Tweet March of The Penguins – Luc Jacquet Peerless cinematography (Laurent Chalet, Jerome Maison) and impeccable, sensitive editing (Sabine Emiliani) make this a shoe-in for a documentary Oscar. Every camera shot, every note of Alex Wurman’s lyrical score, breathes a sense of respect for these extraordinary, impossibly endearing creatures. So it is disturbing to read […]

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Tweet Sadly, the fears I expressed in this review four years ago about Scarlett Johanssen have been realised. Lost In Translation – Sofia Coppola We can categorise films constructively in order to validate aesthetic comparisons. We more often do so lazily in order to file them away in ill-fitting pigeon holes to decide which Oscar […]

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Tweet Michael Clayton – Tony Gilroy Watch Gilroy go. This intelligent, absorbing, innovative thriller is Tony Gilroy’s impressive directorial debut. It comes as no surprise that he wrote the superb screenplay having a track record that includes writing credits on all three films in the excellent Bourne franchise, Proof of Life and Devil’s Advocate. With […]

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Tweet Finding Neverland – Marc Foster The Peter Pan story can either rot the brain or lift the spirit. Decades of commercial exploitation have virtually sucked it dry of any true feeling. Yet it seems to touch something so deep in us that it is indestructible. It must be to have survived the aesthetically treacly […]

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Tweet The Last King Of Scotland _ Kevin Macdonald (BBC Prize Review) Something deeper than race, and more disturbing, lies at the heart of this chilling film. Masculinity, machismo, male dominance was the raw uncivilised force that drove the history and fuels this fictionalised account of Idi Amin’s Uganda. Deeper because ethnicity and colour divides […]

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Tweet Crash – Director Paul Haggis Art and Architecture have one key thing in common: both need foundations. The bigger the building, the deeper and stronger the foundations it needs. Crash is like a complex set of card houses: eight overlapping linked structures are fashioned with great skill into a neatly integrated whole. But it […]

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Tweet Brokeback Mountain – Director Ang Lee (January 2006) The most American film of the year should be an Oscar first. A shared best actor award for Jake Gyllenhaal and Heath Ledger It is hard to see how the leading role, supporting role distinction can be sustained in this absorbing, multi-layered film at the emotional […]

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Tweet The Valley of Elah – Paul Haggis This quiet dignified film is blessed with an Oscar-worthy performance which displays precisely the same rare qualities by the mesmeric Tommy Lee Jones. It is by far the best film so far to evoke the contradictory emotions personal, political and moral, that are and should be aroused […]

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Tweet The Departed – Martin Scorcese Camus places ‘absurd’ man at the heart of an implacably indifferent universe that is Godless, meaningless, purposeless. Without bad faith or consoling self-deception, absurd man makes a definitive existential decision: against all the evidence and the urging of reason, he decides against suicide. Absurdity resides in his deciding to […]

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Tweet Singin’ In The Rain – Stanley Donen and Gene kelly My wife has my funeral wishes. She will just need a movie-loving, liberal vicar. So to speak. At the end of what I expect to be at best, a modestly attended event: large screen, good sound, no popcorn – not that liberal a vicar; […]

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