Hollywood
The Shape of Water review - love in a Cold War climateWednesday, 14 February 2018
Guillermo del Toro has laid down markers as a wizard of the fantastical with such previous works as Pan’s Labyrinth and Crimson Peak (though we’ll skate nimbly around Pacific Rim), and now he has brought it all back home with The Shape of Water, as... Read more... |
DVD/Blu-ray: Blade Runner 2049Tuesday, 13 February 2018
It’s not 1982 any more, but there’s still some disagreement between Ridley Scott and Harrison Ford about whether Rick Deckard was or was not a replicant. Thirty-five years on, Dennis Villeneuve’s belated sequel to Blade Runner may trigger another... Read more... |
Blu-ray: Henri-Georges Clouzot's InfernoThursday, 08 February 2018
Watching what remains of Henri-Georges Clouzot’s Inferno (L’Enfer) serves to remind us just how good his earlier work was. Inferno marked the beginning of the end, its shambolic production beginning Clouzot’s descent into obscurity. But Serge... Read more... |
Daniel Day-Lewis: 'I'm quite good at mending things'Tuesday, 30 January 2018
Daniel Day-Lewis doesn’t look like a 60-year-old retiree. He’s wearing a striped T-shirt under a dark blue shirt, light brown trousers which descend no further than mid-calf and boots laced high above the ankle he could easily have worn as a young... Read more... |
The Post review - Spielberg's glorious paean to printThursday, 18 January 2018
It beggars belief that, from the moment Steven Spielberg took delivery of the script by first-timer Liz Hannah, it took a mere 10 months to get The Post in the can. Its subject being the race to publish, that's a fitting rate of production.... Read more... |
The Commuter review - trouble on the main lineWednesday, 17 January 2018
Nobody is more sensitive about the notion of becoming a geriatric action hero than Liam Neeson (“guys, I’m sixty-fucking-five,” as he points out), but he can still punch bad guys and leap off moving trains with the best of ‘em. In this latest battle... Read more... |
Best of 2017: FilmFriday, 29 December 2017
It was the night Faye Dunaway and Warren Beatty, those old robbers on the run, will want to forget. Thanks to a clerical error, the Oscar for Best Picture briefly ended up in the clutch of the overwhelming favourite. Then the mistake was spotted and... Read more... |
Molly's Game review - Jessica Chastain gets her poker face onTuesday, 26 December 2017
After her brittle and unloveable turn in John Madden’s Washington-lobbyist drama Miss Sloane, Jessica Chastain gets the chance to do it again, properly. This is thanks to Aaron Sorkin, whose directing debut Molly’s Game is. More to the point, his... Read more... |
Stronger review - Oscar-worthy straight talk and tough loveSaturday, 09 December 2017
There are many obvious Hollywood responses to someone losing their legs in the Boston Marathon bombing. Director David Gordon Green waits his whole film to make one. His subject Jeff Bauman (Jake Gyllenhaal) possessed too little bullshit, and too... Read more... |
DVD/Blu-ray: Terminator 2 - Judgment DayTuesday, 05 December 2017
In the last 25 years anything and everything has become possible in cinema. The budgets got bigger, the SFX more spectacular (and the audience ever more infantilised). By rights Terminator 2: Judgment Day, the first film that cost $100 million to... Read more... |
Wonder review - sweet and smart but sometimes also schmaltzyThursday, 30 November 2017
Genuine emotion does battle with gerrymandered feeling in Wonder, which at least proves that the young star of Room, Jacob Tremblay, is no one-film wonder himself. Playing a pre-teen Brooklynite who yearns to be seen as more than the facial... Read more... |
Blu-ray: The Incredible Shrinking ManTuesday, 14 November 2017
The Incredible Shrinking Man starts innocently with a young couple bantering on a small boat off the California coast. Before what looks like an atomic mushroom cloud wafts towards the unfortunate Scott Carey, lightly coating him in glittery fallout... Read more... |
