If you’re working with great material, what else do you need to do as a director other than recruit the right actors and shoot it well? Although Roman Polanski won’t blow your mind with a radical re-imagining of Oliver Twist, he will draw you in to savour the richness of Charles Dickens’ classic story so effortlessly that you might not even notice how brilliantly skillful a film-maker he really is. Read the rest of this entry »

Ah, the American Dream! Where would Hollywood be without it? Or where would the American Dream be without Hollywood? For surely, the old rags to riches fairy tale that has been bread and butter to the industry since its beginnings plays an important propaganda role to ensure that Americans know how lucky they are to live in the land of opportunity. But Gabriele Muccino’s film of Chris Gardner’s memoir keeps the hyperbole to a minimum to ensure that it comes across as a story from the real America, where opportunity exists but sometimes you have to work like a mofo to make it happen, and no one makes it easy for you. Read the rest of this entry »

Watching The Darjeeling Limited is a little bit like looking at a fish tank. There’s a lot of colour. Everything is sharply defined and beautifully presented in its place. If you watch the fish for long enough, you start to get a feel for how they act and react to different things. But ultimately, it’s a pretty alien world that you can enjoy from the outside but not fully empathise with. Read the rest of this entry »

With a title like Flags of Our Fathers, you’d expect this World War II flick to be a chest-thumping glorification of American valour and sacrifice. And you’d be right… kind of. But this is no Saving Private Ryan. Although it certainly commemorates the bravery and tribulations of American soldiers, Clint Eastwood’s film is very specific about where the audience’s admiration should be focused: the individual soldiers themselves – not the political and military machine that threw them into combat. Read the rest of this entry »

It’s the age old moral conundrum. Would you give up your own life so that many others could live? And no one can ever answer it for sure, because the concept is so abstract. The Counterfeiters portrays a very specific instance of a group of people who were faced with that exact dilemma in harsh reality. Read the rest of this entry »

All right, I admit it. I’m just an old softie! I had very little interest in seeing this little piece of British sweetness but, damn it, it’s just a very entertaining film. Read the rest of this entry »

“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 »