Latest screening: Amelia

It's hard to see who, except possibly Hilary Swank's ego, this film was made for. A ponderous, unengaging traipse through the life of US aeronautical grand-dame Amelia Earhart.

As anyone who has seen Vanity Fair or The Namesake can attest director Mira Nair has a stunning ability to make a potentially interesting subject as boring as watching paint dry and here she wants to have her cake and eat it as the film tries both to tell us about Earhart whhile simultaneously assuming we already know her whole story. Though i'd be willing to bet that your average person - even Americans - know she was the first woman to fly across the Atlantic single-handed and the manor in which she died, and that's about it.

The film lacks any real sense of purpose. It seems to want us to see Amelia as a great pioneer, and that's fine i guess, but isn't she already kind of seen that way? That's Amelia the myth. If you're doing a biopic you look behind the myth, you show the woman at the heart of the story - the person noone knew. The problem here is either that Earhart just wasn't all that interesting beyond the legend or that Swank (who serving as a producer clearly we have to thank for what feels like a classic vanity project) and Nair were simply unwilling to tarnish their subject in even the most benign way. Probably a bit of both. Certainly the filmmakers must be to blame for only half-heartedly covering her affair and couching the heartlessness with with she treats Richard Gere's character. The affair feels thrown in out of a necessity not to be accused of avoiding any negative angles but is more implied than stated and then brushed over before it even seems to have started.

Swank shows none of the subtlety she excelled at in Boy's Don't Cry and Million Dollar Baby and instead brings the overplaying version of herself seen in films like The Black Dahlia. Could she be turning into Al Pacino? You do spend half of Amelia expecting her to cry "Hoo-haa!" and it wouldn't seem out of place.

Ewan McGregor is terribly miscast as Gene (?) Vidal (father of Gore - an overplayed aside) and Christopher Eccleston is wasted as Earhart's alcoholic navigator on her ill-fated round-the-world voyage.

Gere fares slightly better though. He is an actor people love to hate but i frequently find myself liking him and he is the best part of this, but not enough to make it a worthwhile watch.

Overall there is nothing here to engage an audience looking for anything other than hero worship and that it just a waste of everybody's time.