Born into an affluent family on the Upper West Side of Manhattan, Doug Liman was six when he was given his first camera, a Super 8, by his father, an attorney who was the chief counsel to the US Senate committee investigating the Iran-Contra affair. Liman's earliest films consisted of footage of dogs in Central Park, and while he was still in high school he made a 25-minute, effects-driven film, The Mummy, which starred his father and dealt with a mummy escaping from the Metropolitan Museum of Art.
In 1993 Liman made his first feature, a rarely-seen low-budget comedy, Getting In, which featured Calista Flockhart and Matthew Perry before they became famous in Ally McBeal and Friends, respectively. Three years later, however, Liman attracted a great deal of attention with his second feature, Swingers, a witty and engaging - though rather over-praised - comedy of young men unlucky in love.
Whereas the appeal of Swingers was rooted in its smart dialogue, nothing about it could prepare audiences for the visual panache Liman brings to his exhilarating new movie, Go. He doubles as director and lighting cameraman and brings first-time writer John August's intricately structured screenplay to life with a sustained rush of energy.
Bringing together a dozen vividly etched characters over the course of one hectic Christmas Eve night in Los Angeles and Las Vegas, Go employs a similar time-shifting structure to Pulp Fiction as it untangles its interconnected narratives from different perspectives.
The remarkable young Canadian actress, Sarah Polley (from The Sweet Hereafter) plays Ronna, a supermarket check-out clerk who, to raise rent money and stave off eviction, unwisely dabbles in drug dealing. Desmond Askew, a graduate of Grange Hill, plays Simon, her English colleague who takes off with three buddies for a riotous night of sex, drugs and rock'n'roll in Las Vegas, where he incurs the wrath of a strip-club bouncer and engages in three-way sex in a hotel room which bursts into flames. In the third and final strand, Scott Wolf (from Party of Five) and Jay Mohr play soap opera actors forced to assist a creepy, sexually ambiguous detective (William Fichtner) in a narcotics sting.
Each of the film's three precisely meshed overlapping strands starts out from the same place and observes the consequences from various points of view. They each reveal layers of information regarding the personalities and fates of the interlinked characters and play teasingly with the assumptions of the audience, frequently veering off into unexpected digressions and playful tangents.
The pace never falters in this heady, stylish entertainment which pulsates with a vivacity that's further charged by a vigorous soundtrack and by Liman's dexterous, swooping camerawork - which excels in an astonishing car chase. The spirited ensemble cast also features Katie Holmes, Breckin Meyer, Taye Diggs, Jane Krakowski, Timothy Olyphant.
Michael Dwyer
Place Vendome (members and guests only) IFC, Dublin
The third feature directed by actress Nicole Garcia features Catherine Deneuve in the performance which earned her the best actress award at last year's Venice Film Festival. The film takes its title from the elegant Paris square which houses the Ritz - and the jewellery business of Vincent Malivert (Bernard Fresson), a man dogged by accumulating debts and suspicions of shady dealings.
Deneuve plays his wife, Marianne, a former jewellery dealer and now an alcoholic, more often in than out of her rehab clinic. When her husband dies in a car crash, Marianne gradually begins to regain control over her life and she re-enters the business to sell seven precious diamonds which her husband had been hiding from his creditors. This brings her back into contact with a former lover (Jacques Dutronc) who is also after the diamonds and is now involved with Vincent's young assistant (Emmanuelle Seigner). This narrative is treated in a convoluted and meandering manner in the rather tortuous screenplay contrived by Nicole Garcia, in collaboration with Jacques Fieschi. The air of listlessness about the film's exposition is compounded by the dreary lighting of cinematographer Laurent Dailland. Clearly, Garcia's allegiances were with her actors, a small group of key players who are given ample time for their characters to breathe and develop. At the film's centre, effortlessly transcending the movie's lapses, the luminous talent and sheer star quality of Catherine Deneuve shine through in an hypnotic portrayal of a woman struggling with desperation and regrets and crawling from the wreckage of her life.
Michael Dwyer
The 13th Warrior (18) General release
It's an indication of the difficulties which appear to have plagued The 13th Warrior that The Thomas Crown Affair, the film directed by John McTiernan after he had completed shooting this medieval epic, ended up on our cinema screens first. Certainly, the finished product shows the tell-tale signs of desperate post-production surgery - uncertain pacing, non sequiturs and uneven characterisation.
But you can see what attracted action specialist McTiernan (Die Hard, The Hunt for Red October) to the story in the first place. The title of Michael Crichton's 1976 novel, Eaters of the Dead, may suggest a low-rent zombie flick, but actually attempts to tell the story of Beowulf through the eyes of a foreign observer, the cultured Muslim Ahmed Ibn Fahdlan (Antonio Banderas, looking unhappy with this particular career move). The plot, which has Ibn Fahdlan travelling from Tartary to the far North with a band of Norsemen, led by the noble Buliwyf, to combat a nameless but terrifying threat, has elements of horror to it, but essentially offers the director the opportunity to show he knows his Kurosawa.
The 13th Warrior is no Seven Samurai, and the Viking characters, all burdened with names like Herger the Joyous and Hyglak the Quarrelsome, verge at times on the Python-esque. But for those of us whose inner child fondly remembers Kirk Douglas pillaging his way through The Vikings, there's a certain cheesy charm about the whole affair. Unfortunately, most small boys are actually under 18, and therefore debarred from this particular experience (they're probably too busy trying to sneak into the South Park movie anyway).
Also showing with The 13th Warrior is Ronan Gallagher's short film, Underworld, a taut, well-achieved psychological thriller about dishonour amongst thieves, which benefits from the powerful performances of Don Baker, Michael McElhatton and Tomas O Suilleabhain as three gangsters whose bungled heist leads to recriminations and betrayal. Atmospherically shot by Ronan Fox, Gallagher's film is particularly notable for its effective use of music and sound design - often a weakness in shorts. Buena Vista Ireland, the distributors of The 13th Warrior, deserve credit as the only local representatives of the Hollywood majors willing to put anything back into the local industry by releasing Irish shorts with their features, as well as distributing films like I Went Down and A Love Divided.
Hugh Linehan
The Forum cinema in Dun Laoghaire, Co Dublin is closed for business from today
