Appearing like an act of contrition following calamitous Adam Sandler vehicle The Cobbler last year, Tom McCarthy's latest directorial offering is as austere a movie as we're likely to get this awards season outside of The Danish Girl. Working with production company Anonymous Content (who, by no coincidence were behind HBO's The Wire in which McCarthy starred), Spotlight accounts … Continue reading Review: Spotlight
When I heard that The Room was back in cinemas and, what's more, sneaking into Oscars contention - not least for its lead actress - I assumed it was some weird joke. Had I woken in Bizarro-world? But no. Tommy Wiseau's cult 'classic' will remain on the midnight movie circuit for a while yet and the … Continue reading Review: Room
"Where the fuck did that come from?" Yeah. There's a statement. One many of us thought or maybe even vocalised in 2007 when the world economy folded up like a deckchair as it became apparent that the banks had acted with such self-interest and short-sightedness that it seriously beggared belief. In hindsight why were we so … Continue reading Review: The Big Short
Conventional wisdom tells us that violence and vengeance form a circle, but that notion suggests the return to a beginning place, a place of innocence where said violence existed only in potential. What if, instead, it were a spiral, emanating from a microcosmic central point, it's range growing ever-wider as it sprawls out into the universe? How … Continue reading Review: The Revenant
The Hateful Eight appears, upfront, to be a western. Quentin Tarantino's 8th feature film (as he takes great pride in advising us right out of the gate) takes place several years after the end of the Civil War in the coldest wastes of wintery Wyoming. It begins, as Django Unchained before it, with a bounty hunter stopping a … Continue reading Review: The Hateful Eight
Another New Year, another transformative Eddie Redmayne performance. This time last year we were taken aback by the actor's committed performance as Stephen Hawking in The Theory Of Everything; a chameleonic turn that garnered multiple awards. It was not long after that the first images of him in The Danish Girl appeared, and almost immediately whisper began … Continue reading Review: The Danish Girl
There's a scene in David O. Russell's Silver Linings Playbook in which Bradley Cooper's bipolar character Pat apologises to Jennifer Lawrence's Tiffany for his conversational style, explaining that he has "no filter". The same might very well be said for Russell's approach to his new film Joy - the portrait of a woman named Joy Mangano who … Continue reading Review: Joy
