What’s become of Liam Neeson?
The aquiline Northern Irishman, best known for the likes Schindler’s List, Michael Collins, and Kinsey, became an unlikely action hero when, at the age of fifty-six, he starred in the Luc Besson-produced Taken.…
Category: Reviews
In Order of Disappearance: worth getting lost in the snow for?
Known though they are for their bleak crime dramas, the Nords aren’t particularly renowned for their sense of humor.
It’s only half surprising then that Hans Petter Moland’s In Order of Disappearance is both very, very bleak and very funny.…
The Guest is worth leaving home for
David Collins, Dan Stevens’ character in Adam Wingard’s new thriller, The Guest, would be about as far removed as you can image from Matthew Crawley, the agreeable young gentleman he played in Downton Abbey.
Well, apart from the issues of manners: David is faultlessly polite, overflowing with “Sirs” and “Ma’ams”, even while bringing destruction down upon the heads of the Peterson clan.…
As Above, So Below ends up smack in the middle
The Catacombs of Paris contain the remains of more than six million people.
Consisting of 200 miles of underground tunnel, much of it uncharted, to get lost down there, to lose your flashlight or to run out of water is to die.…
Night Moves is dead in the water
On first glance, you’d be forgiven for thinking you’d seen Night Moves before.
A tale of ambitious eco-terrorists directed by a well-respected, if relatively little-known indie director, featuring an emotionally guarded lead, a maturing young actress, and a Scandinavian-sounding “leader”.…
Sin City: A Dame to Kill For shows a franchise that should have stayed buried
Hollywood is usually pretty quick off the bat on commissioning sequels – often a picture’s barely made it into cinemas before a follow-up’s been green-lit – but every now and then they leave us twiddling our thumbs.
It’s been nine years since Robert Rodriguez and Frank Miller’s hyper-visual, hyper-violent Sin City made its way onto our screens, long enough that even the most ardent fan had given up hope of a second installment.…
A Most Wanted Man is a fitting elegy to a tremendous talent (RIP, Phillip Seymour Hoffman)
Anton Corbijn’s A Most Wanted Man has the distinction of being not only the first John Le Carré adaptation to reach our screens since Tomas Alfredson’s critically acclaimed Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy back in 2011, but also the last leading role of Phillip Seymour Hoffman, who passed away back in February.
…Get On Up proves there’s still some soul in the music biopic
For a brief time in the mid 2000s, the ’50s-60s musician biopic was the genre du jour.
The life stories of Johnny Cash and Ray Charles both hit the big screen in little over twelve months; the abstracted travails of Bob Dylan reached us two years later in the form of I’m Not There.…
Guardians of the Galaxy could be a brave new world for Marvel
Having come to define the superhero genre, after nine films and six years, Marvel has finally dared to go a little weird.
While there’s a definite built-in audience for the likes of Iron Man and Captain America, the Guardians of the Galaxy are relative unknowns.…
Hercules (2014) may not be the feat of filmmaking you’re hoping for
With Biblical epics are back in vogue thanks to Aronfosky’s Noah, Hollywood have now once more to the rich vein of Greek mythology.
With a physically exemplary Hercules – and more, a bankable star – in the form of the 6’4″, 240lb Dwayne Johnson, it seems almost inevitable that Olympus’ favourite son would be making his way back to the big screen.…