As Justin, who finds purpose restored to his life by Ritalin, Lou Pucci is very good. And the rest of the casting is pretty much flawless, with Tilda Swinton as the smothering mom, and Keanu Reeves as a psycho-babble-spouting orthodontist. Sophie Scholl: the Final Days (PG)A tribute to one of Germany's few uncomplicated heroines of the Second World War: Sophie Scholl, a staunch anti-Nazi who in February 1943 was arrested and executed for distributing seditious leaflets in Munich. This may not be the film the director intended, but at least it's far closer to his vision than the butchered version put out by Columbia 40 years ago.The extended 'Major Dundee' screens at the London Film Festival (020-7928 3232; www.lff .uk) on 30 October. Thumbsucker (15) For the first 30 minutes, I thought this was going to blossom into something rather extraordinary: a study of the shadow-line between youth and manhood, coupled with bleak satire.
Alas, it doesn't live up to that early promise, slipping instead into a meanderingtale of high-school angst. Sony has belatedly made amends for the studio's barbarism by investing heavily in the new version. Its motives are hardly altruistic - there are huge profits to be made by dusting down old classics - but Peckinpah fans aren't likely to complain. The most that he would say was: 'They are giving me a hard time.' But the fact that he even said that - and that look on his face - you could tell he was very, very sad."It's one of the ironies of the DVD age that the Hollywood studios now spend fortunes restoring the films they themselves cut to pieces. He recorded his voiceover narration for Peckinpah and then he re-recorded it for Bresler "You could tell Sam was struggling.
more graphic than anything I had ever seen before."Peckinpah had intended to open the movie with a Hallowe'en party in the cavalry outpost. With the party in full swing, the Apaches arrived, killing everyone "They never shot it," Anderson recalls "That didn't serve the picture well. It meant you never saw the violence that everybody else was reacting to."As relations between the studio and the director deteriorated, Anderson was caught in the crossfire. Even as a younger man, he had this caustic attitude."But, contrary to his later reputation as a bully and arch-manipulator, Peckinpah was "fun and he was funny". Gradually, though, the actors began to realise just how bloody his vision of the West really was.