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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 Runaways (Film)

by Erin Free | July 12, 2010 14:14 | Edited July 14, 2010 11:12

Eschewing the traditional rock biopic format, the film evocatively recreates the era and the pitch-perfect performances capture the high emotions of the time.

With its striking opening image - a drop of menstrual blood splashing onto a hot strip of asphalt - The Runaways makes its position powerfully, abundantly clear: this is a film by girls, for girls, and about girls. It's a bold stand, but one that works perfectly considering the film's subject matter. The titular seventies rock group was made up of teenage girls, and they blazed a trail that helped subsequent generations of female rockers stake their own claim in what was once a purely male-dominated field. Debut writer/director Floria Sigismondi (a highly original voice in the world of music videos) inventively turns her back on the traditional rock biopic format, instead delivering an almost impressionistic coming of age film told from a distinctively feminine perspective.

 

The film begins in the heady mid-seventies, with tomboy wannabe rocker Joan Jett (Kristen Stewart is just the right mix of vulnerability and jutting-chin aggression as this future rock icon) looking to make her mark on the music scene. When she pitches the idea of an all-girl rock group to promoter and industry player Kim Fowley (the wonderfully voluble Michael Shannon), he hooks her up with sex kitten singer Cherie Currie (the brilliant Dakota Fanning in a performance of startling, uninhibited physicality). The Runaways are soon born, and the girls are quickly up to their bottom lips in drugs, fame, notoriety, and the throttling effects of their own burgeoning sexuality.

 

While nuts-and-bolts details are never checked off (it's never quite clear what stage of their career The Runaways are in, and all the record industry power mongering happens off camera), Floria Sigismondi gives the film a visceral kick that makes you vicariously feel the swirling emotional firestorm that these young girls found themselves in the middle of. From the actresses gamely doing their own singing, to the grubby, fumbling sex scenes, The Runaways breathlessly seethes with hard fought authenticity.