Film reviews and more
In his first feature movie Brick (2005), writer-director Rian Johnson created a self-contained world of noir double-crosses, femme-fatales and hardboiled dialogue, and set it all in the microcosm of a Californian high school. For The Brothers Bloom (2008), his second […]
There is no doubt that the Sex and the City franchise is one of the most successful in television history. The series is popular with teenagers and women alike, and its stars have become style icons for fans to the […]
★★★★☆ There is no doubt that we are in the middle of an animation boom, a ‘silver age’ of animation if you will. The contemporary film market is saturated with computer-animated films. This year so far has seen the rerelease […]
WARNING: Contains spoilers The front cover of the 44 Inch Chest DVD is littered with four star reviews. Unfortunately, not one of them comes from a particularly reputable source, unless you turn to Nuts, Loaded or Bizarre for views and opinions […]
★★★☆☆ With such a ridiculous title, it would be unwise to go into Hot Tub Time Machine (2010) with the preconception that what you are about to see is anything but lavishly ludicrous. The plot fails to stretch far beyond […]
The 63rd Cannes Film Festival drew to a close with a genuine surprise as Thai director Apichatpong Weerasethakul walked away with the coveted Palme d’Or prize for his surreal drama Uncle Boonmee who can Recall his Past Lives (2010). Gliding over […]
★★★★★ Sam Mendes’ Road to Perdition (2002) is shot by the undoubted master of cinematography – Conrad Hall: the man who lit every rose in American Beauty (1999) with an individual spotlight; the man who reportedly cried when looking through […]
★★★☆☆ “Not since The Birth of a Nation has a mainstream movie demeaned the idea of black American life as much as Precious.” This was the view of New York Press columnist Armond White upon viewing Precious (2009), the second film by […]
★★☆☆☆ Has there been a better time in recent memory to return to the age-old English legend of a poor man willing to stand up to a nation’s greedy oppressors? Unfortunately, Ridley Scott’s Robin Hood (2010) manages to miss a ripe opportunity […]
After more than twenty years of producing highly intelligent, absurd, dark and hilarious independent movies, Joel and Ethan Coen finally struck Academy gold with their adaptation of Cormac McCarthy’s bestseller No Country for Old Men (2007). The brothers’ only previous […]
The struggle of any cinematic literary adaptation is the very transition from one medium to another. Novels are by their very nature prosaic, episodic and often rely heavily on narration to communicate both the plot and the emotive content within. McCarthy’s novel The Road follows […]
★★★★☆ Yorgos Lanthimos’ Dogtooth (2009) is an unsettling examination of how easily the desire to control others can lead to tyranny. The film follows three teenagers confined with their parents in an isolated Greek country house. Surrounded by high fences on all sides […]