Something silly in Chile: Michael Cera and his magical cactus is weird, in a good way

CRYSTAL FAIRY & THE MAGICAL CACTUS (1 8 )



Verdict: Weird, in a good way



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Michael Cera, so wonderful as the awkward George-Michael in the U.S. sitcom Arrested Development, here plays Jamie, an obnoxious, self-centred, coke-snorting young American who befriends three Chileans, all of whom are much nicer than he is, and takes a road trip through their country.

He is obsessed with finding a hallucinogenic cactus, and is highly disconcerted when they are joined on their quest by a New Agey American woman (Gaby Hoffmann) who calls herself Crystal Fairy, and whose dippiness — and fondness for nudity — makes him increasingly uncomfortable.



He deals with this by first trying to abandon her, then mocking her, calling her Crystal Hairy.

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Higher ground: Michael Cera impresses as a cocky tripper in Crystal Fairy & The Magical Cactus

It is an odd film in many ways, but immensely likeable, and expertly improvised by a talented cast.

The director is Sebastian Silva, who made the critically acclaimed 2009 Chilean film The Maid, and Jamie’s fellow-travellers are apparently Silva’s brothers.

Cera has said the film is effectively a document of their actual road trip, in which they kept stepping back and forth across the boundary between real life and fiction. Somehow, that realism shines through.



THE NIGHT OF THE HUNTER



Verdict: Creepy masterpiece



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‘Children . . . chiiiildren!’ Long before a million nightmares were unleashed by Robert Helpmann’s sinister child-catcher in Chitty Chitty Bang Bang, came Robert Mitchum’s child-stalking preacher man in Night Of The Hunter, the only film ever directed by that great British actor Charles Laughton.

Laughton’s 1955 film has been brilliantly restored, giving new luminosity to the remarkable work of his cinematographer Stanley Cortez. Almost every frame is a masterpiece of light and shade, though in Mitchum’s character there is only shade.

He is creepily captivating in the role of a serial killer, Harry Powell, who roams the American South in the guise of a preacher, with ‘Love’ and ‘Hate’ tattooed on his knuckles.

Scary: Serial killer Harry Powell roams the American South in the guise of a preacher with knuckle tattoos

After sharing a prison cell with a bank robber condemned to death, Powell resolves to find the $10,000 the man has hidden. He tracks down the robber’s widow (Shelley Winters) and children, marries her and then turns his menacing attention to her young son and daughter, who know where the loot is.

Surplus to requirements, their mother is murdered and dropped to the bottom of the Ohio river, enabling Cortez to set up underwater shots of her dead body that were pioneering then, and still haunting now.

The Night Of The Hunter was a flop when it first came out, which was why Laughton curtailed his directing career after one film.

But it has since been accorded the classic status it richly deserves. The intervening years haven’t been especially kind to some of the more clunky acting, nor a jarring change of tone in the final act when Lillian Gish, cast as a kind of fairy godmother, helps love to overcome hate.