Film reviews: Fright Night 3D | The Art of Getting By | The Hedgehog | Weekender | Attenberg

Fright Night 3D (15)

Directed by: Craig Gillespie

Starring: Colin Farrell, Anton Yelchin, David Tennant, Imogen Poots

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A STAPLE of the 1980s video rental boom, the original Fright Night was a sly blend of comedy and vampire horror that riffed on genre trends a decade before Scream made such things profitable. This remake attempts something similar – cue Twilight references – and despite the fact it’s neither as funny nor as frightening as the original, it does have a few things to recommend it, starting with Colin Farrell as the potent vampire who moves in next door to Anton Yelchin’s nerd-turned-cool kid and sets about replenishing his blood-sucking ranks from the transient population of his new residence in the suburbs of Las Vegas. Farrell keeps things on the right side of ridiculous, and he’s matched in the fun stakes by David Tennant’s rakish turn as callow vampire expert Peter Vincent, a louche Las Vegas illusionist who’d rather drink and maltreat his assistant than take on vampires for real. There are some neat twists on the notion of vampirism as a metaphor for puberty too, so it’s a bit of a shame that pacing issues (Christopher Mintz-Plasse disappears for most of the movie), a plot-hole ridden conclusion, and 3D cinematography that is so dim it is at times almost impossible to see what’s going on, prevent this from being the riotous film it could have been.

The Art of Getting By (12A)

Directed by: Gavin Wiesen

Starring: Freddie Highmore, Emma Roberts, Michael Angarano

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“I like layers,” says the obnoxious hero of this Big Apple angst fest when a preppy jock asks him why he’s wearing an overcoat indoors. Layers, however, are exactly what the privileged George (Freddie Highmore) lacks. A self-styled “Teflon slacker” – none of the preferred chemical cures for managing adolescent mopiness have stuck – he’s simply another Catcher in the Rye clone who has not only failed to realise that Holden Caufield was phonier than everyone else, but that trenchcoats went out with Columbine as the uniform of choice for self-pitying loners. Nevertheless, George’s excruciatingly dull assumption that he doesn’t need to do his schoolwork because he reads Camus, doodles and secretly agonises about having nothing to say is enough to pique the interest of Sally (Emma Roberts), a popular girl with family issues, who says things like “you’re different” and rebels by smoking the occasional cigarette on a New York rooftop. Way too in thrall to such clichés to have any hope of subverting them, The Art of Getting By remains true to its title by faking its way through the motions of hipster indie film-making to reach a redemptive Hollywood ending that’s as put-on as Highmore’s accent. A film for dimwitted dilettantes only.

The Hedgehog (12a)

Directed by: Mona Achache

Starring: Garance Le Guillermic, Josiane Balasko, Togo Igawa

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THE second of this week’s films about a privileged angst-ridden kid with a screwed up family is a lot less precious than The Art of Getting By – and a good deal more entertaining. It helps that its precocious 11-year-old protagonist is also a lot more mature, even if she is so full of existential despair she’s decided to kill herself on her 12th birthday. This is Paloma (Garance Le Guillermic), a relentless home video enthusiast who has vowed to complete her documentary exposing the absurdity of her family life before her imminent demise. As she sets about this task, however, she starts finding kindred spirits in her building in the form of chocolate-munching, book-devouring concierge Renée Michel (Josiane Balasko) and her refined new Japanese neighbour Mr Ozu (Togo Igawa). It’s here that The Hedgehog steps up a gear emotionally as the focus shifts away from Paloma and onto the companionship that begins to develop between Rénee and Mr Ozu as they bond over a shared love of literature, music and art. Adapted from Muriel Barbery’s international bestseller, The Elegance of the Hedgehog, without a hint of pretension, it’s a prickly yet tender piece about learning to find happiness again.

Weekender (15)

Directed by: Karl Golden

Starring: Henry Lloyd-Hughes, Jack O’Connell, Zawe Ashton

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THERE’S probably a great film to be made about the Second Summer of Love, the early rave scene and the attendant political and social implications of the government’s rapid crackdown on large groups of kids assembling in abandoned spaces, necking happy pills and dancing all night. Sadly, Weekender isn’t it. Eschewing the inventive, myth-interrogating approach that made Michael Winterbottom’s 24 Hour Party People – about the overlapping “Madchester” music scene – such a trenchant and entertaining examination of cultural movement, director Karl Golden and writer Chris Coghill favour a straight-ahead, music-flavoured tale of best friends who find their loyalties tested as they get in way over their heads during the dawn of the rave scene in Manchester circa 1990. Played by Henry Lloyd-Hughes and Jack O’Connell, these chancers find their skills at putting on warehouse parties start netting them serious money as club promoters, but the money they generate also starts attracting the attention of local gun-wielding gangsters, none of whom seem willing to embrace the blissed-out, neo-hippy, hug-everyone raving ethos that’s supposed to be at the movement’s core. It all goes in exactly the direction you might expect.

Attenberg (18)

Directed by: Athina Rachel Tsangari

Starring: Ariane Labed, Giorgos Lanthimos, Evangelia Randou

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THE title is a mispronunciation of David Attenborough’s surname and such skewering of the familiar is at the heart of this oddball Greek coming-of-age film. Written and directed by Dogtooth producer Athina Rachel Tsangari, and starring Dogtooth director Gorgos Lanthimos, it’s a film that in its own way is almost as uncompromising as its Cannes-conquering forebear, if not quite as engagingly deranged. It’s the story of Marina (Ariene Labed), an eccentric, withdrawn young woman who retreats into a world of nature documentaries as a way of coping with the fact that her father is dying. As such, her worldview is coloured by a kind of distanced, naturalist’s bent for homing in on the strange and curious behaviours exhibited by creatures in the wild and this, in turn, affects how she interacts with people, especially as she becomes interested, albeit belatedly, in sex. Deadpan in tone, the film’s absurdist musings can be read as a meditation on the extent to which social norms ensure sex and death remain uncomfortable topics despite being part of the natural order of things. But it’s approach is a little too wilfully tedious to fully embrace.

ALISTAIR HARKNESS