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How far can you go? Put that question to Brüno, Sacha Baron Cohen's flamboyantly gay Austrian fashionista, and he would most likely provide you with an explicit demonstration involving sex toys and human orifices.

Brüno (18) (Rated 2/ 5 )

All in the worst possible taste

Inside Reviews

Cloud Nine (N/C) (Rated 4/ 5 )

Friday, 10 July 2009

No film this year is less likely to get a Hollywood remake, but that would be to praise Andreas Dresen's drama of passionate love in old age.

Mishima: a life in four chapters (15) (Rated 3/ 5 )

Friday, 10 July 2009

Paul Schrader's 1985 biopic of the Japanese writer Yukio Mishima is a brave but flawed attempt to tell a sensational story in a formalist manner. The author's last day in November 1970 – when he committed ritual suicide after addressing an army garrison – is interspersed with black-and-white flashbacks to his painful boyhood and dramatic excerpts from his novels, remarkably visualised by the designer Eiko Ishioka. Yet the cerebral cool of Schrader's perspective sacrifices emotional connection to its subject: Mishima's life will always be a mystery, but the careful layerings don't give much of a clue as to why he became an object of cult worship to the Japanese.

Fired Up! (12A) (Rated 1/ 5 )

Friday, 10 July 2009

A puerile, remedial class version of Wedding Crashers.

35 Shots of Rum (12A) (Rated 3/ 5 )

Friday, 10 July 2009

Claire Denis's film-making is so elliptical you sometimes feel at a loss to know what's going on, but the mood – cool, meditative, unhurried – beckons you along insistently. This film takes a sidelong look at work, home, love, sympathy, and invites us to make the links between them. At its centre is a widowed Parisian train driver Lionel (Alex Descas) and his student daughter, Josephine (Mati Diop), who have lived companionably in the same flat for years. A kind of narrative ambles on – a rock concert is missed, a cat dies, a trip to Germany reveals a lost kinship – though it's the fleeting changes of facial expression and body language that carry whatever elusive meaning lurks within. Patience is required, and, in the end, is mysteriously rewarded.

Soul Power (12A) (Rated 4/ 5 )

Friday, 10 July 2009

Kinshasa, Zaire, in 1974, will always be remembered for the Rumble in the Jungle, but six weeks before the Ali-Foreman fight another epic was in progress – a three-night concert that brought together Southern Africa's top musicians and America's leading black R&B acts.

Hurt: Keanu Reeves and Robin Wright Penn in 'The Private Lives of Pippa Lee'

The Private Lives of Pippa Lee (15) (Rated 3/ 5 )

Friday, 10 July 2009

Robin Wright Penn ought to have been some great director's muse, like Catherine Deneuve or Liv Ullmann.

First Night: Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince, Odeon, Leicester Square (Rated 3/ 5 )

Wednesday, 8 July 2009

It's dark – but at least there's a kiss

Ice Age 3: Dawn of the Dinosaurs

Ice Age 3, Carlos Saldanha, 96 mins, (U)
Am I Black Enough for You, Goran Hugo Olsson, 87 mins, (12A)

Sunday, 5 July 2009

The third Ice Age movie subjects its child viewers to too many grown-up themes before the fun starts

Men in hats: Christian Bale plays FBI agent Melvin Purvis on the trail of bank robber John Dillinger in Depression-era America

Public Enemies, Michael Mann, 140 mins, (15)

Sunday, 5 July 2009

Johnny Depp underacts and Christian Bale lacks charisma in the much-hyped 1930s gangster biopic

DVD: Marley & Me, Retail & rental, (20th Century Fox)

Sunday, 5 July 2009

This breezy comedy strolls through the happily uneventful married life of two Miami journalists, Owen Wilson and Jennifer Aniston.

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FIVE BEST FILMS

Drag Me To Hell, 15
Sam Raimi takes a break between Spider-Man films in order to deliver the kind of supernatural horror-comedy with which he made his name: slick, outrageous, darkly witty and enormously good fun. Nationwide

Katyn, 15
This quietly moving and sombre requiem uses the experiences of a handful of women to investigate the massacre of 15,000 Polish officers by the Soviet secret police in the spring of 1940. Limited release

Soul Power, 12A
A marvellous documentary record of Zaire 74, the three-day concert of African and black American music that was staged around the same time as Muhammad Ali’s Rumble in the Jungle. Limited release

Cloud Nine, 15
An intimate, very natural and at times quite lovely drama telling the story of a seamstress grandmother’s affair with a septuagenarian. Limited release

The Hangover, 15
A blissfully silly guys-together misadventure about the morning after the night before, with some very funny, very non-PC dialogue and some terrific turns by a cast of virtually unknown actors. Nationwide