Starring Ben Stiller, Rhys Ifans, Greta Gerwig
Directed by Noah Baumbach
★★★★
Anyone who has heard word of mouth about Greenberg will probably have heard that it marks Ben Stiller’s first ‘serious role’. This is not entirely the case but while he hasn’t quite done a Robin Williams or Jim Carrey-esque U-turn, what he has done is give the best and most interesting performance of his career. Continue reading Greenberg
Starring Jimmy Page, The Edge, Jack White
Directed by Davis Guggenheim
★★★★
As a guitarist myself, I might not be considered the most impartial person to review Davis Guggenheim’s frank, honest and highly entertaining guitar documentary, It Might Get Loud. I will however, do my best to inform from a non primary as well as primary demographical point of view; indeed, this should be the appropriate stance to take because it is how well this balance is kept throughout that ultimately makes this film so enjoyable. Continue reading It Might get Loud
Directed by Jean Pierre Jeunet
Starring Danny Boon, André Dossollier, Nicholas Marie, Jean Pierre Marielle, Yolande Moreau
★★★
Jeunet is back! I for one (and a good number of others I expect) experience a certain rush of excitement upon hearing the news that Jean Pierre Jeunet is to release a new film. Aside from being an avid fan of the man, I guess it’s got something to do with the length of time between his projects and the fact that until he has a film out, there is not going to be anything quite like one in the interim. Continue reading MICMACS
Starring Katie Featherston, Micah Sloat
Directed by Oren Peli
★★★
2009 has shown itself to be a promising year for the horror film; after the Asian wave of originality had just about run dry and Hollywood’s best answer was to remake nearly all of those films one by one and scene by scene, the future was looking decidedly bleak. Then earlier this year hopes were significantly raised with the arrival of superb Swedish vampire yarn, Let the Right One. Now Paranormal Activity ensures that the year also closes on a reasuring high. Continue reading Paranormal Activity
Starring Colin Firth, Mathew Goode, Julianne Moore, Nicholas Hoult
Directed by Tom Ford
Establishing yourself as one of the world’s most elite fashion designers and revolutionising the House of Gucci en-route would be more than enough you would expect, to grant one the utmost credit in their profession. Continue reading A Single Man
Starring Christian Friedel, Leonie Benesch, Ulrich Tukur, Ursina Lardi, Burghart Klaussner, Steffi Kuhnert
Directed by Michael Haneke
★★★★
Michael Haneke makes films that make you meditate hard on their subject matter; indeed, some would say that they demand it. Dark and uncomfortable themes were explicitly dealt with in The Piano Teacher and Funny Games and to a degree The White Ribbon is not much different. It is the number of small, subtle differences however, that make this his most accomplished work to date. Continue reading The White Ribbon
Starring Bradley Cooper, Zach Galifianakis, Ed Helms
Directed by Todd Philips
★★★
With such a vast amount of caper themed comedies released over the past 30 years or so, it’s a nice and rare thing to get one that can stand on its own. With such a ‘comedy by numbers’ format the scope for originality has at this stage, run very thin.
The sub genre really hit its peak during the 1980’s; most notably with the string of successful college caper movies by National Lampoons and John Hughes. The latter truly setting the bar for all to reach with Ferris Bueller’s Day Off in 1986. Continue reading The Hangover
Starring Christian Bale, Sam Worthington, Bryce Dallas Howard,
Helena Bonham Carter, Anton Yelchin, Michael Ironside
Directed by Mc G
★★★
It’s been 25 years since James Cameron first introduced us to a cold, calculating cyborg from the future with an iconic catchphrase, as well as giving us a fresh thinking Sci-Fi Thriller in Terminator. Continue reading Terminator Salvation
Starring Diego Luna, Gael Garcia Bernal, Francella Guillermo
Directed by Carlos Cuarón
★★★★
It’s been a relatively long and steadily successful career road for Diego Luna and Gael Garcia Bernal. Having made their arrival firmly known in Alfonso Cuarón’s excellent Y tu mama tambien in 2004, they have individually made their names known, starring in a number of well received films at home in Mexico as well as some very successful Hollywood productions; Luna co starred with Tom Hanks in Stephen Spielberg’s The Terminal and last year he played a substantial role opposite Sean Penn in Gus Van Sant’s Oscar winning Milk. Garcia Bernal received notable interest after playing Che Guevara – for the second time – in the acclaimed Motorcycle Diaries. Since then He has starred in Michel Gondry’s The Science of Sleep as well as Alejandro González Iñárritu’s multi Oscar nominated Babel. Continue reading Rudo & Cursi
(Lat Den Ratte Komma In)
Directed by Thomas Alfredson
Starring Kare Hedebrant, Lina Leandersson
★★★★
I’ll begin with a personal claim that many may find haste and irrational; there are two stories you need to know regarding the vampire myth; one is Bram Stoker’s Dracula, and the other is John Ajvide Lindqvist’s Let the Right One In. I base this claim on the fact that upon seeing this superb film adaptation of the latter book, I have not known the vampire myth to be so poetically and emotionally enacted since the former masterpiece, which to many, is the very origin of the modern vampire yarn. Continue reading Let the Right One In (Lat Den Ratte Komma In)