The urgency of that talk is impressive, but most of the time I hadn't the smallest clue what they were on about. It looks good, though.Unleashed (18) *Bob Hoskins abuses the memory of The Long Good Friday as a small-time cockney villain who has trained an adopted urchin, Danny (Jet Li), to fight like an attack dog once let off the leash. Primer (12A) *** Now here's something mighty peculiar. Shane Carruth, a former engineer who spent three years teaching himself film-making, wrote, directed, edited and scored this little conundrum of a thriller "for the price of a used car". He also stars as Aaron who, with his fellow boffin Abe (David Sullivan), discovers unexpected clairvoyant properties in a gadget they've been experimenting with in a garage. The potential is awesome, though this doesn't quite fit with a story that's basically white-shirted office drones talking impenetrable shop. Preparing for her visit, he's panicked by the sight of his kids' messy bedroom, but realises that this is what passes for "normal".
"Just play around," he tells them, "do whatever it is that kids do." By the end he still hasn't got the hang of it - why dump an unloved art print in the bushes outside your house? - but at least he has stopped immolating himself.. July is similarly bold in dealing with inchoate sexuality and the borderline between curiosity and abuse, but whenever the tone looks about to darken she swerves away towards light comedy. I was grateful; another Solondz would be surplus to requirements.July herself, her eyes an almost unnatural blue, has one terrific scene in which she walks with Richard along the street, and they mark their progress from a shoe store to a car park as if it were an entire relationship.Richard, in search of a "normal" life, is initially freaked out by Christine's eccentric friendliness, and doesn't know what front he should present. The 14-year-old Peter (Miles Thompson) is used as a test dummy by two neighbourhood Lolitas trying out their oral skills, while his six-year-old brother Robby (Brandon Ratcliff) stumbles into a weird relationship with a stranger on the internet who is beguiled by the boy's fanciful musings on "poop".Talk of internet porn involving minors might ring an alarm bell if this were a movie by Todd Solondz, whose brilliant Happiness remains a benchmark for the sick comedy of dysfunction. Christine runs into Richard (John Hawkes), a shoe salesman on his uppers following a painful separation from his wife. Desperate to spy a silver lining in the gathering clouds, he tells himself, "I am prepared for amazing things to happen", even if setting fire to his own hand wasn't amazing in quite the way he intended.His two sons seem to be having more fun than he does.
There is something guileless and less than knowing about its offbeat characters, all engaged in the pursuit of love, or at least in the avoidance of solitude.July, as well as writing and directing, takes the role of Christine, who works by day as a cab driver and by night tinkers at video art which, by the look of it, is meant to be hopeless, though, this being LA, one can't be too sure. Miranda July's feature debut, Me and You and Everyone We Know, which wowed them at the Sundance and Cannes festivals, would have to hold up its hand on the kooky-and-quirky front, but, while in other movies that might constitute a warning, here it qualifies as a recommendation. Shirley MacLaine vamps through the part of Endora, one of those egomaniacal divas she plays to order, only here without any decent lines or memorable scenes. You have to remind yourself that this film is from the pen of the woman who wrote When Harry Met Sally, because not a trace of that wit and dash is discernible 17 years on.