Tag: Hollywood
Barbie
Friday, July 21st, 2023 Film Reviews,Barbie is the most unusual feminist statement ever to hit the cinema. It’s also a bizarre advertorial for the Mattel corporation, and one of the most original movies you’ll see in this or any other year. A word of warning: there is an awful lot of pink. From the moment she appeared in March 1959, […]
Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny
Friday, June 30th, 2023 Film Reviews,There are some sprightly octogenarians around, but nobody tops Indiana Jones. When we meet him in this long-awaited finale to the series, it’s during the last weeks of World War Two. A digitally rejuvenated Harrison Ford is battling the Nazis, getting out of one close scrape after another, while setting up the key plot device […]
Renfield
Friday, June 2nd, 2023 Film Reviews,After watching Renfield I walked back to the car, switched on the ignition and was greeted by strains of Bela Lugosi’s Dead, by the original Goth band, Bauhaus. “No,” I thought. “Bela Lugosi is not dead! He’s very much alive and goes by the name of Nicolas Cage.” In the context of Cage’s roller-coaster career, […]
Air
Friday, April 7th, 2023 Film Reviews,Air is truly a film for our times. Essentially a two-hour advertisement for Nike, it is being acclaimed as stunning entertainment, and a potential “movie of the year”. We’ve come a long way from 1999, when Naomi Klein’s No Logo made the case against Nike and other big brands as shameless exploiters of the developing […]
Tár & Babylon
Friday, January 27th, 2023 Film Reviews,Last week I thought Michelle Williams was unbeatable for Best Actress at this year’s Oscars, but after watching Tár, it’s hard to see Cate Blanchett coming second. Todd Field’s film about a musical genius who falls for the seductions of fame and power, is a classic Faustian tale. Blanchett’s Lydia Tár doesn’t exactly sell her […]
The Fabelmans
Friday, January 13th, 2023 Film Reviews,At a certain point in an illustrious career, many a writer has turned to autobiography. That moment usually arrives when an author has become so famous that he or she is more fascinating to the public than any work of fiction they may produce. It does, however, require a special kind of ego. Gore Vidal […]
The Banshees of Inisherin & A Man Called Otto
Thursday, December 29th, 2022 Film Reviews,It must be a great relief for Colin Farrell to finally be in a film in which he can speak with an Irish accent. A tragi-comedy of insularity, Martin McDonagh’s The Banshees of Inisherin is set on a island off the west coast of Ireland. There is no actual place called Inisherin, but one assumes […]
Avatar: The Way of Water
Thursday, December 15th, 2022 Film Reviews,We are told “the Way of Water has no beginning and no end,” which sounds like a perfect description of James Cameron’s long-awaited Avatar sequel. Anyone who hasn’t seen the original Avatar of 2009, or like me, has forgotten most of it, will get the disconcerting feeling of having entered the film at the half-way […]
Black Panther: Wakanda Forever
Friday, November 18th, 2022 Film Reviews,A decade ago, it would have been unthinkable for Hollywood to produce a superhero film in which all the lead characters were black African women. Even less likely was that the United States would play the role of the villain – an irresponsible superpower that can’t be trusted to preserve world peace. Welcome to 2022, […]
Amsterdam
Saturday, October 8th, 2022 Film Reviews,It’s hard to pinpoint where Amsterdam starts to go wrong, but once that sinking feeling sets in, it never leaves. I’ve come to think of David O. Russell as one of the very best contemporary American directors, but this film swiftly leaves the shining path and wanders off into the wilderness. It’s 1930, and we […]