Reader Getting Barcelona. Or something.

It won't have escaped the attention of UK readers that, it being Oscar season, enough good films to keep us going for an entire year are being released within one month, guaranteeing that even the most dedicated film-goers will miss a decent chunk of them, and have to spend the rest of the year watching Knocked Up 2: Knocked Down - The Domestic Violence Years!* and wishing they were at Slumdog Millionaire / Milk / Revolutionary Road / Frost Nixon / Doubt / The Wrestler / The Reader / Rachel Getting Married / Vicky Cristina Barcelona instead. To help you in your film-choosing misery, I am thus reviewing the films off that list which I have already seen, so that you don't (necessarily) have to. It's novel, it's innovative, it's a public service.

Anyway.

1. The Reader. Begins with the most graphic and protracted vomiting scene since John Hurt, or possibly Ian Holm (I can't tell them apart), spewed up the Alien in Alien. Through his chest! But you know, that's what vomiting feels like. Anyway, this scene is somewhat less necessary than that one, given as The Reader (surprisingly) is not about a monstrous vomit creature. My first piece of advice: arrive ten minutes late. As for the rest of the movie, it is mostly remarkable for the amount of time Kate Winslet spends in the nude, showing off her authentic body hair. If she wins the Oscar, it will be for services to armpit hair, in the tradition of giving Oscars to beautiful women for playing ugly (cf Charlize Theron, Nicole Kidman etc.) Kate doesn't play it that ugly - she has a perfectly honed gym body, as you'd expect on a 1950s German bus conductor - but she does walk like a sack of potatoes on legs, to emphasise her unprettiness. Other irritations include the syrupy music poured over absolutely everything to let you know how you feel, as we wouldn't want to risk someone coming out a post-holocaust movie with the wrong opinion, because that would be WRONG, and the fact that everyone in the film affects a German accent, to emphasise that the film is set in Germany, and about Germans, otherwise you might forget. More positively, the film is absolutely competently executed in every way and not actively a waste of your time, and there is loads of sex.

2. Vicky Cristina Barcelona. Everything you'd expect from a good Woody Allen movie (forget the last decade or two) - except less. Intellectual discussion - but less of it! Furrow-browed angsting - but less of it! Awkward social interaction - but less of it! Clever humour - but less of it! And so on. The only thing there is more of is more pretty young women (Penelope Cruz, Scarlet Johannson and Rebecca Hall) indulging in more tortured love triangles with a more sexy than Woody lead Javier Bardem. You know, that does make it worth it. But manage your expectations.

3. Rachel Getting Married. OK, so this is the one to see. From the title and the casting of Anne Hathaway I was expecting a chick flick nightmare, but what I got was a highly intelligent, beautifully performed, wonderfully directed film which is about as close as you can get to actually going to a wedding without having to eat any sugared almonds. The entire film takes place over a wedding weekend for a huge wedding, and is filmed handheld and semi-improvised so that you feel like another guest. The "front" story is Hathaway's return from rehab for her sister's wedding and the impact that has on her family. This is bravely handled by the screenplay which refuses to give you obvious "good guy" and "bad guy" characters for you to side with or hate. I spent half the movie in painful sympathy with Hathaway, and the other half wanting to slap her. Wait a moment, that's how I feel about myself. The "back" story is the wedding itself which provides way more than a living backdrop. It's a wonderful seething mass of wedding, which, like a real wedding, is alternately sentimental, moving, boring, exciting, going on for far too long, punctuated with moments of magic, padded out with semingly endless speeches and so on. All of the incidental music in the film is "real" ie comes from wedding guests and band practising, performing or just noodling away. I thought this film was fantastic and a virtuoso effort from Jonathan Demme. One not to miss - hat optional, no gifts please.

*May not actually be a movie.