Tweet The Place Behind The Pines – David Cianfrance The paradoxes of cool. If you think you are – you aren’t. If you try to be – you won’t be. Worst of all: if everyone tells you are and you believe them – you never could or will be. Cool is impossible to define: [...]
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Tweet Django Unchained – Quentin Tarantino Django contains the many strengths and several weaknesses of Quentin Tarantino. As with all his best movies, he takes a well-established generic form, here the Western, and develops its elements to farce; to absurdity; even finally to destruction. With scabrous dialogue, scandalous amorality and an almost childish determination [...]
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Tweet A Good Day To Die Hard - John Moore Don’t. No, seriously – don’t. At last I can shed my secret shame – I’ve always enjoyed most of the Die Hard series. But this latest crass, meritless, ear-splitting drivel finally emancipates me from this affliction. I like trashy films; good trashy films: [...]
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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 [...]
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Tweet End Of Watch – David Ayer End of Watch is David Ayer’s much praised follow-up to his equally critically approved Training Day. It is action-packed, often tensely exciting, rattles along at a furious pace and looks like being a massive box-office hit. It is also in my view a thoroughly bad movie [...]
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Tweet Silver Linings Playbook – David O Russell The mesmeric Jennifer Lawrence almost makes this phoney movie work – but not quite. For me at least. Claudia Winkleman on BBC’s now equally unwatchable Twittery Film 2012 loved it; while her mate on the show, Danny ‘Boy’ Leigh hated it. Reluctantly, I’m with Danny [...]
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Tweet Ruby and Calvin Ruby Sparks – Jonathon Dayton, Valerie Faris Thoughtful, imaginative, perceptive and different. Not common epithets for Hollywood romantic comedies nowadays so don’t let this quirky, charming little gem disappear before you catch up with it. Playwright turned screenwriter Zoe Kazan, granddaughter of Elia, holds the movie together as the [...]
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Tweet Killing Them Softly – Andrew Dominik One of the deepest and most interesting issues in Philosophy is that of knowledge of other minds. How is it that we can come to know, understand, care, hate, love another person? Indeed the idea of what it is to be a person is an [...]
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Tweet Seeking A Friend For The end Of The World – Lorene Scafaria The camera always catches you acting. The most common fault in movie acting performances is doing too much. Keira Knightley is a case in point. A naturally animated personality, she has not yet learned, or so far been well-enough directed, to [...]
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Tweet Think Like A Man – Tim Story About an hour in, my usually gently-spoken wife said: “ I don’t give a sh*t about any of these people – I’m off.” With relief, first time for a very long time, I left a movie half way through. Excruciatingly unfunny, even the narrator in [...]
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