Taking Woodstock (15)

3/5

"If you can remember the Sixties, you weren't there," goes to the old line.

Thank goodness, then, for Oscar-winning director Ang Lee and screenwriter James Schamus, who collaborate once again on this recreation of Woodstock, the festival that defined a generation.

Rather than recreate the music performances, the film unfolds through the eyes of the Jewish family who invited hundreds of thousands of music-loving strangers to their sleepy corner of Bethel, New York.

It's a fascinating yarn, adapted from Elliot Tiber's celebrated memoir Taking Woodstock: A True Story Of A Riot, A Concert And A Life.

Elliot (Demetri Martin) – born Teichberg, later changing his name to Tiber – goes home to hen-pecked father Jake (Henry Goodman) and harridan mother Sonia (Imelda Staunton) to help the family's ailing motel business.

Learning that a music festival is looking for a suitable location, Elliot contacts its organiser Michael Lang (Jonathan Groff) and puts him in touch with Max Yasgur (Eugene Levy), who owns a neighbouring farm.

The Woodstock committee takes up residence at the dilapidated El Monaco Motel as a steady stream of hippies passes through.

Locals are horrified. "They will be high during the day and raping cows at night,'' one snaps.

Cross-dressing bodyguard Vilma (Liev Schreiber) provides valuable protection from local hoods as Elliot finds the strength to embrace his homosexuality and be the man he always wanted to be.

Taking Woodstock is handsomely crafted, as you would expect from Lee (Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon, Brokeback Mountain) but his new film lacks that vital spark.

Stand-up comedian Martin is an interesting casting choice for the laconic leading man, but he is upstaged by dreamy newcomer Groff and a scenery-chewing Staunton.

Cold Souls (12A)

2/5

Despite a great cast and a director who is tipped for great things, Cold Souls is a tepid film, writes Mike Polanyk.

It's a metaphysical tragicomedy which begs obvious comparisons with the quixotic work of Charlie Kaufman, but it's too smart, too clever for its own good.

Paul Giamatti – sigh – plays a fictionalised version of himself in this quirky drama. He's an actor struggling through rehearsals for Uncle Vanya, but he cannot seem to get in touch with the character because he is too weighed down by personal woes.

Reading an article about a revolutionary medical procedure, which temporarily removes the soul from the body and allows the person to go about their day-to-day lives without the emotional baggage, he visits Dr Flintstein (David Strathairn). The medic reassures Paul that it is a safe and simple procedure, and his soul will remain in cold storage until he needs it re-implanting. Paul goes ahead with the extractionand, sure enough, his rehearsals improve dramatically. Meanwhile, back at Flintstein's storage facility, Nina (Dina Korzun), who smuggles souls back to Russia where there is a huge black market, receives an order from one of her customers for the soul of a Hollywood actor.

What could have been a dark, witty black comedy ends up as a fairly cheerless piece of melancholic nonsense.

Tulpan (12A)

4/5

Sergey Dvortsevoy's directorial debut is a whimsical romance set on the Kazakh steppe, where the nomadic people live off the land with their families and livestock.

Asa (Askhat Kuchinchirekov) completes his naval service and goes to live with sister Samal and her husband Ondas on the steppe. To become a shepherd like his sibling, Asa must first be married – but the only eligible woman within miles is the enigmatic Tulpan, who rejects him because his ears are too big. Unperturbed, Asa sets out to persuade Tulpan that he would be an excellent prospect, weathering constant run-ins with his brother-in-law.

Feted at Cannes, derided in its native Kazakhstan – despite being the country's submission for the foreign language Oscar – Tuplan had a roller coaster history.

It's finally limped out over here, but don't be deterred by the lack of fanfare: it's a gorgeous little movie, full of rich, wry humour.

We Live in Public (12A)

3/5

Prefaced by the caption "This is the story of the greatest internet pioneer you've never heard of'', Ondi Timoner's documentary pays tribute to a visionary who was decades ahead of his time.

In 1993, Josh Harris formed Pseudo Programs and was one of the first people to introduce online multi-player gaming. He channelled his energies into establishing an online TV network and then, famously, created an online art project called Quiet which took the Big Brother model to the extreme by inviting 100 volunteers to live in a bunker in Manhattan, their every move recorded by omnipresent cameras. The experiment ended with police razing the bunker. We Live In Public salutes the hubris of Harris, who subsequently lost millions and very nearly his sanity.

Sundance award winner Timoner trawled through thousands of hours of Harris's own footage to craft this tale, which starts off entertainingly enough but becomes rather tiresome.

The White Ribbon (Das Weisse Band) (15)

Shot in stunning black-and-white, the new film from writer-director Michael Haneke (Funny Games, Hidden) is a gripping mystery set in a German farming community on the eve of the First World War.

In this melting pot of bitter rivalries and deceit, the new schoolteacher (Christian Friedel) is shocked to learn of an attempt on the life of the local doctor (Rainer Bock) and the subsequent death, perhaps murder, of the Baron's son (Ulrich Tukur).

The Magic Hour (15)

A portmanteau of five short films by disabled directors, includingParaphernalia by John Williams, which melds live action and animation to sketch the relationship between a boy and his robot; William Mager's mockumentary Hands Solo about a deaf man who becomes an internationally-celebrated porn star; and Buttermouth by Andrew Gibbs, which employs stop-motion animation to relate the story of a mother and child and their blindness.