ScreenWize

Pete Postlethwaite wants to tell a story, an Australian story.

Filed Under: Interviews by Simon
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The packed, mostly teen crowd eagerly applauded the slow parting of the red curtain, such was their excited anticipation. But once the lights fell dim and the stark cold reality of Harry’s world was there on the screen, there was barely a sound. And it stayed that way throughout, apart from a couple of laughs […]

Filed Under: Reviews by Simon
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He’s not pretty and he’s certainly not subtle, but Michael Moore knows how to ask a loaded question. After the global success of his documentaries Bowling for Columbine and Fahrenheit 9/11, the new target for Moore’s unusual brand of polemic is America’s health care system and the private insurance companies that dominate its landscape. The […]

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The scariest thing about this film is the memory that it was originally released fourteen years ago in 1993. It was a smash hit on theatrical release – both with audiences and critics - and for many years has been much loved on DVD. Now there’s a very good reason to go back to the […]

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There’s action, blood and frantic fighting, with cars and bikes attracted to plate glass like mad moths to the candle. Yet there’s nothing here to hold it all together – certainly no coherent story or style, nor enough charisma from Jason Statham who once again struggles with a leading role. Only Jet Li can walk […]

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When 37 year-old Simon Wiesenthal walked out through the gates of the Mauthausen concentration camp in 1945 he weighed less than 45 kilograms. He had lost nearly every member of his family in the genocidal violence that first the Soviets and then the Nazis perpetrated as they occupied his hometown – now part of the […]

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With the Harry Potter franchise heading towards its conclusion, The Seeker looks set to capture that young teenage audience that is slowly growing and being left behind in its wake. It’s another reluctant young boy versus evil dark lord tale and is based on the second of a series of five children’s novels written by […]

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David Cronenberg is obsessed with the body and the idea of infection. He’s made unconventional horror and science-fiction films like Scanners, The Fly, and Dead Ringers, all edgy and intelligent, but frequently grisly and shocking, and for many years he was known as the bad boy of Canadian cinema. His latest film, Eastern Promises is […]

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Woah! What a ride is this film – a Russian fantasy action thriller of epic dimensions and outrageous style, guaranteed to stun you with its impossibly imaginative special effects one moment and confound you with its bricolage banality the next. It’s an extraordinarily playful and inventive work – even the subtitles perform wonderful animated […]

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If you liked ‘The 40 Year Old Virgin’ (and plenty of people did) then you know what you’re in for with writer/director Jude Apatow’s second feature Knocked Up. It’s the dialogue-based Hollywood world of likeable losers and toilet-bowl humour, sprinkled through liberally with middle-American honesty and grunge-free freshness. If this were food, it would be […]

Filed Under: Reviews by Simon
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