From an unpromising start as the descendant of a farming family wonders whether to sell the family farm, Sweet Land reveals that it is less a story of real estate and more a tender tale of real love.
Speaking little English, Inge (Elizabeth Reaser
) arrives in America from Norway in 1920 for an arranged marriage with Olaf (Tim Guinee), a farmer of Norwegian descent. But there's a catch. Inge is German and somehow doesn't have official immigration papers and, with anger over the First World War still raging, her heritage makes her a pariah. The minister refuses to perform the marriage until she learns English and proves her worthiness in this old-fashioned immigrant saga.
EL CANTANTE (15)
**The mostly true story of the rise and fall of Hector Lavoe, the Puerto Rican singer who popularised salsa music, El Cantante offers a quintessential study of a self-destructive artist whose chronic drug addiction only adds to his legend. Following the success of Ray and Walk The Line, it's hardly surprising that Jennifer Lopez and her husband Marc Anthony were drawn to the story, and it turns out Anthony has a better set of pipes than Lavoe ever did.
Unfortunately Mrs Marc Anthony hogs too much of the screen time in what should be a supporting role playing Mrs Lavoe, and you have to wonder if vanity issues are the reason why she plays a character aged 60 who appears to be modelled after Ryder Haggard's She. In another scene, J-Lo positions herself so Anthony can't see anything except her big butt. This, in a nutshell, is what is wrong with El Cantante.
EL BAÑO DEL PAPA (15)
***An Ealing-esque political parable about a Uruguayan village gripped by papal fever when the Pontiff visits. The locals sell everything they own to set up food stalls so they might profit from a visit by the Pope. As everyone goes into mass production of spicy sausage and corn fritters, the local smuggler goes one step further by constructing a WC in his garden. A slow-burner of a film where faith has become a luxury in a world where some can't afford even basic mod cons.
BANISHMENT (12A)
**A long, stone-faced Russian art house piece about a tormented husband and father (Konstantin Lavronenko), who goes on a family holiday, learns his wife is pregnant and believes she has a lover. The price of forgiveness is an abortion, which goes horribly wrong. That's pretty much all you get for drama since this film is in thrall to its own pretentious, overloaded symbolism, unfolding at a pace that makes cold treacle on a spoon seem frantic and compelling.
DISASTER MOVIE (12)
**A sloppy end of the summer spoof which barrels through recent and recentish box office hits like a tractor trailer driven by underage drunks. Mashing together some of the hits of the season, from Indiana Jones to Sex And The City to Wanted, the real calamity of Disaster Movie is its failure to hit the sweet spot of what makes any of these projects inherently absurd.
The full article contains 532 words and appears in Scotland On Sunday newspaper.
