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Although decent, this remake fails to live up the dark tensions provided by Raimi’s 2002 film.
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Killer Joe is a furiously brilliant, astute and hypnotic film.
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Whether you think it is brilliant popular fiction, a guilty pleasure, or just gutter trash, E.L. James’s Fifty Shades trilogy is a publishing phenomenon. Even before it became an explosive success in the UK, (it’s now the fastest selling adult paperback of all time) Hollywood studios were fighting to secure the rights to a film […]
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Casting has been announced for BBC One’s upcoming adaptation of William Boyd’s bestselling novel Restless. The two-part drama serial is set to star Hayley Atwell (pictured right in 2011’s Captain America: The First Avenger) and Charlotte Rampling, playing the younger and older versions of the central character. Rufus Sewell, Michelle Dockery and Michael Gambon will […]
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The Borgias is an experience to be immersed in, even if it is a somewhat ludicrous portrayal of 15th century Italy.
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You have to go into this series prepared. It’s like EastEnders on acid, or perhaps The Godfather remade in East London via an Usher music video. The colours, the violence, the filming style – it’s all cranked up to bursting point. As the title suggests, this four-part drama is an adaptation of Martina Cole’s novel […]
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In the February of 2009 there was a feature article in The Independent about the current state of television drama. It said we were currently living through ‘a new golden age’ of TV fiction, but this was being helmed by the USA rather than Britain. We have, as the article suggested, fallen behind. At the […]
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Everything is fine. People can relax. All the stresses of life are cured. Because there’s a new DVD boxset of Lewis out. If you want to feel bruised and psychologically assaulted, as if you’ve just been dragged by the ankles around a museum of torture that uses sandpaper for carpet, then watch Waking the Dead (all nine […]
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Now I have entered the no-work haven of the Summer months, I have been catching up on some films I missed when they were released in cinemas. The latest bunch of films I have greedily consumed includes The Rite, an exorcism horror film. It tries its best at being both a thought-provoking story about the more controversial […]
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This bleak and interesting drama about a worldwide flu-like pandemic is a recent offering from the prolific Steven Soderbergh. I haven’t liked much of his past work – the Ocean’s films had a smug obnoxiousness about them – but this is something quite different. The best thing about Contagion is that it tries to systematically show, from different viewpoints, […]
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I realise I’m quite late in adding my views of The Artist to the chorus of support that has already embraced it. As you will probably have heard already (or witnessed yourself, if you have seen the film), it is a wonderful picture, a film that has the power to speak to anyone and everyone. And it’s […]
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The original was a masterpiece, and a bloody tough act to follow, but this really sickeningly terrifying horror sequel is almost as good. When a man is murdered whilst taking part in a radio phone-in, Police officer Dennis Hopper convinces DJ and journalist Caroline Williams to use it as bait to catch the perpetrators. But […]
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Rupert Sanders, director of Snow White and the Huntsman, is from the world of advertising. This has been discussed a lot in the many preview articles and reviews of this film – the second big-screen adaptation of the classic fairytale to reach screens this year. It’s understandable why people are making a song and dance […]
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Prometheus has managed to cultivate that kind of legendary cult following that movie studios dream of. During the lead up to its release, fans have been blogging, twittering, guessing and criticising, eating up all the manufactured pieces of viral marketing as they go. But as I watched Prometheus, I found it rather easy to forget […]