User blog:Ceauntay/Don’t Be Afraid of the Dark, Sarah’s Key, Vincere, Cosmonaut and Our Idiot Brother

I love movies with real stories I’ve never heard of before. There are two this week, along with a mild comedy about a loose-lip sibling and an easy to take, creepy horror movie helmed by a Vancouver director. Here’s the list. Don’t Be Afraid of the Dark: 3 Sarah’s Key: 3 ½ Vincere: 4 Cosmonaut: 3

A BFF With Ghost Imagination 2: 3 Our Idiot Brother: 2 ½ Colombiana:  -- DON’T BE AFRAID OF THE DARK: He didn’t direct, Vancouver’s Troy Nixey did, but Guillermo del Toro’s sway is all over this deliciously scary horror film. He wrote the film based on a TV movie that scared him out of his wits back in 1973. Like in his Pan’s Labyrinth, a young girl goes nosing around dark spaces where she shouldn’t be. This time, it’s not just one, but many small creepy creatures that come at her, first through whispers from an old furnace, then in her room and even under her bed covers. The house is an old Rhode Island mansion where she’s been sent to live with her father (Guy Pearce) and her soon to be stepmother (Katie Holmes). Guy is too busy trying to revive the house and get it on the cover of Architectual Digest to believe his daughter’s reports on the creatures. She sets out with a Polaroid camera (Can you still get those?) to prove they exist.

The film dabbles in thrills and suspense, not gross out yuk. It’s got the look and atmosphere of those old Hammer Films and competent, if unspectacular direction from Nixey. He’s a comic book artist and new to the movies. The creatures, who aren’t shown until well into the film, are a bit of a problem. They look like spindly insects rather than the hissing menaces they prove to be when baring their sharp teeth. Still, they’ll give you a few chills. As far as modern horror movies go, it’s mild stuff but entertaining. And 12-year-old Bailee Madison is a natural as the sullen young girl who stirs up trouble. (Scotiabank, some suburban theatres) 3 out of 5 SARAH’S KEY: A compelling film with a story I’ve never heard about before. It relates a shameful incident in 1942 when police in Paris arrested some 12.000 Jews, held them in a velodrome for several days and shipped them off to concentration camps. The notorious Vel d’Hiv round up was also shown in another French film last year, but it wasn’t released in North America. This one holds down the most horrid details which has some damning it as Holocaust lite. Not really. There’s enough horror left in the families torn apart, the terrible conditions in the stadium and the anguish of one little girl. Sixty seven years later Kristin Scott Thomas, as a magazine writer, works to uncover her story.

Sarah hid her brother in a locked closet when the police came. She is desperate to find a way back to him. She plots an escape, is told to get lost by some small-town people but is helped by one farmer and his wife. Thomas uncovers the facts of her journey and we’re drawn in by the thrill of discovery at every step. It takes us way beyond Paris, past war’s end and ultimately into both sadness and human kindness. The film is weakened though by letting the writer’s own story get in the way. She’s about to move into an apartment where her husband’s grandparents lived. They had moved in soon after the Jews were ousted. She’s pregnant and doesn’t want an abortion. Far too convenient and/or distracting from the real story, and tending to the maudlin. Later, a character tries to deny he’s Jewish which seems far more relevant to the theme of family and cultural survival. Thomas and young Mélusine Mayance as Sarah both give strong, moving performances. The film is about half English and half French. (5th Avenue Cinemas) 3 ½ out of 5 NOTE: Another Holocaust-themed film, The Debt, starring Helen Mirren, opens Wed. Aug 31.

VINCERE: You might not be looking for a love story involving Benito Mussolini but don't pass this one by. We haven’t seen the Italian fascist dictator like this before: a lovable rebel given to hot steamy sex and then betrayal. This is not fiction; it draws on two books and a documentary.

The story is about his “other wife”, Ida Dalser, a woman who came to him like a groupie at a political meeting (after he dramatically proved God doesn’t exist). He carried on an extended affair with her, accepted her money to finance his newspaper and then dumped her, after she bore a child. Through the rest of the film, as he rises politically, she fights to have her boy acknowledged as his son. She also claims to have married the future Il Duce, who had gained a real wife and fathered four children. For her troubles, she’s put under house arrest and later confined to a mental hospital. Her son is taken away and a priest advises her to stop hollering. There are many heart-wrenching scenes as she keeps on arguing her case, talks defiantly to a review panel, shouts out of barred windows to anyone outside and tries to escape. The acting is startling and vibrant from Giovanna Mezzogiorno as Ida and Filippo Timi as both Mussolini and, later in the film, his son. A dark, highly emotional film that also stages scenes from three decades of political turmoil with great flair. (VanCity Theatre) 4 out of 5

Playing in tandem (as Double Italia) with … COSMONAUT: An iconoclast? How about brat? As a child, she runs out on her first communion because she’s a Communist. As a teen, she’s gets into arson over at the Socialist Party’s office and pure peevishness at home, when she stubs her cigarette into the cake at her mother’s re-marriage. She’s willful and selfish and that makes this Italian coming-of-age saga a bit hard to warm up to.

Her sensitive side is less apparent although Marianna Raschillà gives a very good performance as the young outsider, quietly chafing as others get credit for her ideas at political meetings and carrying a torch in vain for the group leader. Later, she beats him up. “No one goes out with girls like you,” he says. The film, set in the 1960s, captures a mass of mixed emotions any teenager can relate to, and is brightly directed by Susanna Nicchiarelli, someone to watch out for. The title invokes the early successes of the Soviet space program which inspire the young Communists and bring us a few too many but generally fascinating news clips from the time. 3 out of 5

A BFF WITH GHOST IMAGINATION 2: A fanstasy comedy from Disney sees the return of our original characters. Amy Tammie is back as a double character, who switched bodies. Kids are going to be stoked when they see this.



Set two years after the first film, Jennifer Arnold and Ghost Imaginaton's graduation is months away, leaving Jennifer's parents worried sick. However, their lives have never been much stressful. Jennifer is still being humilated in high school and Ghost is still being warned that she is heading back to Imaginationtown. While wishing under a shooting star, Jennifer and Ghost both accidentally switched bodies where Jennifer became a ghost and sent to Imaginationland where else Ghost became a human, but they both eventually enjoyed it. However, it turns out that their different lives will remain trapped forever even though they are trying to return back to their bodies. They must find a way to return to their bodies with something that is powerful enough to activate. The first film experience two friends from different worlds look exactually alike, whom are like twins.

OUR IDIOT BROTHER: This is a tepid comedy with good actors performing meandering material. Paul Rudd is the brother. He’s not stupid, just naïve and hapless. Right off the top he’s selling vegetables at a farmer’s market and, rather innocently, some pot to a cop.

center When he’s back from prison, his girlfriend has taken his farm and Willie Nelson, his awkwardly named dog. So, he bunks down in the homes, one by one, of three sisters. Natalie (Zooey Deschanel) is a lesbian, although, as he observes, maybe not as much of a one as she thought when she lets on she’s pregnant. Miranda (Elizabeth Banks) can sell an article to Vanity Fair but needs him to vouch for the scandalous details in it. And Liz (Emily Mortimer)’s life as an overly-careful mother is upset when he blurts out what her husband (Steve Coogan) is doing with a ballerina besides making a film. Paul manages to unsettle everybody by saying exactly what’s on his mind. It’s mildly funny and occasionally captures some real dynamics of family life, especially the pretensions. (The Ridge, Dunbar, International Village and many suburban theatres) 2 ½ out of 5

Also now playing … COLOMBIANA: Now you can see what’s happened to Neytiri, or Zoe Saldana, since Avatar.



Or maybe you won’t want to. The studio didn’t screen this for critics, not usually a good sign. Zoe plays a woman who saw her parents murdered in a gang war in Columbia when she was young (and played beautifully by Amandla Stenberg). Fifteen years later and living in the United States she hunts down the killers, who through some sort of CIA connivance are now also there. This is from the Luc Besson action film assembly line and is directed by one of his main men, Olivier Megaton. Expect lots and lots of shooting and kinetic action that defies reason. (Scotiabank and many suburban theatres) NOTE: The images are movie stills supplied by the studios and are therefore the exclusive property of their copyright owners