Like many cartoons from the golden age of animation, Hanna-Barbera’s Yogi Bear had a simple TV-friendly premise: a talking brown bear named Yogi and his reluctant companion Boo Boo endeavour to steal picnic baskets in the wilderness reserve of Jellystone Park — a riff on America’s famous Yellowstone Park — while the irritable Ranger Smith tries to stop them. The inevitable big screen adaptation, directed by Eric Brevig [...]

By all accounts, The Tourist sounds like the perfect cinematic getaway. It stars two of Hollywood’s most beautiful actors, Angelina Jolie and Johnny Depp, and is set in one of Earth’s most beautiful locations, Venice. It also boasts action and romance, with a hint of comedy.

So why, dear reader, was I squirming in my seat like an earthworm on hot concrete?

Well, the chair was [...]

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.

Todd Phillips’ Due Date is more like an actual hangover than last year’s blockbuster comedy The Hangover: it’s unpleasant, unfunny and the sooner it comes to an end, the better.

Phillips, a hit-and-miss comedy director responsible for the likes of The Hangover (hit) and the remake of Starsky & Hutch (miss), was clearly hoping lightning would strike twice by reteaming with Zach Galifianakis, [...]

Not long ago, it would cost Hollywood upwards of $100 million to destroy downtown Los Angeles, most of which would be spent employing an expert team of stuntmen, set  designers, pyrotechnicians and a horde of visual artists. These days, it can be done at a fraction of the cost using a Mac Book Pro, a 3D modelling suite and many, many cans of Red Bull.

This new [...]

Mexico’s coast houses one of the world’s most beautiful atoll reefs and the country is trying to gain a World Heritage site honour for Banco Chinchorro, which is displayed to beautiful use in Alamar. This may be the reason for making the landscape such a large part of this film, as well as director Pedro Gonzalez-Rubio’s love for documentaries. He’s created a hybrid of style (and colour) for his latest [...]

The recent string of English-language remakes continues with Jonathan Lynn’s (My Cousin Vinny, The Whole Nine Yards) British comedy Wild Target. Taking aim at the 1993 French film Cible Emouvante, a bullseye, this is not.

When Britain’s most esteemed assassin, Victor Maynard (Bill Nighy), fails to kill his (wild) target Rose (Emily Blunt), he reluctantly agrees to protect her from the men who want her dead. Caught [...]

If nothing else, take heart in the fact that Saw VII 3D – possibly the movie’s title, possibly its library call number – marks the end of a horror franchise that, quite frankly, should have only ever been a trilogy. After all, it was in the third film that the remarkably productive serial killer Jigsaw (Tobin Bell) perished. But alas, there was still money to be made. So [...]