There is a moment in the middle of Midnight in Paris where Gil Penders, the films’ leading man and a hopeless romantic, muses that no work of art can equal the beauty of a great city. Just as Isaac felt about New York in Manhattan, or Vicki and Cristina felt about the Spanish capital in Vicki, Cristina, Barcelona, Gil is enamoured with the great French city from whence this film [...]

Joining Conan the Barbarian and Footloose as the latest B-grade eighties pop cultural touchstones to be remade, the new Fright Night, much like the old, tells the story of a suburban teenager who is flummoxed to learn that his new next-door neighbour is actually a vampire. Scripted by Buffy alum Marti Noxon and directed by Craig Gillespie (Lars and the Real Girl), the film is packed with obvious [...]

Kinky sex, a Southern beauty queen, kidnapped Mormon missionaries, brainwashing, a high-profile media trial and cloned puppies. In the words of one interview subject in Tabloid, the gob smacking story of Joyce McKinney really does have something for everybody. A former Miss Wyoming contestant, McKinney became the obsession of the notorious British tabloid papers in the late nineteen seventies after she was arrested and put on trial for kidnapping, imprisoning [...]

As you’re probably aware, critics are invited to see films at preview screenings for free, not because we’re a privileged bunch, but because we’d have to forgo eating for a week if we were to pay to see movies like those of you with incomes and shoes and other fancy things. Usually, these 90-minute stints spent inside a roofed establishment are the highlights of my week, second only to finding [...]

I haven’t actually read Jane Eyre. People often give me a hard time about that. I suppose that fact is to my detriment in more ways than those merely social now, seeing as I don’t have knowledge of the source material that has inspired so many filmic adaptations. I went into this latest version of Jane Eyre, directed by Cary Fukunaga, knowing only that I could probably expect a feisty [...]

According to the producers, 2009’s The Final Destination was supposed to be the final Final Destination movie, but as with most sentences beginning with “according to the producers”, that changed when the film went on to make buckets of money. In hindsight, a more apt title would have been Semi-final Destination, or in the likely event that even more sequels are made, they could [...]

Winner of the Best Dramatic Direction award at this years’ Sundance Film Festival, Martha Marcy May Marlene heralds the arrival of two very impressive talents on the independent cinema scene. First, director Sean Durkin, who in his first feature film demonstrates an incredible assuredness and mesmerizing control of his camera, intermingling through astounding editing two timeless with ethereal subtlety and consummate skill. Secondly is young actress Elizabeth Olsen, who shatters [...]

A gentle film about a gentle man, Our Idiot Brother is a warm and very funny comedy from director Jesse Peretz about family, honesty and sublime stupidity. Headline by the always endearing Paul Rudd, the film is packed with a pitch-perfect cast of under-rated actors and actresses all working from a clever, laid back script written — rather fittingly — by Peretz, his sister and her husband. The result is [...]