The Upside of Anger

15, 117 mins

Suburban mom Terry Wolfmeyer (Joan Allen) has hit the bottle after her husband’s recent disappearance. Her three daughters are subjected to the emotional fallout of what she assumes is his desertion. Then into her world comes a drunken former baseball star, Denny (Kevin Costner) – first as a drinking buddy, then as the man in her life. The writer/director Mike Binder has created a funny and dramatically engaging study of a dysfunctional mother trying to hold her family together as she falls apart. Allen and Costner – yes, an unlikely combination – really do shine in this grown-up, witty and intelligent drama. Four stars CL

Bridge to Terabithia

PG, 95 mins

This is a remarkable film for children – and pretty powerful for adults. It is the story of an outsider, Jesse Aarons (Josh Hutcherson), and his friendship with a new girl at school, Leslie (Anna Sophia Robb). They escape the privations of their lives – his poverty, her lack of parental attention – by going to the local woods and playing in the imagined kingdom of Terabithia. The film moves effortlessly between the realism of everyday life and the imagined world. A sudden and unexpected twist in the plot should have all the family weeping together. Hutcherson and Robb give remarkable performances, and you pray there will be a sequel. Four stars CL

Dans Paris

15, 94 mins

Two of the brightest young male stars of French cinema are united in Christophe Honoré’s drama. Romain Duris plays Paul, who has retreated to his family home in a state of severe depression, and Louis Garrel plays Jonathan, Paul’s younger brother, who tries to cheer his sibling up via mobile-phone conversations while sauntering around Paris. Beneath some flowery, distinctly French-movie dialogue, the film offers a poignant account of depression, dwelling on how the condition can put sufferers beyond their loved ones’ understanding. While Paul languishes, Jonathan seems incapable of not enjoying life. Indeed, the divide between the brothers splits the narrative into two strands that don’t always work well together. Yet, with the help of its jazzy nouvelle-vague style, the film remains beguiling. Three stars EP

Mutual Appreciation

15, 108 mins

Andrew Bujalski is a young American film-maker carving a niche for himself with low-key pictures about clever but indecisive twentysomethings meandering through small emotional trials. This is the black-and-white story of a budding singer-songwriter (Justin Rice) who takes a shine to his best mate’s girlfriend (Rachel Clift). For every scene that rings true, there’s one in which the mumbles and hesitations are overdone. At times, the awkwardness seems to come not from the characters, but from the actors – they look unconvinced about the need to do so much uming and ering. Still, they are likeable, and the film made me happy to go with its flow. Three stars EP

Goya’s Ghosts

15, 114 mins

With Amadeus and Valmont already to his name, Milos Forman returns to the 18th century for this fictional tale of events witnessed by Francisco Goya (Stellan Skarsgard). It’s certainly a Goya-esque yarn in its catalogue of suffering, with rival ideologies inflicting equal amounts of pain and characters being driven to insanity and despair. But the film’s brush strokes are cack-handedly broad. Javier Bardem, as a wily inquisitor, is hindered by his Spanish accent, while many of the film’s other Spaniards sound oddly American. They include Natalie Portman, who has to run around playing both a gurning madwoman and this character’s daughter. Two stars EP

Zizek!

no cert, 71 mins

The Slovenian philosopher Slavoj Zizek is entertaining company in Astra Taylor’s documentary. Exuberant, shaggily bearded and speaking English with a thick Slavic accent, he is a perfect caricature of an esoteric cultural theorist. But the film is unsatisfying. Part tutorial, part fly-on-the-wall profile, it gives us neither a solid account of Zizek’s thinking nor a clear sense of his personality. The funniest bit is a clip of him being interviewed on an idiotic American talk show. It’s a scene Christopher Guest might have cut on the grounds of it being too improbable. Two stars EP

Fast Food Nation

15, 113 mins

To convey some of the points made in Eric Schlosser’s book Fast Food Nation, a journalistic exposé of the burger industry’s less savoury practices, Richard Linklater has made a fictional film about various ordinary people whose lives throw light on things that the fast-food companies would prefer to keep in darkness. It’s a propagandist equivalent of the director’s early Slacker and Dazed and Confused, but whereas the discursive style of those movies is the aim of the exercise, the many sidetracks in this can only be token decorations on the film’s didactic framework. They just add extra dullness to what is an essentially dull concept. One star EP

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