Joe Wright overcomes an unremarkable plot with distinctive direction in Hanna, a beat-driven action/art-house hybrid that blends East-European iconography with Grimm fairytale fancy. A departure for the English director, best known for his austere costume dramas including Atonement and the most recent Pride and Prejudice adaptation, the film follows an adolescent girl (Saoirse Ronan) who has been trained by her secret-agent father (Eric Bana) as a cold blooded killer while [...]
What would you do if you could travel through time? What would you change? If you really think about these questions, there are probably some fairly loaded answers. The object of time, if there is such a thing, and the vivid memories that come to pass within it are things we take an interest in – even more so when we’re older. But to take things for granted? We do that every single day without realising it, regardless of age. Ideas of trusting our instinct and the little voices in our heads are taken to an extreme in The Time Traveller’s Wife, where those attributes are formed in the shape of a human being just like all of us. And he too has to live with the pain that comes with life’s joy.
“It’s what non-car people don’t get,” begins Top Gear presenter Jeremy Clarkson when discussing with Eric Bana (Black Hawk Down, Star Trek) their shared obsession with cars in Love the Beast. “They see all cars as a one and a half ton piece of metal and rubber. That’s all they see.”
Clarkson’s right. As someone who views cars as little more than a mode of transport, I struggle to relate with Bana’s quarter-century love affair with his 1974 Ford GT Falcon Coupe. Love the Beast is a solid film about car lovers, for car lovers. Unfortunately, I’m not one of them.
Confession: I have never sat through an entire episode of Star Trek, nor seen any of the ten prior films belonging to the franchise up until this latest reboot. As scientifically proven to be true with 4 out of 5 people, I consider myself a Star Wars fan if anything, making me somewhat proud of such ignorance…that is until now. In Star Trek XI, Director J.J Abrams wipes the slate clean and achieves the seemingly impossible; he’s made Star Trek ‘cool’. Regardless of whether you’re fluent in Klingon or not, Abrams’ reboot is an exciting sci-fi action extravaganza well worth the Trek.
Clay animation is quite possibly the most painstaking process of filmmaking, especially when you consider it took Adam Elliot five years to make Mary & Max, his first feature length clay-animated film since 2003′s Oscar winning short Harvie Krumpet. It’s a process few left in the industry still have the patience and passion to undertake, two qualities that Adam Elliot infinitely exerts. Mary & Max is unquestionably a labour of such love, one that has proven to be worth the time and effort. The animation is superb, characters endearing, humour abundant and topical themes honestly and thoroughly explored.
