Reviews in a nutshell
Oscar-winning The Departed writer William Monahan’s directorial debut, London Boulevard, is one of those films that prompts the immediate reaction of ‘hmmm’: You really don’t know how to process what you’ve just seen – unless you’re an avid Colin Farrell fan, so can be rest assured that his sexy charm is in full flow in …
Forget the troublesome Pelham of 2009: Action guru Tony Scott and his muse Denzel Washington are firmly on the right tracks with this year’s adrenaline-fuelled thriller, Unstoppable, that really hits the mark, despite triggering an initial groan of yet another potential train-wreck of a movie on the cards. After suppressing giggles from hearing that there’s …
Don’t be fooled by the action sequences they squeeze out of the film for the trailer to try marketing this as an action-based crime thriller: it’s no Bourne. It is a part-foreign-language drama set in foreign lands – making it perfect London Film Festival fodder – that cleverly manages to straddle both art-house and mainstream …
Stieg Larsson’s Millennium Trilogy finally comes to a cinematic end, and the only thing worth knowing is whether Daniel Alfredson’s finale, The Girl Who Kicked The Hornets’ Nest, does justice to the spellbinding novel in tying up the loose ends. It does, to a certain extent, providing a relatively engaging and much-needed justice server at …
Continue reading “The Girl Who Kicked The Hornets’ Nest – 3*”
There’s been an eager wait by fans for this film’s release, since it’s ‘fake’ trailer featured in Quentin Tarantino & Robert Rodriguez’s Grindhouse that starred its charismatic and craggy-faced lead, Danny Trejo, back in 2007. Now Machete in full form has finally arrived, having been conceived years before the former, and Rodriguez and co-director Ethan …
It’s very easy to become a film snob about any US remake of a recent and internationally acclaimed foreign-language film. But if the material it’s based on is of a high calibre, then the film-makers are already off to a flying start. Such is the case with Cloverfield director Matt Reeves’s take on Ajvide Lindqvist’s …
A new buddy comedy from The Hangover maestro Todd Phillips sounds like one to watch, especially with the former hit’s cuddly star Zach Galifianakis in the frame again. And it is, in many respects, because this safe bet for Phillips dishes out the genre’s formulaic mix of chaotic sketches, emotionally revealing moments and morals aplenty. …
Scottish Actor/writer/director Peter Mullan (The Magdalene Sisters, Orphans) may well have struck gold with his first internationally marketable feature, Neds – even though its broad Glaswegian dialect takes some getting used to, and resulted in subtitles at its world premiere in Toronto. What Mullan gets right every time that translates, regardless of language, is his …
Toilet humour, eye-watering blows to the never-regions and Evel Knievel-style stunts are on the Jackass (3D) menu in this film. But as the title suggests, what you also expect, even before head prankster Johnny Knoxville’s grand announcement at the start, is all of the above in glorious, gut-wrenching 3D. Let’s face it; that’s the key …
