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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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The Last Circus (Film)

by Dov Kornits | June 20, 2011 14:44 | Edited June 20, 2011 14:45

While it’s packed with plenty of visceral and visual kicks, many of its themes may not translate to audiences beyond the borders of Spain.

What is it with clowns? Why are they so often depicted in such a dark manner in the cinema? It doesn't get blacker than in this Venice Film Festival prize winning film from Spanish auteur Alex De La Iglesia (The Day Of The Beast, Perdita Durango).

 

The prologue sees a couple of clowns enlisted against their wishes to fight during The Spanish Civil War. Without even rubbing off the makeup, they shoot the enemy with such ferocity that it sets the tone for the bizarreness of what's to follow. One of the clowns has a boy, so we jump forward thirty-odd years, and the introspective son becomes the "sad clown" in a ragtag circus. He soon falls for a flirtatious acrobat, but the problem is, she's already in a relationship with the circus' "happy clown." You know that there's going to be trouble when the happy clown admits that if he wasn't a clown, he'd be a murderer.

 

Never shying away from gratuitous violence, Iglesia throws everything but the kitchen sink into his idea-heavy movies, and if you board the rollercoaster, you'll appreciate the journey. The major problem with his latest cult flick is that the themes, many of which would have resonance with a Spanish audience, may not stick here. Unlike a genuine masterpiece like The Day Of The Beast (1995), which had a priest picking up a rifle to murder The Anti-Christ, where the central idea and the ensuing breaking of taboos were universal, here they are limited to the turning on its head of the clown image, which has been done before. That said, The Last Circus is chockablock with visceral and visual pleasures, and if you rooted for Heath Ledger's Joker, you'll no doubt get a kick out of this.