Film Reviews
- entertainment
-
11 March 2006Syriana + After the ridicule heaped upon actors who meddle in politics in 2004's entertaining puppet satire Team America: World Police, it is a brave Hollywood star indeed who dares to tackle the contentious world of contemporary politics.Yet as the war in Iraq reaches its third anniversary, mainstream Hollywood seems finally to be catching up with the political debates that have been raging ever since the "War on Terror" was launched in the wake of the September 11th attacks. -
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. -
11 March 2006Tristan + Isolde + The medieval romance of Tristan and Isolde (or Yseult, depending on how archaic you want to be) is these days best known thanks to the grand opera by Richard Wagner, often claimed to be one of the finest ever written.After its initial appearance during the Dark Ages, by the 13th Century Tristan had been elevated to the level of one of the knights of King Arthur's Round Table, before the tale of their tragic romance eventually evolved into that of Lancelot and Arthur's queen, Guinevere. -
11 March 2006Imagine Me And You + As soon as one film finds success with a subject previously thought not to hold any commercial appeal, movie-makers tend to run around in a desperate attempt to imitate the same previously unconsidered route to success.Gladiator shows that the historical epic can still find an audience, and within a couple of years we have the likes of Kingdom of Heaven and the upcoming Hannibal trying to cash in. -
11 March 2006The White Countess + The death of producer Ismail Merchant in May last year marked the end of an era for British film-making. -
11 March 2006Firewall + One of the major dilemmas for any fan of Hollywood blockbusters over the last decade has been how to explain what has happened to Harrison Ford. -
11 March 2006Capote + Truman Capote ranks as one of America's greatest ever writers, yet today is probably best known - at least to film lovers - as the author of that classic Audrey Hepburn flick Breakfast at Tiffany's.He is also prime material for the typical Hollywood biopic - a man who rose from poverty in the deep south to the New York cocktail set, mixing with A-list celebrities and royalty while engaging in a string of doomed homosexual relationships with married men and battling drug and alcohol addictions, before dying of a drug overdose aged 59. -
10 February 2006Aeon Flux 1 In 1991 MTV introduced a new adult-themed cartoon to its Liquid Television series, a dialogue-free short packed with stylishly frenetic action and centred around a girl in a leather bikini who got killed every episode on some kind of impossible mission. -
10 February 2006The Fog + In 1980, writer/director John Carpenter scared the bejeezus out of everyone with his zombie ghost story The Fog - where a coastal town is terrorised by a strange mist and the loping masses of long-dead, cursed sailors. -
10 February 2006Casanova + Fresh from a much-lauded and award-nominated turn as a rugged and secretly gay cowboy coming to terms with his love for another man in Brokeback Mountain, Heath Ledger here returns to more familiar territory, proving both his rampant heterosexuality and his great comic timing. -
10 February 2006Good Night, And Good Luck + Considering that George Clooney's career started off with a pile of awful nonsense like Return to Horror High and Return of the Killer Tomatoes, and that his return to the big screen after finally getting famous with TV hospital drama ER was blighted by the disastrous campness of Batman and Robin and tedious nonsense of The Peacemaker, his successes of the last few years are nothing short of amazing.Not content with reviving both his own and director Steven Soderbergh's careers with a wonderfully charming performance in 1998's rom/com crime caper Out of Sight, he has gone on to turn in some genuinely great performances in a succession of modern classics. -
26 January 2006Fun With Dick And Jane + There seems to have been a spate of comedy remakes of TV shows and films from the 60s and 70s recently, be it Bewitched or Starsky and Hutch, The Producers or The Longest Yard. -
26 January 2006The Matador 1 Fresh from being booted out of his most famous role as James Bond, Pierce Brosnan hits the big screen once again in a role that seems to have given him an immense amount of fun.In fact, those who know Brosnan primarily from his Bond turns - or perhaps as Remmington Steele in the 1980s TV show of the same name through which he first found fame - may not really have noticed that he's got a wonderful comic ability. -
26 January 2006Munich + Having become the darling of the Jewish world with his masterly portrayal of the sheer horror of the Holocaust in 1993's Schindler's List, Hollywood's biggest director has now risked being denounced by those who formerly praised him for highlighting some of the less savoury policies of the state of Israel, in a highly topical action thriller based on real events from more than 30 years ago.Considering the sheer levels of vitriol involved in the Israel/Palestine conflict, where to show any indication of criticising Israeli policy can lead to accusations of anti-Semitism, for a non-Jewish director to try and dramatise an aspect of the long-running and bloody dispute would have simply been begging for widespread condemnation. -
26 January 2006Zathura: A Space Adventure + In 1995, the still relatively new movie technology of computer-generated effects was employed to good effect in the Robin Williams-starring Jumanji, a children's adventure flick based on a book by Chris Van Allsburg in which a board game, the titular Jumanji, could magically affect real life.A decade on, we get another children's adventure based on a book by Chris Van Allsburg in which a board game, the titular Zathura, magically affects real life. -
26 January 2006Walk the Line + A little over a year ago, a biopic of a groundbreaking, near-legendary, recently-deceased singer-songwriter whose life had been filled with more than its fair share of tragedy and upset along with the success earned wild critical praise and numerous awards.Much was made about the accuracy of the central performance, with praise heaped upon the actor responsible for his vocal mimicry and attention to detail, as well as how the actor had got to know and gain the blessing of the person he was portraying before he died. -
26 January 2006Chicken Little + Although Disney studios have got a great and profitable film franchise on the go with the Pirates of the Caribbean series, the animated division has not been faring so well. -
11 January 2006Brokeback Mountain 5 In one of the most remarkable films of recent years, Heath Ledger and Jake Gyllenhaal play a pair of cowboys desperately and secretly in a love in rural American.Ledger plays Ennis Del Mar, a young ranch hand of few words, set side by side with chatty rodeo cowboy Jack Twist (Gyllenhaal).During a season herding sheep across the mountains, the pair become close and experience a passionate sexual relationship. -
24 December 2005Memoirs Of A Geisha + Originally to have been directed by Steven Spielberg, this big screen adaptation of the bestselling novel of the same name is so sprawling in its period complexity, and takes place in such an unusual setting for a Hollywood film, that an experienced hand on the tiller was always going to be necessary.Taking a story set in pre-war Japan, with an almost exclusively Japanese and Chinese cast, would have been a challenge even for the current master of American cinema. -
24 December 2005Match Point + Yep, it's that time of year - the perennial excuse for film fans the world over to ask, "Has Woody Allen finally got good again?" Meanwhile, a whole slew of others rant on about how he was never any good in the first place.Whichever side of the argument you tend to lean towards, New York's very own paranoid whiner is back with his annual big screen excursion, and it is guaranteed to spark some debate.
