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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.
Internships can be hard work - the long hours, little or no pay and the nagging feeling that you might never achieve the job which you’re dedicating yourself to is a constant psychological drain. Spare a thought then for Pasha Danilov, a research intern on a remote arctic weather station who has only surly research veteran Sergei for company. His routine consists of taking daily telemetry readings and relaying them back to base via a rudimentary radio and with very little else to do and even less to look at, he’s understandably more interested in sleeping, playing video games and listening...
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If you’ve ever wondered what the appeal of riding is, Richard De Aragues’s new documentary film is an excellent place to start. Ok, it’s the extreme version of riding, but it absolutely hammers the message across in the bluntest and most raw of terms. 'TT3D: Closer To The Edge' is an exhilarating, heart-stopping adrenaline rush full of big ballsy biking, which like the race magic the petrol-head 'gladiators' cherish, draws you in and injects you with the TT lunacy drug. With the utterly entertaining Elvis-and-Wolverine cross Guy Martin as your maverick ace and the film's anti-hero, you'll...
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Petrol heads unite! It’s the return of throbbing muscle cars tearing up the streets and desert highways with a bunch of thrill-seeking car enthusiasts at the wheel. Well, kind of, but the noise and adrenaline is certainly still there in full force. Once you’ve adjusted your ears, seasoned Fast franchise director Justin Lin throws in a dusty desert chase at the very beginning for fans who have been eagerly awaiting the next instalment. We suggest you lap up this incredulous first stunt, because the latest film has turned all Jason Bourne/'Ocean’s Eleven' on us, and is more about a major heist...
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Disney haven't been the best of friends to poor old Pooh bear. Their cartoon versions of the British book series have tossed aside all of the crucial character traits, ignored the playful philosophical undertones, and crammed in scores of frustrating new characters. This film version, however, looks like a step in the right direction. The first good move is that they've gone back to the original source material. Admittedly it cobbles together elements from several stories in across two different books, but pulling the characters back to their roots makes all the difference. The tale begins with...
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French leading man Guillaume Canet is no slouch in the director’s chair. He follows up his excellent thriller 'Tell No One' (2006) with this bitter-sweet comic drama that skewers its bourgeois characters with a sharp-shooter’s accuracy and delivers laughs along the way. Rich restaurateur Max (François Cluzet) and his longer suffering wife Véro (Valérie Bonneton) like to entertain a merry band of Parisian friends every year at their expensive beach house on the coast. On the eve of their next holiday one of their best pals, Ludo is badly injured in a motorbike accident. Instead of staying...
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The current cinematic obsession with all things supernatural continues with this incarnation of the Brothers' Grimm fairytale. It's clearly aimed at 'Twilight' fans, but unfortunately it isn’t as appealing or engaging. 'Red Riding Hood' is set in a snow ridden medieval village in the middle of nowhere; a village that has been plagued by a werewolf for two generations. Against this backdrop, a young girl called Valerie (Amanda Seyfried) falls for an orphaned woodcutter (Shiloh Fernandez): to the horror of her parents who have betrothed her to the local rich boy (Max Irons). Meanwhile the villagers...
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'Scream 4' brings the horror franchise right bang up to technological date in this tech-savvy sequel which aims to outdo the original (apparently that's the fundamental rule of a sequel). It doesn’t quite achieve it, but it is just as sharp and irreverent as the first 'Scream'. It lambastes the social network revolution and our obsession with Facebook and Twitter, which were merely a gleam in their creators’ eyes when 'Scream 3' was released eleven years ago. They are now a way of life of course along with texting and blogging our every thought. 'Scream 4', or 'Scre4m' to give it the c0rr3ct...
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Panto season is (thankfully) a long way off, but if you want some pre-Easter sauciness to tickle your fancy, and are a big fan of sword-fighting fantasy adventures, 'Your Highness' is at your service. Crass, crude and boundlessly bonkers, 'Your Highness' is a hilarious, sex-obsessed adult fairy tale with a big heart – think a cross between 'Benny Hill', 'Monty Python', 'Stardust' and 'Labyrinth', with a bit of 'Willow' thrown in. Danny McBride, of 'Pineapple Express' fame, takes his first lead with all the confidence and spunk that we've been waiting for. He plays Thadeous, a spoilt, childish...
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It doesn’t bode well when the most interesting thing in a film is the end credits depicting how it was made. Sadly that is the case with Disney’s latest kids animated feature 'Mars Needs Moms'. The mini end clips show the cast having a blast as their performances are being digitally captured by computerised cameras. While they were having a ball the audience wasn’t. The technique of performance capture to bring 'Mars Needs Moms' to the big screen in 3D is pretty impressive but it just seems to be smoke and mirrors. It looks fantastic but it is not in the least bit engaging. Then it is produced...
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'The Roommate' is a disappointingly predictable and pedestrian psychological thriller which aspires to be a modern day version of 'Single White Female' but fails miserably. Set in a college campus it contains all the key ingredients for this genre - an overly friendly roommate who turns stalker, check; a 'Psycho' style shower scene check; a cute pet that is destined to come to a grizzly end, check; the alienation of friends and loved ones check; and the final deadly confrontation check. But director Christian E Christiansen didn’t have the cojones to go fully psycho which is what this film...
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With the massive success of the 'Ice Age' series able to rival even the likes of Pixar and Disney at the box office, it’s a bit of a gamble for Blue Sky Studios (the animation division of 20th Century Fox) to venture off the beaten path with their new project. Thankfully, director Carlos Saldanha is up to the task as 'Rio' is a fun, colourful gem of film, packed with some great characters and charming songs. Captured while he was a hatching, rare Macaw Blu (Jesse Eisenberg) is shipped off to Minnesota as an exotic parrot for sale. Fortunately, his truck’s chance encounter with a speed bump...
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If you are going into this expecting the 'killer tyre movie' you have been promised by the trailers then prepare for a surprise. There is a deliberately misleading framework set around this central concept that is designed to piss you off. It's a brave piece of liberty-taking that you will (eventually) come around to... but boy does it test you. RUBBER is the story of Robert, an inanimate tire that has been abandoned in the desert, and suddenly and inexplicably comes to life. As Robert roams the bleak landscape, he discovers that he possesses terrifying telepathic powers that give him the ability...
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A breathtaking exercise in single-minded filmmaking, 'I saw the Devil' is about as compelling as modern cinema can get. It might also have a nasty, even misogynistic streak to it, but that's never stopped Hitchcock from being hailed as an all time great. And yes, i've chosen that comparison deliberately, Ji-Woon Kim really has created something of that standard, taking his place as one of the best directors around. Kyung-Chul (Min-sik Choi) is a dangerous psychopath who kills for pleasure, his victims ranging from young women to children. The police have chased him for a long time, but have been...
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In 1974, Ntozake Shange’s choreopoem “For Colored Girls Who Have Considered Suicide When The Rainbow Is Enuf” made its stage debut, combining poetry, dance and music, and most significantly, placing the black female experience center stage. In lyrical, honest, angry, funny and tender language, Shange’s “colored girls” evoked the feelings woven into the fabric of black female life in America. Within two years, the play became a Broadway sensation, won an Obie and Tony Award, and would eventually be produced in regional theaters throughout the country. Now, thirty six years later, filmmaker...
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You might have already listened to Cassam and I getting very excited about the imminent release of 'Sucker Punch' in our TRAILER BREAKDOWN. I utter such anticipatory hypoles as 'this looks like the culmination of Zack Snyder's work', and we generally gawp at the spectacle that seems to be promised. Unfortunately we were wrong, very wrong. The story is ostensibly that 'Babydoll' (Emily Browning) is a recently bereaved girl who is forced to live with her abusive stepfather and younger sister. One evening she can take no more of his drunken advances and takes a stand, but rather than injuring her tormentor...
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'Oranges and Sunshine' centres on the extraordinary true story of a social worker from Nottingham who uncovered one of the most shocking social scandals of the last century - the secret mass deportation of children, some as young as four, from Britain to Australia where many were subjected to hard labour and sexual abuse in children’s homes. Margaret Humphreys (Emily Watson) single handedly reunited thousands of families and brought this unbelievable miscarriage of justice to light which finally ended in a formal apology from the British and Australian Prime Ministers to the thousands of victims...
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When Christmas rolls around, cinemas are flooded with a tide of festively-themed films. Halloween also has more than its fair share of horror-themed holiday scares. Easter is far less represented in the movie department, but 'Hop' aims to change that as it bounds on to our screens this year. E.B. (Russell Brand) is the son of the Easter Bunny. He’s the heir apparent to his father’s job but has no interest in spreading chocolate to the children of the world. Instead, he’d rather concentrate on his music and spends most of his time drumming in his room. When he realises that he’ll have...
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I'm a big fan of Martial Arts films so was looking forward to this release. It's been around for a while, and is packed with some notable names from the MMA (mixed-martial arts) arena as well as a pro-wrestling legend (Rowdy Roddy Piper). Unfortunately it's only partially successful as the fight sequences vary in quality. As expected it's not even worth talking about the acting or the plot development at any great length. Revolver Entertainment are proud to announce the forthcoming DVD release of FISTS OF RAGE - a mixed martial arts action drama, directed by David Worth (Kickboxer). New to DVD,...
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After travelling to the end of the world in his last feature-length documentary, 'Encounters at the End of the World', Werner Herzog now makes an attempt to travel back in time. Sort of. The subject of this documentary is the cave art of the Chauvet Cave. Discovered in 1994, this enormous cave in France contains cave paintings produced around 32,000 years ago: making them the oldest known examples of human art. Along with the paintings, and also preserved in unbelievably pristine condition, are a huge array of artefacts from the period before the cave was sealed off from the world around 20,000...
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After her surprising musical performance on 'Glee', then the Grammys followed by the Oscars, Gwyneth Paltrow shows she definitely has the X factor in 'Country Strong': the female version of 'Crazy Heart'. She stars as a self destructive country music superstar who leaves rehab early on the advice of her manager/husband (Tim McGraw) to go on a disastrous comeback tour. She falls for Beau (Garrett Hedlund) a handsome and talented guitar playing singer-songwriter who works at the centre and who ends up performing on her tour. The plot is overly melodramatic and hackneyed. It includes love triangles,...
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