PODCAST: In the Heights [Movie RobCast]

Episode 118 sees the Robs out and about on a gloriously sunny Sunday afternoon.

In the shadow of the Tate Modern they swap thoughts on In the Heights, Lin-Manuel Miranda’s vibrant musical about life in the South American community of Washington Heights.…

PODCAST: Cats (2019) [Movie RobCast]

Episode 78 of The Movie RobCast is proof that bad publicity can be as effective as positive hype.

Rob Daniel had no intention of seeing Tom Hooper’s adaptation of Andrew Lloyd Webber’s hit stage show. And then the negative reviews arrived.

CINEMATIC GRAB-BAG: Beauty And The Beast (2017) & Get Out

Beauty And The Beast (2017)

Obligatory “tale as old as time” reference.

Disney’s original Beauty And The Beast holds a special place in my heart: it was, according to my parents, the first film I ever saw in the cinema; aged just eighteen months.

LFF Day 3: La La Land & Manchester By The Sea

Rhapsodic Hollywood dreaming and glacial Massachusetts misery on London Film Festival Day 3.

 

Ryan Gosling and Emma Stone soar in Damien Chazelle’s radiant love letter to the Golden Age of Hollywood musicals and those who dare to follow their dreams in the City of Angels.

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.…

Jersey Boys hits the jukebox but misses the stage

Jukebox musicals are a dime a dozen, much like the machine from which they get their name.

Usually focusing on a single band or era of music, they used tried-and-tested narratives as a framework for the hits. Whether it’s Jim Broadbent smarming his way through “Like A Virgin” in Moulin Rouge or Meryl Streep’s recriminatory “Winner Takes it All” in Mama Mia!

Saving Mr. Banks is self-serving nostalgia from the House of Mouse… It’s also great, hugely feelgood fun

 

Try to think of an occasion on which you’ve seen the celebrated Mr. Walt Disney portrayed in film.

Simply put, you can’t: the Disney corporation has fiercely guarded the image of their founder, almost as fiercely as their iconic mascot.…

Les Miserables: Faith, grace, mercy, and music (and getting a head in Revolutionary France)

 

You know that sometimes you leave the cinema struggling to articulate exactly what it is that you’ve just seen?

Those are my feelings regarding Les Miserables, the adaptation of Cameron Mackintosh’s blockbuster musical, directed by Tom Hooper (The King’s Speech).…