Tag: crime
The Reluctant Fundamentalist & Sinister
Saturday, May 25th, 2013 Film Reviews,Mohsin Hamid says the structure of his novel of 2007, The Reluctant Fundamentalist, was partly based on Fred Zinnemann’s classic western, High Noon. Instead of Gary Cooper waiting for the baddies to arrive, we have a group of militant students in Lahore awaiting the police and a group of American agents. It sounds good in […]
The Place Beyond the Pines & Tabu
Saturday, May 11th, 2013 Film Reviews,Although I’m not much interested in the celebrity circuit, it was surprising to read, late last year, that Bradley Cooper had been named The Sexiest Man Alive by People magazine. By all accounts the most outraged constituency were fans of Ryan Gosling, the other Hollywood pin-up boy of our era. If it achieves nothing else, […]
Trance & Rust and Bone
Saturday, April 6th, 2013 Film Reviews,In a recent poll sponsored by HMV, Danny Boyle’s Trainspotting (1996) was voted the best British film of the past 60 years. Although such surveys have an unhappy resemblance to those ‘Greatest Hits of All Time’ polls run by commercial radio stations, Trainspotting deserves the kudos. It was a brilliantly original movie which sealed Boyle’s […]
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 – […]
Seven Psychopaths & Robot and Frank
Saturday, November 17th, 2012 Film Reviews,Psychopaths are so commonplace nowadays they almost qualify as normal. Not only does the media serve up one mad gunman after another, glaring at us from page one, we also read about the ‘corporate psychopaths’ who make their way to the top of huge businesses, bring them down in flames, then move on to another […]
Jackpot
Saturday, August 18th, 2012 Film Reviews,Like me, you may be wondering how many more ‘new Stieg Larssons’ are going to be thrown up by the vogue for Scandinavian crime fiction before the spotlight of fashion turns elsewhere. Perhaps South America is preparing a wave of depressed, alcoholic detectives. Maybe Kazakhstan has a new age crime fighter ready to go? For […]