For a man widely regarded as Britain’s best-loved living playwright, Alan Bennett sure does have a fixation with old ladies.
It’s a perception Bennett himself laments in The Lady in the Van. He claims he’d much rather be writing about spies.…
He Named Me Malala captures its subject’s achievement but misses out on the full story
What were you doing when you were seventeen? If your answer is “Taking the President of Nigeria to task over his failure to secure the return of kidnapped schoolgirls from Boko Haram”, then you must be Malala Yousafzai.
Now perhaps the most recognisable eighteen year-old on the planet, the activist and two-time Nobel laureate is now the subject this documentary from director Davis Guggenheim, which does justice to the scope of her achievements, if not the complexity of Malala herself.…
Steve Jobs is a near perfect fusion of functionality and artistry
What is the current fascination with technology entrepreneurs?
From The Social Network to AMC’s Halt and Catch Fire, key figures in the PC movement, real or imagined, have grown to legendary status in the public consciousness. Perhaps it’s because they are ambitious dreamers, mavericks who shape the way we interact with the world — by way of example, this review was drafted on an iPhone and written up on a Macbook — or perhaps because they provide an point of entrance into the digital realm, which is otherwise so hard to dramatize.…
Manglehorn is not exactly the summit of Pacino’s career but at least it’s on the slopes
If you were looking for a word to describe Al Pacino’s acting career over the past two decades chances are “understated” would not be it.
Generally regarded as one of the finest actors ever to have graced the silver screen, it nevertheless seems sadly fitting that his only Oscar win came as the blind, bellowing Frank Slade in Scent of a Woman.…
Spectre summons up the ghosts of the Bond franchise to diminishing returns
The evocatively titled Spectre, 24th installment of the Bond franchise, is a film steeped in continuity but light on originality.
While capitalizing on the back-story laid down for Daniel Craig’s super-spy in Casino Royale, Quantum of Solace, and Skyfall – the first incarnation of the character to have much by the way of continuity – it finds the time, over the course of 138 minutes – which also makes Spectre the longest film in the franchise – to riff on nearly every previous episode from the series’ 53 year history.…
Rubble Kings: a Bronx story of hope amid blood and strife
“Warriors, come out to play-yay.”
You’ve know David Patrick Kelly’s sing-song mockery, even if you’ve never seen the film it’s in. With its gritty, lurid depiction of costumed gang warfare in ‘70s New York, The Warriors seems like a film born for cult stardom.…
Mr. Holmes puts the “To bee” in the legendary detective’s last gasp
Based on Mitch Cullin’s A Slight Trick of the Mind, the title of this adaptation suggests its immediate desire for respectability.
After all Mr. Holmes was part financed by BBC Films and stars no less august a figure than Sir Ian McKellen.…
Cooties is a indie zombie flick that won’t give you the lurgy
There are many opportunities for dread offered by the zombie genre. The shambling, increasingly putrefying undead. The threat of losing one’s own humanity. Cooties introduces in a new one: chickens.
A new horror comedy from first-time directors Jonathan Milott and Cary Murnion, Cooties the gruesome passage from battery farming to school meal via flies, maggots, and pink sludge.…
Crimson Peak: the height of Gothic thrills and chills?
With Crimson Peak, beloved horror director Guillermo Del Toro sets about creating another period ghost story.
While his previous work of course includes The Devil’s Backbone and Pan’s Labyrinth, both of which are set in and around the Spanish Civil War, this entry on his filmography takes its cues more from classic Gothic melodrama.…
Office is a lavish but dull workplace musical
They’re the places that, for better or worse, occupy (or rather we occupy for) most of our waking hours.
It’s perhaps surprising then that the common-or-garden workplace doesn’t feature more prominently in cinema. Sure, there’s the bureaucracy-bound comedy of Office Space, the coked-up sexcapades of Wolf of Wall Street, or the Kafkaesque delirium of Brazil — but they’re rarely characterised as productive working environments.…