If consuming an inordinate number of films has taught us anything at all it’s that a group of people should never venture into the woods without telling anyone. Bad things happen in the woods. It’s where the mutants, in-breds, cannibals and psycho killers set up shop, lying in wait for their victims to cluelessly trickle […]
In its day, there was nothing to compare with Titanic (1997), the film that leapfrogged Star Wars (1977) to take its place as box office conqueror extraordinaire. Now, fast forward 15 years and James Cameron’s epic waterlogged romance of the way too high seas has been given the obligatory 3D treatment and shipped back into
Two compelling, influential figures, one great director. The stars were aligned when Christopher Hampton’s A Dangerous Method fell into the lap of David Cronenberg. Adapting both his own play, The Talking Cure’ and John Kerr’s book, ‘A Most Dangerous Method’, Hampton set about creating a portrait of Carl Jung (Michael Fassbender) via his ill-fated relationship
Ex-pat British director Gareth Evans bursts onto the international scene with The Raid, an ultra-violent, insanely assaultive battering ram of an action film. Is this Indonesia’s greatest ever export? The set-up is hardly complicated: a 20-strong SWAT team converge on an apartment building to extract a master criminal, Tama (Ray Sahetapy) a man for so
The spirit of that French master of mime, of nonverbal, physical comedy, Jacques Tati, lives on in Sylvain Chomet’s wonderful The Illusionist. This eccentric animated tale of the friendship forged between a struggling, aging French magician and a young Scottish girl is based on an unproduced 1956 screenplay by Tati. Chomet, responsible for The Triplets
Looking back at how some familiar and famous cinematic figures first made lasting impressions on audiences is an enjoyable though sometimes embarrassing experience. John Cusack continues to endure, in his younger days often reliably called upon for edgy dramas that had their finger on the pulse of popular taste. In its day, Grosse Point Blank
Would a sextet of CGI penguins leave their live-action counterparts in the dust? Would this be another nail in the career of Jim Carrey? Or would the world’s most underrated and, not coincidentally, my personal favourite actress, Carlo Gugino, save the day and Carrey’s bacon in the process? I can’t say I was overly curious
Transformers: Dark of the Moon is a monstrous waste of time. I’ve never witnessed something that had so much, and yet so little, going on. For over two and a half hours this film hammers your senses with extra precision given the 3D glasses and you come out the other side extra pissed off. The
The film that single-handedly sank the teen-movie whilst introducing Gen-X cinema, Heathers’ place in pop culture seemed all but assured until the tragic events at Columbine High School in 1999. Suddenly, school kids with guns wasn’t such a groovy topic. But recent years have seen a revival of this Michael Lehmann-directed classic. Its arch irony
After a string of interesting but fairly anonymous supporting roles, Saturday Night Live alumnus Kristen Wiig has made a spectacular transition to lead actress on the big screen with Bridesmaids, a raucous comedy with a title that will have unbeknownst males dragged along to the cinema expecting the worst. Acting as both star and co-screenwriter,
