• Pages

  • Site Sections

  • Tags

  • Archives

The Bling Ring – Sofia Coppola A waste of space movie about a waste of space lifestyle

Tweet     The Bling Ring – Sofia Coppola A rarity: a movie without a single genuine emotion throughout its full 90 minutes. The unspeakable ersatz world of celebrity slavishly but pathetically emulated by a bunch of young people descending like a plague of designer-brand locusts to strip celebrity homes of every famous named product […]

Hitchcock – Sacha Gervasi. Cinema’s master craftsman revealed

Tweet      Hitchcock – Sacha Gervasi I’ve always thought of Alfred Hitchcock as the master craftsman of cinema: meticulous in preparation, rigorous in execution and always controlled. His films seldom strayed outside the generic corridor of thriller, suspense or mystery. All demonstrate a respect for and careful control of story, character and plot. The […]

Seven Psychopaths – Martin McDonagh. Anarchic scabrous, black satire

Tweet    Seven Psychopaths – Martin McDonagh The spirit of Joseph Heller (Catch-22) haunts this anarchic, scabrous black satire. And it doesn’t get any better than that. Heller took the established but contradictory conventions and attitudes to war as premises and then with a rigorous, implacable logic followed them through to a reductio ad absurdum […]

Safe House – (Richard Pearson overseen by Daniel Espinosa) – a 3-line pitch action movie

Tweet      Safe House – (Richard Pearson overseen by Daniel Espinosa) Nobody does Denzel better than Denzel does Denzel. Unfortunately Denzel nowadays only ever does Denzel: result – too much Denzel. Yes Denzel lady fans: hard to believe, but it’s true. The only way to access the considerable talent of this fine screen actor, it seems to me, […]

The Descendants – Alexander Payne Heart-warming pathos – laid on thick

Tweet          The Descendants – AlexanderPayne I have laughed as the world ends in a ballet of atomic explosions to the voice of Vera Lynn; at a Knight struggling to fight back having lost both arms, gushing blood, undeterred even when his legs are the next to go; even God help me, once, […]

Pride and Glory – Obama, ‘5/11’, and ethnic stereotypes in movies

Tweet Pride And Glory – Gavin O’Connor Barack Obama’s election to the Presidency is likely to influence American society in profound but as yet unpredictable ways. It will be fascinating to see how Hollywood embraces the new New World. Which director in which film with whose screenplay will be the first to portray deep racial […]

Crash – racism as product

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 […]