Deborah Ross

The Bucket List 12A, Nationwide As Rob Reiner should know better and Jack Nicholson should know better and Morgan Freeman should know better, what you have here is a film which has to make you ask: how come they didn’t? You’d think one, at least, would say somewhere along the line: ‘Thanks, but if it’s all the same to you, I think I’ll count myself out of this lazy and condescending package.’ I don’t get it, but at least I napped though a sizeable chunk in the middle. Yes, I did feel cross at myself when I woke up, although only when I realised there was still some way to go.

There Will Be Blood 15, nationwide Juno 12A, nationwide There Will Be Blood (oh, yes) stars Daniel Day-Lewis as Daniel Plainview, a late-19th-century American oilman whose own view could not be plainer: find oil, beat off the competition, buy the land, drill it, get rich. And that’s about it, not that it matters. It’s the genius — a word that should never be used lightly; which is why I hope you can see I just used it heavily — of Day-Lewis’s performance that will keep you with it. Day-Lewis is, surely, every actor’s actor, even though they all probably hate him at some level. ‘If Day-Lewis is making a movie this year, then I am not.

Cloverfield 15, Nationwide Cloverfield is tiresome, dumb and horrid, and just in case you didn’t get that I’ll say it again: this film is tiresome, dumb and horrid. Don’t go. Do anything but go. Don’t be swayed, as I was, by the fact that on its opening day in America it grossed $16 million, grossed a further $41 million on its opening weekend — making it the most successful January release of all time — and has since grossed $56 million worldwide. Don’t be swayed into thinking there must be something in it, because there isn’t. It’s a monster movie that not only fails as a monster movie — I’ve been more scared on the teacups at the fair — but also fails at having anything to say.

After the cheerlessness and brutality of No Country for Old Men, I’m not sure a film about a serial killer is just what you want. Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street 18, nationwide After the cheerlessness and brutality of No Country for Old Men, I’m not sure a film about a serial killer is just what you want. I may even be up to here with bloody films about bloodless people. Why not a nice film about nice people doing nice things, like crocheting for the poor? How hard can that be? True enough, Sweeney Todd is a musical, but this doesn’t exactly lighten the mood which, if you are as vigilant and smart as I am, you will spot right from the beginning when slicks of scarlet blood ooze from the opening credits. Hello, Dolly! Now that was a nice musical.

No Country for Old Men 15, Nationwide No Country for Old Men, adapted by Joel and Ethan Coen from Cormac McCarthy’s novel, is not for the squeamish or easily spooked, or at least should not be for the squeamish and easily spooked. I am both — in spades — yet found it almost ecstatically absorbing. This is not to say I liked it. But neither is it to say that I didn’t. It’s not a film that asks to be either liked or disliked. It just is, branding itself on to you like a heated iron. It is set in Texas, in 1980, on the USA–Mexico border where the men are men (‘Quit yer hollerin’,’ they say to their womenfolk) and the desert landscape is vast and dry and desolate.

Charlie Wilson’s War 15, Nationwide Mike Nichols’s latest film is a mixed bag and a stuffed bag and, incredibly, none the worse for either. In its rat-a-tat, rapid-fire 95 minutes you get bombings, mines, refugee camps, casualties, hot tubs, Playboy cover girls, arms dealers, cocaine, scandal, Tom Hanks’s naked butt (surprisingly delicious; peachy), CIA agents, world presidents — and all in a movie that is partly serious political satire and partly just a hoot. A film about America’s covert funding of the mujahedin in Soviet-occupied Afghanistan a hoot? Listen, I know a hoot when I see one, and this is a hoot. OK, so who is this Charlie Wilson and what exactly is this war? Good question. Top marks.

Well, it’s not as good as Monica Ali’s book. I’m not convinced it does the book justice. I didn’t think it captures the book. Is it true to the book? And blah-de-blah-de-blah, but if you want my advice, which you should, as I am very good at advice: ditch the book. This is a film and should be judged as only that: a film. A film adapted from a book is no longer the book, just as milk made into cheese is no longer milk. It’s become something else, in and of itself. So there is really only one question and that question is this: is Brick Lane a good film? Yes, it is. It’s not flashy or showy and it is not going to knock your socks off, but it’s a small jewel of a film: gentle, languorous, humane, and acted with the utmost sweetness.

OK, here we have a fantasy film and I absolutely hate fantasy films. They bore me to hell and back, plus what if one day I don’t actually make it back? What if I end up stuck for all eternity in some place where, for example, everyone insists on speaking Elvish and having three-day message-board conversations about the story arc of Blake’s 7 or the nuances of Quidditch before going back to work on the helpdesk at the library? I accept this is probably my limitation; that my imagination is a dried, shrivelled-up husk of a thing, which does makes it simpatico with my face but does not make it simpatico with this particular genre. But there you have it and there I have always had it.