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Men In Black 3

It’s not a sequel that needed to be made, but thanks to the charm of its leads and a tone that harks back to the wit and humour of the original, it’s a pretty enjoyable trip.

Bel Ami

The excellent female support cast saves this patchy effort, which is let down by its leading man and a flat screenplay.

The Dictator

A disappointing, often repulsive and mean-spirited mess of a film with seemingly only one real criterion on its agenda: to shock and offend.

The Woman In Black

Packed with atmosphere, this old-fashioned but deftly told ghost story delivers ample chills and thrills.

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Pina (Film)

by Mark Demetrius | August 16, 2011 17:44 | Edited August 16, 2011 17:48

Decidedly underwhelming, this unfortunately fails to reveal any real insight into its fascinating subject.

The new documentary Pina purports to be the world's first 3-D arthouse film, though that's highly debatable. In any case, the 3-D is state-of-the-art, and this is a tribute to Pina Bausch, the late German choreographer. Unfortunately, it tells us almost literally nothing about her.

 

The original idea here was for Bausch and writer-director Wim Wenders to collaborate on a doco. Sadly, she died suddenly in 2009 at the age of 68, just five days after being diagnosed with cancer, so the resulting picture is "for" her rather than about her. We see the members of her ensemble, The Tanztheater Wuppertal, performing various pieces, and hear voiceovers - while looking at their impassive faces - of them lamenting her passing, or quoting her. Most of these quotes are underwhelming and decidedly vague. ("What are you yearning for?" "Words...can't do more than just evoke things. That's where dance comes in.")

 

The dancers range from teenagers to the elderly, and to be fair, many of them are extremely talented. The trouble is that they tend to do unremarkable things expressively, rather than to act out stories, so the net result is akin to a mime act - only with more people involved. The musical accompaniment to the dancing ranges from jazz and light classical to pop, and the visual contexts range from the austere to the lush - a room with chairs, tram, park, factory, public swimming pool, and so on - but the regular changes of scene don't manage to stave off monotony.

 

When cult German filmmaker Wim Wenders is on form (Wings Of Desire, The Buena Vista Social Club, Paris, Texas et al), he is just about matchless. But Pina is a bit of a guilty displeasure: you feel that you should be enraptured, but a lot of it is unutterably boring.