Firefly

Also Showing: Serenity (15)
Everything (18)
Kinky Boots (12A)
Night Watch (15)
Rag Tale (15)

One of the 652 things that were wrong with the Star Wars prequels was that there was no Han Solo figure - no swashbuckling brigand who could smirk at all the po-faced posturing and go about his self-interested business with some sardonic humour and humanity. Serenity is the opposite of those misbegotten films: it’s essentially a Star Wars adventure that’s all about Han Solo. To be precise, it’s all about Mal Reynolds (Nathan Fillion), but we can guess the model for this rugged gun-slinger who buzzes around a distant solar system in a spaceship that would barely scrape through its MOT.

Mal and his rag-bag crew of mercenaries were first seen in Firefly, the television series created by Joss Whedon after Buffy The Vampire Slayer and Angel. It was cancelled after just 11 episodes, so Whedon has achieved something unprecedented by getting it off the ground as a film, and he’s taken great pains to ensure it won’t crash-land again.

Much like his TV work, Serenity has characters you’d like to go for a drink with, screwball dialogue that pulls the rug from under every macho sci-fi cliché, and storytelling so fast and economic that the pre-credit sequence should be taught in film schools. It also has a complement of explosions and space chases that could never have been done on TV, making Serenity the movie that sci-fi fans - not just Firefly fans - have been waiting for.

Ray Winstone stars as a gruff enigma who nervously hauls himself up the stairs to a prostitute’s room in Soho, and tells her (Jan Graveson) he just wants to talk. At first she’s suspicious, but the man returns the next day, and the day after that, asking ever more searching questions about the oldest profession, and paying ever more for the privilege. A two-hander, and set almost entirely in one room, this low-budget thriller is acted with conviction, but it’s as underwritten as any forgettable fringe play.

We’ve had stripping dockers, nude Women’s Instituters and a ballet-dancing miner’s son. Now we have Kinky Boots (pictured), another cockle-warming comedy about provincial prejudice, industrial decline and salt-of-the-earth Brits doing something very slightly daring. It’s inspired by the true tale of a Northampton shoe factory that shook off its slump by diversifying into stiletto-heeled boots for drag queens and fetishists. The story is better crafted and more highly polished than that of Calendar Girls, which had the same writer and producers.

But, despite Chiwetel Ejiofor’s touching turn as the footwear’s dragged-up designer, Kinky Boots still feels as if it’s come off a production line. If the film were a shoe, it would be one of the sturdybrogues which the factory makes at the start of the story, not one of the sexy, thigh-high numbers it makes at the end.

Night Watch is the Russian answer to Constantine, Hellboy, Underworld, Blade, and every other movie about vampires and demons battling in the urban gloom. Its grimy Moscow locations give the apocalypse a new look, and there are decidedly un-Russian, David Fincher-ish effects. At one point the camera tracks a rivet as it falls off an aeroplane, swirls through the sky, rattles down an air vent and plops into a cup of coffee. Even the subtitles get in on the act, flickering, or dissolving into crimson wisps. But Night Watch is rather too proud of being the opening instalment of a trilogy, with too many characters and storylines being introduced, never to be seen again.

Rag Tale is set in the offices of a very atypical London newspaper. It’s a place in which the editors brainstorm the front page headline first thing in the morning, and then take the rest of the day off; a place in which the Murdoch-like proprietor (Malcolm McDowell) knows that his wife (Jennifer Jason Leigh) is sleeping with the editor (Rupert Graves), but doesn’t do anything about it. Goodness knows, there’s a lot about the tabloids that deserves a satirical kicking, but if Mary McGuckian is going to castigate her characters for falsifying stories, it would help if she got a few facts right herself. The actors improvise their overlapping office banter with gobby gusto, but it’s all to no avail when the plot’s so stupid that it wouldn’t get in the Sunday Sport, and the fidgety editing gives you a headache after five minutes and a stomach ache after 10.

One of the 652 things that were wrong with the Star Wars prequels was that there was no Han Solo figure - no swashbuckling brigand who could smirk at all the po-faced posturing and go about his self-interested business with some sardonic humour and humanity. Serenity is the opposite of those misbegotten films: it’s essentially a Star Wars adventure that’s all about Han Solo. To be precise, it’s all about Mal Reynolds (Nathan Fillion), but we can guess the model for this rugged gun-slinger who buzzes around a distant solar system in a spaceship that would barely scrape through its MOT.

Mal and his rag-bag crew of mercenaries were first seen in Firefly, the television series created by Joss Whedon after Buffy The Vampire Slayer and Angel. It was cancelled after just 11 episodes, so Whedon has achieved something unprecedented by getting it off the ground as a film, and he’s taken great pains to ensure it won’t crash-land again.

Much like his TV work, Serenity has characters you’d like to go for a drink with, screwball dialogue that pulls the rug from under every macho sci-fi cliché, and storytelling so fast and economic that the pre-credit sequence should be taught in film schools. It also has a complement of explosions and space chases that could never have been done on TV, making Serenity the movie that sci-fi fans - not just Firefly fans - have been waiting for.

Ray Winstone stars as a gruff enigma who nervously hauls himself up the stairs to a prostitute’s room in Soho, and tells her (Jan Graveson) he just wants to talk. At first she’s suspicious, but the man returns the next day, and the day after that, asking ever more searching questions about the oldest profession, and paying ever more for the privilege. A two-hander, and set almost entirely in one room, this low-budget thriller is acted with conviction, but it’s as underwritten as any forgettable fringe play.

We’ve had stripping dockers, nude Women’s Instituters and a ballet-dancing miner’s son. Now we have Kinky Boots (pictured), another cockle-warming comedy about provincial prejudice, industrial decline and salt-of-the-earth Brits doing something very slightly daring. It’s inspired by the true tale of a Northampton shoe factory that shook off its slump by diversifying into stiletto-heeled boots for drag queens and fetishists. The story is better crafted and more highly polished than that of Calendar Girls, which had the same writer and producers.

But, despite Chiwetel Ejiofor’s touching turn as the footwear’s dragged-up designer, Kinky Boots still feels as if it’s come off a production line. If the film were a shoe, it would be one of the sturdybrogues which the factory makes at the start of the story, not one of the sexy, thigh-high numbers it makes at the end.

Night Watch is the Russian answer to Constantine, Hellboy, Underworld, Blade, and every other movie about vampires and demons battling in the urban gloom. Its grimy Moscow locations give the apocalypse a new look, and there are decidedly un-Russian, David Fincher-ish effects. At one point the camera tracks a rivet as it falls off an aeroplane, swirls through the sky, rattles down an air vent and plops into a cup of coffee. Even the subtitles get in on the act, flickering, or dissolving into crimson wisps. But Night Watch is rather too proud of being the opening instalment of a trilogy, with too many characters and storylines being introduced, never to be seen again.

Rag Tale is set in the offices of a very atypical London newspaper. It’s a place in which the editors brainstorm the front page headline first thing in the morning, and then take the rest of the day off; a place in which the Murdoch-like proprietor (Malcolm McDowell) knows that his wife (Jennifer Jason Leigh) is sleeping with the editor (Rupert Graves), but doesn’t do anything about it. Goodness knows, there’s a lot about the tabloids that deserves a satirical kicking, but if Mary McGuckian is going to castigate her characters for falsifying stories, it would help if she got a few facts right herself. The actors improvise their overlapping office banter with gobby gusto, but it’s all to no avail when the plot’s so stupid that it wouldn’t get in the Sunday Sport, and the fidgety editing gives you a headache after five minutes and a stomach ache after 10.