I mentioned in an earlier post that I'd taped Ian McKellen's Richard III over christmas and I finally got round to seeing it. It's set in 1930s Britain in a kind of alternative reality where Richard is in charge of an army not dissimilar to the Nazis (some costumes are Nazi uniforms without the eagles). It's quite interesting, but this really is just a performance piece for Ian McKellen. It boasts a killer cast (Maggie Smith, Jim Broadbent, Nigel Hawthorne, Kristin Scott Thomas, Robert Downey Jr, etc.) but only Annette Bening is out of place, giving what I found to be a laughably poor performance. So a setting that works and a lead performance that anchors the film and will always ensure an inherent interest is retained, but it's a tad trashy in places and probably too lightning fast (about half the lines are cut out) to truly satisfy.

I caught the last hour of a film I've wanted to see for a while (because I'm a fan of writer-director Preston Sturges), The Palm Beach Story. Claudette Colbert on form with a very nicely scrubbed up Joel McCrea (especially after Sullivan's Travels ), Rudy Vallee was very amusing and Mary Astor rather loudly stole the whole thing with a hilarious turn. Really want to see the whole thing all the way through because it was consistently laugh out loud funny with Sturges' perfect blend of wit, slapstick and cracking performances.

The next film I saw was Cromwell, which was on tv last Saturday (there were about two dozen films worth seeing on tv last saturday, it was insane). Was looking forward to it because Richard Harris as Cromwell and Alec Guinness as Charles I sounded absolutely delicious. Sadly it was a bit of a let down, the opening 45 minutes were very dull and dragged out. For the next hour the film found some drive (when not being bogged down by overlong, uneventful battle sequences) before an unispired finish. The acting was fine but not enough to elevate the material, it's decent overall but doesn't half try the nerves in getting there.

Doing the rounds this week on Sky Premiere is Definitely, Maybe, which I've wanted to see for a while for many reasons (Wendy Ide gave it a very good write up in the Times, I bought it as a present for a friend and I have a soft spot for Ryan Reynolds because Two Guys, a Girl and a Pizza Place was one of my university sitcoms). This thing delivers. It's a romantic comedy following a man who is getting divorced (Reynolds) telling his daughter (the divine Abigail Breslin) the story of how he and her mother got together. The catch? There are three possible women it could be (Elizabeth Banks, Isla Fisher and Rachel Weisz) and he's "changing all of the names and some of the facts".

Abigail Breslin & Ryan Reynolds

It's consistently funny, has genuinely romantic moments and is much cleverer than your average rom-com. What it does rely on is the charm of the performers, especially Reynolds and Breslin. Reynolds does a first rate job, he has lots of great lines but he makes some of the lesser ones believable through his delivery. This is the type of film that if it were South Korean would be another example of how great that country's output of this type of genre film has been this decade. It's obviously not Korean, but would stand alongside Il Mare and Take Care of My Cat as among the best chick flicks in recent memory.

Also on Saturday night was Film Four's premiere of Funny Games U.S., which having seen the original I knew there was no way I could follow up Definitely, Maybe with *that* so I taped it and watched it later. In the months since seeing Michael Haneke's 1997 version of the film, while I maintain it's unwatchable, I've acquired a great admiration for his intellectual reasoning for doing the film (he sucks all the fun out the violence in the film and then taps you on the nose for being annoyed at it not being fun, which is his point - you're watching a family being tortured by two young men, it shouldn't be fun). This is pretty much a shot for shot/line for line remake but the acting is superior in every department - Naomi Watts is stellar, Tim Roth gives a beautiful turn and even Michael Pitt was charming. The problem is that this may all make the film more watchable and entertaining and that's all very well and good ...  but it also completely defeats the purpose of the film. So a rather pointless remake of a genius concept, but if you're on Haneke's side and want to see some excellent acting, there are things to be gotten from it.

Having seen Breslin earlier in the week, I was tempted to watch her other film from 2008, Nim's Island, also starring Gerard Butler and Jodie Foster. Foster is a very interesting actress, she went from being ... basically the 1970s version of Abigail Breslin (i.e. the most gifted child performer) to a powerhouse dramatic actress in the late 80s and early 90s, to appearing about once a year in films most would consider beneath her. What she has done recently though is come out of her Hero-Mom phase and in her last two films, somehow she has incredibly rediscovered all the naturalness she displayed as a child. The Brave One was a contrived, ugly film, but for the first time I was seeing grown-up Jodie Foster show that light, basically be the girl she was in those Scorsese films in the 70s. In this one she retains all of that and I for one am overjoyed.

The film follows a father and daughter (Butler and Breslin) who are oceanographers on a remote volcanic island. Foster is an agoraphobic writer of the adventure novels Breslin loves. While Butler is off on a mission, Foster gets in contact with Breslin researching her latest novel. Butler gets into trouble in a storm and Foster discovers the young Breslin is alone on the island and ... they take it from there. It's a silly film, but very fun. Breslin is beautifully natural and Foster is brilliant, she knocks every line out of the park and doesn't look for a second as if she's acting - her scenes with her having conversations with the imaginary hero of her books (also played by Butler, looking very Indiana Jones) are fantastic. If Amy Adams was having people say she should get nominated for an oscar last year for Enchanted then why not the same sentiment for Foster here? She absolutely nails the part, which could have been so non-descript or uninspired in less capable hands, and along with Breslin makes the film. Not without flaws, a tad cheesy at times, but it is a children's film. There's more than enough to entertain adults though and the cast are the main reason for that.