Step Up 3D (Her Review)

If you enjoy formulaic teenage dance films, whereby pretty people with tight abs, who are cooler than you,  bump and grind all night, to music by people who are also cooler than you, then director Jon Chu (Step Up 2: The Streets, When the Kids Are Away) has come up trumps.

Step Up 3D (His Review)

In Step Up 3D – the third entry into the successful dance franchise about street gangs who battle to the sound of a boom box rather than a gun shot — a young dancing hopeful nicknamed Moose (Adam G. Sevani)  shares this pearl of absolute wisdom: “People dance ‘cos dancing can change things.”

Remarkable screenwriting, that.  But if dancing does indeed “change things”, there’s not much evidence here.

The Special Relationship (Review)

It’s always a tricky act to make a movie about real-life leaders, especially if they are still fresh in people’s memories. Oliver Stone didn’t quite pull it off with his George W. Bush biopic W., despite  having greater success with past biopics like Nixon and JFK. In The Special Relationship, however, director Richard Loncraine (My One and Only) and writer Peter Morgan (Frost/Nixon) succeeded beyond my expectations in portraying the very unique and compelling relationship [...]

The Ghost Writer (Review)

When I mentioned my anticipation for Roman Polaski’s new political thriller The Ghost Writer in conversation with a friend, they frowned upon me like I had said something seriously wrong. At first I thought it was a reaction to Polanski’s famed criminal convictions from the 1970s – the man’s a fugitive paedophile-rapist, don’t you know — but it turns out that had nothing to do with it. More innocently, it was because they had confused the film [...]

Splice (Review)

Ever since Frankenstein first came alive in the early 20^th century, filmmakers have constantly reminded us of  the potential horrors of playing God in the laboratory. And just in case Flubber or The Nutty Professor 2 wasn’t incentive enough to put down those test tubes, here comes indie writer/director Vincenzo Natali — best known for his existential cult hit Cube — with the provocative sci-fi horror Splice.

But viewer discretion is advised; Natali’s mostly solemn treatment [...]

Killers (Review)

Ladies and gents, the first sure-fire awards contender of 2010 has landed! It’s called Killers and it’s going to take the Golden Raspberries by storm.

If you thought the similarly themed Knight and Day was bad, wait till you see this vacuous spy comedy from The Ugly Truth director Robert Luketic. Killers sees Luketic take a desperate swing at genre after genre in a hope he [...]