“Man proposes to sex doll”. You can just see the headline tucked away in the corner of the World section of your local newspaper - the obligatory quirky news item from some rural corner of the USA. Only in America. The amazing thing about Craig Gillespie’s Lars and the Real Girl is that the love affair it presents between a man and an inanimate object almost starts to make sense. Read the rest of this entry »

Beautifully shot but brutal. I’m not sure Nick Cave’s screenplay successfully tells the story he wanted it to - many of the characters’ actions and motivations seem unfathomable, and ultimately you wonder what the point is supposed to be. Read the rest of this entry »

A beautifully shot film in a gorgeous location, this could have been a really great film but for a bit of a sloppy plot and a pretty sub-standard supporting cast. Nolte is very good as the rough-diamond heroin-junkie ex(?)-thief, and his character is nicely developed, but the heist plot is rather unconvincing.

Everyone is raving about Daniel Day-Lewis in this and the hype is more than justified - he is stupendously good. The entire film hangs off the strength of his performance, and that is both a good thing and a bad thing. Read the rest of this entry »

If you like intelligent, intricate and detailed plots that you have to think hard to make sense of, you’ll enjoy this film. Very long but well paced Read the rest of this entry »

You know what it’s like when you start a new job. You don’t really know anyone, so you tend to hold back in your interactions until you know the best way to get through to all these new individuals. Meanwhile, your new boss is probably trying to mould you into his pre-formed vision, and you’re still finding your way around the new office, so no matter how keen you are to do something great, it all kind of feels forced and out of reach. It must have been the same for Alfred Hitchcock when he made the move from his position as the pre-eminent filmmaker in England and started work on the bigger stage of Hollywood. The Paradine Case is one of his first films for an American studio, and it represents a strange transition point between the exuberant brilliance of his English films and the form-bending mastery of his greatest Hollywood films. Read the rest of this entry »

Powerful drama about an American tourist who tried to smuggle hash out of Turkey and was sent to prison to endure terrible hardships.

I have to say, I don’t quite understand the controversy about this film - at least not in terms of it being a piece of propaganda about how bad Turkey and all Turkish people are. Read the rest of this entry »