Film :: Review 01 Dec 2008
Becky Bartlett: Shot in a mixture of crisp colour, grainy sepia and monochrome over ten years, director Steven Sebring does not attempt to inform viewers of a timeline in Patti Smith: Dream of Life. A beatnik, rock and roll mix of poetry and visuals merge together to ...
Film :: Review :: DVD Review 28 Nov 2008
Gavin Sturgeon: The Spiderman films taught us that “with great power comes great responsibility”, but what if you chose to spurn your super powers in favour of cheap liquor and even cheaper girls? Smith is Hancock, an anti-hero who has fallen by the waysid...
Film :: Review 28 Nov 2008
Gail Tolley: Reaching the half way point of Erick Zonca’s new film, you wouldn’t be blamed for not wanting to continue much further. Enduring almost an hour of our protagonist Julia (Tilda Swinton), a desperate, egotistical alcoholic, is somewhat tryin...
Kevin McHugh: Robert Carlyle gives a career-best performance in a deeply affecting take on two men’s friendship. Through flashbacks presented by narrator Shaun, we are introduced to our two main characters; Shaun (Carlyle), the local bad boy and his partn...
Film :: Review 25 Nov 2008
Michael Gillespie: The 90s saw a new and still present cultural phenomenon emerge: the New Lad. As well as embracing binge drinking, football and pseudo-porn magazines, new lads were also quick to lionise gangsters and criminals. One such figure was notorious football ho...
Film :: Review :: DVD Review 25 Nov 2008
Michael Gillespie: Almost every American film made since September 2001 has been probed and prodded for a post-9/11 subtext. Directed by James Marsh, The King (2005) explored the rise of the Christian right in the Bush era, with a family drama of Old Testament proportion...
Film :: Review :: DVD Review 23 Nov 2008
Michael Gillespie: With Obama soon to be in the White House and a renewed sense of hope amongst the American left, Jamie Babbit’s follow up to But I’m A Cheerleader may be the last of its kind. A punk romance, the film follows buttoned down receptionist Anna ...
Film :: Review 20 Nov 2008
Gavin Sturgeon: Mike Myers has plunged to new depths for cheap laughs in his first onscreen performance since 2003. As well as playing the leading role, Myers is on writing duties, and plays it well and truly safe: knob gags are lazily in abundance. Did it really take...
Film :: Review 17 Nov 2008
Gail Tolley: Baghdad, Kabul, Grozny, Beirut – names which evoke, more than anything, the war stricken images of televised news. Such associations make creating a documentary on the conflict in these places especially challenging; there are already so many co...
Film :: Review 15 Nov 2008
Gail Tolley: There’s a sense of déjà vu in this pleasant, yet predictable French drama. Our central character, a painter from Paris, returns to the village where he grew up and hires a gardener who turns out to be a school friend he hasn’t...
Film :: Review 14 Nov 2008
Laura Smith: Clark Gregg's strangled adaptation of lit cult favourite Chuck Palahniuk's novel of masculine malaise really wants to be an edgy, twisted little indie satire but fudges all its promise of energetic sleaze and cynicism with an uncertain blend of diluted...
Sara Nowak: "It feels like I'm swimming in milk." The White Sickness begins with a young professional struck blind while behind the wheel. An abrupt affliction of unknown origins, it soon spreads from a local to a global epidemic. Ruffalo, the eye doctor, becom...
Film :: Review 10 Nov 2008
Michael Gillespie: For most, Spanish cinema is Pedro Almodóvar, and while this sprightly comedy has clearly been drinking his gazpacho, it’s thankfully unspiked. The brilliantly monikered Juan Flahn has crafted a racy, raucous farce all his own, despite wear...
Film :: Review :: DVD Review 10 Nov 2008
Michael Gillespie: Alfred Hitchcock once said that the problem with so many movies was that they were essentially “filmed plays”. Sordid Lives is one such beast, not least because it is based upon writer-director Del Shores’ stage production, but also b...
Kevin McHugh: Jack Black in a funny movie? No it’s not School Of Rock 2. Kung Fu Panda is about Po, a portly panda who works in a noodle shop with dreams of becoming a Kung Fu master. Improbably, he’s chosen to fulfil an ancient prophecy that will see hi...
Film :: Review 07 Nov 2008
Kevin McHugh: After the success of the little-seen but highly regarded Spanish horror [REC], it was only a matter of time before Hollywood brought out the remake. Jennifer Carpenter (star of TV show Dexter) is Angela, a news reporter sent with her cameraman Scott (S...
Film :: Review 05 Nov 2008
Gavin Sturgeon: The arrival of Quantum of Solace has brought with it a whole host of questions. Once you have attempted, and probably failed, to decipher the meaning of the title, minds are cast to answering just how the producers would go about bettering the most suc...
Film :: Review :: DVD Review 03 Nov 2008
Kevin McHugh: Legendary director Martin Scorsese has picked the Rolling Stones for his next music documentary after the success of 2005’s Dylan documentary, No Direction Home. Seamlessly cutting new and old footage with a newly recorded concert, shot by no les...
Film :: Review :: DVD Review 27 Oct 2008
Jonathan Melville: While an eco-friendly sci-fi film starring a handful of robots trying to preserve the remnants of the Earth’s plant population may sound familiar to viewers of 2008’s WALL-E, this particular plotline comes from a film 36 years its senior, 1...
Film :: Review 27 Oct 2008
Gail Tolley: The idea that war is messy and destructive is nothing new. But in Hunger, Steve McQueen’s film on the IRA prisoner Bobby Sands (Michael Fassbender), the focus on the physical body as both victim and weapon is novel and compelling. Hunger is hea...
