Eisenstein in Guanajuato (15)
Directed by Peter Greenaway
2/5
SOVIET director Sergei Eisenstein earned his place as a true cinema giant with three 1920s classics — Strike, The Battleship Potemkin and October.
Invited to Hollywood, but failing to get a film off the ground after two years, Eisenstein left California for Guadajuato to make Que Viva Mexico!, privately funded by US pro-Soviet sympathisers including American writer Upton Sinclair.
Interestingly, Eisenstein is an admirer of Mexico — “You had a successful revolution five years before we did” — but, regrettably, it doesn’t take long for writer-director Peter Greenaway to wallow in self-indulgent film-making at the considerable expense of his subject.
Thus we see Eisenstein, in his thirties, losing his virginity to a Mexican in a quasi-porno gay sex sequence.
Finnish actor Elmer Back, reduced by Greenaway to resembling — and playing — Eisenstein like Curly from The Three Stooges, deserves praise for his hard work.
Yet Greenaway appears to delight in denigrating his subject even though in terms of film-making, rather than content, there’s no denying his considerable technical talents.
He makes the most of vivid split-screen sequences, clever camera movements and vivid visuals. Yet Eisenstein and those unfamiliar with his great work definitely deserve considerably better.

Review by Alan Frank

The Jungle Book (PG)
Directed by Jon Favreau
3/5
ALMOST 50 years on, Disney’s animated feature The Jungle Book is still cute and sweet. But the studio’s new live-action version is anything but.
Inspired by the 1967 film, Jon Favreau’s remake is surprisingly dark and menacing although full of nods to its classic animated predecessor, including its best-loved songs.
Newcomer Neel Sethi plays man-cub Mowgli, persuaded by his mentor Bagheera (Ben Kingsley) to leave his wolf family and the jungle when the evil tiger Shere Khan (Idris Elba) starts hunting him down.
On his journey he meets dangerous hypnotic snake Kaa (Scarlett Johansson) and the free-spirited Baloo, brilliantly voiced by Bill Murray.
For his first acting gig Sethi does an impressive job while Elba, though a terrifying Khan, lacks the finesse of George Sanders’s 1967 interpretation.
Yet Elba nails it nevertheless, scaring every young child in my vicinity at the screening I attended.
It is an engaging film but remarkably sinister for a Disney and parents be warned — it’s definitely not for the under-8s.