He’s back. And his acting isn’t any better. Not that Arnold Schwarzenegger ever took his relationship with Hollywood that seriously: the former Mr Universe, body builder and more recently politician has publically acknowledged that, with his thick accent and bulked up body, he was really little more than a comic action hero in a world of pure entertainment. The Last Stand continues the tradition, a mindless shoot-out and car chase story with a few moments of cool grace. [click to continue…]
February 2013
It won the Palme d’Or at last year’s Cannes Film Festival, scooped the European Film Awards and has been nominated for five Academy Awards – including Best screenplay, film and director. It’s also one of Michael Haneke’s most intimate and painfully truthful films – an exploration of what love means at the far end of life, a place where loss, dignity and dying dominate the everyday concerns of an elderly couple. [click to continue…]
Director Joe Wright worked with Keira Knightley on heavyweight literary films Pride & Prejudice and Atonement, and this time the two tackle Tolstoy’s doorstop-sized novel Anna Karenina. With a screenplay by Tom Stoppard, it’s a highly enigmatic adaptation for screen, Wright mixing elements of theatre, dance and circus for a sometimes exhilarating, sometimes distracting period piece about love, longing and the social mores that surround infidelity. [click to continue…]
Fans of 1970s Brit-television will no doubt remember John Thaw and Dennis Waterman in the original version of The Sweeney – a long running cops and robbers series about London’s Flying Squad, a heavy hitting branch of the Metropolitan Police that smashed doors and banged heads, arresting violent crims with classic lines like “get your trousers on son, you’re nicked”. [click to continue…]
Four years ago, Norwegian filmmaker Tommy Wirkola had some of the best fun possible with the cult hit Dead Snow, snappier than a chainsaw and a riot of bloody fun as zombie Nazis surrounded a shack full of medical students on a winter holiday. Seduced by one of the Hollywood studios, his attempt to create a new splatter fairy tale franchise with Hansel & Gretel is sadly misguided by comparison – the international stars in the cast unable to make much of a confused treatment of the Grimm Brothers’ cautionary tale. [click to continue…]
This gripping tale of how the CIA found and killed Osama bin Laden is unquestionably the work of a writer-director team at the height of their abilities. We have all lived bits of this story – through news reports and images of acts of terrorism, speeches by political leaders and clips of military action – and so it seems so familiar. Yet screenwriter Mark Boal and director Kathryn Bigalow (both also producers of the film) make this a mesmerising and intricate experience – slowly and steadily pulling together the threads of ten years of gritty undercover work, and keeping the storytelling fresh and alive with possibilities. [click to continue…]