The Rebound in 100 words ...

Catherine Zeta Jones force-feeds some much-needed warmth into her CV with this
older-meets-younger romcom. The object of her divorcee character’s affection is
aimless 20-something Aram Finkelstein (Justin Bartha), the boy barista next door.
After babysitting, and growing to love, Zeta’s brats (clearly showing he’s a guy with,you know, feelings), the two start ‘dating’ like nobody’s business. Some cute hijinx ensue but any – limited – success forged by the rather likeable leads is bludgeoned into mediocrity with a patchy script. By the final globe-trotting, half-decade-spanning montage sequence, it becomes clear what this rebound really needed. And it was just a rewrite.
2/5

This slow train threatens to run out steam before it gets to The Last Station

A lot of us have had a relationship with an ego on legs. Some of us may have been unlucky enough to live with this suffocating presence. Of course, these things are largely unfounded. But imagine living with someone who deserves the hype, whose egocentricity is, to some extent, very well-founded indeed.

The Last Station presents exhibit A: Leo Tolstoy. Exhibit B is his long-suffering wife (played with a graceful but deadly fire and ice by Helen Mirren). The two are deeply in love and have been for years. But it doesn't mean that Leo's wife always enjoys living with genius. This is especially the case when a young interloper enters their midst; Bulgakov (James McAvoy) represents the state. They are keen to follow up on one of Tolstoy's more outlandish statements, in which he promised his wealth and land to the Russian people.

Although Tolstoy is spending his old age living in a large house surrounded by people who are - to all intents and purposes - serving him, he's doesn't believe in private property or wealth. His aims are pure - celibacy, vegentarianism, and the people surrounding him will continue to live on the land after he dies. If that didn't put a strain on the relationship with his wife, then Bulgakov certainly would.

When the film sticks to this plot, it's moving and intelligent. Unfortunately, it often indulges a parallel contrasting narrative involving McAvoy's sexual awakening. It does mean we get to see his bum, but otherwise the scenes are largely unnecessary and schmaltzy. Fleshed (ahem) out they could have been a nice commentary on the main plot. But this dishy side dish is simply too sweet.

If you can get past this, then it's easy to be taken in by The Last Station's gentle bubbling. Although the movie is a less inspiring affair when Mirren isn't on screen and the film's scales tip over to cloying sentimentality, it'll inspire a good discussion. It reminds us that behind most great men, there's a partner running around and picking up the pieces. And, without them, how great would these men actually be?

Life During Wartime

In the late 90s Todd Solondz's films were the last word in misanthropic chic. Forget the early stuff by Neil LaBute or any of Woody Allen's sour movies of the time (Deconstructing Harry through to Celebrity). Happiness and Welcome to the Dollhouse were blasts of ice cold, cruel air. They rallied against the increasing influence of romantic comedy and self-conscious, post-Pulp Fiction American indie. In his movies, Solondz delivered a very middle class psychological horror; educated, affluent people who offended ethically, morally and legally. This was real life in an accentuated scabrous ugliness.

In Life During Wartime, Solondz revisits the characters from Happiness, and asks whether we can forgive them. It's a tricky task as these people included narcissists, perverts and a paedophile. So, after a couple of recent misfires (the underwhelming Storytelling and the confused Palindromes), it's good to see Solondz returning to safer ground. Or is it?

Initially signs are mixed. The movie has been completely recast, which seems to serve no real purpose aside from to obfuscate and disorientate. Yet, in itself, the casting is consistently successful and distinct. Dylan Baker's paedophile dad is now played with a dour detachment by Ciarin Hinds. He is having problems clearing his subconscious of his victim, as he returns home from jail. Ally Sheedy's Helen is still a self-centred and thoroughly unlikable character, but now she is married to a celebrity. And her Plain Jane sister Joy is played with breathy earnestness by Shirley Henderson, and is now involved in charity work. Paul Reubens also turns up as the ghost of suicides past, in the role previously inhabited by Jon Lovitz.

They all do a lot of hand-wringing and moralizing , and it's all incredibly frustrating. There are moments in the script which are powerful; the film's last shot and a speech delivered by the film-stealing presence of Alison Janney. But none of it feels believable or real. Issues aren't fleshed out, and Solondz appears to be going through the motions. Depending on your view he either wastes a great cast, or uses them to shroud the movie's rather bare bones.

It is becoming increasingly clear that Solondz has seriously lost his way as a filmmaker. There are rumours that Life During Wartime may be his last film. Considering his success to failure ratio is now 2:3, it's probably for the best.

You've got the look...

There were two types of shock in the Tate Modern's new exhibition, Exposed: ... There was a visceral shock, seen with the images of a lynching, a man dying in the street and an execution in an electric chair (all within spitting distance of each other; an orgy of violence in which the first part of the exhibition culminates). And then were was a more insidious, moral shock. This occurs throughout; at the beginning with photos taken with hidden cameras, and slightly later with the celebrity pictures.

Either way, the exhibition is fundamentally about the voyeurism. The pictures are so shocking as they are taken illicitly, or are of illicit things. We are confronted with the dialogue between the pleasure and horror we get from looking at some of them. We are even asked to consider whether photography is itself an inherently intrusive medium.

But also, we have seen most of this kind of images all before. Just open up a classroom textbook on American history to seen lynchings. Broadsheet papers peddle images of death in the third world. For two quid we can ogle at exposed celebrities in Heat magazine. But their collective power in an art gallery is truly unexpected.

There are a couple of flaws we can level at the exhibition, but neither of these could be described as fatal. Firstly, it's pretty long. There are fourteen rooms in total, some of which are huge and others which contain a couple of dozen photos. Secondly, the last few rooms which focus on surveillance do seem somewhat superfluous. It's too much information, too much of an afterthought and, after all the shock and awe of the galleries before, an uncomfortable change of tack.

But by viewings everything which went before in the context of art deeply unsettles. Not only does it get us to question the artifice of photography, and how we view it, but it's a moral bludgeon. It could be described as overbearing and overegged, but I'm not sure how you can overstate the message. To me, it exposed a truly ugly side of human nature: the need to look.

Very Bad Things

Werner Herzog interprets the word ‘remake’ rather loosely in The Bad Lieutenant: Port of Call New Orleans. It’s based on the controversial 1992 Abel Ferrera movie, which saw Harvey Keitel abusing his authority, rampaging around LA in order to find good drugs, bad sex and worse.

In Herzog’s remake, Nicholas Cage is the bad lieutenant. Cage’s ... resorts to self-medication after an accident involving a permanent disfiguration to his spine; his doctor’s prescription of vicodin clearly proving insufficient. One year - and one bravery medal - after the accident, things have changed. He has a prostitute girlfriend, snorts cocaine and smokes crack. He’s also investigating a gangland massacre, in which five people were shot dead in an apartment.

Essentially, Herzog is donning his Hollywood hat once more, after his first brush with the industry with 2007’s Rescue Dawn. Like that movie – and, in fact, like most of his movies – it’s another story of a man who is part maverick, part maniac. And again like that movie, it’s almost mainstream.

Do note the word ‘almost’ in that sentence. There is a lot of darkness in The Bad Lieutenant. Terrence violently uses an old woman as bait to get her carer to talk. Cage abuses both his weapon and his gun so a stoned woman can avoid prosecution.

And like Terrence, the movie is also off its rocker. The amount of depicted drug taking alone earned The Bad Lieutenant an eighteen certificate. Cage’s character ingests so many substances, he sees lizards on coffee tables and the souls of dead old white men dancing. The casting is also a little left-field. Jennifer Coolidge turns up as an old lush, Val Kilmer is a dour cop and 90s survivor Fariuza Balk is a bent cop with a great body.

It’s exactly what you expect from Herzog. It is inherently bizarre. Which, depending on how you look at it, is either brilliant or rather boring.

Lost and found

Modern Art Oxford is known for bringing the art of established and rising national - and international - stars to the city. In the past we've had works by Tracey Emin, Miroslaw Balka and Robert Mapplethorpe. So it's rare then to find an exhibition with such a parochial focus.

Maria Pask's Deja Vu centres around the deprived local area Rose Hill. The place exists maybe five or so miles outside of the city centre. Sadly, it has a reputation; it's often dismissed as a crime-ridden flea pit, populated by undesirables. Flea pit or not, it's somewhere to go if you're looking to save rent money (and still be fairly central; it's all of a fifteen minute bus ride to the dreaming spires). I almost moved there, in fact.

Pask has worked with local people (and a few professionals) to produce a series of sometimes interlinked short films exploring the idea of community in Rose Hill. All pieces revisit the fifties and sixties, in which one local resident tirelessly wrote and self published a newsletter entitled The Roundabout; copies of the newsletter are displayed alongside the films. The films show scenes inspired by the publication: fashion shows, local theatre productions and scenes down the pub.

It's a melancholy nostalgia. Although what we see is not entirely positive (there's some nastiness in the pub sequences, for instance), there's a yearning, here. It's the idea these very different people (of varying ages and social backgrounds) can come together to create something incredibly powerful. As the films show, it is something they are more than capable of doing again.

It's not all clear cut though. Interestingly, a number of the scenarios are replayed with different actors playing each part. They swap roles regardless of age or gender. It's playful and funny. But there is a sense of mobility here. It's about transcending convention and approaching a subject in a different way. It's a metaphor for what is needed to regain community.

Bird (and a wire)

No summer day is complete without a soundtrack of screaming children, the opening of tupperware boxes and birdsong. The Barbican clearly have similar views, and the latest installation in their 'Curve' space heralds in the upcoming season with a flock of zebra finches in a walkthrough aviary. However this is a aviary with a difference; it comes complete with Gibson guitars and cymbals (all liberally sprinkled with seed, pools of water and bird shit).

For this is birdsong with a difference. Presented in the bright, airy Curve, the birds flutter onto the symbols and strings of the guitars and create stabs of noise. It's all complimented by excitable orni-chatter and befuddled looks from the limited capacity crowd trickling through the curtained entrance.

Some critics have compared this bird-music to the last Sonic Youth album. It's a glib statement; clearly the sounds these birds make with the instruments is a lot more worthwhile. What we have is an adventurous, thought provoking and amusing installation. It'll be curious to see what the artist - Celeste Boursier-Mougenot - will do next; this unique spectacle is pretty memorable and difficult to out-weird. I advise you check it out in person; the much-viewed YouTube video doesn't do it justice.