Reviews in a nutshell
Its blood-splattered poster, complete with promises of ‘genuinely scaring the hell out of you’ depends on your previous encounters with spooky goings-on in condemned houses. Sinister by The Exorcism of Emily Rose creator Scott Derrickson, in summary, certainly puts the ‘creepy’ back into four domestic walls, but the horror tick boxes of bumps in the …
There is a real sense with the second round in Luc Besson’s father-marauding saga that both writer and cast signed up to a totally different project at the start, only for a daft decision from above to make it accessible to a wider (and younger) audience to ruin things, and hence, kill of what made …
Jay Roach’s new comedy is more in the vein of his slapstick work of Meet The Parents/Fockers and Austin Powers, so those expecting a clever political satire ridiculing the recent Romney and Ryan shenanigans, say, of current US politics will be mildly disappointed. However, there are enough subtle undertones to admire and to suggest writers …
Ol Parker – he of The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel notoriety – is fast becoming the director of choice for sanitising death for those who fear its onset most. As with his last film about a bunch of OAPs on a latter-years, lifetime’s trip to India, he takes the subject and makes it not only palatable …
Brad Pitt reunites again with writer-director Andrew Dominik (The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford) to adapt George V. Higgins’s novel, Cogan’s Trade for the big screen. It’s another successful outcome, entitled Killing Them Softly – referring to hits by strangers on strangers in the underworld. As Cogan, Pitt embodies his standard …
Producer-Director Oliver Stone, best known for his political thrillers, war films and a recently completed Castro documentary, reverts back to Natural Born Killers/U-Turn type for his latest film, Savages, appealing to a wider commercial market wanting pulpy, consumable, popcorn action thrillers without any political intensity. In a way, Savages is a satisfying all-action trip with …
Fans of the hit 70s TV series have no fear: Director-writer Nick Love has taken the heart and soul of the iconic characters, Regan and Carter, and given them a cosmetic 2012 facelift, thrusting the chauvinistic, hard-nosed coppers into a contemporary, clinical crime-fighting environment, complete with latter-day baddies. In fact, Love is wise not to …
Director Joe Wright’s take on Tolstoy’s tragic love story, Anna Karenina, is bound to divide opinion, particularly after watching the initially distracting theatrical element of a film set within theatre set changes. Those who favour classic Russian epics, like the days of Doctor Zhivago, may well have envisaged this in grander, more realistic settings. Admittedly, …
