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I must be one of the few people in the world who haven’t read The Hunger Games, the first in a series of novels aimed at teenagers about teenagers. Except the world author Suzanne Collins has created isn’t full of ordinary teen problems such as who fancies who (although there is a bit of that) […]
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It’s very hard to talk about this entertaining and at times ingenious horror thriller without giving too much away. It really is one of those films where the less you know, the better the experience will be. Therefore I shall do my best to keep the secrets of The Cabin in the Woods. It starts […]
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This film is too small, sensitive and understated to get much mainstream attention, but it was very well received by both audiences and critics when it was released in cinemas last year. It looks at the subject of gender identity by observing a sweet family drama, played from the point of view of a ten-year-old […]
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Silent Witness has been going for 16 years now which, in this day and age of brutal axing of shows which don’t ‘find their audience’, is a mark of the series’ enduring popularity. Some people can’t stomach it, for a variety of reasons. It’s often unflinchingly gory in its scenes of bloody autopsies and violent […]
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After last year’s rather unfair and lazy list of nominations, the 2012 ‘Razzies’ ceremony (known officially as the Golden Raspberry Awards, the ceremony which highlights the worst films of the past 12 months) has grabbed headlines by awarding every single category to the same film. I haven’t seen this year’s biggest winner Jack and Jill, which […]
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I have mixed feelings about James Cameron’s epic 1997 feature Titanic. As I’m sure you are aware, it’s about to be re-released in cinemas in a new version, converted to 3D, so those who found the banal dialogue and crass characterisation too intellectually challenging the first time round can be helped along by pointy things […]
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Ken Russell sadly died November last year, and The Devils is a work that haunted him throughout the last forty years of his life. It’s had a troubled history, with censors enforcing cuts upon it. Russell was pressured into reducing and changing certain scenes so as to avoid the film falling foul of the laws and […]
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The best thing about 21 Jump Street, an adaptation of a 1980s TV series, is its knowing humour. This film isn’t afraid to make fun of itself, Hollywood, the derivative nature of modern filmmaking, high school movies, the youth of today, and the people in the audience. And it really works. This is the first truly […]
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Actors don’t always make great directors when they transfer their talents from in front of the camera to behind it, but British actress Rachel Ward manages the transition rather well. Beautiful Kate, adapted from a novel by Newton Thornberg, observes the relationship between a father and his estranged son. It flashes back to when the […]
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If you’re looking for something original to watch, avoid this derivative piece of low-budget nonsense. The plot involves a big house, a new family moving into it, a wife who starts to suspect it is haunted, husband/friends who accuse her of being mad, and a horrific crime that happened inside the house years ago. Now […]
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Two Mexican-American sisters (Alex Vega and Camilla Belle) who have lost their mother suddenly become orphans when their father dies. They have lived comfortably all their lives in a beautiful mansion, but it turns out their dad was in debt and they have no choice but let the house go. They move to a dodgy […]
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Robert Pattinson is bankable property, being the star of one of the most lucrative teen franchises of modern times, and it would be easy to get cynical about his casting in this new adaptation of the classic Guy de Maupassant novel. But he’s rather good and gives hope that there may be a bright cinematic […]
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I haven’t seen every film ever nominated for the Best Picture Academy Award, but I’m sure Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close has to be one of the worst to be given such high recognition. It isn’t exactly hard to work out why it received Oscar nods. The drama is stimulated by the sense of loss […]
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It is not uncommon to hear people moan that older actors, particularly women of a certain age, are not sufficiently provided for in terms of proper, leading roles in mainstream cinema. This complaint is not an unfair one. But The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel, whilst not perfect, does try to right that wrong. It’s a […]