The Muppets, written by and Starring Jason Segel, is a lovingly nostalgic continuation of the legendary puppet (sorry, muppet) based franchise. The Muppets haven’t been on our screens since…. well, some time not long after Treasure Island, which was in the 90s, so it was high time they came roaring back with a triumphant comeback.…
Mother is a fantastically acted and riveting thriller that explores the extent to which a mother will fight to protect her son. Kim Hye-ja is phenomenal as the unnamed mother whose life is turned upside down when her mentally challenged son Do-joon, played by Won Bin, is arrested on suspicion of murder. She sets out…
City of God, or Cidade de Deus, is the best film that Martin Scorsese never made. It’s a multi-stranded, hyper-kinetic, visually vibrant crime extravanganza that charts the undulating fortunes of the various inhabitants of the City of God, a Brazilian favela on the outskirts of Rio de Janeiro. Operating on a higher level than even…
Union Films closes off the year with a blend of romance, drama, comedy, action and a dash of festive spirit.
Women Without Men is the debut feature of Shirin Neshat, a brave and talented Iranian artist who is daring to talk about a topic many stay away from: women in a conservative Islamic society. Her film is a beautiful, poetic adaptation of a 1990 novel by Shahrnush Parsipur, a work which is banned in Iran. The film…
Lovely Molly is an outstanding new horror film from Eduardo Sánchez, the co-director of The Blair Witch Project. He is widely regarded as the man who invented, or at least helped champion, the found-footage horror movie, and his latest chiller is an exceptional marriage of third-person and first-person narrative filmmaking. The performances from the leading…
Depp is as enigmatic as ever as the infamous thief John Dillinger, who with his group of fellow criminals targets big city banks and walks out with all the cash. The surprise of the film however turns out to be Christian Bale as the officer hunting him. Michael Man’s direction is terrific, and the many parts…
Alfred Hitchcock’s brilliantly entertaining chase movie still proves as effective as ever, thanks to an astonishingly crisp new high definition print from Warner Bros. If you’re going to revisit this classic masterpiece, or try it out for the first time, I strongly advise you get hold of Warner Bros’ Blu-ray edition. HD mastering doesn’t come…
I must first make something clear. There is a current movement in blockbuster cinema that has high aspirations. It dares to be different and give its audience good, intelligent stories told in a serious way with superb technical skill and understanding of the power of cinema. Christopher Nolan, the British director of the two previous Batman films…
At the start of There Will Be Blood, Paul Thomas Anderson’s superb 2008 feature, there is very little dialogue. We just observe a man attempting to get oil from the ground. Some oil splashes onto the camera lens. A deliberate decision by Anderson and his cinematographer, one assumes. Does it remind the viewer they are…
Ben Wheatley’s film Kill List won him critical praise and attention. I quite liked it, but felt that in its attempt to be shocking and different it lost control and sacrificed its own intelligence for weird scares. Sightseers, Wheatley’s latest, is an offbeat, amiably dark comedy about a couple in their thirties who go off…
Director Lee Unkrich’s heart-warming animated charmer may well be the best of the beloved Toy Story series. It serves as a rather beautiful and moving goodbye to the characters Pixar created more than fifteen years ago. Andy is off the university, and is faced with the task of donating his old toys before he leaves. When Woody,…
This is an action movie that isn’t stupid, sexed up, or part of a Hasbro toy franchise/comic-book series/theme-park legacy. Of course, it does star Angelina Jolie, a woman that occupies many men’s dreams, but she is never overly sexualised in this film, nor does her character take part in any kinky antics that involve the…
Trevor Eve and Hermione Norris play the well-off middle class parents of Prue (28 Days Later’s Imogen Poots). She is adored by her father – rather too much, if truth be told – and has become entangled with Gavin (Tom Riley), a dangerous, manipulative and very attractive young man. He is her sixth form English teacher,…