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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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Project Nim (Film)

by Erin Free | September 26, 2011 15:27 | Edited September 26, 2011 15:27

Driven by James Marsh’s measured storytelling style, this ethically unsettling and emotionally compelling documentary is the equal of any cinematic epic.

With his Oscar winner, Man On Wire, director James Marsh bent and twisted the documentary form until it looked more like a seventies heist flick, as he told the extraordinary story of an eccentric daredevil who illicitly walked a wire between New York's Twin Towers. Man On Wire was a smashing example of how truly engrossing and entertaining documentary cinema can be, and, in a feat to rival the one pulled by that film's central character, James Marsh has actually bettered it with his new doco, Project Nim, a stunning, ultimately heartbreaking tale of bad science and animal mistreatment.

 

In the seventies, behavioural scientist Herb Terrace instigated a study which involved removing a baby chimp from its mother, and raising it as if it were a human child, with the aim of teaching it sign language and determining whether chimps could actually communicate with human beings. In the first of a series of bizarre decisions, Terrace chose a former lover with no animal experience to raise the chimp, Nim. He then instituted a revolving door policy of employing support staff, bringing on a number of equally unqualified young teachers (several of whom he slept with) to work with the chimp. When Terrace eventually deems his experiment to have failed, he abandons Nim in an act of typically cold science-first reasoning, and from there, the tragic chimp's story just gets stranger and sadder.

 

Playing out like a bizarre psychodrama, replete with only-in-the-seventies details (Nim smoked weed, and lived in a New York brownstone), Project Nim comes packed with more love triangles, betrayals, manipulation and violence than your average soap opera, but Marsh's literate, measured storytelling style, and the tale's innate emotional drive, make Project Nim the equal of any cinematic epic. It's a wholly affecting work of rare power from a filmmaker quickly ascending to the top of the documentary pile.