Summary
Stage Beauty (15) Stars: Billy Crudup, Claire Danes, Rupert Everett, Tom Wilkinson, Ben Chaplin, Hugh Bonneville, Richard Griffiths, Edward Fox, Zoe Tapper 110 mins LIKE Shakespeare In Love, and there's no getting away from the comparison, Stage Beauty sets out to show that boys will be girls - especially in 1660s England when women were banned from acting on stage in public. So the most celebrated leading lady of the day was a man, Ned Kynaston, who's more Martha than Arthur in his private life too. His beauty and way with words has made him the toast of London society. If only those royals hadn't poked their noses in. King Charles II (Everett) is bored with the same old actors and, at the instigation of his latest mistress Nell Gwyn (newcomer Tapper) decrees that women can tread the boards. Kynaston sees his livelihood slipping away, although unaware that his young dresser and aspiring thespian Maria (Danes) has been borrowing his costumes and performing illegally in a seedy tavern at night. As his career hits rock bottom, her's rises - a situation made all the more difficult as the pair are falling in love, if only Maria can turn his attention away from men to the fairer sex. This gender-bending movie is blessed with a star-making performance from Crudup as the confused leading lady, and another excellent one from Danes as the backstage helper who seizes the chance to strut her stuff in front of the footlights. Add a supporting cast of favourite British actors, including Everett's monarch and Griffiths' hilarious dandy, and you have a movie that has even more going for it than Shakespeare In Love.
Hellboy (12A) Stars: Ron Perlman, Selma Blair, Jeffrey Tambor, Karel Roden, Rupert Evans, John Hurt I'VE never read the comic book on which Hellboy the movie is based - then again, not a lot of people have, apparently, but the screen version is fast and furious fun. Perlman may be buried beneath a ton of latex, but his Hellboy, the result of a Nazi experiment during the Second World War that went wrong, is sheer magic. With his sawn-off horns and red complexion, he looks ferocious and, indeed, can more than hold his own in a fight. But he also has the sulky attitude of a teenager whose Game Boy has been taken away from him. You half expect him to stamp his foot instead of picking up the bad guys and twirling them round his head. He was rescued from his "father", evil madman Rasputin (Roden), by kindly Professor Broom (Hurt) who raised him like a son, albeit a big red one, and developed his paranormal gifts. Then he put him to work in his secret organisation, the Bureau for Paranormal Research and Defence. , where his companions in the fight against evil include fire-raising Liz Sherman (Blair) and merman Abe Sapien (voiced by Frasier's David Hyde Pierce). It's them against the seemingly-indestructible Rasputin, who wants Hellboy back on his side to help bring about Armageddon. Writer and director Guillermo del Toro achieves the right balance of fantasy and feeling, investing his superheroes with enough emotional confusion to make you root for them against the bad guys. But he doesn't forget to give us a succession of special effects-laden confrontations between good and evil. I look forward to Hellboy 2.See the full content of this document
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Cinema - Beautiful Dreamers
The Terminal (12A) Stars: Tom Hanks, Catherine ZetaJones, Stanley Tucci, Chi McBride, Diego Luna, Kumar Pallana 125 mins THERE have be...
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