The Third Man (PG)
Directed by Carol Reed
5/5
NOT every film dubbed a “classic” survives the passage of time.
Carol Reed’s superb film noir is a notable, possibly unique, exception in that it’s as powerful and gripping now as it was rightly seen to be when it was first released in 1949.
Graham Greene’s multilayered screenplay strands pulp writer Holly Martins (Joseph Cotton) out of his comfort zone when his old friend Harry Lime (Orson Welles) invites him to post-war Vienna, only to find that Lime has died. Or has he?
The film still works perfectly, with Robert Krasker’s Oscar-winning black-and-white cinematography adding dramatic impact to Reed’s vivid location shooting and Anton Karas’s zither score remains equally impressive.
Welles began his film career at the top with Citizen Kane and Lime was his finest character portrayal since that debut and it’s possibly even more nuanced here. There are no poor performances but Welles’s really does transcend the decades.
Alan Frank

Everly (18)
Directed by Joe Lynch
0/5
DURING this uniquely repellent slice of ill-conceived torture porn, “heroine” Everly (Salma Hayek) opens a Christmas present and finds a severed head.
That this isn’t the most unpleasant sequence in director Joe Lynch’s trashy tale says it all.
It starts with long-time brutalised sex-slave Everly emerging naked from the bathroom of her apartment and mounting a blood-spattering battle against her vile Yakuza boss and his henchmen.
Lynch adds gratuitous sadism, masochism, torture, bullets, corpses galore, faces being dissolved with acid and enough blood to feed a season of Hammer horrors.
Add a sleazy subplot where Everly’s five-year-old daughter’s life is threatened and — just what British filmgoers want to see — a dog being slaughtered and you have something so nauseating it makes Tarantino at his frequent worst seem sugar-sweet by comparison.
There’s only one question that needs to be asked — what made Hayek make the film?
Alan FRank

Going Clear: Scientology and the Prison of Belief
Directed by Alex Gibney
4/5
OSCAR-WINNING director Alex Gibney turns the spotlight on Scientology in this remarkably powerful and insightful documentary.
Based on Lawrence Wright’s book, it outlines the workings of L Ron Hubbard’s “church,” its origins and the lengths to which the organisation goes to control and hold on to its members and challenge its critics.
Through archive footage and interviews with former high-ranking and well-known scientologists such as film director Paul Haggis, the highest profile defector, you learn how members are beaten, subjugated and effectively brainwashed to do its bidding while being persuaded to hand over most of their money to the organisation.
They don’t learn the truth about its religious beliefs, such as “the overlord Xenu and the galactic federation,” until they have been scientologists for over six years.
One of the most startling revelations is how the organsiation’s hierarchy ordered the derailment of their poster boy Tom Cruise and Nicole Kidman’s marriage, turned their adopted children against her and wiretapped her phone, an allegation which the “church” has denied.
What you don’t truly discover is what made the likes of Cruise, John Travolta and these former members join Scientology in the first place.
Even so, this illuminating and thought-provoking documentary will set the cat among the pigeons.
Maria Duarte

That Sugar Film (12A)
Directed by Damon Gameau
3/5
THIS Aussie documentary attempts to reveal the bitter truth about sugar, proving yet again that we are what we eat.
Writer-director Damon Gameau embarks on a 60-day high-sugar diet to see its effects. He consumes 40 teaspoons a day — roughly the daily average for 19 to 30-year-old Australians — only by eating so-called healthy foods which are nevertheless laden with hidden sugars like low-fat yoghurt, muesli bars, juices and cereals.
Within three weeks he developed fatty liver disease, while by the end he had early type-2 diabetes and gained a stone and a half.
Though not ground-breaking, Gameau’s film delivers with the help of star cameos and visual aids in an eye-opening documentary which takes him to a remote Aboriginal community which believes sugar is killing its people and then on to the US, where he’s briefed by leading nutrition experts.
The film dispels the notion that all calories are equal and explores the possible link between sugar and metabolic diseases while showing the lengths the food industry has gone to in denying the association between the two and exonerating sugar by bankrolling scientific “experts.”
Maria Duarte

She’s Funny That Way (12A)
Directed by Peter Bogdanovich
2/5
AFTER almost 14 years, Peter Bogdanovich returns with a screwball comedy which screams Woody Allen from beginning to end.
From Irving Berlin’s Cheek to Cheek playing over the opening credits to the New York setting to the quirky characters and a plot revolving around the staging of a Broadway show, the comparisons are obvious.
Imogen Poots portrays Izzy Patterson, a Brooklyn-born call girl-turned-actress who auditions for a play to discover that the director Arnold Albertson (Owen Wilson) was a former client who gave her $30,000 for a new start in life. She is to play a prostitute opposite his wife (Kathryn Hahn), the star of the production.
Only Wilson can make this odious cheating father of two, whose modus operandi is to give large sums of money to call girls, a charming and likeable guy.
He heads the star-studded ensemble cast in a shockingly disappointing and derivative comedy which harks back to Hollywood’s ’30s and ’40s heydays from the director who gave us the delightful What’s Up Doc? and the unforgettable Paper Moon.
Maria Duarte

The Overnight
Directed by Patrick Brice
3/5
THIS provocative yet grown-up sex comedy manages to keep you uncomfortably off-kilter till the end.
It’s due in part to director Patrick Brice’s witty and intelligent script, coupled with the superb performances from its ensemble cast.
Having just met the rather odd Kurt (Jason Schwartzman) and his son Max (Max Moritt) in the park Alex (Adam Scott) and Emily (Taylor Schilling), newly arrived in Los Angeles, agree to go to his home with their son RJ (RJ Hermes) for a play date.
There they meet Kurt’s beautiful French actress wife Charlotte (Judith Godreche). After consuming much alcohol and drugs the night takes a weird and sexual turn as they are shown Charlotte’s breast-pumping porno films. Alex’s physical insecurities then surface when Kurt parades his well-endowed manhood by the poolside.
It’s a frank and candid comedy, full of the unexpected.
Maria Duarte

Minions (U)
Directed by Kyle Balda
and Pierre Coffin
3/5
MINIONS, those adorable yellow creatures, completely stole the show and in Despicable Me 1 and 2, so giving them their own film was inevitable. Do they pull it off? Yes and no.
The opening potted history montage of minions from the dawn of time serving evil masters but failing to keep them is ingeniously hilarious.
However things go awry in 1968 when, leaving their colleagues in a cave, Kevin, Stuart and Bob search for a new boss and discover super-villain Scarlett Overkill (Sandra Bullock) who enlists them to steal Queen Elizabeth II’s crown in her plan to take over the world.
The problem is that Overkill isn’t as formidable or as lovable a baddie as Gru, the ’60s London setting is incongruous and it lacks the heart and the great visual gags of the previous films.
There’s an awesome soundtrack, though, and the minions haven’t lost their charm.
Maria Duarte