Film
A Good Day to Die HardThursday, 14 February 2013
There was a time, a couple of aeons back, when Bruce Willis wanted to get in touch with his thespian side. Tinseltown kept casting him, he complained, as rubberised lunks rippled in gore (pictured below) who always revert to the vertical after yet... Read more... |
This Is 40Wednesday, 13 February 2013
The shock of no longer being young and carefree – that’s the message in director Judd Apatow’s funny and poignant fourth feature, a ‘sort of’ sequel to Knocked Up. In the long tradition of Fellini and Woody Allen - where a lead actor is the director... Read more... |
Side by SideTuesday, 12 February 2013
Does it matter if film dies? Keanu Reeves, always cannier than his limited acting style suggests, produces and presents this even-handed documentary on analogue’s apparently fatal decline in the face of a very recent digital onslaught. His contact... Read more... |
Berlinale 2013: Before MidnightTuesday, 12 February 2013
They’re in trouble. They had to be. Otherwise there’d be no drama. And if you’re a fan of Richard Linklater’s Before Sunrise (1995) and Before Sunset (2004) skip the next two paragraphs to avoid knowing where, physically, temporally, Céline (Julie... Read more... |
DVD: Ginger & RosaTuesday, 12 February 2013
Sally Potter has forged an admirable career as an independent British filmmaker. She has avoided formulas, made daring visual experiments, and been committed to a highly personal art cinema. Among her movies, there have been two dazzling... Read more... |
BAFTAs 2013: Argo, Skyfall and Day-Lewis trump Les MisMonday, 11 February 2013
Presented a clear fortnight ahead of the Oscars, while the BAFTAs might have little, if any, bearing on the decision making there, they at least provide an opportunity for the Brits to have a go at the glitz and glamour before award fatigue sets in... Read more... |
Berlinale 2013: Don Jon's Addiction, Charlie Countryman, Vic+Flo, GloriaMonday, 11 February 2013
Great fun on day three in Berlin: Scarlett Johansson co-stars in a porn movie. Well, a movie about a young man’s love of porn sites, in which she flashes her famous curves - and starts sleeping with Jon Martello (Joseph Gordon-Levitt). But Jon, a... Read more... |
Alexander Nevsky, BBC Symphony Orchestra and Chorus, Brabbins, Barbican HallSunday, 10 February 2013
Is Prokofiev’s 1938 score for Alexander Nevsky the greatest film music ever written? Not quite, if only for the fact that Sergei Eisenstein’s second sound-picture glorifying historical role models for the ever more tsar-like Stalin, Ivan the... Read more... |
Berlinale 2013: The Grandmaster, Promised Land, More Than HoneySaturday, 09 February 2013
Ecology at the first full day of the Berlin film festival. An intriguing Matt Damon city-versus-country movie, Promised Land, puts fracking into the mainstream for the first time. Damon plays Steve Butler, an eager corporate buyer of leases in rural... Read more... |
Wreck-It RalphFriday, 08 February 2013
A colourful confection which is certain to satisfy both the young and young at heart - and above all, gamers - Wreck-It Ralph is the conceptually fabulous, aesthetically various tale of a brick-brandishing brute who longs to be a hero. The cinematic... Read more... |
DVD: Beasts of the Southern WildFriday, 08 February 2013
It's difficult to categorise Benh Zeitlin's feature debut, which is engaging and flawed in equal measure. Part drama, part dream-like experience, it was made as a riposte to the catastropically poor management of Hurricane Katrina in 2005.We don't... Read more... |
HitchcockThursday, 07 February 2013
A pedestrian talent hitches a ride on genius in Hitchcock, director Sacha Gervasi's often cringemakingly banal look at the filmmaker in the run-up to the mother of all horror movies, Psycho. One can only imagine what the Great Man himself would... Read more... |
