Film reviews: Flawless | Silence of Lorna | Year of the Nail | Four Christmases

Published on Friday 21 November 2008 14:25

FLAWLESS (12A) **

It isn't, of course. Demi Moore and Michael Caine, last seen together as daughter and father in 1984's Blame It On Rio, co-star in a rather lacklustre jewel heist. It offers us Caine as a janitor at London's biggest diamond company, ignored by almost everyone except Moore's workaholic executive whose long hours blend into his long hours. A woman in a man's world, she's been passed over six times for a promotion to managing director, and when she tries to broker a touchy arrangement with the company's Russian clients her bosses instead set her up for a fall.

After tipping her off about the corporation's plans to fire her, Caine enlists her help in his convoluted but compelling plan to steal a Thermos full of diamonds from the firm's vault. Demi Moore tries a British accent the way some of us might try a bowl of jellied eels, tentatively and without much enthusiasm, but fortunately Caine's rough-diamond routine remains a semi-precious thing.

On general release from Friday

SILENCE OF LORNA (15)

***

Filmmaking brothers aren't having much luck this winter. First there was the Coen brothers' disappointingly inconsequential Burn After Reading; now the Dardenne brothers, long-time chroniclers of society's underdogs, have been carpeted for being too conventionally brilliant. Their first film since The Child has certainly got the sort of elements that you connect with the brothers' work: shoogly handheld cameras, minimalist plotting, fine performances. However, this story of a young Albanian woman (Arta Dobroshi, left) who has undertaken a marriage of convenience to a drug addict (Jeremie Renier) to get Belgian citizenship takes plot turns that are far from conventional and is always very watchable.

On general release from Friday

YEAR OF THE NAIL (15)

***

Jonas Cuaron's sweet love story about a twentysomething American tourist who escapes a failed romance by renting a room in the house of a family in Mexico. Most of her time is spent with the family's 14-year-old son and a close relationship develops. He falls hard for her, and Molly enjoys the attention and respect missing from her relationships with boyfriends. When she returns to New York, he decides to follow. Told through photographs taken over a year, with sound effects, it's a simple idea but well executed.

On general release from Friday

FOUR CHRISTMASES (12A)

**

After last year's frantically unfunny Fred Claus most of us would be unwilling to unwrap another Christmas-related offering from Vince Vaughn.

This time he and Reese Witherspoon are a couple whose Yuletide plan to top up their tans in Fiji is abruptly cancelled by fog, forcing them to spend Christmas with each of their divorced parents, and their dysfunctional extended family.

Robert Duvall, Sissy Spacek, Jon Voight, Mary Steenburgen and Vaughn's Swingers chum John Favreau also star, but there's more clever comedy being done by birthday-party clowns and teenagers dressed as Amy Winehouse for Halloween parties than this redemptive rom-com.

It's as if everybody involved knows what the deal is: it's November, we shouldn't be at this film, we should be scraping frost from our windscreens or off posting overseas Christmas cards. Bah humbug.

On general release from Friday