Film Reviews
Cloud Atlas & The Paperboy
Saturday, March 2nd, 2013 Film Reviews,Watching a movie can occasionally inspire us to adopt that quaint old-fashioned pasttime of reading a book. The new adaptation of Anna Karenina sent me back to Tolstoy, if only to confirm that a terrible film may be made from a great novel. Over the past year I’ve found myself re-reading Jane Eyre, Wuthering Heights, […]
Amour & Roman Polanski: A Film Memoir
Saturday, February 23rd, 2013 Film Reviews, Uncategorized,As a Valentine’s Day promotion this year, Madman Entertainment put together a package of eight DVD releases intended to take the “guesswork” out of finding a gift for one’s nearest and dearest. The selection was decidedly off-beat, including A Declaration of War, about a couple whose child has cancer; A Royal Affair – an historical […]
Anna Karenina & West of Memphis
Saturday, February 16th, 2013 Film Reviews,William Faulkner, Nobel prize winning author and sometime Hollywood scriptwriter, was once asked to nominate the three greatest novels of all time. He replied: “Anna Karenina, Anna Karenina and Anna Karenina.” The problem with making a film adaptation of a literary masterpiece is that it is impossible to translate the complexity of the book into […]
Lincoln & Elles
Saturday, February 9th, 2013 Film Reviews,It’s impossible to watch Lincoln without thinking how little, and how much, American politics has changed since the days of the Civil War. The same ramshackle cast of opportunists, ideologues, yes men and non-entities sits in the House of Representatives, but nowadays the radical thrust comes from the right not the left. The radicals of […]
Zero Dark Thirty & The Impossible
Saturday, February 2nd, 2013 Film Reviews,Zero Dark Thirty arrives at our cinemas with a readymade controversy: “Should director, Kathryn Bigelow, and scriptwriter, Mark Boal, have included the scenes of the CIA torturing prisoners?” Although it was driven home by the scandal of Abu Ghraib, surely noobdy will be surprised to learn the Americans practised torture. Indeed, it would have been […]
Django Unchained & The Guilt Trip
Saturday, January 26th, 2013 Film Reviews,A typical Quentin Tarantino film combines relentless bloodshed with a dry humour that releases the tension whenever the tide of gore starts lapping at one’s ankles. This formula has enjoyed such critical and popular success that a new Tarantino flick such as Django Unchained arrives on a tidal wave of anticipation. Like Tim Burton, Tarantino […]
Gangster Squad & You Will Meet a Tall Dark Stranger
Saturday, January 19th, 2013 Film Reviews,Rarely has a film ‘based on a true story’ seemed more like a fairy tale than Gangster Squad. If you go looking for the book behind the movie, as I did last week, then head for the True Crime section. Veteran journalist Paul Lieberman has penned a racy account of the real Gangster Squad – […]
Hitchcock & Sightseers
Saturday, January 12th, 2013 Film Reviews,Last year the film industry reflected on itself in My Week with Marilyn, this week we have Hitchcock. It’s pure Hollywood navel-gazing when directors make movies about other directors, in which the stars of the past are played by the stars of today – but it’s weirdly irresistible. It was a real test of Michelle […]
Life of Pi & Samsara
Saturday, January 5th, 2013 Film Reviews,Every movie seems to come with a pithy tag line intended to be thought-provoking and seductive. Probably the two best-known examples are: “In space, no-one can hear you scream”, from Alien (1979); and “Just when you thought it was safe to go back in the water..” from Jaws 2 (1978). In the latter case the […]
Paris-Manhattan & Quartet
Saturday, December 22nd, 2012 Film Reviews,“Heartwarming” must be the most overused word in the film critic’s lexicon. It suggests we enter the cinema as cold-hearted types and are transformed by the power of a movie. When the lights go back on we are more sensitive, more optimistic; we believe in the essential goodness of human beings and the necessity of […]