Tag: comedy
The Intouchables
Saturday, October 27th, 2012 Film Reviews,Although it should be the most depressing subject in the world there is something strangely inspiring about films that deal with disability. The Miracle Worker (1962) was a smash hit in its day, making Helen Keller into the most famous deaf and blind person in history, although she has since been overtaken by several cricket […]
Moonrise Kingdom
Saturday, September 8th, 2012 Film Reviews,Wes Anderson’s films are so doggedly idiosyncratic they will always leave a certain part of his audience feeling stranded. For the rest of us, they are one of the abiding delights of contemporary cinema. Mooonrise Kingdom is Anderson’s seventh feature, so by now you probably know whether you are a fan or not. One of […]
The Chef
Saturday, June 16th, 2012 Film Reviews, Other Writing,With a film about food and cookery, a director can hardly fail. Whatever the deficiences of the script, the acting or camerawork, the subject has such an intrinsic attraction an audience will keep watching just to see the next dish. Daniel Cohen’s The Chef is better than that – a slick French farce as predictable […]
The Dictator
Saturday, May 19th, 2012 Film Reviews, Other Writing,For a riotous comedy about a North African dictator imagine a documentary about Colonel Gaddafi’s 42-year reign in Libya. Were he still around to see The Dictator, Gaddafi might have felt flattered by the number of features that Sacha Baron Cohen has borrowed from his glorious regime. There are the costumes, of course, and the […]
Iron Sky
Saturday, May 12th, 2012 Film Reviews, Other Writing,Why is it that film-makers think the Nazis are funny? There may have been something inherently absurd about the Third Reich, with its fetish for uniforms, racial purity and Wagner, but it was no laughing matter for those obliged to share the planet with Hitler’s minions. A few weeks ago I expressed reservations about Hotel […]
German Film Festival
Saturday, April 21st, 2012 Film Reviews, Other Writing,That old injunction from Fawlty Towers – “Don’t mention the war!” – is no longer relevant. Nowadays the German film industry is mentioning the war at every opportunity. The game-breaker was probably Oliver Hirschbiegel’s Downfall of 2004. After a movie devoted to Hitler’s last days in the bunker, there was nothing that might prove more […]
This Must Be the Place
Saturday, April 7th, 2012 Film Reviews, Other Writing,Sean Penn has had more dynamic roles, but he can hardly have played a weirder character than Cheyenne, a living relic of the post-punk era, complete with porcupine hairdo, lipstick, and the kind of eyeshadow usually found on Egyptian tomb paintings. Think of Robert Smith from the Cure. When Cheyenne talks, he enunciates every word […]
Le Havre
Saturday, April 7th, 2012 Film Reviews, Other Writing,Some films are too good to be saddled with that paralysing epithet, “heart-warming”. One thinks of smiling, rosey-cheeked children, poor but honest parents, perhaps a loveable old codger, and a dog. Aki Kaurismaki’s Le Havre has the dog, it has the salt-of-the-earth characters, but it also has a vein of surreal humour that never allows […]
Bad Teacher
Tuesday, August 16th, 2011 Film Reviews,When Cameron Diaz is not acting, like, she talks just like a typical teenage girl, like. Amazing! Considering she’s like almost 40 and a multi-million dollar earner on the Hollywood circuit. Awesome, dude! I’ve always wondered whether Sofia Coppola’s notorious parody of Diaz as a blonde, airheaded actrine in Lost in Translation, was an unfair […]