Surprising no one, Tron: Legacy jumped to top spot in its first weekend with a box office total of $3.35m, beating other new release Love & Other Drugs and sending Narnia: Voyage of the Dawn Treader and Harry [...]
Somewhere is the kind of smug, avant-garde nonsense that takes immense satisfaction in going nowhere. As vacuous as its subjects, the film features dead-on-the-inside people looking pensively into their bowls of pasta and excruciating long takes of nothing but Mr. Forlorn flicking between TV channels. Some call this reality, I call it bloody boring.
Compared to emotionally intelligent 3D animated features such as Toy Story 3 and How to Train Your Dragon, live-action kids movies tend to degenerate into a study of how many blows a man’s gonads can take before he is rendered infertile.
So imagine my surprise when Gulliver’s Travels, a modern rehash of Jonathan Swift’s [...]
Where did you go Mel Gibson? You were so crazy cool in the Lethal Weapon films. You had your hard-boiled characters of vengeful action in Payback and Ransom. You delivered memorable moments of heroic leadership in epics Braveheart and The Patriot. Where are you now? With your hand up a beaver puppet begging for a second chance, that’s where.
Despite everything, is there a chance – even just a [...]
There is simply too much truth to the heartbreak of Blue Valentine for it to not come from a deeply personal place. If writer/director Derek Cianfrance hasn’t lived this profoundly moving story about a crumbling marriage blow for blow, he most certainly knows someone who has. In fact, we probably all do. That’s what makes Blue Valentine so authentic, so poignant and so haunting.
It’s the sublimely nuanced performances of the [...]
Whilst Christmas-celebrating people at this time of year are making their lists and checking them twice, the sanctuary of the cinema usually becomes a safe house and the films within provide the perfect hide-out from fairy lights, excessive shopping and dreaded family gatherings. This year, however, Finnish writer/director Jalmari Helander has made it his seasonal duty to give us a very special, if not creepy, Christmas gift. Rare [...]
In computer speak, TRON: Legacy is a film that takes forever to boot up, fails to form a connection with its audience and repeatedly falls victim to the dreaded Blue Screen of Boredom (BSoB). It truly is the Windows Vista of blockbuster movies.
On paper, the specs are impressive; it boasts a starring role from recent Oscar winner Jeff Bridges, an electrifying score by Daft Punk and [...]
Tom Hooper’s The King’s Speech is one of the funniest, most compelling and richly fulfilling cinematic experiences of the year, but I understand completely if you don’t believe me. Heck, had someone told me that prior to seeing the film, I probably would have fetched myself a cup of tea just for the sake of dramatically spitting it out mid-sip. After all, regal dramas have a habit of [...]
