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Below you'll find our latest reviews of films out in cinemas and on DVD, as well as updates on festivals and short films. For a list of older reviews just click on the relevant section from the menu above.
Imagine throwing the party you’ve always dreamed of in a venue primed for purpose – pesky neighbours and law enforcement aside. Imagine all the coolest people attending and dancing to some kick-ass tunes. It’s the stuff of decadent dreams that this out-of-control juggernaut feeds on, tapping into a real deep-rooted deviance from our days of youthful carefree living. After all, someone else can pay later; it’s all about tonight and now. For The Hangover fans – director Todd Phillips produces this time – there is an even greater sense of the party boys being plunged into the virtual...
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'Role Models' director David Wain returns to big screen comedy with Apatow-produced 'Wanderlust'. The film that's been overshadowed by Jennifer Aniston's boobs... not like that... Yes, it's the film in which Aniston met lover Justin Theroux who, we're told, vetoed the shots in which she gets her baps out. Still, we're pleased to report there's much to enjoy in this comedy. The premise sees New York couple George (Paul Rudd) and Linda (Jennifer Aniston) failing miserably to face the recession head-on. Unable to pay the mortgage on their 'micro loft', they retreat to Atlanta and the home of George's...
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The prospect of another, more contemporary Lawrence of Arabia focussing on current affairs in the Middle East today, and with big acting names involved is an attractive one. Black Gold is especially enticing because it has been producer Tarak Ben Ammar’s long-time goal by bringing the finer points of Hans Ruesch’s rousing novel South Of The Heart to the big screen. And it's directed by Jean-Jacques Annaud (Enemy at the Gates, Seven Years in Tibet). Sadly, the reality is a dull, dusty, overly long epic attempt that has jarring and frankly odd sporadic bouts of humour in a story that is primarily...
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Charm and experience go hand in hand, and director John Madden (The Debt) has coaxed this potent combination effortlessly out of a truly stellar British cast of Judi Dench, Bill Nighy, Maggie Smith, Tom Wilkinson, Penelope Wilton, Celia Imrie and Ronald Pickup. This film may have an older audience in mind, but its characters’ personal issues are universal. In The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel, British retirees from different walks of life travel to India to take up residence in what they believe is a newly restored hotel, run by an over enthusiast young entrepreneur called Sonny (Dev Patel) who is having...
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It's certainly loud. This is a film whose themes and issues are there for all to see, and they come together in an effective way. If it wasn't for some award-baiting grandstanding from director Stephen Daldry, it would be more than incredibly close to being an excellent film. A best picture nominee at this year's Oscars, this film is based on a bestselling novel that takes in all manner of issues from 9/11 to broken families and mental illness. But it's divided critics right down the middle. Borderline-Aspergers sufferer Oskar Schell (Thomas Horn) has a special bond with über understanding father...
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Worth watching just to be absorbed into this foggily mysterious ambience of poetic confusion (see what it made us write?), 'The Woman In The Fifth' is the story of writer Tom Ricks (Ethan Hawke) whose mission to Paris to visit estranged daughter Chloé leads him on a mysterious journey... Personal tragedy has kept writer/director Pawel Pawlikowski from our screens for too long. But now he returns and, if his award-winning features 'Last Resort' and 'My Summer Of Love' are anything to go by, we should expect to be absorbed into a quiet, lyrical tale. Once in Paris a poor run of luck sees Tom living...
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Admitting to enjoying a Nic Cage film always feels like a guilty pleasure. But there is often plenty to be entertained by, regardless of how incredulous the story his character resides in is. In fact after the lukewarm response to the first Ghost Rider film, there is nothing to lose with the second one – and this gung-ho attitude permeates Cage’s Johnny Blaze character too, with oodles of cheap thrills to be had. In Spirit of Vengeance, Blaze still struggles with his demonic side as he hides out in Eastern Europe. But he is soon called upon by a holy man called Moreau (Idris Elba) to stop...
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Co-writer and star Jason Segel and director James Bobin courageously embraced the arduous task of recapturing the magic of The Muppets for a new generation, safe in the knowledge that the adult ‘kids’ out there who remember the show first time around would only need a few bars of Sam Pottle and Jim Henson’s iconic theme tune to secure a captive interest. However, this alone cannot guarantee a whole new movie’s success, and it’s because Segel and Bobin – of The Flight of the Conchords fame – have stuck to making this a puppet character-driven piece full of the coy innocence of the 70s’...
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It's a ridiculous heist movie that occasionally descends into utter nonsense, but somehow it's still quite fun. Sam Worthington needs to work on his accent though. The 'Avatar' star takes on the role of Nick Cassidy, a cop convicted of a crime he didn't commit. Needless to say, he's not going to sit back and take it. Instead he concocts a daring plan to escape custody and prove his innocence. Beginning with a brawl at his father's funeral and ending up on a hotel ledge, Cassidy's plan sets in motion an audacious heist which will rely on the ingenuity of his brother (Jamie Bell) and the predictability...
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The smash hit of last year's Sundance film festival, Sean Durkin's blistering debut has set tongues wagging for its combination of dreamlike imagery and a startling performance by Elizabeth Olsen. Marcy May (Elizabeth Olsen) has just fled the confines of a rural cult. Under the brutal patriarchy of its leader (John Hawke) she had been forced to work the land, follow his orders, and submit to his sexual whims. Turning to the sister she abandoned long ago (Sarah Paulson), Marcy May returns to the outside world, and her original name - Martha, to try and escape. But the past is a tough thing to escape,...
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Hammer Horror continues its attempt at dominating the cold chill in cinema's spine with this classic ghost tale, starring former Mr. Potter himself: Daniel Radcliffe. The shift away from corny pagan subject matter (don't try and remember 'Wake Wood') is a welcome one, and a tried-and-tested ghost story seems a good move. It's already had successful incarnations as a novel, stage play and surprisingly decent TV movie, so there don't seem to be too many risks involved with bringing it to the big screen... unless you doubt the talents of erstwhile wizard Daniel Radcliffe of course. The tale begins...
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A treatise on love, lust, loss and loneliness from the Hollywood craftmasters. You can try not to respond, try to parry the attack with cynicism and smug, self-assured intellectual superiority, but resistance is futile. This is super streamlined, focused and finessed film making at it’s most devastatingly effective. The story is an interesting cocktail - 1 part pygmalion makeover, 2 parts Mike Leigh ‘awkward’ social satire, with a twist of ‘Focker’s’ farce and a big slice of focus group resolution. Steve Carell is faultless as Cal Weaver, the archetypal middle aged, middle American...
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Oh Adam Sandler, how do I hate thee? Let me count the ways... Actually, forget it. That'd take too long. Seriously though, Adam Sandler's continued success has become one of the world's greatest mysteries. He once started as a purveyor of puerile comedy with a specialty in delivering madcap scenarios featuring big kids who never really grew up. 'Billy Madison', 'Happy Gilmore', 'Little Nicky': all about naive man-boys growing out of their own little world's. Formulaic, but quirky enough to entertain for 90-minutes. Assuming you can tolerate Sandler screaming toilet humour for the duration. Now,...
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I keep having this recurring nightmare where a director repeatedly makes lazy stoner comedies crammed with pseudo-shock paedo jokes, lazy emotional cliché and paper thin attempts at nonsense that show all the imagination and energy of a depressed koala. Hang on a second... David Gordon Green is real?! I thought he was just comedy's Freddie Krueger! I always seem to fall asleep in his films and have the ugliest cinema-dreams. But if he's real, then God help us all. 'The Sitter' is his latest bore fest, which has barely escaped total box office humiliation in the USA thanks to the dubious honour...
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Relationships are hard enough without visas, stretches of water and time differences standing in your way. Writer-director Drake Doremus’s new romantic indie drama, Like Crazy, tackles the tricky issues faced by any fledgling couple, in addition to trying to keep love alive while separated by two continents. British college student Anna (Felicity Jones) is coming to the end of her summer term at an LA university, but has fallen for American student Jacob (Anton Yelchin), and the pair cannot bear to be parted. She decides to stay the summer, overstaying her student visa. When she returns to the UK then...
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This is yet another film full of promise about another enigmatic icon, J. Edgar Hoover, the man who created the FBI, and one of the most complicated and feared characters to walk the US corridors of power. The parallels between this film and the recently released The Iron Lady, starring Meryl Streep, are apparent: both films allow the controversial protagonist the chance to tell their side of events, but both brush over further enlightening those not in the know as to the seismic impetus their individual reigns had on politics and power. The story explores the public and private life of J. Edgar...
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Another Hammer production line product, set in the late 19th century battleground of the Raj when Kandahar was still in India and this sort of tawdry film making was still financially viable. That so many people ‘worked’ to construct this cobbled together tosh is a wonder in itself. Filmed entirely on set in Bray, Middlesex and stealing as much footage from the location shot ‘Zakar’ as they could get away with, this is repertory cinema with an old India viewed through a provincial British filter. Oliver Reid is Eli Khan, the Bin Laden of his day, leading Indian rebels against the dirty...
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Historical fiction is at it’s zenith currently. The sheer volume of titles released in the last 5 years bear testimony to the public’s desire for insight into past times and a love of costumed tales of power, corruption, lust and lies. This era of ‘hisploitation’ ( © this author 2012) has leapt off the page and onto our screens. Historical fiction is second only to comic books in Hollywood’s story sources in the noughties, ‘The Tudors’ and ‘Pillars of The Earth’ on the small screen and ‘300’, ‘The Black Death’ ‘Ironclad’ and the plethora of straight-to-streaming...
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Spielberg's latest epic is adapts from the novel/stage a play of the same name, chronicling the twin trials of everyday family woes and once-in-a-generation tragedy as a young boy and his horse grow up together, before being separated by World War I. Expect plenty of tear-jerking moments. A poverty-stricken family in Devon are in a spot of bother after boozy patriarch Ted (Peter Mullan) wastes a fortune bidding on a thoroughbred horse named Joey. Despite his wife's (Emily Watson) haranguing, his son Albert (Jeremy Irvine) convinces him that he can raise the horse himself. He makes a go of it, but events...
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"Nurse! Crazy Maggie's been at the milk again!" So begins a bizarre tale of dementia that is 50% the story of an old woman chatting to the ghost of her dead husband, and 50% a glossy montage sequence of 1980s Britain. The headlines around this release have centre wholly on how the film affects the image of two women: Meryl Streep and Margaret Thatcher. For the former, deserved plaudits sing of her versatile performance, equally capturing the fragility of an aging icon and the prowess of a political powerhouse at the top of her game. She certainly looks the part, and at times she captures the eponymous...
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