Under Milk Wood (15)
Directed by Kevin Allen
4/5

I REALLY enjoyed Kevin Allen’s funny and fascinating film of Dylan Thomas’s classic portrait of the lives and dreams of people in a small Welsh fishing village.

The BBC first broadcast Thomas’s inimitable radio play Under Milk Wood in 1954 and it triumphantly underlined the crucial creative quality of the medium in allowing listeners to create their own unique imagery, guided and inspired by words.

Here, Allen adds his images and creates a witty, visually stunning and consistently surprising riff on the original.

Corpses converse on the seabed, humanoid rats sing and a satyr adds a diabolical touch to the increasingly otherworldly village of Llareggub.

Its beguiling parade of oddball inhabitants include a daft draper who sings and dances to express his love, a prim woman in nazi gear savouring her sexual fantasies by whipping her two shackled husbands and an organist who plays facing a panoply of severed hands and feet hanging from the ceiling — cliched characters are demonstrably rare.

Knowing performances, led by narrator Rhys Ifans, decorate a unique fantasy that consistently delivers the unexpected.

If you see the film, you can decide whether or not to suggest its creators should “fforegub.” I doubt that you will — unlike the self-important 1972 Richard Burton-Elizabeth Taylor version, this is eminently watchable.

Review by Alan Frank

Do I Sound Gay? (15)
Directed by David Thorpe
4/5

WRITER-DIRECTOR David Thorpe asks the question: “Do I sound gay?” and — possibly with his tongue lodged frequently in cheek — sets out to answer his own unlikely query in a documentary whose style wittily follows Morgan Spurlock’s Super Size Me.

His confidence destabilised after a romantic break-up, Thorpe becomes obsessed with the sound of his own voice and, emotionally traumatised by the homophobia he encountered when he was growing up, investigates his vocal abilities.

He consults a voice coach and attempts to follow her advice as to how to deepen his tones, takes witty swipes at homophobic shock jock Rush Limbaugh and, tellingly, assembles a fascinating gallery of gay witnesses to boldly go where no film man has gone before in having Star Trek’s George Takei testify to camera.

 Novelist David Sudaris’s “What’s the problem if someone assumes that I’m gay when I open my mouth?” is perhaps the most acute comment.

Review by Alan Frank

Taxi Tehran (12A)
Directed by Jafar Panahi
4/5

FLYING the flag for Iranian cinema, veteran director Jafar Panahi has defied the authorities once more by producing this wonderfully insightful and award-winning fly-on-the-wall mockumentary about life in Iran.

This is the third film he has made covertly since being banned from film-making for 20 years in 2010 and it won the top accolade at this year’s Berlin Film Festival, thus sticking it to the man again.

Posing as a taxi driver, Panahi ferries a series of passengers — played by people he knew — across Tehran. They discuss a range of subjects, from politics and human injustice to film-making and video piracy.

Based on Panahi’s own experience and documentary material, all the action is captured by several cameras installed in the cab.

It is a simple but ingenious idea and the result is a surprisingly entertaining yet gripping ride.

However the lack of end credits is a sober reminder of the danger involved in such an enterprise and the number of people who were willing to take risks.

Described as Panahi’s love letter to cinema, Taxi Tehran is an inspirational example of where there is a will there is a way.

Review by Maria Duarte

Fresh Dressed (15)
Directed by Sacha Jenkins
3/5

THE vital quality of a good documentary is that it is watchable even when the subject has no apparent appeal.

I know very little about hip-hop and even less about fashion, so all credit to first-time director Sacha Jenkins for an interesting and never boring film covering both subjects. Indeed, more running time would have been welcome.

He explores hip-hop fashion’s remarkable genesis — depressingly, we learn that even slaves were allowed one good outfit for church — and, while commercial exploitation is endemic in the US, the background to this corruption fascinates.

Hip-hop happened in the Bronx in the 1970s where gangs became “crews,” using clothes to show who they were, or aspired to be, and vivid witnesses to the phenomenon include Pharrell Williams, Kanye and Damon Dash.

“Fashion is a whole other thing,” we’re told. The mantra that if you look good, you feel good convinces, while the design influence of Easy Rider should fascinate cinephiles.

Review by Alan Frank

The Vatican Tapes
Directed by Mark Neveldine
2/5

JUST when you thought there was no more life left in the demonic possession/exorcist horror genre, along comes a film which shows it is time it is put out of its misery once and for all.

In this predictable good-versus-evil thriller, Dougray Scott plays a deeply religious military man who enlists the aid of the local priest (Michael Pena) when his 27-year-old daughter (Olivia Taylor Dudley) is possessed by a demon and modern psychiatric medicine can’t help her.

The Vatican Tapes has its creepy moments, aided by Dudley’s solid performance, but when the head of the Vatican archive and exorcist sweeps in to take charge it all turns to laughable cliches, including the final reveal.

The burning question is what possessed Scott and Pena to star in this. That’s the real mystery the film poses.

Review by Maria Duarte