February 2012
3 posts
5 tags
Interview With A Vampire: The Vampire Chronicles...
Over-acted melodramatic nonsense of the highest order from the all-star cast of Pitt, Cruise, Slater, Banderas, Newton (Thandie), am I forgetting anyone? Oh yes, also a young Kirsten Dunst and a cameo from Only Fools and Horses’ Trigger. The action centres around the memoirs of Louis, a 200-year old vampire (Pitt), who is telling his life story to a modern-day reporter (Christian Slater)....
5 tags
Buried (2010) - 80%
Claustrophic thriller starring Ryan Renolds as Paul Conroy, a truck driver kidnapped in Iraq and buried alive with only a mobile phone, a lighter and a pencil with which to survive. Utterly gripping and moving in equal measures, a lot has been made of director Rodrigo Cortés’ achievement of filling 90 minutes with just one man in a box. And boy does he achieve it; even without the use of...
9 tags
Death Becomes Her (1992) - 68%
Robert Zemekis, known for his penchant for high concept and innovative special effects, pulls another corker out of the bag. Starring the excellent trio of Meryl Streep, Goldie Hawn and Bruce Willis is Death Becomes Her, a dark “screwball” comedy exploring the morals and practicalities of eternal youth and immortality.
When forty-something actress Madeline Ashton (Streep) finds...
January 2012
1 post
7 tags
The History Boys (2006) - 83%
Nicholas Hytners’ screen adaptation of Alan Bennett’s ‘The History Boys’, containing all of the stage show’s original cast, is a magnificent film of undoubted depth. It concerns the fortunes of a group of charmingly gifted schoolboys from Yorkshire and their efforts to get into Oxford, and deals in academia, sexuality, causality and love. Stirring performances from,...
December 2011
5 posts
8 tags
The Last Supper (1995) - 76%
It’s 1909 in Austria, and you meet a young artist named Adolf. Even though he has done nothing wrong yet - hasn’t formed any Reichs, hasn’t killed anyone - would you kill him? What if it’s nothing quite so bad as Hitler, but perhaps this person is just a bigot; just somebody with abhorrant views based on hatred and fear. If you knew the world would be a better place...
8 tags
The Guard (2011) - 78%
Usually when we think of trans-Atlantic film collaborations, we perhaps understandably assume English-American. Here from John Michael McDonagh (the brother of Martin, writer of In Bruges), comes The Guard: a massively cross-cultural delight which brings FBI agent Wendell Everet (Don Cheadle) into the small Irish town jurisdiction of loveable misanthrope Sergeant O’Doyle (Brendan Gleeson)....
7 tags
Black Mirror "15 Million Merits" (2011) - 74%
Part two of the Charlie Brooker-penned Black Mirror trilogy is “15 Million Merits”, a dystopian satire concerning our unhealthy relationship with celebrity - and most pertinently our fascination with the X Factor style judge-contestant panel shows. The show is set in an “alternative” reality (bit of satire of my own there) where the only real occupation is to earn merits...
7 tags
Black Mirror "The National Anthem" (2011) - 88%
Although technically not a film, this hour-long special was the most genuinely gripping, engaging and exciting piece of television I have seen in years. Written and executively produced by the always brilliant Charlie Brooker, Black Mirror part 1 “The National Anthem” concerns a kidnapped people’s princess and a prime minister who has to, well, he has to make sacrifices to save...
5 tags
Sideways (2004) - 82%
This charming, superbly-written gentle comedy snuck up on me a little bit, despite the Oscar. Starring Paul Giamatti as Miles, a frustrated novelist, and his soon-to-be married friend Jack (Thomas Haden Church), Sideways is a real gem which takes in the glories of America’s wine country and the pitfalls of close friendships.
Underpinning the film is the excellent performance of Giamatti....
November 2011
3 posts
7 tags
The Full Monty (1997) - 78%
Set against the backdrop of a dreary Sheffield suffering the effects of a recession comes The Full Monty – South Yorkshire’s answer to Saturday Night Fever. You know the set-up: led by Robert Carlyle, a group of factory workers-cum-dole scroungers put together a strip show for the local women to raise a bit of cash; and along the way find friendship, strength and redemption. It’s a comedy at its...
7 tags
John Carpenter's The Thing (1982) - 88%
Masterfully gripping sci-fi thriller from the frequently brilliant John Carpenter. Completely isolated due to faulty radio equipment and a heavy winter, the U.S. Antarctica Research Program team come across a deadly creature from another planet. They have artillery, and they have man power. The only problem is that the creature they’re up against could be any one of them. It is a...
8 tags
Bright Young Things (2003) - 70%
A dazzling directorial debut from none other than the monolith that is Stephen Fry. Based around Evelyn Waugh’s Vile Bodies, Stephen manages to knit together a fine young cast, an appreciation of everything that the Waugh image entails, and a keen eye for aesthetic beauty. Unsurprisingly from such an admirer, and in some ways product, of the carefree but passionate idle classes of the...
July 2011
2 posts
8 tags
Peter's Friends (1992) - 83%
A touching and very English ‘buddy movie’, playing on the depths of chemistry already available amongst a cast comprising four of the enduring Cambridge Footlights Revue, The Cellar Tapes - Stephen Fry, Hugh Laurie, Emma Thompson, and Tony Slattery; not to mention stand-out performances from writer/directors Kenneth Branagh and Rita Rudner. And Imelda Staunton. So stellar...
8 tags
Rudo y Cursi (2009) - 70%
If you hated Goal and it’s bastard sequels, then this might well be the footballing film for you. Eschewing the inevitably awful CGI and terrible super-impositions - not to mention painful ‘banter’ and entirely unsympathetic characters - Rudo y Cursi opts to provide an actual story complete with jokes and a deeper understanding of the beautiful game.
Rudo and Cursi are perhaps...
June 2011
4 posts
7 tags
Cemetery Junction (2010) - 95%
From the outset I should say that I love everything that Ricky Gervais and Stephen Merchant have collaborated on, and this is my all-time favourite film. Please don’t expect this to be a wholly sensible post, because I don’t think I can be wholly sensible when it comes to this film.
Cemetery Junction is a film about stifled ambitions and the suffocation of being young in a...
3 tags
10th post
Ok, so I’ve written a whole NINE recommendations. Imagine that. So, upon completing such a mammoth task, here is a very quick note on why I would start this, superficially, utterly pointless and annoyingly self-indulgent alter-blog.
As the URL suggests, this was originally going to be a sort of film review blog (more on why even this seemed necessary later), but very quickly I realised that...
6 tags
One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest (1975) - 81%
Up until now this blog has largely been aimed at reasonably obscure films, but I would like to recommend to those unfamiliar a work of pathos and comedy in (almost) equal measure, and one rarely surpassed since. Joining Jack Nicholson in One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest is an outstanding supporting cast, many of whom were similarly on the verge of being propelled into much greater heights,...
8 tags
The Squid and the Whale (2005) - 77%
A vaguely twee illustration of the trials and tribulations of adolescence, set in and amongst the divorce of two warring parents. When writer Bernard (Jeff Daniels, Dumb and Dumber. Yeah, I said it) separates from his now more successful writer wife Joan (Lauren Linney, Truman Show), the relationship between them and their two sons becomes all the more fractious and unpredictable. A well...
May 2011
7 posts
7 tags
Hvordan vi slipper af med de andre (How We Get Rid...
A darkly humorous vision of a Denmark in which one curious official discovers that a mere 20% of the Danish population is responsible for 60% of the welfare spent. Seeing this as an unacceptable drain on society, moves are made to concoct criteria by which citizens can be deemed worthy, or indeed unworthy, of continued existence. If you meet more than one of the criteria set, and you can’t...
7 tags
Spread (2009) - 60%
Nikki (Ashton Kutcher) is a pretty boy in LA intent on living the good life. He’s equally intent however, on not getting a job. Instead, he finds young women to have sex with - and therefore a bed in which to sleep - and older women to sponge off. His studied craft of seduction and charm lands him in the sexy providing care of Samantha (Anne Heche) and for a while his life is sweet, but...
8 tags
The Road (2009) - 70%
A powerfully bleak, post-apocalyptic portrayal of one man and his son, the latter born into a world of scavenging, cannibals and heartache.
There are excellent performances across the board, including - and perhaps even especially - the young Kodi Smit-McPhee (who plays the unnamed son of Viggo Mortensen’s similarly unnamed character); all of whom fulfill a role in illustrating the line...
8 tags
JCVD (2008) - 80%
Jean-Claude Van Damme is at a turning point in his life. Making shitty films just to meet his alimony payments, he decides to return to his native Brussels and begin again. Things don’t run quite so smoothly however, as he is thrust into an armed robbery and hostage situation - exactly the kind of scenario he has encountered so many times, but this time the gun to his head isn’t...
7 tags
Super High Me (2007) - 70%
This 2007 documentary film is a pot-based take on the 2004 documentary Supersize Me, and follows a perpetually stoned Doug Benson for thirty days. However, he must first undergo 30 weedless days, in order to gain some comparison on various biological and psychometric tests.
It’s a fun ride through 60 days of a stand-up comedian, and various other comedians along the way, and really...
6 tags
Epic Movie - (2007) - N/A
Why didn’t they just re-release their other piece of shit, Date Movie? Or any Wayans brothers film? I just can’t understand who likes this jizz. Surely even thick 7 year olds are more discerning than this?
It grossed $86million.
No rating necessary
Edit: Just referenced Liberace. Who the fuck would get that reference and enjoy this film?
P.S. This is not strictly a recommendation, unless you...
7 tags
Tyson - The Movie (2009) - 75%
A fascinating, unflinchingly honest documentary film about the legendary boxer Mike Tyson. Over an 80-minute monologue, interspersed with archive footage, we find out more than you might expect straight from the tiger’s mouth.
From his Brooklyn childhood, to meeting his mentor and father figure Constantine D’Amato while only a young teen, to unifying the world heavyweights titles, and then on...