Hollywood
Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find ThemFriday, 18 November 2016
Name seven students in Ravenclaw. Which 14 subjects are on the syllabus at Hogwarts? Create a shopping list of 20 different types of magical sweet. In her Harry Potter stories JK Rowling conjured up an almanack of wizarding facts and figures which,... Read more... |
ArrivalThursday, 10 November 2016
While the world goes to hell in a handbasket, it’s faintly reassuring to imagine that there might be some intelligent life form out there beyond the stars that’s just waiting to land on our planet and make us all love one another – or swiftly... Read more... |
Doctor StrangeTuesday, 25 October 2016
Aiming for the trippy qualities of The Matrix and Inception, Doctor Strange is possibly the most enjoyable Marvel foundation story since the first Iron Man, mixing wit with visual pyrotechnics. Benedict Cumberbatch plays supercilious... Read more... |
InfernoFriday, 14 October 2016
Dan Brown is famed for calamitous language massacres that sell by the kerchillion to tone-deaf Renaissance cryptogram junkies. His sentences hurt eyes and his plots numb skulls. But one thing you can say for Brown is he checks facts like an... Read more... |
LFF 2016: A Monster Calls / A United KingdomSaturday, 08 October 2016
The cinema trailer for A Monster Calls ★★★★ looks faintly ludicrous, with its scenes of a giant tree stomping around the landscape, but don't be deceived. In conjunction with screenwriter Patrick Ness, who also wrote the original novel, director J A... Read more... |
Captain FantasticFriday, 09 September 2016
If you’re expecting family drama, the opening of Captain Fantastic will surprise. We’re following a hunter, greased-up so he’s invisible in the woods, stalking a deer. There’s an edginess to the scene, the atmosphere primal as the animal is killed.... Read more... |
The Nice GuysWednesday, 01 June 2016
“A porno film where the point was the plot?!” The Nice Guys asks you to make quite a few imaginative leaps: to find Russell Crowe endearing and Ryan Gosling funny and to believe that anyone in 1977 would set out to shoot a skin flick with a... Read more... |
DemolitionWednesday, 27 April 2016
How would you behave if your wife was killed in a random car accident? In Demolition, Jake Gyllenhaal’s Davis, a wealthy banker, is almost relieved – he can ditch his job, his house, nearly everything of his old life, and shack up with a total... Read more... |
Sunset Boulevard, London ColiseumTuesday, 05 April 2016
Could the fascination of Glenn Close's Norma Desmond transcend the frequent bathos of Lloyd Webber? Would they have sorted out the miking which wrecked last year's first choice of semi-ENO musical, the infinitely superior Sweeney Todd? Yes, to... Read more... |
Hail, Caesar!Friday, 04 March 2016
As a title, Hail, Caesar! is as delightfully self-conscious and “inside Hollywood” as The Hudsucker Proxy and O, Brother Where Are Thou? An alternative might have been It’s a Wonderful Lie.Set in 1951, Joel and Ethan Coen’s satirical fantasy, a... Read more... |
Secret in Their EyesThursday, 25 February 2016
Secret in Their Eyes is not a mystery-thriller that leaves us pondering for long “whodunit”. The focus is on how two investigators and a Deputy District Attorney can relinquish obsessions that have glued them to a murder case for 13 years. This is a... Read more... |
TrumboSaturday, 06 February 2016
Trumbo depicts the 13-year struggle by the screenwriter Dalton Trumbo (Bryan Cranston) to break the blacklist imposed on him and the other members of the Hollywood Ten in 1947. By continuing to get his scripts produced throughout the Fifties, Trumbo... Read more... |
