Film Reviews
The Armstrong LieThursday, 30 January 2014
Lance Armstrong is a Hollywood villain who just happens to be real. He bullies, lies, manipulates, cheats and destroys lives until righteous crusaders hunt him down and drive a stake through his heart. And that, more or less, will be the plot of the movie Stephen Frears is working on now. Popcorn munchers demand nothing less than a comeuppance for the bad guy. To cite Oscar Wilde, the good end happily, the bad unhappily: that’s what fiction means. It’s not quite what happens in The... Read more... |
Out of the FurnaceWednesday, 29 January 2014
After his outsized triumph as conman Irving Rosenfeld in American Hustle, Christian Bale is gaunt and stringy again (Jennifer Lawrence will be happy to hear) in this minor-keyed, intensely atmospheric story of two brothers in an America that time forgot. It's set in North Braddock, Pennsylvania, a ghost town all but abandoned by its devastated steel industry. "Born down in a dead man's town", as the Boss put it in "Born in the USA". Read more... |
Lone SurvivorTuesday, 28 January 2014
Just what kind of beast is Peter Berg's Lone Survivor? A jingoist justification for the continuing conflict in Afghanistan? A cautionary tale questioning the rules of engagement? War porn? An intense vehicle for its talented stars? Or, in fact, a critique of the American war machine which sends young men out to be slaughtered and provides them with scant support? Read more... |
That Awkward MomentMonday, 27 January 2014
Who'd have thought that buried deep within the bromance antics of That Awkward Moment, the latest essay in celluloid dude-dom to confirm the notion that guys will be guys, would lurk a Shakespeare comedy? Read more... |
Grudge MatchSaturday, 25 January 2014
It’s hard to believe your eyes when you see a film now actually exists in which Stallone meets De Niro in the boxing ring. It’s Rocky v Raging Bull, of course, a fantasy match-up no one sane ever fantasised about. It sounds like the result of a Hollywood pitch meeting gone mad, stunt casting of imperial chutzpah. Read more... |
Jack Ryan: Shadow RecruitFriday, 24 January 2014
Assuming you care at all, your favourite incarnation of Tom Clancy's industrious CIA agent Jack Ryan is probably Harrison Ford (Patriot Games, Clear and Present Danger). Before him came Alec Baldwin in The Hunt for Red October, and afterwards there was Ben Affleck in The Sum of All Fears. Read more... |
Inside Llewyn DavisThursday, 23 January 2014
Inside Llewyn Davis, Joel and Ethan Coen's brooding homage to the Greenwich Village folk scene, is set in 1961 (January probably), just before Bob Dylan's revelatory songs popularised it. The film is named for its protagonist, a working-class singer-guitarist suggested by the seminal Village folk-blues performer and musicians' mentor Dave Von Ronk. The undomiciled Llewyn also inherited Phil Ochs's habit of crashing on other performers' couches. Read more... |
August: Osage CountyWednesday, 22 January 2014
Anything planned as Oscar-bait never works – although the Pulitzer Prize-winning play that underpins the film August: Osage County has a pedigree to please the Academy. By some accounts, it began with a lunch between Harvey Weinstein and Emmy-winning director/producer John Wells (The West Wing). Read more... |
The General (1926)Tuesday, 21 January 2014
It's no discredit to Sandra Bullock and George Clooney that they didn't venture into outer space when filming Gravity – setting aside other considerations, the insurance costs would have been prohibitive. Read more... |
TeenageTuesday, 21 January 2014
Once open a time, all children would have blossomed into adults. Or, at least, have entered the adult world immediately after childhood. There was no intermediate stage. Then, in the 1950s, teenage was acknowledged as a distinct phase. Neither child nor adult, these young people had their own lifestyle, lingo and mores. Yet, as the film Teenage makes clear, this new section of society had actually emerged at the beginning of the 20th century but wasn’t recognised as such. Read more... |
The Night of the HunterFriday, 17 January 2014
The Night of the Hunter is not recorded as having charmed critics when released in 1955, but its reappearance in cinemas means it can be seen for what it was: a dark, frightening and intense film which questions the nature of faith and what happens when evil comes to town. Read more... |
Devil's DueThursday, 16 January 2014
Filmmaking collective Radio Silence - who comprise Matt Bettinelli-Olpin and Tyler Gillett (who take on shared directorial duties for this film), Chad Villella and Justin Martinez (Devil's Due's executive producers) - shot to fame on the genre circuit in 2012 with the visceral and funny haunted-house sequence from found-footage anthology V/H/S. Presumably off the back of that they got a deal working with 20th Century Fox to make a feature-length horror film. Read more... |
The Wolf of Wall StreetWednesday, 15 January 2014
It was Benjamin Franklin who said "money has never made man happy...the more of it one has the more one wants," and there is no shortage of examples of boundless greed and how an abundance of cash can upturn and empty lives. Based on the memoir of Jordan Belfort, a former stockbroker convicted of fraud, The Wolf of Wall Street gives us one such example. This is Martin Scorsese's... Read more... |
Crystal FairyTuesday, 14 January 2014
Crystal Fairy (or to give it its full, original name Crystal Fairy & the Magical Cactus and 2012) is an endearing curio from odd-couple director and star Sebastián Silva and Michael Cera, who have teamed up for a double-bill of projects: the other one is the psychological thriller Magic Magic, currently scheduled for an April release. Read more... |
Oh BoyMonday, 13 January 2014
Niko (Tom Schilling) just wants a decent cup of coffee. With this ambling excuse for motivation, he drifts through a day and night in Berlin, contriving to lose his girlfriend, driver’s license and college funding (Dad’s just discovered he dropped out two years ago). Read more... |
Sylvester Stallone, London PalladiumSunday, 12 January 2014
“There’s not much more I can do in action apart from explode,” says Sylvester Stallone with a grin on his face on being asked about the next step in his career. Following a video montage of the sweaty, musclebound action heroes Stallone is adored for (minus any clips from Rhinestone, his musical collaboration with Dolly Parton), a jolly and reflective Stallone took to the London Palladium stage in sharp suit full of sage advice and revelations about his writing process. Read more... |
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