Category: Films

A Good Year is Ridley Scott’s latest film. Once again, he’s working with Russell Crowe who plays Max, a bond trader in London. Max inherits a large Provencal house with its attendant vinyard. As a tough, cruel money-making man, he doesn’t suffer fools and his immediate response is to sell the place for as much…

Little Miss Sunshine is the debut feature of directing team Jonathan Dayton and Valerie Faris who’ve previously specialised in music videos. So does this mean that this comedy is some kind of XXX/Fast & Furious MTV edited affair? No it does not. The film has a superb cast featuring Steve Carrell, Greg Kinnear, Toni Collette…

Today I went to see Superman Returns at my local multiplex. More of that in a minute. I just thought I’d highlight what a joy it now is to pay my money and watch a film at the cinema. It begins with the box office. There’s some stat that I’ve seen at work that says…

The Last Stand (or X-Men 3 as it was known until pretty recently) is the latest, and possibly final entry in the X-Men film series. Although Bryan Singer was univerally praised for his first two, they always left me a little cold; perhaps because I was more a DC comics reader than Marvel. Singer, of…

This remake of The Omen is very interesting. It’s quite a while since I first saw the original Omen from 1976 which came, I guess, as something as a riposte to 1974’s The Exorcist. This version has been described as a re-imagining, but I’d say that it’s more of a shot-for-shot remake, with David Seltzer…

Do you like the TV series Alias? You know, the series from JJ Abrams, it’s just finishing its run in the US now after five series. In Britain, the series floated around various stations. I think Bravo show it now. Anyway, if you, you’re going to love M:I 3, because it’s essentially a big screen…

Thank You For Smoking is the film that Lord of War probably wanted to be. That is to say, we’re supposed to empathise with the lead character despite him having a, frankly, despicable job. And you know, you do. But let’s step back a second. Aaron Eckhart plays Nick Naylor, one of the most prominant…

Prior to a couple of days ago, what I knew about Johnny Cash could have been written on a very small postage stamp. I knew a couple of his more famous lines, and also knew about his some of his latter sounds when he recorded songs by such artists as Depeche Mode and even Nine…

I’ve got a lot of time for Ang Lee, although I’ll fully admit that I’ve still yet to see The Hulk, but I’m reasonably sure that I’m not missing an awful lot. Brokeback Mountain is a great return from someone who hasn’t made a proper film since Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon. Based on a short…

Let’s have another attempt at this, since my first review from a couple of weeks ago seems to have disappeared from the site. Munich, the latest Steven Spielberg film, is much more Schindler’s List than War of the Worlds. A few years ago, there was a fantastic documentary feature, One Day In September, that examined…

Hidden, or Caché, as it is in French, is a very strange film. I think the only previous Michael Haneke film I’ve seen is The Piano Teacher, which a very disturbing film. But this is probably more unusual. Overtly, it’s something of a thriller, with a couple (Daniel Auteuil and Juliette Binoche) receiving strange video…

Jarhead is the new Sam Mendes film, and I suppose for that reason alone, is worth paying attention to. It’s based on a book that came out a couple of years ago written by Anthony Swofford recounting his experiences as a fairly new Marine as he becomes part of, first, Desert Shield and then, eventually,…

The 1933 release of King Kong came at an interesting time in Hollywood’s history. Self-censorship was still the order of the day, and of course it was at the height of the depression. The story at the heart of the film could in some ways be described as a unrequitable love story. Fay Wray was…