ALISON ROWAT
Cop Car
three stars
Dir: Jon Watts
With: Kevin Bacon, Camryn Manheim
Runtime: 86 minutes
TWO boys have decided to run away from their homes in Colorado. As if that was not enough excitement to be getting on with, their day is about to get a lot more interesting after they find what looks like an abandoned police car well off the beaten track. Where is the sheriff? What is the car doing out here? And how much harm is there in hopping into the front seats and trying the cop car out for size? Showing as part of the American Dreams strand, Jon Watts's thriller shows how a little imagination can go a long way in compensating for a small budget, with twist piled upon swerve upon handbrake turn. Also helping proceedings rattle along is one Kevin Bacon, the usual driver of the cop car who would now like to be reunited with it. Although the running time is just 86 minutes, Watts cannot keep the show on the road, and credible, right to the end credits, but for a while his slice of mid-west Gothic fair tears up the screen. An engrossing watch, and a timely reminder, too, that there is a lot more to Bacon than punting mobile phones.
Tonight (FRI), 20.35, Cineworld; June 24, 18.20, Cineworld
Every Secret Thing
three stars
Dir: Amy Berg
With: Elizabeth Banks, Diane Lane
Runtime: 93 minutes
AMERICAN director Amy Berg has not one but two films in this year's festival. While Prophet's Prey finds the helmer of West of Memphis and Deliver Us From Evil on familiar documentary terrain, Every Secret Thing is the result of her segue into feature film making. And what a cast and crew she has been able to call on for her fiction debut, including actors Elizabeth Banks and Diane Lane, not to mention writer Nicole Holofcener (Enough Said) here adapting the novel by Laura Lippman. On the face of it, Every Secret Thing is by the numbers police procedural about a missing children and the race to find her, but the number of women in the cast, and the way proceedings are dominated by them, mark it out as notable. It is almost enough to make one forgive the film's flaws, including a melodramatic score that brings the piece uncomfortably close to afternoon TV movie territory at times.
Tonight, 18.00, Cineworld; tomorrow, 16.00, Odeon
ALSO BOOK FOR: Amy (four stars) Asif Kapadia's documentary portrait of singer Amy Winehouse; Love and Mercy (three stars), the life and wild times of Brian Wilson, as played by Paul Dano in his youth and John Cusack in later life; Maggie (three stars), Arnold Schwarzenegger as you've never seen him, pared down and gentle, in a post-apocalyptic zombie family drama (really); and Peter Bogdanovich returns to the director's chair with light as fizz sex comedy She's Funny That Way (three stars), starring Imogen Poots, Owen Wilson and Jennifer Aniston in another eye-poppingly turn.
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