Category: Films

Alexander has been roundly criticised by many as being almost laughable. In particular, in America, it has performed poorly at the box office, taking something like $35m dollars when it cost something nearer $150m. It’s certainly not a great film, but it’s not nearly as bad as some would have you think. I think the…

The House of Flying Daggers is Zhang Yimou’s latest film, except that unlike his last film, Hero, we haven’t had to wait three years to get it. The plot involves lots of double-crossing and a secret society – the House of Flying Daggers – of whom Ziyi Zhang is a member. She seems to be…

I don’t know exactly when this film began production, but a smart mover like Jerry Bruckheimer could probably have greenlit and turned around this film in pretty short order. To say that it shares certain traits with The Da Vinci code would be putting it loosely. It’s a romp around north eastern America in search…

There’s something particularly ridiculous about getting dressed up in black tie to go to the cinema. But it’s fun to dress up and for no clear reason, I got an invitation to the Royal Command Film Performance of Ladies in Lavender. This is the new film featuring the two Dames – Judi Dench and Maggie…

If there’s one classic novel that’s well known in the UK, it’s Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice. It’s been dramatised many times, with Laurence Olivier and Greer Garson in 1940 and televised on the BBC in 1967. But the most famous version to date has been the 1995 Andrew Davies adaptation with Colin Firth and…

Saw this new Michael Mann film earlier this evening, featuring Tom Cruise as a professional hitman who kidnaps Jamie Foxx’s taxi driver forcing him to help out on his night of hits. The whole thing looks like it was shot on hi-definition video, and it lends an almost noir-ish feel to the film. There are…

I’ve just spent a good part of this evening watching the great Stephen Poliakoff play Caught on a Train starring Peggy Ashcroft and Michael Kitchen, which was released last year on DVD. I’ve watched it at least once, and maybe twice before, and it really leaves an impression. We follow the story from Peter’s (Michael…

I got around to seeing this little masterpiece that dissects Fox News piece by piece. Of course, it’s not news that Fox News massively distorts the real news, and takes a consistently right wing approach to its coverage. But the really interesting parts of this film were those that covered the techniques that Fox engages…

A dreadful film. I only recently came to Pitch Black, and it’s not a bad low budget sci-fi thriller. But this is an atrocious sequel. OK, it’s technically competent, but the plot is dull, and there are some dreadful sequences that simply make no sense. For example, when escaping across Creamtoria, being chased by the…

A couple of years ago Matt Damon starred in a reasonably good thriller called The Bourne Identity, and last night it was on Sky Movies so I watched it again. I liked this thriller based on the Robert Ludlem novel (and previously filmed some years ago with Dr Kildare himself) because it had a believable…

I’ve categorised this entry as “Films/DVD” but I was watching my videos. I got the video set of Fortunes of War years ago (the pre-copyright tape suggests a duplication date in 1998), undoubtedly in an HMV sale, but never got around to watching them. Of course I watched the series when it was first broadcast…

I’ve been looking forward to seeing this film since I heard that Michael Moore was making it. It’s been doing excellent box office in America, but given the sales of his books, that’s maybe not surprising. The film starts with the well-trodden Bush election fiasco. Actually, it wasn’t a fiasco, it was a travesty of…

It’s apparently very important that this film is Good Bye Lenin, and not Goodbye Lenin. I can’t say why really – not because I’d give the plot away, but I simply don’t know. It’s set in the months either side of the Berlin wall coming down, and a wonderfully communist mother who goes into a…