Film Reviews
- entertainment
-
25 October 2006Marie-Antoinette 2 Despite the fact that she's both richer and more successful than any of us can imagine, it's hard not to feel sorry for Sofia Coppola.If it wasn't bad enough to have one of the late 20th Century's greatest film directors as a father, ensuring that any initial forays she made into cinema would be dismissed as merely "Francis Ford Coppola's daughter imitating daddy", she first came into the public eye as a late replacement in one of her father's own films. -
25 October 2006History Boys + Since opening in London in May 2004, Alan Bennett's first play in 12 years, of which this film is an adaptation, has sold out at almost every venue over hundreds of performances, winning countless awards - from Oliviers to Tonys - along the way.Bennett may well be one of Britain's best-loved playwrights, but rarely has even he met with such success. -
26 July 2006Pirates Of The Caribbean 2: Dead Man’s Chest + Though the commercial success of a film which saw the mighty Disney team up with mega-producer Jerry Bruckheimer and an array of well-known actors was pretty much guaranteed, the critical success of the first Pirates of the Caribbean movie was anything but. -
26 July 2006The Break Up + Considering the title and the stars, this could hardly be more perfect gossip magazine material. -
29 April 2006Brick 1 Generally speaking, films set around the world of US high schools are to be given a very wide berth, especially when they are using a high school setting for an alternate backdrop to an established genre.There have been hundreds of tediously clichéd standoffs between the jocks and the nerds or the chess club and the cheerleaders over the years, and any number of unimaginative reworkings of Shakespeare, westerns and the rest in the corridors and classrooms of some generic school in a standard suburb. -
29 April 2006Prime + Although at first glance this might seem to be a fairly typical romantic comedy, the utter lack of fame of the male lead compared with that of the two female stars on the poster should be an indication that this is a movie that's not so easy to pigeonhole.Yes, it's set in New York. -
29 April 2006Down In The Valley + Edward Norton is generally regarded as one of the finest actors of his generation, an heir to the likes of De Niro and Brando, with two Oscar nominations to his name by the age of 30, and someone who can turn in performances of great subtlety even with rather sub-par material.Sadly, the past couple of years have seen him working with far more bad material than good, from the dire remake of The Italian Job to Ridley Scott's disappointing Kingdom of Heaven. -
29 April 2006Mission: Impossible III + With the man behind the insanely popular and quirky TV series Lost, JJ Abrams, in the director's chair for this third installment of Tom Cruise's 60s TV show-inspired action series, it is likely that many cinemagoers will be expecting something a bit different.But, lest you forget, the last two Mission: Impossible films were also helmed by big names famed for their idiosyncratic styles, Scarface's Brian de Palma and Hong Kong legend John Woo. -
29 April 2006Confetti + The pitch is not a hard one to imagine - This Is Spinal Tap meets Four Weddings and a Funeral with just a touch of Pop Idol chucked in for good measure. -
29 April 2006The Da Vinci Code + Dan Brown's The Da Vinci Code is one of those novels that occasionally appears and inexplicably becomes a phenomenon. -
28 April 2006Enron: The Smartest Guys In The Room + In 1987, Oliver Stone defined a decade with his superb exploration of American business that was Wall Street, yet even the devious business mastermind that was Gordon Gekko could not have dreamed up some of the things the energy giant Enron managed to get up to -and that eventually led to its downfall.The story of Enron's collapse was well covered at the time yet for many it remained a story for the business pages. -
28 April 2006American Dreamz + Ignore the terrible 'trendy' title, because it is all part of the surprisingly intelligent yet still highly amusing and often wonderfully silly satire of this movie. -
28 April 200616 Blocks + Bruce Willis seems to have been playing the washed up, aging wannabe hero now for even longer than he was playing the real thing. -
5 April 2006Happy Endings + Happy Endings, the film that opened the 20th London Lesbian and Gay Film Festival, is the latest offering from Don Roos.It is a twisting and sometimes complicated tale of relationships between nine Californians. -
4 April 2006Keep Not Silent + This film explores the difficult subject of orthodox Jewish women living in Israel who try to reconcile their deep religious belief with (the forbidden) homosexual practice. -
24 March 2006Ice Age 2: The Meltdown + Since the success of the likes of Toy Story and Shrek, computer-animated movies have become a regular fixture of the school holiday cinema listings.From the apparent decline of Hollywood animation in the 1980s and early 1990s, new technologies have revitalised the art of feature-length cartoons, and the constant desire of parents world-wide to find something to keep their kids occupied has ensured that there is big money in the genre. -
24 March 2006Paradise Now + You surely cannot get much more topical and controversial than a Palestinian film about suicide bombers. -
24 March 2006Rent + A play revolving around the depressing subject-matter of impoverished young people living in the shadow of AIDS would, to a lot of people, hardly sound like the most entertaining night out. -
24 March 2006Cockles and Muscles (Crustaces et Coquillages) + Cockles and Muscles is a delightful, light-hearted tale of the intricacies of modern French family life.Set in the sea side resort of Côte d'azur where mechanic father, Marc (Gilbert Melki) and his half Dutch wife Beatrix (Valeria Bruni-Tedeschi) take their son Charly (Romain Torres) to enjoy an idyllic summer in the house that Marc spent his youth. -
11 March 2006The Pink Panther 1 You would have thought that he would have learned his lesson after reviving the classic comic character of Sgt Bilko for the screen, but it seems that Steve Martin pays little attention to critics.Having failed to do justice to American comedian Phil Silvers' most famous creation, Martin has now decided to attempt to pick up the mantle of the best-loved character of that most versatile of British actors, Peter Sellers, by donning the trademark moustache and trenchcoat of bumbling French detective Inspector Clouseau.
