Posted on December 16th, 2012 by Zettel Film Reviewer
Tweet Technical Quality Dramatic Quality The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey – Peter Jackson This visual realisation of a fantasy world of endlessly warring kingdoms is a technical tour-de-force: graphically state of the art with special effects to match. Simon Bright’s Art Direction aided by Andy McLaren and Ben Milson, together with Dan Hennah’s […]
Filed under: 2 star, Action, Drama, Fantasy, Hollywood, Humorous, Oscar Winner, Peter Jackson | No Comments »
Posted on September 15th, 2011 by Zettel Film Reviewer
Tweet The Inbetweeners – Ben Palmer Tragedy takes many forms but there can few things more acutely tragic than the sight of four basically decent English lads adrift on a sea of hormones, desperately trying to get laid. The odds they face are truly frightening: their chronological equals of the fairer sex are light-years […]
Filed under: 3 star, Ben Palmer, Comedy, Director, Humorous | No Comments »
Posted on July 30th, 2011 by Zettel Film Reviewer
Tweet Horrible Bosses – Seth Gordon The best comedy I’ve seen this year. And judging by the queues, a word-of- mouth hit. The sheer pace and minimal gag gaps in Horrible Bosses means our interest never flags and the next laugh is never far away. Lots of very solid TV comedy experience is all there on […]
Filed under: 4 stars, Comedy, Director, Film Reviews, General, Hollywood, Humorous, Seth Gordon | No Comments »
Posted on November 13th, 2010 by Zettel Film Reviewer
Tweet Skyline – Colin and Greg Stausse Sci-Fa not Sci-Fi: science farce not science fiction. Final score: Latex 10 – Literacy 0. Graphic designers Colin and Greg Strausse (Avatar, Iron Man2, 2012 etc) should have stuck to their day job. As directors, well where should one start? Everything in this movie is derivative and deeply […]
Filed under: 1 star, Action, Colin Strausse, General, Greg Strausse, Humorous, Sci-Fi | No Comments »
Posted on November 2nd, 2010 by Zettel Film Reviewer
Tweet Embarrasssment defines and divides Americans and Brits. Movies reveal this. For Americans embarrassment is funny: for Brits embarrassment is, well, embarrassing. Films like Meet The Fokkers or any comedy with Robert de Niro in it demonstrate this perfectly. Ben Stiller is the patron saint of embarrassment humour. There is an instinct for schadenfreude in […]
Filed under: 2 star, Comedy, Director, Drama, General, Hollywood, Humorous, Lisa Choldenko | No Comments »
Posted on February 4th, 2010 by Zettel Film Reviewer
TweetFilm, performance, screenplay, art Technical, Effects, Art direction Avatar – James Cameron Avatar sucks: the bambification of an aboriginal narrative. A sentimentalised pastiche of a Native American stereotype. The Na’vi sound like Hollywindians and worship an Earth-mother who looks like a fibre-optic willow tree spiritually reified by tinsellated dandelion-seed-like Christmas tree baubles that slo-mo around […]
Filed under: 1 star, Action, Drama, Fantasy, General, Hollywood, Humorous, Sci-Fi | No Comments »
Posted on May 24th, 2009 by Zettel Film Reviewer
Tweet Il Divo – Paolo Sorrentino (2008) Shakespearean in content, operatic in tone, writer director Paolo Sorrentino’s Il Divo (the extraordinary life of Giulio Andreotti) is a masterly work. Richly textured and at times demanding, Sorrentino’s film is a profound study of power, and its irresistible affects on men who possess it and those drawn […]
Filed under: 5 stars, Action, Drama, Europe/World cinema, Extended essay, Film Essay, Historical, Humorous, Paolo Sorrentino, Philosophical, Political, Thriller | No Comments »
Posted on April 24th, 2009 by Zettel Film Reviewer
Tweet The Apprentice Week 5 – Parrots, Pirates and Pants The penny finally drops: when deciding who to take into the boardroom, the losing team leader must ignore task performance, personal animosity one or two-way, disruptiveness, charmlessness and most especially the unshakable solipsistic egoism shared by all the apprentice Apprentices. No: the implacable rule is […]
Filed under: 3 star, Humorous, Philosophical, Television | No Comments »
Posted on April 17th, 2009 by Zettel Film Reviewer
Tweet The Apprentice Week 4 – ‘Sh*t of the Show’ winner – with still 8 shows to go. Yale Psychologist Stanley Milgram July 1961: “I set up a simple experiment at Yale University to test how much pain an ordinary citizen would inflict on another person simply because he was ordered to by an experimental […]
Filed under: 2 star, Humorous, Philosophical, Television | No Comments »
Posted on February 22nd, 2009 by Zettel Film Reviewer
Tweet Vicky Christina Barcelona – Woody Allen Woody Allen doesn’t simply film women: he makes love to them with the camera. I don’t really know how healthy this is or even by what criterion of health one should judge it. Cinema is irreducibly voyeuristic so we are complicit. If you doubt me consider this: by […]
Filed under: 3 star, Comedy, Fantasy, General, Hollywood, Humorous, Romance, Woody Allen | No Comments »