At what point does a cinematic courtship get out of hand? At what point does one begin to grow weary of the two people onscreen continuing to ignore the fact that they are Perfect For Each Other? Is at the one decade mark? Two decades? Or – let’s throw a spanner in the works – is it less a matter of duration than it is one of execution? I’ll hazard [...]

Director Shawn Levy (Cheaper by the Dozen, Night at the Museum) has made a cozy career out of middling family films, and his latest effort, the robo-rumble Real Steel, is no exception. Set in a not-too-distant 2020 — you know it’s the future the moment you see wind turbines, as no government in the present would approve a renewable energy scheme — the film is based on a short story [...]

“Apes will rise” stresses the film’s marketing campaign, presumably since a title like Rise of the Planet of the Apes is just too darn ambiguous in a post-Snakes on a Plane world to decipher. And rise the apes do — eventually. Because we can’t have apes rising all willy-nilly, now can we? They’ve got to be provoked. They’ve got to earn it. So, in order to get to the promised [...]

Home to the oldest rock paintings and archeological marvels in world, the Chauvet Cave in South France could certainly serve as an interesting focal point for a documentary. Yet if the cave’s custodians genuinely wanted to chronicle the scientific and cultural importance of the site, German filmmaker Werner Herzog probably wasn’t the right choice for the job. The 68-year-old auteur behind feature films such as Fitzcarraldo and Bad Lieutenant: Port [...]

Pixar are, in a word, perfectionists. The animation studio’s trophy cabinet — housing no less than twenty-six Oscars and seven Golden Globes — should be evidence enough. Yet even virtuosos are subject to the occasional lapse in judgment; days when they produce something that doesn’t quite live up to their own impossibly high standard. Something like 2006’s Cars, for example.

Now call me an optimist, but I like to believe that [...]

Back in 2003, when Johnny Depp wearing eyeliner still conjured up images of Edward Scissorhands, Hollywood producer Jerry Bruckheimer teamed up with Disney to turn a tired old Disneyland ride in to one of the most profitable movie franchises in history.

It was, of course, Pirates of the Caribbean: The Cure of the Black Pearl: a fun, funny and invigoratingly fresh film that represented everything a blockbuster movie should be. The [...]

Love it or hate it, the Twilight series has been a massive success that turned its handsome star, Robert Pattinson, into an international pin-up idol overnight. Between instalments and capitalizing on the fever generated by the fanged franchise, here is his latest showcase: Water for Elephants, another tale of doomed love in a setting full of mythical creatures – this time the awe-inspiring beasts of a travelling carnival.

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Russell Brand is one of those comedians you either love or hate. And it seems people pay just as much attention to the sordid details of his private life as to his work – in the films he appears in (Get Him to the Greek, Forgetting Sarah Marshall) or lends his instantly identifiable whiny voice to (Hop, [...]