Reviews in a nutshell
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 …
Man On Wire and Project Nim director James Marsh has aptly brought Tom Bradby’s chilling thriller to the big screen, with the help of the author who turns screenwriter. The combination of a documentary-based filmmaker and an author with the ability to convey the compelling nature of the Troubles in one intimate scenario is the …
Brain-at-door. Big-dumb-entertainment-at-the-ready: you just can’t take this sequel seriously. If you do, shame on you as you miss out on one of this year’s silliest, pumped-up homage’s to 80s/90s action-hero flicks going. If we say there is one scene that sees former Terminator Schwarzenegger walking in defiant formation next to Die Hard Willis and Rambo …
The Greengrass-Damon brigade was always on the ready to sniff at this latest film in the Bourne franchise and dismiss – as they see it – its dissemination of the personal path to self-preservation and discovery that Jason Bourne was determined to follow. The fact is Legacy is about the wider picture: just how wide …
Gotham City is once more set as an unsettling place to live with its future in the balance, allowing visionary film-maker Christopher Nolan the opportunity to propel us into the depths of human despair and depravity in his latest dark saga, The Dark Knight Rises (TDKR). But with this film, which completes the story arc …
General consensus is Marc Webb (of 500 Days of Summer fame) has delivered a reboot of the original Spider-Man (2002). That much is true. However, he has taken a lot of the wit and sensitivity of his hit rom-com and added it to the superhero genre, effectively making a superhero reboot should appeal to a …
Writer-director Bobcat Goldthwait – he of whiny, high-pitched and inane Zed of Police Academy fame – does not hold back on trampling taboos in his aim to despair of the contemporary demise of social interaction and insatiable appetite for gossipy tripe. As in World’s Greatest Dad (2009), he makes you sit up and pay attention …
The title of Julia Leigh’s novel is a very appropriate double entendre for the main character of this haunting film adaptation, representing more one man’s fascinating and harrowing journey of self discovery that forever challenges expectations than the literal sense and job title of the protagonist. Director Daniel Nettheim only had one actor in mind …
