The Fault in Our Stars is carefully constructed to tear plaintively at your heartstrings. It works best not as a weepy, but as a gentle evocation of romance through the subjective perspective of teenage protagonist, Hazel Grace (Shailene Woodley). Hazel has cancer, yes, and the story is in many ways about that. It’s also about…
The notion of films adopting a “videogame aesthetic” is – or was – a common critical observation, wielded as pejorative or praise depending, seemingly, on the critic’s personal opinion of videogames. Since at least The Matrix – a film visually and conceptually indebted to contemporary videogames while inspiring the design of games to come – and even Tron before…
“The Mountain and the Viper” is a reminder that in George R.R. Martin’s unforgiving Game of Thrones universe, some things are inevitable… …bloodshed, for example. Or that whenever there’s a cursory shot of buff, shirtless men… …there’ll be a series of leering close-ups on naked women shortly afterwards. (Not that I’m especially complaining about getting…
The Trip to Italy is a hard film to dislike. Sure, your jealousy of Rob Brydon and Steve Coogan might curdle into distaste. They’re both charming fellows, talented (and affable, if you believe Brydon), but when they get to make a television series-cum-feature film that sees them traipse around the most picturesque locales in Italy,…
As a modern example of the post-Bourne action blockbuster, Tom Cruise vehicle Jack Reacher is more than adequate. It’s a sleek, streamlined piece of Hollywood filmmaking, managing to maintain interest throughout its 130 minute runtime thanks to carefully-judged pacing, clean cinematography. The narrative – a machismo-laden mystery mostly faithful to Lee Child’s novel One Shot…
Under the Skin is a challenging viewing experience. Those attending entirely off the back of “I heard Scarlett Johansson gets naked in this” will find themselves faced with a film more in tune with Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey than Species. From its opening screen of black inexplicably infiltrated by white lights and rings that…
Maleficent is studio-mandated fan fiction, a Sleeping Beauty remix with sumptuous visuals that never really provides a good reason for existing. I’ll grant that it’s the first competent execution of the post-300 “artificial live-action” aesthetic, but the narrative adjustments to the classic tale – a sympathetic villain, an excoriation of dictatorial hierarchies and a hefty…
The Cat Returns is one of those sweet, charming fairytales until all of a sudden it isn’t; like most Studio Ghibli pictures, there’s depth behind this charming, colourful animation. When Haru (Chizuru Ikewaki/Anne Hathaway) saves the life of a cat on her way home from school, she finds herself caught up in the intricacies of…
You know what you’re getting into when you watch a film with a title like Cheerleader Massacre. Bad acting is par for the course: the actors might look like the Days of Our Lives type, but their thespian ability falls short of even that mark. There’s no reason to be surprised by home-video quality cinematography…
This isn’t going to be a review of Prince Avalanche. Stop by Rotten Tomatoes and you can find a raft of those, talking about the charming atmosphere of David Gordon Green’s buddy comedy, the laidback performances of leads Paul Rudd and Emile Hirsch and the way the fire-ravaged California forest and Explosions in the Sky…
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