The week's biggest screening was
Evil Dead, a remake of Sam Raimi's 1981 classic about a group of young people who find a sinister book in a cabin in the woods and unleash all sorts of nasty horror. This version has some very nice touches, and gore-hounds will absolutely adore it. We also caught up with Danny Boyle's twisty, gleaming, enjoyably over-complicated hypnosis thriller
Trance, starring James McAvoy; Jason Bateman and Melissa McCarthy in the amusing but pointlessly overcomplicated comedy
Identity Thief; Bryan Singer's epic-sized fairy tale action movie
Jack the Giant Slayer, in which a lively cast rescues us from digital overload; and Jim Sturgess and Kirstin Dunst in the fantasy-romance
Upside Down, which is strong on ideas but short on logic and story.
A bit further off the beaten path were Bernardo Bertolucci's perceptive and remarkably youthful Italian drama
Me and You; the astonishing, essential British doc
We Went to War, which catches up with Vietnam veterans after filmmaker Michael Grigsby (who sadly died last week) first documented them in 1970; and an intriguing but annoyingly indulgent French actor-director encounter in
Unfaithful.
This coming week we have the action sequel
G.I. Joe: Retaliation, the comedy
21 and Over, Gemma Arterton and Saoirse Ronan in
Byzantium, Eric Bana and Olivia WIlde in
Deadfall, the American indie
Four and the Filipino-Malaysian drama
Bwakaw.
