Joseph Walsh
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DVD Review: ‘Jack Reacher’
★★★☆☆ Based on Lee Child’s gun-ho creation, rumoured Mission: Impossible 5 director Christopher McQuarrie presents solid actioner Jack Reacher (2012), starring Tom Cruise in the title role and now available on DVD and Blu-ray. A solitary wanderer after tours of Iraq and Afghanistan, ex-military cop Reacher (Cruise) is drawn into a conspiracy after sniper James…
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Interview: Thomas Vinterberg, ‘The Hunt’
Prominent Danish filmmaker Thomas Vinterberg returns to territory previously tackled in his much-lauded feature Festen (1998) this week with The Hunt (Jagten, 2012), a taught Scandinavian morality tale starring world cinema darling Mads Mikkelsen. Wrongly accused of molesting a young child (also the daughter of his best friend), kindly primary school teacher Lucas (Mikkelsen) becomes…
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Interview: Ben Wheatley, director of ‘Sightseers’
Following on from the success of last year’s critically acclaimed occult horror Kill List (2011), rising filmmaker Ben Wheatley may not seem the most obvious choice for helming an off-beat British comedy set in the great outdoors. Yet, the world of comic drama was exactly where the Billericay-born director first cut his teeth, with a series…
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Film Review: ‘Jack the Giant Slayer’
★★☆☆☆ Continuing the current trend of bringing live-action fairytales to the big screen, Bryan Singer’s fi-fi-fo-fum fantasy Jack the Giant Slayer (2013) (not ‘Killer’ – that might scare the kids) finally reaches UK cinemas this week, with Nicholas Hoult, Stanley Tucci and Ewan McGregor all in-tow. Opening in a manner not dissimilar to that of…
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Film Review: ‘Maniac’
★★★☆☆ We’re not in the Shire anymore, Mr. Frodo. Former hobbit Elijah Wood cuts an immeasurably darker figure in Franck Khalfoun’s Maniac (2012), a remake of William Lustwig’s original 1981 horror. Reminiscent of Wood’s homicidal turn as psychopath Kevin in 2005’s Sin City, here we are presented with a deeply disturbed individual, loaded with mummy issues…
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Film Review: ‘The Paperboy’
★★★★☆ There are few films that can lay claim to being quite so lurid and sultry as Lee Daniels’ infamous Cannes foray The Paperboy (2012) – which makes it all the more delicious to sample. Set deep within the humid bayous of southern Florida, this sexually-charged guilty pleasure stars Zac Efron, Matthew McConaughey and Nicole…
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DVD Review: ‘Sister’
★★★★☆ Ursula Meier’s sophomore feature, Sister (L’enfant d’en haut, 2011), is one of those all too infrequent examples of well-handled, powerful and emotionally-charged drama, with tremendous performances from the young Kacey Mottet Klein and Léa Seydoux. Opening in a ski resort high in the Swiss Alps we find a young boy, Simon (Klein), dexterously pilfering…
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Special Feature: Between the Lines Festival roundup
DocHouse and The Frontline Club can celebrate this week after the triumph that was last weekend’s tremendously successful Between the Lines Festival (1-3 March), which engagingly approached some of the most pertinent issues facing the changing trends in documentary and journalism today. The mission statement of the festival was to explore the key issues that…
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Special Feature: Between the Lines Festival begins
Housed at the Rich Mix in Shoreditch and presented by DocHouse and Frontline Club, Between the Lines is a newly formed documentary film festival that runs over the weekend 1-3 March in 2013. Aiming to explore the ways in which shifting boundaries have affected today’s new media landscape, the three-day event will bring together champions…
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Film Review: ‘Broken City’
★★☆☆☆ Whilst sadly stale in its overall delivery, there are still some delights to be found in Allen Hughes’ fusion of political thriller with noir pot-boiler, Broken City (2013), which stars Mark Wahlberg, Russell Crowe and Catherine Zeta-Jones. The New York of the film seethes with seediness, a hive of both corruption and vice. We…