Central Station (15) Screen at D'Olier Street, Dublin
Walter Salles's evocative, beautifully made road movie, which was nominated in two categories for this year's Academy Awards, might superficially seem like typical Oscar material, with its story of the tentative relationship that develops between a cynical middle-aged woman (Fernanda Montenegro) and a homeless boy (Vinicius de Oliveira). But Central Station, a personal odyssey which also operates as a fable about the current state of Brazilian society, is far from the sentimental fluff which usually dominates the Best Foreign Film category.
Montenegro (who has also been nominated for her performance) plays Dora, a letter writer in Rio De Janeiro's huge central train station who transcribes messages from illiterate workers and posts them on (or not, as she sees fit) to faraway relatives. When a young woman with her small son asks her to write a letter to the boy's father, Montenegro doesn't send the letter, but the boy (Vinicius de Oliveira) returns after his mother is killed in a traffic accident. At first, Monetenegro tries to sell him on, but finally agrees to take him to find his father in the remote hinterland of northern Brazil.
From the opening shots of the vast, teeming station, and the straight-to-camera recitations of the letter-senders, Central Station brilliantly draws us into the harsh world of the Brazilian underclass, where thefts can be punished with summary execution and children's lives can be cheaply disposed of. As Dora, Montenegro (one of the country's most respected actors) is unyielding, hardened and morally corroded by years of adversity and bitterness. It's to Salles's great credit that the transformation in her character which takes place over the course of the journey is never less than credible, while nine-year-old de Oliveira (who Salles found shining shoes in an airport) is remarkable.
The film is clearly an allegory for the current state of Brazil, with Montenegro representing the disillusioned older generation and de Oliveira as the hope for a better future, and on one level Central Station provides an illuminating snapshot of the country, its traditional, indigenous forms of Catholicism, its burgeoning Protestant evangelical movement, and the social fragmentation in its huge, new urban sprawls. This deeply humanistic film is studded with religious iconography and images of the nuclear family which both characters have lost, with nothing but their own strange relationship to replace it. But Salles's vision is ultimately optimistic, holding out hope for a future in which these wounds can be healed.
Pleasantville (15) General release
As a screenwriter, Gary Ross has been responsible for such well-crafted liberal fantasies as Big and Dave, so it's little surprise that his directorial debut continues in the same vein, setting up an alternative universe in the manner of Frank Capra's It's A Wonderful Life, for its defence of contemporary values. Indeed, it's tempting to see Pleasantville, with its privileging of messy personal freedom over safe conformism and its critique of the 1950s values beloved of American conservatives, as the first Hollywood movie of the post-Monica Lewinsky era.
As a fantasy concerned with the conformist world of 1950s TV sitcoms and soaps, Pleasantville bears some resemblance to The Truman Show, but where Peter Weir's film concentrated on our fear of being watched and manipulated, Pleasantville prefers a more conventional and sometimes heavy-handed defence of liberal values. That's not to say that it's not enjoyable - there are plenty of excellent jokes, and the film's central conceit of a black-and-white world transformed by colour is stunningly executed in a succession of memorable images.
Tobey Maguire and Reese Witherspoon play the contemporary teenagers whisked into the fictional world of Maguire's favourite 1950s sitcom, Pleasantville, by a mysterious TV repairman. Arriving in the show, where sex doesn't exist and all books have blank pages, they find they have become the children of the central family, the Parkers. Maguire is initially prepared to go along with the show, but the feisty Witherspoon is having none of it, and introduces the school basketball captain to sex, precipitating the arrival of chaos and uncertainty to the town, and the final struggle between the opposing forces of black-and-white and colour.
Ross's script is packed with references and allusions to everything from The Wizard Of Oz to Nazi Germany, a magpie approach which often pays off, but also makes the film seem hectoring at times, particularly towards the end. A similar cross-referencing seems to be at work in the casting - the excellent Maguire's role appears to be a riposte to the part he played in The Ice Storm, a film which could be read as Pleasantville's dialectic opposite. Joan Allen, as the sitcom mother, recalls her performance as the ultimate supportive housewife, Pat Nixon, in Oliver Stone's biopic of the American president, while her affair with the newly-liberated and colourised Jeff Daniels has more than a touch of The Purple Rose Of Cairo about it. Well performed, skilfully executed and ravishingly beautiful to look at, Ross's film is best enjoyed as a seductive and highly enjoyable slice of entertainment.
Insomnia (Members and guests) IFC, Dublin
Set in a remote northern Norwegian town at a time of year when the sun never sets, Erik Skjoldbjaerg's psychological thriller stars Stellan Skarsgard as a Swedish homicide detective (which in Norway has the same resonance as a British policeman in Ireland, or an American in Canada) sent with his partner (Sverre Anker Ousdal) to investigate the murder of a teenage schoolgirl. Skarsgard has his own past demons troubling him, not helped by the fact that he finds it impossible to sleep, and a shooting accident plunges him into an increasingly complicated web of deceit.
Maintaining an impressive control of his material, Skjoldbjaerg crafts a stylish, memorable little film which uses the flat, grey light of the region to good effect. Skarsgard, who seems to be ubiquitous in films on both sides of the Atlantic at the moment, anchors the story with a performance that alternates between public impassiveness and private self-torture.
Patch Adams (PG) General release
Robin Williams has given us some cringe-worthy performances in recent years. We've had Williams as holy simpleton, Williams as man-child, Williams as tender, life-saving physician and Williams as life-affirming entertainer in the midst of death. In his new movie, we get all of these rolled up in one, along with their inevitable conclusion, Williams as Messiah; a smirking Jesus in a very bad shirt.
Supposedly based on the true story of a medical doctor who had to struggle with the authorities before being allowed to practise his unorthodox brand of humour-centred therapy, Tom Shadyac's repellent film (a depressingly big hit in the US) allows this once-funny comedian to wallow like a hippopotamus in a muddy orgy of self-love. Any slightly harsh facts in the original story are pureed into harmless goo (Adams got his nickname from the anti-Vietnam war badge he wore, but the film concocts some other, absurd reason), while depths of bad taste undreamt of by the Farrelly Brothers are plumbed when actual ill children are wheeled on to cheer the vindicated Williams in his final, triumphant courtroom scene.
