Reviews
Let our critics help you save those precious two hours you’ll never get back. And make sure you let them have it in the comments if you disagree with their take!
The Beast of Burden
I am not one for “fantasy dramas.” I indulged in enough fantasy when I was younger and have enough drama in my life now to be instinctively repelled by either genre. It was probably for this reason that I waited until Film Society held a screening of Beasts of a Southern Wild before...
The Most Deserving, and Most Likely to Take Home Gold
So here we are again, the 85th Academy Awards are days away and it’s about time we weigh up once and for all who will go home several golden pounds heavier and who really deserves the little golden man. I have painstakingly watched almost every film nominated in every category and paid close attention to...
Django Unchained
There is a dark magic that pervades much of Tarantino’s work; a killer combination of witty riffs, circular dialogues and continually rising tension that is eventually released by gunfire, brutality and sadism. Tarantino has become a master of shocking audiences, holding them down in their seats as they writhe and pine for escape but at...
Finding the Silver Lining
All children are warned growing up that it is not right to make fun of the kids who are different. And so, with this ingrained into the human psyche, there is an understandably fine line for a director to tread when making a comedy about those who are mentally ill. The subject matter demands more...
2012′s Best Picks
After the shipwreck that was 2011 cinema, there’s been more than enough to celebrate this year. Last year I struggled to pull together five movies that I considered worthy of accolade (you can see which films eventually made it here). But this time around I was faced with at least 16 films that could quite...
Living the Pi Life
A brief glance down the list of Ang Lee’s past works will leave most nodding their head in appreciation or admiration. His diverse resumé includes films that range from tales of Chinese war-time espionage (Lust, Caution) to an exposition of Victorian England in the film adaption of Jane Austen’s Sense and Sensibility. As if that cultural...
Looping Back and Forth
Time travel just doesn’t do it for me. The scientific holes in the concept have been made obvious in movies for decades. Take, for example, if you went back in time, fell in love with a smoking hot Ukrainian woman (if those even exist), married her and then realised that she would have eventually turned...
The Hobbit: An Expected Ordeal
Few can discredit the brilliance of Peter Jackson’s Lord of the Rings trilogy. His imagination and devotion to bringing JRR Tolkien’s Middle-Earth to the screen is unparalleled and his faithfulness to the original novels has been widely extolled the world over. And so, when Jackson announced that he was going to release The Hobbit some 9 years...
Skyfall
It has been 50 years since Dr No was released in 1962. Back then, the filmmakers had $1,1 million to play with and Sean Connery was paid a cool $100,000. Inflation aside, Skyfall’s budget of a reported $200 million and Daniel Craig’s tasteful salary of $17 million show how the franchise has risen in popularity, stature and...
Pulled Apart At The Seams
Cloud Atlas is a refreshingly ambitious project. Released amidst a plethora of what-you-see-is-what-you-get titles such as Taken 2, Paranormal Activity 4 and Hotel Transylvania, it certainly cannot be faulted for it’s individuality, creativity and enterprise. It undertakes to weave six stories that take place across continents and time, stretching back to the ancient past through to the distant...
Chronicle
All kids dream of having superpowers. I have hundreds photos of myself dressed up as Superman, Batman and (one time) Wonder-Woman at children’s parties that I attended when I was young. I would run around the gardens pretending to fly and stare at plants in an effort to zap them with my laser vision. Not...
The Bourne Legacy: To die for?
A follow-up on the series of superb action-thrillers constituting the Bourne Trilogy – the fourth instalment had a lot to live up to. Anyone who has seen a prior Bourne film would testify to its gripping storyline, its excellent action scenes and the general likeability of its protagonist – Jason Bourne (Matt Damon). Going...
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