Category: Films

Here’s the latest in my somewhat infrequent rundowns of recent films that I’ve seen. The Hurt Locker is the latest film from Kathryn Bigelow, who always seems to go quiet for a bit between films. Previously she made such fare as Point Break, Strange Days and Near Dark. This film is set in Iraq and…

In a genius masterstroke of marketing, Twentieth Century Fox today persuaded hundreds of thousands of people to go to the cinema to see 15 minutes of footage from the forthcoming new film from James (Terminator 2, Titanic) Cameron. And of course I was one of those who happily clicked on the free link and went…

(This picture is vaguely of summer, and has nothing to do with the film!) I got invited to a blogger’s screening of this film next week but couldn’t make it – so I saw a separate screening and I’m really glad I did. Superficially this is light-hearted romantic film, but it’s really not. A voiceover…

Moon is a great little film – a debut from Duncan Jones (aka David Bowie’s son). It’s nice to see a proper science fiction film based on ideas rather than space ships shooting other space ships – or more likely, blowing up landmarks. Sam Rockwell is Sam Bell. He works in a base on the…

I’ve been most remiss about noting recent films that I’ve seen on this blog – if only to serve as a contemporaneous record for myself as to what I thought of various films. But before I begin, can I just say that it really can’t be healthy that I’ve had to tell people off twice…

I must admit that although the enormous build up for this film had left others frantic with excitement, I’d not really been one of them. But by the time it arrived in cinemas at the weekend, I was certainly intrigued enough to want to go and see this “reboot” of the Star Trek franchise. I’ve…

Last night the NFT BFI Southbank had a showing of Coraline, the new stop motion film from Henry Selick (the director of “Tim Burton’s” The Nightmare Before Christmas) and based on the book by Neil Gaiman. Now I’ve not read the book, although I believe many have – and some of them were in the…

This is a film I went into completely blind. I knew it couldn’t have had the best reviews of the week, but I hadn’t seen a trailer and didn’t really know anything about it. First things first. Nic Cage’s hair is very strange in this film. At some point soon he’s going to have to…

Obviously, any film that was going to set itself on a pirate radio station in the swinging sixties was going to pique my interest. And so it was with the new Richard Curtis film. Richard Curtis films are big affairs – you don’t make films like Love Actually and Notting Hill and decide that your…

I’m really not at all sure what I think about Duplicity, the new film from writer-director Tony Gilroy starring Julia Roberts and Clive Owen. It’s one of those twisty films that keeps you on your toes as it jumps back and forward in time to tell a story of industrial epsionage. Indeed one suspects that…

Doubt is another “Oscar” film adapted and directed from his own play by John Patrick Shanley. And up front, it’s fair to say that it feels very much like a stageplay adapted to film. It’s claustrophobic and has powerful set pieces that scream “play” at you. Meryl Streep is a strict nun who’s principal of…

I saw a preview of this at the weekend, although it was a close run thing. When I turned up at the cinema at 10.30am on Sunday morning along with a hundred and fifty or so other people, my local multiplex seemed to know nothing about it. Cue lots of delays and uncertainty about whether…

Professional wrestling has always had a strange alure for me. I can’t say that I’ve ever watched very much of it, but the idea that something that was presented as sport, wasn’t fairly contested is just something that goes against all my sensibilities. Of course, these days it’s presented at “Sports Entertainment.” There’s also the…