The BFI IMAX at Waterloo is currently home to two action movies with a difference, Beowulf (2007) and Polar Express (2004), both directed by Robert Zemeckis. The IMAX 3D experience really comes to life with dramatic effect as swords, arrows, trains and snow leap out at you with stunning clarity. The gimmick of 3D as it was in the 90s, with cardboard spectacles stuck to the front of The Radio Times, is done away with for good and IMAX doesn’t look back. It is serious technology and gives the viewer the ultimate performance of the action movie spectacle. Sound thunders all around you in crisp digital surround, and the screen – the height of five double-decker busses – completely engulfs your field of vision, literally putting you in the picture.

Kids watching Polar Express are mesmerised by the action and swipe at the air in front of them in an attempt to touch the reindeer hurtling towards them. This is the perfect Christmas movie, a magical journey to the North Pole with a twist of excitement and adventure. It is totally engrossing and just as good for adults as it is for kids. Tom Hanks provides many of the voices and the film tells a reaffirming story for those who are loosing faith in Father Christmas.

Beowulf’s more grown-up content is just as involving and exciting as the technology of the IMAX format brings the glorious action scenes of this timeless legend to life in a stunning 70mm print. It is truly a film of epic proportions; battles rage all around, mead and mirth flow freely in the drinking halls and sexual allure is a dangerous passion for our hero.

The IMAX opened in 1999, having been built courtesy of a £15 million grant from the Arts Council of England’s Lottery Fund. It was designed by award-winning architect Bryan Avery (of Avery Associates Architects) and is a distinct beacon of design just behind the revitalised BFI Southbank. IMAX is also home to such spectacular features as Deep Sea 3D (2006) and Sea Monsters 3D: A Prehistoric Adventure (2007). These more realistic and educational offerings are just as spectacular and show why the IMAX cinema is one of the most commercially popular and awe-inspiring arms of the BFI.

White Oleander (2002) is one of my favorite films of all time and in one scene features a particularly memorable line, “loneliness is the human condition.” In my opinion, Into the Wild (2007) can best be understood through the lens of that very vision. Directed by Sean Penn, Into the Wild is an adaptation of Jon Krakauer’s best-selling novel (in turn based on a true story). Emile Hirsch gives a stellar performance as Chris McCandless, a 22-year old university graduate who donates his life-savings to OXFAM and embarks on what he calls his ‘great Alaskan adventure’. Over approximately two years he travels alone, passing through several states as far as Mexico via the Colorado River before finally arriving north-in the Alaskan wilderness.

His need for adventure is rooted as much in his desire to experience the unknown as it is in his anxiety to escape the predictability of his future: to forge a solitary path far away from the constraints of home and society. Early in the film, Chris renames himself ‘Alexander Supertramp’, an obvious attempt to sever the connections with what he believes to be a painful and meaningless past. His ascetic journey through the wild at times bears a quality of almost Siddhartha-like spiritual rebirth. Alex allows himself to be molded anew by the people he meets on his travels; poignantly, those who have a significant impact on him are those who assume the role of parental substitute. What has made Alex hollow is consequentially what he craves the most: a loving, united family that keeps no secrets. Thus, he subconsciously seeks out people who are ‘real’ and who value truth as much as he does.

Organized into five chapters, which flow seamlessly, the viewer follows Alex as he matures through the indelible marks left on him by those he encounters. At the beginning of his journey he shuns the traditional role that society dictates that young men his age should assume. He says characteristically, “careers are a 20th century invention” and pointless spending one’s time and effort on. He further argues that the joy in life lies not in human relations. For some, like him, to be content is to be alone; able to know and understand oneself. It is only at the dénouement of his adventure that he comes to realize the flaws in his reasoning that “happiness is only real when shared”.

The urge to erase the past can at times be overwhelming. What this film demonstrates brilliantly is that in reality it is never possible to begin on an entirely blank page-nor indeed is this desirable. The significance of memories is often unacknowledged, and when Chris attempts to run from his own he instead amplifies the feelings that caused him to flee in the first place. As he comes to understand, to be truly happy the journey that must be taken is one whose purpose it will be to make peace with the trauma and sadness of the past, because only then does it become possible to propel further into the future.

Jia Zhangke’s Still Life (2006) follows the quest of our two main protagonists as they search for their estranged spouses in the town on Fenjie in the Sichuan province. The first character is miner, Sanming, and played by Zhangke regular, Han Sanming. He has come to Fenjie to search for his wife who left him sixteen years ago. He is also desperately hoping to meet his daughter, who he has never seen. Hanming arrives in Fenjie clutching a small bag and a tattered piece of paper containing his wife’s address. He wanders through the broken city to find half of it, and the surrounding villages, submerged in water; flooded as a result of the giant and controversial Three Gorges Dam project. What remains of the city is being demolished or is marked for demolition. The people seem dislocated, helpless and alienated. The city nestles in the majestically epic landscape of the Three Gorges – its beauty juxtaposed with the rubble and decay of the city, to great effect. In the second half of the narrative, we watch Shen Hong as she looks for her husband, who disappeared two years ago, apparently moving to live and work in the Fenjie area.

Zhangke captures these people in a way that evokes a stubborn sense of longing: information is presented to us in a dislocated fashion, the climaxes are downplayed and the interactions are subtle. The story seems secondary to the style and tone Zhangke reveals through aesthetics; enduring shots of the wasteland of the city draw the eye to the impressive surrounding scenery and the greys of the crumbling buildings. The spectator is confronted with a harsh portrayal of 21st century urban China, disparate to the mythic creation of China in mainstream films such as Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon (2003), or House of Flying Daggers (2004).

We watch men working, smashing up walls of concrete, demolishing building after building, the camera lingering on their working bodies, carrying the stress of arduous labour. The script is muted; verbal communication is limited, or replaced by looking and observing. The subtlety of the acting is quite brilliant, the smallest movement on a face communicates poignantly, the use of non-professional actors adds credibility to the narrative and the atmosphere is created by a visual sense of surrounding nothingness and abandoned hope.

These two stories set in this place give a wonderful sense of personal affirmation in an environment that is unstable. The cinematography is breathtaking and the depiction of Chinese life is unflinching and unforgiving, whilst delicate moments of tenderness light up the film.

Still Life runs from February 1, 2008. Coinciding with its release, the BFI Southbank are showing a complete retrospective of Jia Zhangke’s work (with the exception of Dudu which is lost), including features and shorts.

This January the British Film Institute (BFI) Southbank brings Hitchcock’s classic, The Lady Vanishes (1938), back to the big screen. It runs as a part of the Margaret Lockwood retrospective and co-stars Michael Redgrave. The plot is true Hitch; murder, suspense, lies – plus, for the ever-nostalgic at heart, a classic train journey. Travelling from Tyrol to London on the Trans-Continental Express, Lockwood, Britain’s favourite actress from the 1940s, plays Iris Henderson who meets, and quickly falls for, the charms of musician Gilbert Redman. Redman, played by Redgrave, is the only person on the train who believes Henderson’s claims that little old lady, Miss Foy, has mysteriously disappeared. In fact, no one else even believes that Miss Foy exists, begging the question: to what extent can we trust what it is we see?

While at times Lockwood seems to embody the hysterical Hitchcockian heroine, she is more far more scintillating than the likes of some of his later (and blonder) leading ladies. She is punished less by men because of this. But Redgrave, whose performance is resonant of Lawrence Olivier’s in The 39 Steps (1935), speaks for Hitch when he comments on what it is about Lockwood that is so alluring, “There are two things I like about you – you haven’t any manners at all and you’re always seeing things.” Again, the audience is asked to question visual representation, and indeed the illusion that is cinema itself.

Lockwood’s beauty and charisma is perhaps rivalled only by genius comedy duo Nauton Wayne and Basil Radford, two cricket-crazy curmudgeons whose roles are not only to entertain but also to be endearingly English.

There is no doubt that this masterpiece is Hitch at his British best. Before moving on to Hollywood, and as one of his last UK-produced films, The Lady Vanishes is exemplary as a textual representation of what it means to be British. From the riotously overt, “There’s something definitely queer in here” to the downright xenophobic, and pompous, “Well they can’t possibly do anything to us, we’re British subjects”, Hitchcock represents the Nazis through their otherness. What’s more, it is in fact Britishness that brings our protagonists together – when part of the train is derailed by the Nazis (including the dining cart), all the Brits are united – and how? Well, “Luckily at teatime the English are all in the dining cart.” Jolly good stuff.

In this style-obsessed age we live in, occasionally aesthetic hubris has a tendency to overtake substantive quality. ‘Smoking Aces’ is a prime example of such a divergence. It both tries to concoct a story replete with trendy and original hitmen, with a visual style littered with more BIG guns and gore than a bad day in Baghdad. The result? We watch an assortment of villains (a sassy couple of African-American women, a trio of redneck Nazis, a scarred sullen killer called ‘Soot’, and some Latin American mercenary loon) and a couple of good federal agents all descend on a Nevada hotel to find super-snitch Buddy Israel. They get there, they shoot each other, and they find love, blah blah blah.

The film’s plotline is so weak that we are constantly obliged to listen to long speeches by characters to tell us what is going on. Rather than the action unfold before us we are told who everyone is, what they are doing there, and then we watch it happen. Add to this the baffling number of irrelevant characters who appear to do little more than occupy space and pad someone’s CV, it makes the explanations even more essential to keep the audience focused on the pretence of a story.

The real question you walk away from this film asking is how on earth theoretically intelligent people managed to wash away however many millions on this claptrap and how can I get onto that gravy train?

To see for yourself: www.smokinaces.net

Verdict: 2/5

An interesting, if possibly romanticised, account of the adult life of the famous children’s author, Beatrix Potter. Renée Zellweger gets her Bridget Jones accent back to tell stories about bunnies, among other things, and against all odds becomes a roaring success to the shock of her fussy mother and pride of her dewy-eyed father. A pleasant performance from Ewan McGregor (who bumbles around as Mr Norman Wade, the publisher and love interest of Miss Potter) and tolerable acting from the child actors in the roles of young Beatrix and her brother.

Overall a lovely film that seems to overlook the somewhat sinister and obscure nature of Potter’s stories. I do not think this film has the makings of a classic, but it runs nicely and gives an example of a remarkable young woman who defies status and social expectation by becoming a huge success in her own right.

To see for yourself: www.misspottermovie.co.uk

Verdict: 3/5

‘A touch of Spice’ is a movie of love, history and recipes.

The film travels from Istanbul to Athens combining two worlds, assumed different, but so alike through people’s culture. Fanis, a Greek boy, being raised in Istanbul, is taught the secrets of cooking by his grandfather and Saime, a Turkish girl, teaches him how love feels.

During tumultuous times in Greek-Turkish affairs, all the Greeks had to be deported from Istanbul, including Fanis and his parents, meaning he had to leave Saime behind.

Many years later Fanis returns to Istanbul. Whilst there, he re-embraces the city, its flavours, its smells, its spices and its beauty, but also he faced facts he long tried to suppress: he comes across Saime again. Why did he stay away for so long? Was it too late for love?

The movie is in Greek, Turkish languages with English subtitles.

Verdict 5/5

Meryl Streep is a superbly talented actress and usually chooses good projects… not too sure about this one though. There is a lot of singing in this film, almost enough for a score rather than a script to have been written.

Country music lovers should stop reading here, because if that’s your thing, then this is your film! It is intriguing in parts (Virginia Madsen mysteriously floats around in a bright white coat) and slightly dull in others. The overall cast boads well, with a brilliantly endearing comical performance by Kevin Kline, a nonchalant and un-caring theatre owner; Woody Harrelson and John C. Reilly as two singing strumming cowboys and Streep and her screen sister Lily Tomlin as two very capable singing sisters. Upsettingly, the whining and frankly untalented Lindsay Lohan played Streep’s daughter making her debut as a country singer. A lucky break indeed. However there was a sense that she was too aware of the publicity this part may get her in co-staring with Streep rather than focusing on building a plausible character.

However, the real problem lies in the narrative, which essentially seems to centre on the final airing of a ‘real life’ radio show hosted by Garrison Keiller (as himself) and the quirky but somewhat mundane events from behind the scenes and on stage in the final live recording. Back stage affairs blur their way onto the stage and vice versa making for a unique but not a ‘must-see’ film experience

To see for yourself – www.imdb.com

Verdict: 3/5

Based on the book by Milan Trenc, ‘Night at the Museum’ operates on the magical premise that everything in the Museum of Natural History in New York comes to life at night because of an Egyptian tablet to the long-dead Ankmenrah.

Divorced and unemployed father of one, Larry (Ben Stiller), gets the job as the new night watchman and has to control all manner of creatures and historical figures with the help of Teddy Roosevelt, amongst others. The slightly sickly father-son relationship plotline is balanced out by the excellent and hilarious performances from well-known faces such as Ricky Gervais, Owen Wilson, Dick Van Dyke and Steve Coogan. I strongly suggest giving your inner child a treat by going to see this film.

To see for yourself – www.nightatthemuseum.com

Yes, prima facie, it is a huge ‘look at me I’m Mel Gibson, ego masturbation fest’. But, it is also cinematically brilliant: let us remember that Gibson is reviving a 16th century Mayan Empire at its ‘zenith’ and, although he takes many anthropological liberties (typical of Western ecological hubris), the overall effect enthrals, excites and submerges you in a compelling Mayan world. This effect is created by casting an all Mayan cast, filming in the Mayan language, unfettered graphic violence, thrilling action, and the foreshadowing of impending doom. The microcosm represented by our charismatic protagonist’s plight combined with omnipresent augurs point throughout the film both at the Maya’s own Apocalypse and, on another level, at the arrival of Pizarro.

So, the plot, the symbolism and the action all run smoothly and create a ‘must see’; even Gibson’s overt pontificating cannot dull his monumental achievement.

Verdict: 5/5