Film: Cruz sizzles in Volver, friends overstay their welcome and horror gets some laughs
Cruz wins acclaim for Volver
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Directed by David R Ellis, out now, cinema, starring Samuel L Jackson, Julianna Marguiles and Rachel Blanchard, running time 105 minutes. |  |
Thursday, 24, Aug 2006 06:15
Of all the films out this week, Volver has so far one won the most critical acclaim. Starring the beautiful Penelope Cruz, it tells the tale of three generations of women living in La Mancha in Spain. Raimunda (Cruz) works hard to support her daughter and husband while her sister Sole is separated and lonely. But after the death of Raimunda's husband, Sole starts receiving visitations form their deceased mum and the pair are forced to face the past and deal with their present.
Volver manages to be both funny and moving, and beautifully shot and told. Variety describes it as "reflective, subdued and sometimes intense", while the New York theatre wire claims it is "an at-times plaintive love letter to women: a paean to their humour, their loyalty, and especially their ability to survive their encounters with cheating, lying fornicators".
Newlyweds Molly and Carl, played by Kate Hudson and Matt Dillon, have an unwanted houseguest in You, Me and Dupree. After the wedding they return to find that their best man (played by Owen Wilson) needs somewhere to crash after losing his job and home. Typical slapstick humour ensues as Wilson outstays his welcome and slowly begins to drive his friends crazy.
Despite well-received humorous roles in previous comedies such as Zoolander and The Wedding Crashers, Owen Wilson fails to get as many laughs in this latest venture. Critics have so far failed to be won over by the film, and it may be that the film is best left well alone unless people are after an evening of cheap laughs and nothing else. USA Today have called it "cringe inducing humour at its most wooden" and slated it as "a good idea badly executed".
Black horror/comedy Severance on the other hand has been received far more warmly. A sales division team from a multinational weapons firm are sent on a team-building weekend in Hungary, and if team-building is not scary enough, things start to get gory after they are set upon by killers intent on revenge.
Film Focus has described the film as "scarier than Shaun of the Dead but just as funny" and maintains that it is "full of well-drawn characters, playful gallows humour and wonderfully original horror".
Look Both Ways is Australian filmmaker Sarah Watt's feature debut and follows the lives of a couple of characters who are thrown together by a train crash. It has won acclaim Down Under for its ability to look at grief in a both unforgiving and romantic way.
"Death, survival, fate, chance, struggle, acceptance . . . all these weighty things plus a good deal of wit are at the heart of cinema's latest effort to present colliding characters searching for their spiritual centre," the Boston Globe writes.