The Believer ***
Dir: Henry Bean
With: Ryan Gosling, Summer Phoenix, Glenn Fitzgerald, Theresa Russell, Billy Zane, Garret Dillahunt, Kris Eivers, Joel Garland, Joshua Harto, Tommy Nohilly
98 mins, cert 15
If this story weren't based on truth, you would have difficulty believing it. It is culled from the life of a yeshiva student who turned into a neo-fascist, joined the Ku Klux Klan and killed himself when outed as a Jew by an investigating New York journalist.
The story is altered in this long- planned, cheaply-made but not cheap-looking film. Danny Balint is painted as precociously intelligent, arguing with his rabbis as a boy and then becoming a lone skinhead beating up Jews at the age of 22. He hates his race largely because his view of the Holocaust was that they acted like eternal victims rather than fighters. Bean seems to insist that Balint was virtually a split personality, linking up with a neo-fascist organisation by day, and arguing with them too, but studying the Torah obsessively by night. When he leads a group of skinheads into a synagogue, helping to plant a bomb, he prevents them from desecrating the sanctuary. Arrested for causing a fracas in a kosher cafe, he is forced to face "sensitivity training" with Holocaust survivors whom he despises. But he teaches his girl (Summer Phoenix) Hebrew and the tenets of Jewish religion. Ryan Gosling provides a commanding centre to the film, well worth the Oscar nomination he probably won't get because of the controversial nature of Bean's story. He never overplays, but invites you to look into the psyche of a man living an impossible contradiction.
If the logic of the film is muddled, it is certainly as strong a piece of work as American History X - and even more audacious. The tendency is to think: "Only in America." Bean may have wanted more than that. That's the film's failure. Its success is surely that it was made at all, and with such a performer in the lead.
Riding in Cars with Boys ***
Dir: Penny Marshall
With Drew Barrymore, Steve Zahn, Brittany Murphy, James Woods
132 minutes, cert 12
This is the film version of Beverly Donofrio's best-selling account of her life as a teenage mother with a hopeless husband and a desperate desire to get educated and write a book. It is freely adapted, which means a lot has been changed, not necessarily for the better. It has other problems too - it's too long, and Drew Barrymore, in the leading role, doesn't age very convincingly in the 25 years or so in which the story is told.
But there's still much to admire in this portrait of small-town American life - and it is hard to remember Barrymore being better. This is a very honest, un-starry performance, much aided by Zahn as the feckless lad who gets her pregnant, marries her, takes to heroin as well as booze and then leaves to give his wife a better chance. He almost attains the status of a tragic figure. Episodic and rambling as the film is, its portrait of a child/woman struggling against fearful odds and encumbered by a policeman father (Woods) who persists in doing the wrong thing at the wrong time - right down to refusing her a bra at the age of 12 and messing up her wedding - looks very accurate. Marshall has made crisper films, but few which detail a life with less Hollywood compromise.
A Christmas Carol * Dir: Jimmy T Murakami
With: Simon Callow, Kate Winslet, Nicolas Cage, Jane Horrocks, Michael Gambon
81 mins, cert U
Decorated by some not very notable pop songs, two cutesy mice following the action and only moderate hand-drawn animation, this European rival to Disney and co doesn't really cut the mustard. Simon Callow does his impersonation of Dickens in the live action bookend scenes, and voices Scrooge nicely, but the rest of the distinguished cast are largely wasted. And we'll draw a veil over Cage as Bob Marley. The chief trouble is that, though the backdrops look good, the characters themselves are poorly thought out.
Dog Eat Dog * Dir: Moody Shoaibi
With: Rik Billock, Nathan Constance, Crunski, Alan Davies, Gary Kemp, David Oyelowo, Madhav Sharma, Mark Tonderai, Stewart Wright
93 mins, cert 15
www.peoplesound.com/dogeatdog/
"Two rules," says the director, "No guns, no car chases." Fair enough, but what about a coherent storyline and a screenplay that sounds as if it wasn't scrawled on the back of an envelope? Dog Eat Dog, I'm afraid, is yet another Britpack movie that simply doesn't work properly.
Its principals are four young black London friends, each from a different background and each hoping to get rich quick or at least repay their debts. They are not an attractive quartet, though the director clearly thinks we might find them so. The intention is to create a comedy of modern city manners that takes in dreams, drugs, pornography, clubbing and football. The worst thing is the attitude towards women, the best is the energetic performances. This is a messy and forgettable debut.
Women Talking Dirty ***
Dir: Coky Giedroyc
With: Helena Bonham Carter, Gina McKee, Eileen Atkins, Kenneth Cranham, James Nesbitt, James Purefoy, Ken Drury, Julien Lambroschini
93 mins, cert 15
www.womentalkingdirty.com
"Christ, look at me," says one of the heroines of this British romantic comedy, "I'm growing a beard. Haven't had a shag in ages." Do women grow beards if they haven't had a shag? Someone tell me. If this is talking dirty, that's about as far as the film, culled from the novel by Isla Dewar, goes. It isn't in any way as daring as Stella Does Tricks, the director's grimly realist debut. Set in Edinburgh, it has Gina McKee as Ellen, a shy, passive cartoonist, and Helena Bonham Carter as Cora, an oddball single mother. They are celebrating the former's split from her gambler husband before flashbacks tell us what went on before between the two friends and their unreliable men. The screenplay is a bit patchy, but often nicely ironic so that the ups and downs of the young women's lives allow both actresses room to show what they can do. Bonham Carter's mad-haired eccentric is lively and McKee, so good in Notting Hill and Wonderland, gives a quieter but equally effective performance. Nice to see Richard Wilson and Eileen Atkins in cameo roles that could have been overcooked but aren't. In all, this is a better homegrown film than has often been put before a reluctant public this slightly benighted year.
The 51st State *
Dir: Ronny Yu
With Samuel L Jackson, Robert Carlyle, Emily Mortimer
98 minutes, cert 18
For the first 20 minutes, they showed us this braindead if smartly made farrago without the dialogue. It was a good idea. When it came on, I counted 87 four-letter words beginning with "F" before giving up. The screenplay is virtually non- existent and it looks like a Hong Kong action movie made in Liverpool. Sadly it bears the Film Council logo. Jackson, who executive produced, appears in a kilt throughout until, in the last scene, we see him walking away entirely nude. It is truly, utterly and irreparably dreadful.