Film: New Films

THE FACULTY (15)

Director: Robert Rodriguez

Starring: Elijah Wood

The Faculty tosses up a salad of The Breakfast Club and Invasion of the Bodysnatchers all played out at an all-American high school where the staff have been taken over by aliens and it's left to the kids to save the day. It's just the sort of clever-clever outing you'd expect from Scream scribe Kevin Williamson and From Dusk 'til Dawn creator Rodriguez, yet we find wit, neat acting and genuine satirical edge here too. Ultimately, there's more to The Faculty than postmodern gloss alone.

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SLAM (15)

Director: Marc Levin

Starring: Saul Williams, Sonja Sohn

Even if slam-poetry's clanking rhyme schemes make you want to "slam" the perpetrator's head in a car door, Marc Levin's drama still carries an emotional force. Saul Williams is the Afro-American Everyman; busted on a drugs charge before finding freedom of expression through his rap stylings, egged on all the while by Sonja Sohn's prison tutor. Levin's story is preachy and simplistic; earthy and earnest. Much like slam-poetry itself.

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A CIVIL ACTION (15)

Director: Steven Zaillian

Starring: John Travolta, Robert Duvall

John Travolta's ambulance-chasing lawyer takes a shot at redemption in a complex and frequently absorbing courtroom saga which nonetheless raises inevitable comparisons with Sidney Lumet's The Verdict. Culled from a true story, A Civil Action spins your classic David and Goliath drama, in which blue-collar locals go head to head with the big corporations who poisoned their water. Zaillian negotiates the legal intricacies with ingenuity.

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HIGH ART (18)

Director: Lisa Cholodenko

Starring: Ally Sheedy, Radha MItchell

A Star is Born for the cultural-theory crowd. High Art charts the respective trajectories of junkie photographer Lucy (Ally Sheedy) and bright-spark magazine editor Syd (Radha Mitchell); their professional/ personal shenanigans played out against a SoHo backdrop. If you can forgive Cholodenko's blunted satire (the director is too in love with the New York art-scene to properly damn it), High Art weaves an elegant and involving love-story. Soft, curvey Mitchell and brittle, intense Sheedy maintain a neat dynamic at the tale's centre.

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BEDROOMS AND HALLWAYS (15)

Director: Rose Troche

Starring: Kevin McKidd, Jennifer Ehle

Bedrooms and Hallways is the latest offering from the This Life school of British film-making, ushering Kevin McKidd's giddy Londoner through all manner of romantic hoops on the run-up to this 30th birthday. Kev's orientation arrow spins from gay to straight, his mates offer endless advice, and Simon Callow pops up as a New Agey men's group leader. Rose Troche's smooth direction and McKidd's winsome playing compensate for an often smug and lightweight script.

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THE RED VIOLIN (15)

Director: Francois Girard

Starring: Samuel L Jackson, Greta Scacchi

Girard's daisy-chain of historical vignettes tries a more clanking, storybook riff than on his earlier 32 Short Films About Glenn Gould; chasing the course of its cursed violin down the centuries. Unfortunately, a thrift shop budget leaves many of the period backdrops looking like cast-offs from BBC schools programming. More crucially, Girard's broken-up and bitty narrative leaves his film labouring in third gear throughout.

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NO (15)

Director: Robert Lepage

Starring: Anne-Marie Cadieux, Alexis Martin

Lepage's third feature obliquely spotlights Quebec's push for independence in 1970 with an absurdist parallel narrative that crosscuts between the trials of a troubled actress (Cadieux) and her activist boyfriend (Martin). But its fascinating elements fail to gel; its scenes unravel; its reach exceeds its grasp.

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ORGAZMO (18)

Director: Trey Parker

Starring: Trey Parker

Orgazmo looks like the runtish love-child of Boogie Nights and Flesh Gordon: a gambolling send-up of the porn industry. Parker is the staunch Mormon, turned skin-flick superstar; Robin Lynne the fiancee who stumbles upon his guilty secret.

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