Month: September 2015

Rosewater is a bit too floral and watery for its own good

 

As the directorial debut of a man better known for political satire than drama – The Daily Show’s long-time, recently abdicated host Jon Stewart – Rosewater is a suitably timely work of dramatized non-fiction.

It tells the story of Maziar Bahari, an Iranian-Canadian journalist imprisoned by the Ahmadinejad regime for 118 days following Iran’s controversial 2009 elections.…

Legend is a monument to Tom Hardy’s acting talents

 

Looking at the poster for Brian Helgeland’s latest film, Legend, you’d be forgiven you were suffering from (a slightly inexact) double vision.

The names are the same, but the men below them aren’t. Tom Hardy stars along Tom Hardy (himself) as Reginald and Ronald Kray, the notorious twins who held Sixties London in a grip of both fear and awe.…

The Visit makes for a sublime, ridiculous semi-return-to-form for M. Night Shyamalan

 

On a sliding cinematic scale from Christopher Nolan to Michael Bay, M. Night Shyamalan falls somewhere in the middle.

Equal parts auteur and hack, his output ranges from the sublime — The Sixth Sense, Unbreakable — to the ridiculous — The Happening, The Last Airbender.…

Z For Zachariah gets a B+ in the post-apocalypse stakes

 

Craig Zobel’s Z For Zachariah may have the same PG-13 age rating as the bloodless Terminator Genisys1, but there’s more to this adaptation of Robert C. O’Brien’s classic junior sci-fi than just The Road for kiddies.

While Cormac McCarthy’s famously grim work of fiction is structured around, well, the road, Z For Zachariah concerns staying put.…