Reviews in a nutshell
The dilemma facing two sets of parents in Japanese writer-director Hirokazu Kore-eda’s latest taut drama, Like Father, Like Son (Jury Prize winner at Cannes 2013), is the stuff of nightmares for any family: What if your child was not your biological child, and you knew where your real flesh and blood was – would you …
A fitting film to open this year’s BFI London Film Festival, Captain Phillips holds one of Tom Hanks’s finest and most raw performances to date. Coupled with Green Zone and United 93 director Paul Greengrass’s snappy direction and multitude of camera angles to capture every moment and reaction, the pace never eases and the intensity …
The violent, sexist silliness that is Robert Rodriguez’s Mexploitation action saga Machete, starring Danny Trejo as ex-Federale assassin Machete, is back with another equally violent, sexist, silly sequel. If you enjoyed the 2010 film, it’s much the same gleeful juvenile B-movie humour the second time around. In fact, according to Rodriguez, this film was not …
It’s safe to say, there would be little of interest to Kevin Macdonald’s (The Last King of Scotland) How I Live Now if it weren’t for the ever-beguiling Saoirse Ronan at the helm. Perhaps he knows this as the production compliments her every thought and expression in this apocalyptic story set in the not-too-distant-future in …
Some thrillers need more than a touch of style and an attractive cast; they need a substantial storyline. It’s not that Runner Runner doesn’t initially promise something meaty to bite on and the chance to watch it all play out in sunny Costa Rica, it’s just things fizzle out and become mediocre when we’ve soon …
Coming third in the People’s Choice Award at Toronto International Film Festival this year, Canadian director Denis Villeneuve and Contraband writer Aaron Guzikowski’s dark thriller Prisoners, starring Hugh Jackman and Jake Gyllenhaal, packs a blood-chilling and sickening punch for any parent. It also questions just how far you would go to find a missing loved …
If you were a tad disappointed with John McClane’s escapades in the latest Die Hard film (A Good Day To Die, 2013), fear not, Independence Day director Roland Emmerich gives you a younger version of Willis in Channing Tatum as white-vest-wearing, gun-totting John Cale (even the name sounds similar) in White House Down. This is …
You don’t have to appreciate the world of motoring racing to enjoy Ron Howard’s latest adrenaline-fuelled film, Rush. It’s more about an intriguing character stand off, much like the director’s 2008 film, Frost/Nixon that pitted the recently departed British interviewer against an American President. In all fairness, there are the angry buzzing sounds of the …
Do not go into this film on an empty stomach, you will be distracted by the dishes on display. Go into it thinking part self-exposition story, part Indian cuisine lesson, on behalf of the writer-director Amit Gupta (who gave us wartime drama Resistance back in 2011). Gupta’s second feature, Jadoo has a little too many …
