New Films

Xan Brooks
Thursday 02 September 1999 18:02 EDT
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GO (18, 100 mins)

Director: Doug Liman

Starring: Sarah Polley, Desmond Askew

See The Independent Recommends, right.

West End: ABC Tottenham Court Road, Odeon Camden Town, Odeon Kensington, Odeon Marble Arch, Odeon Swiss Cottage, Odeon West End, Ritzy Cinema, UCI Whiteleys, Virgin Fulham Road And local cinemas

PAPERBACK HERO (15, 96 mins)

Director: Anthony J Bowman

Starring: Hugh Jackman, Claudia Karvan

When Jack the trucker (Jackman) pens a Mills & Boon-style novel, he is understandably loath to set his name to it, choosing instead to publish under the name of cafe-owner Ruby (Karvan). Cue mistaken identity, myriad confusion and a sketchy examination of gender roles Down Under. It's not that Paperback Hero is a duff film, exactly. Just a little flimsy, a trifle slight, a mite schematic. The story turns dog-eared midway through.

West End: Odeon Mezzanine, Odeon Swiss Cottage, Virgin Haymarket Local: Streatham ABC

THE 13TH WARRIOR (15, 103 mins)

Director: John McTiernan

Starring: Antonio Banderas, Omar Sharif

Adapted from a Michael Crichton book, The 13th Warrior has the visuals of a heavy metal album and the plot of a Dungeons & Dragons game. Banderas is the Arabic hero press-ganged into helping a band of Norsemen battle a bunch of grisly flesh-eating monsters. The film idles through its middle section but whips itself into a hormonal storm for the battle segments. It's an awkward adolescent of a movie: heavy-limbed, sporadically impressive, but not quite grown into its frame.

West End: Odeon Kensington, Virgin Trocadero

And local cinemas

THE WAR ZONE (18, 100 mins)

Director: Tim Roth

Starring: Ray Winstone, Lara Belmont

See The Independent Recommends, right.

West End: Clapham Picture House, Curzon Soho, Screen on the Green, Virgin Chelsea

YELLOW SUBMARINE (REISSUE) (U, 85 mins)

Director: George Dunning

Lest we forget, the Age of Aquarius was not all great music, vibrant sex and chic revolutionary antics. It also gave us Richard Nixon, Thalidomide and Yellow Submarine, here celebrating its auspicious 32nd birthday with a remastered print. George Dunning's unofficial Beatles pic (the boys crop up in a live-action segment, but their cartoon incarnations are voiced by soundalikes) strings some of their more saccharine tunes around an airheaded plot that has the Fab Four tuning oppressed Pepperland into the joys of peace'n'love. So Yellow Submarine uses pop-art visuals to showcase the Beatles' worst impulses (the idiot whimsy, Goon Show-esque humour and vacuous take on Eastern mysticism). This is the Sixties death knell; Altamont in cartoon form.

West End: Curzon Soho

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