Back to the future

X-Men (12) General release

The last of the really big summer blockbusters to reach our shores, Brian Singer's stylish version of the cult Stan Lee comic strip proclaims its much-vaunted "seriousness" from the opening scene, set, with debatable taste, at the gates of a Nazi concentration camp. The point is made: Bat- man this ain't, although one wonders how wise it was to sling quite so much ideological baggage on to the undercarriage of what 20th Century Fox clearly hopes will be its brave new franchise for the 21st century. But, after Spielberg, Benigni and Robin Williams, it was only a matter of time before the Holocaust was enlisted as a mere plot device.

Singer clearly doesn't see it that way, of course; the concentration camp serves notice that X-Men is not going to be your regular tale of men and women with underpants over their tights. Instead, it's a rather heavy-handed metaphor for intolerance and minority rights in a multicultural society. Phew - but there are a few good effects as well.

The premise of X-Men is that the human race is slowly evolving, and a new species with extrasensory powers is beginning to emerge. These new arrivals are known derisively as "mutants", and are feared and despised by the general population, whipped up by a McCarthy-type rabble-rousing senator. Some mutants, led by the benevolent telepath, Xavier (Patrick Stewart) are working to defuse the prejudice; others, led by Xavier's former friend, Magneto (Ian McKellen) believe that humans and mutants can never co-exist (X-Men's producers posit a parallel between Martin Luther King and Malcolm X - Irish viewers might prefer pre-Agreement Hume and Adams). The two rivals are racing to find a young woman whose special powers could resolve their struggle.

As all this might indicate, there's an awful lot of exposition to get through before X-Men finally cuts to the chase, by which stage it's nearly time for the final showdown at the Statue of Liberty. The result is a curiously lopsided movie, gorgeously designed and with some spectacular set-pieces, but decidedly odd pacing. Which is not necessarily a bad thing, and certainly preferable to the rigid, predictable three-act structures of most summer blockbusters. But Singer and his screenwriters seem torn between their fears of offending fans of the original strip and introducing the larger than life characters - Wolverine (Hugh Jackman), Cyclops (James Marsden), Storm (Halle Berry) et al - to a paying audience. The result is less a stand-alone movie than a pilot for a projected series - which is, after all, what X-Men probably is (Number Two is reportedly already in the pipeline).

I Could Read the Sky (Club IFC), Dublin

Nichola Bruce's striking interpretation of Timothy O'Grady and Steve Pyke's photographic novel is that rare thing in Irish feature-length cinema, a non-linear, multi-layered film which deploys the techniques of experimental, non-narrative filmmaking in search of essential emotional truths. In exploring the memories and experiences of an Irish emigrant working in England in the 1950s, Bruce builds up her textures through overlapping imagery, words, sound and music to convey a story of loss, betrayal and pain.

If this doesn't sound like a lot of fun, well, it isn't - the criticism that could be levelled against I Could Read the Sky is one of unrelieved gloominess, which arguably misrepresents the actual reality of even the most unfortunate lives. That mood is magnified by Iarla O Lionaird's overbearingly plangent score, and finally over-emphasised by Sinead O'Connor's feel-my-pain singing.

But there are too many good things in Bruce's film to ignore: Dermot Healy's central performance as the working man looking back on his life from a grimy London flat is achingly note-perfect; Seamus McGarvey and Owen MacPolin's cinematography imbues familiar imagery with fresh meaning; the elliptical subtlety of Catherine Creed's editing is admirable. In its own way, I Could Read the Sky is a landmark in Irish film-making, showing new (and badly-needed) ways to engage with the past and with memory.

Himalaya (Club IFC, Dublin)

Nominated for an Oscar last year, and already a deserved big hit in France, Valli's magnificent, Western-style epic is a perfect introduction to the IFC's new, improved main screen in Cinema One. Shot in stunning wide-screen images, Himalaya tells the story of an inter-generational conflict within a small tribe of Nepalese villagers as they prepare for their arduous annual migration across the mountains. When the elderly village chief's son dies in an accident on the mountains, the chief, Tinle (a remarkable performance by Thilen Lhondup) attempts to reassert his authority, but many of the villagers doubt whether he has the strength to lead the trek one more time. The community divides between the younger men, whose leader, Karma, is blamed by Tinle for his son's death, and their fathers, who still have faith in their old leader, and the two antagonistic factions set off separately on the dangerous trail.

In some ways, Himalaya recalls the "ethnographic documentaries" of Robert Flaherty, such as Man of Aran and Nanook of the North, in its precise detailing of a remote, indigenous way of life from a humanist, Western perspective. But, despite the fact that he uses an almost completely non-professional cast, Valli never attempts to pretend that Himalaya is anything other than a fictional story, and it's the unabashedly classical quality of this storytelling (compared by some critics to Howard Hawks's Red River) that helps give the film its power. A sequence when the migrants and their herd of yaks must traverse a crumbling ledge on a sheer rock face high above a beautiful, dangerous lake, is more gripping and spectacular than any Hollywood action sequence this year. In fact, Himalaya, which deservedly won Cesars (the French Oscars) for its cinematography and music score, ranks very near the top of any list of must-see films in 2000.

Frequency (15) General release

Gregory Hoblit's highly enjoyable film starts off like an urban version of Field of Dreams, then takes an unexpected twist into serial killer whodunnit territory, before finishing off with an exploration of the paradoxes inherent in the concept of time travel. Quite a lot to fit into one movie, but Hoblit pulls it off rather well, delivering one of the better mainstream entertainments of the last few months. The story opens in 1969, at the scene of a heroic rescue by New York firefighter Frank Sullivan (Dennis Quaid), before flashing forward 30 years. Frank's son, John (Jim Caviezel), a thirtysomething cop, is going through a dark night of the soul; his relationship is falling apart, he's drinking too much and he feels his life is a disappointment. Still living in the family home, he is haunted by the night, 30 years before, when his father died in a fire. When his neighbour pulls out Quaid's old ham radio, untouched since the day he died, Caviezel pays no attention, until someone starts trying to contact him.

It would spoil the pleasure of Frequency to give away too much of its convoluted plot, beyond saying that the inventive screenplay blends elements of It's A Wonderful Life with Back To The Future for dramatic rather than comic effect. Crucially, Hoblit plays the whole thing straight, and is helped immeasurably by Caviezel and Quaid, both of whom turn in terrific performances. Caviezel in particular, who figured prominently in Terrence Malick's Thin Red Line last year, is a revelation as the troubled cop. At a time of year when formulaic storytelling generally rules, it's a pleasure to come across a movie which crosses genre boundaries with such skill and aplomb.

The Colour of Paradise (Club IFC, Dublin)

Majid Majidi's memorable, deceptively straightforward film follows the fortunes of a blind, eight-year-old boy (Mohsen Ramerani), and his journey from his special school in Tehran back to his remote village with his father (Hossein Mahjub), a widower who sees his son as a shameful burden to be jettisoned as soon as possible. As they travel across the bleak but beautiful landscape of northern Iran, Majidi brilliantly evokes the child's exploration of nature through sound, touch and smell.

The Colour of Paradise is in a recognisable line of contemporary Iranian cinema, which has brought it to a wider and more appreciative audience than ever before. Unlike some of the other directors in the current Iranian wave, however, Majidi does not appear to be using children's stories as a way of circumventing his country's strict censorship regime through metaphor. Instead, his concerns (as in his earlier Children of Heaven, the first Iranian feature to be nominated for an Oscar) are with the world of childhood itself. The apparently simple inversion of the story, whereby it is the father who is spiritually blind, and his son who can truly see, is merely the framework for a beautifully worked exploration of the relationship between the senses and the physical world and of the human capacity for transcendence.

Donald Cammell's `Wild Side' (Club IFC, Dublin)

Best known for co-directing Performance with Nicolas Roeg in 1970, Donald Cammell committed suicide in his Hollywood home in 1996, and this "director's cut" of his last movie is actually a posthumous debowdlerisation by friends and colleagues, who rescued it from the clutches of the company which had turned it into straight-to-video exploitation fodder. Frankly, they shouldn't have bothered. On the surface, Wild Side looks potentially intriguing; a study in power, money, violence and sexuality whose themes recall those of the earlier film. Add in a better-than-usual cast (Christopher Walken, Anne Heche, Joan Chen) and cult status might seem assured. But the deeply silly screenplay and ridiculously self-indulgent acting (from Walken in particular), along with a surprisingly banal visual style, make this one to avoid rather than treasure.