Author: Barnaby Walter

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    Barnaby Walter

    Film Archive: Saw III is cinema at its most appalling and repugnant

    This is when it really got sick. This is when it became more about the torture, and less about suspense. This is when it got obsessed with suffering rather than ingenious puzzles and plot twists. In other words, this is when the most successful horror franchise of all time became, to put it bluntly, shit. […]

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    Barnaby Walter

    DVD & Blu-ray Review: Stake Land ★★★☆☆

    An interesting addition to a crowded genre

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    Barnaby Walter

    Drive ★★★★★

    Classy, cool, and packing one hell of a punch – red-hot cinema.

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    Barnaby Walter

    The Debt ★★★☆☆

    Helen Mirren overacts in this otherwise watchable fillm

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    Barnaby Walter

    Cowboys & Aliens ★★★☆☆

    With an unashamedly ridiculous and provocative title, it’s surprising how tough and conventional this competent blockbuster is. There’s relatively little humour, considering director Jon Favreau is no stranger to comedy. It has a strict beginning-middle-end structure, and there is of course a brooding attractive hero, a sexy lass and a collection of mildly interesting supporting […]

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    Barnaby Walter

    Film Archive: With her sophisticated debut Cracks, Ridley Scott’s daughter proves she is a talent to watch

    This confident directorial debut from Jordan Scott could be seen as a sexually repressed version of St Trinian’s, or a violent sequel to Wild Child. On its own, Scott succeeds in making it an effectively atmospheric drama about obsession, school-girl crushes and dangerous desires. Set in a remote 1930s girls’ boarding school, Eva Green plays games teacher […]

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    Barnaby Walter

    Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy ★★★☆☆

    Thomas Alfredson’s adaptation of the 1974 spy novel is a must-watch, but unfortunately not for strengths in the plot or execution.

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    Barnaby Walter

    Film Archive: Bronson is a horrible, self-indulgent mess of a film

    Tom Hardy gives a stunning performance as one of Britain’s most infamous criminals, but unfortunately the film as a whole is an unremittingly nasty and pretentious biopic. Unconventionally told with as much charm as a festering corpse, this is potentially dangerous stuff, depicting unforgivably violent and horrifying scenes in a glamorous, humorous and non-judgemental way. It’s […]

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    Barnaby Walter

    Film Archive: South Korean drama Treeless Mountain deserves a larger audience

    Yong Kim delivers an affecting and memorable follow-up directorial effort to her 2006 feature In Between Days with this simple but interesting picture. It’s a sad tale of two young children whose mother leaves them to find their missing father. Their drunken aunt has to look after them – although “look after” is probably too strong a phrase, […]

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    Barnaby Walter

    One Day ★★★☆☆

    I was an enormous fan of Loan Scherfig’s 2009 picture An Education. It captured a spirit of charming optimism that is rarely seen in British films these days. Her big-screen adaptation of David Nicholl’s bestselling novel One Day does have a certain degree of charming optimism, but is sadly far from the masterpiece-standard reached with […]

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    Barnaby Walter

    Badly plotted and painfully slow, The Girl Who Played With Fire is a dull failure

    The first entry in Swedish author Steig Larsson’s best-selling Millennium trilogy became a surprise big-screen hit. The film, The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo, directed by Niels Arden Oplev, was a near-perfect adaptation of Larsson’s novel. Chilling, reckless and relentlessly compelling, it was a foreign-language film for a mainstream audience, earning a place in multiplexes that […]

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    Barnaby Walter

    DVD & Blu-Ray: Everybody’s Fine ★★★☆☆

    Kirk Jones’s remake of 1990 Italian drama Stanno Tutti Bene received a less-than-enthusiastic response from some critics when it was released last year, but I found it an enjoyable, involving and at times moving experience, with a beautifully restrained performance at its core from one of the industry’s best actors. Robert De Niro plays widower Frank, […]

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    Barnaby Walter

    DVD & Blu-Ray: Game of Death ★☆☆☆☆

    Game of Death is one of the latest releases from Stage 6 Films, Sony’s B-movie department that turns out cheap trash at an incredible rate, producing up to 15 features per year. This awful straight-to-DVD dud sums up the quality of most of their output. Wesley Snipes plays a special ops agent, charged with the […]

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    Barnaby Walter

    DVD & Blu-Ray: Water for Elephants ★☆☆☆☆

    Set in the American depression of the 1930s, this big-screen adaptation of Sara Gruen’s best-selling novel may be sumptuously filmed, but unfortunately it is yet another example of a film that is gorgeous to look at but ultimately dead from within. The film is bookended by an old man called Jacob telling the story of […]