At the movies with Dan Slevin

SOMEBODY once said that comedy is just tragedy plus time and Four Lions, a wicked, bitter and hilarious new comedy by Chris Morris, tests that maxim to breaking point (and for some of you, beyond it).
Back in the 90s, Morris was responsible for “Brass Eye”, a mock current affairs series that conned gullible celebrities and politicians into (for example) appearing in advertisements warning the nation against the new super drug ‘Cake’. Fearless and righteous in equal measure, he has made his first feature film and it dares to try and make us laugh at the first world’s current bogeyman, Islamo-terrorism, specifically the homegrown kind which led to the 2005 London bus and tube bombings.
In Sheffield, South Yorkshire, a group of wildly enthusiastic but incompetent jihadists (played superbly by Riz Ahmed, Kayvan Novak, Arsher Ali, Adeel Akhtar and Nigel Lindsay) would be making a stand if only they could stop bickering. A trip to a Pakistan training camp, bomb making classes, farewell videos and a trip to the London Marathon are all disasters but Four Lions is only 98% farce - there’s some heart in there too.
Four Lions is pretty much indefensible in print but in a dark cinema you can let yourself go and enjoy some of the finest absurd comedy moments of the century so far.

I’m given to understand that the “ham” in Josh Duhamel is silent. After watching his new “comedy” Life As We Know It, I wish that the ham in his acting was silent too. Duhamel and the ghastly Katherine Heigl play a mismatched pair who are given custody of a baby when the parents are killed in a car accident. They hate each other and aren’t prepared for parenthood but grow to love each other and become a family.
Life As We Know It is a revolting ugly contrivance, Heigl plays her usual insufferable control freak and plenty of clichés are rolled out, including the last minute run through an airport to save a relationship. Don’t. Bother.

Farewell was the code name for a top level Western source inside the Soviet security machine. He fed enough material to the French (and eventually the Americans) to tilt the balance of power decisively in Reagan’s favour and bring the Cold War to an early end. At least that’s the thesis of the French-Russian thriller Farewell, which successfully recreates the paranoid psychology of the times and features an excellent performance from Emir Kusturica, better known as a director of films like Black Cat, White Cat and When Father Was Away on Business. If you look closely enough you will also see former TV detective Hutch (David Soul) as a White House spook.

I’m extremely impressed by the intelligent and challenging cinema coming out of Spain at the moment. [REC], Timecrimes and Cell 211 are all examples of fresh thinking and taking inspiration from limitations.

Buried is the latest winner - a superb idea brilliantly executed by director Rodrigo Cortés (from a script by Chris Sparling). Ryan Reynolds is a US truck driver contracted to ship stuff around the Iraqi war zone. After an ambush he is kidnapped and buried alive with only a zippo and a cellphone. He is being held for ransom and has only 90 minutes of air left to persuade the authorities to pay up or he will never be found.
The entire film is shot inside the confines of the coffin and all takes place in real-time - structural formalism for the win! - and the tension is often unbearable as Cortés, Sparling and Reynolds pile on the pressure. Buried is going to be a film school text one day. Get to it quickly because no one else is and it won’t be around long.

Lantern-jawed movie star Ben Affleck has already proved that he’s a filmmaker of great promise. He (with Matt Damon) started a kind of Boston trilogy with Good Will Hunting in 1997. He directed his first feature ten years later and hit it out of the park with Gone Baby Gone. His latest, The Town, also prowls the inner city Boston mean streets of Charlestown, where the proud Irish American community robs the banks of the rich and polices its own.
Affleck is the leader of a crew of bank robbers. When he falls in love with a witness he is supposed to be pressuring not to testify (Rebecca Hall) he tries to retire but comes into conflict with hothead half brother Jeremy Renner (The Hurt Locker) and G-man Jon Hamm (who proves he ain’t Don Draper by not shaving).
This time around Affleck the director gives Affleck the writer a little too much liberty (and Affleck the actor too many opportunities to indulge himself). There’s a bit too much speechifying in the first two acts and too much shooting in the third, but The Town is a solid thriller nonetheless.
Dan’s recommendation: Four Lions.