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Seth Rogen in Zack and Miri Make a Porno |
Also on release this week
• Hurray for the British Film Institute and hats off to the clever people who decided to wallop a rerelease of A Streetcar Named Desire into this month’s movie calendar.
The film made Marlon Brando a true star when it was first show in the early 1950s, and is a defining moment in his career.
Brando plays Stanley Kowalski, a rough-edged Polish immigrant living in New York with his pregnant wife Stella. Vivien Leigh plays Blanche, a southern belle come to visit her sister, Brando’s wife, but who quickly finds herself at odds with her brother-in-law.
Based on the 1947 play by Tennessee Williams, it speaks of the struggle between the two leading characters, of old America and new: the rural, and supposedly refined, southerner played by Leigh and the tougher northern city immigrant. It got 12 Oscar nominations and to have it on the big screen again offers a rare opportunity to appreciate quite how strong Brando’s and Leigh’s performances are. It is on at the National Film Theatre until November 27.
• ON the wall of every restaurant and every café in America are careful instructions on how to save someone if they are choking. You can imagine that this is not so much to educate diners about the intricacies of doing the Heimlich Manoeuvre, more a guide should a diner get litigious over a fish bone. Choking Man tells the story of Jorge, a desperately shy new arrival in New York, who spends his days washing dishes under the steady gaze of said poster. He has eyes for the Chinese waitress, has to battle each day to stake his territory with his room-mate, and, above all, find his feet in the cold and uncaring world of the lonely immigrant.
• Fine, Totally Fine is a Japanese stoner comedy without the dope. It pokes gentle fun at a generation who don’t want to grow up. First-time director Yosuke Fujita has created three believable yet dumb characters who mumble their way through life in a vein similar to the New Yorkers in Friends. Occasionally charming, often stupid, it is easy to miss the wry observations about remembering to be content with your lot.
• Seth Rogen has become a gut-bellied pin-up for the Sarah Silverman generation.
His bad taste has no limits. In Knocked Up he plumbed depths with funny results, and Pineapple Express was as good a stoner comedy as you are likely to see. Zack and Miri Make a Porno is as crass and stupid as it sounds, but there are grim laughs aplenty, if you can watch this without sitting near anyone you plan to impress. |
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