It’s tempting to reach for some tried and trusted sporting clichés to describe Paul Bettany’s performance in Broken Lines. Like many other critics, I think he’s a knockout as partially paralysed ex-boxer, Chester. Atrophied muscles and a bruised psyche have… Continue Reading →
[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b3iL8euEvO4&w=525&h=394] What a sad day. Ken Russell the visionary director of The Devils (1971), Women in Love (1969) and Tommy (1975) has died at the age of 84. Michael Winner, the talentless hack who directed Death Wish and the… Continue Reading →
My Week with Marilyn is more than just a film: it’s the latest instalment of How to Win an Oscar by Portraying a Famous Dead Person. In recent years the Academy Awards have become increasingly fixated on the idea that… Continue Reading →
Her name is synonymous with classy dramas — in English and French — but it would be wrong to classify Sarah’s Key as another Kristin Scott Thomas vehicle. She does deliver a typically cool and intelligent performance here as a… Continue Reading →
[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6oVdLIvcNRE&w=560&h=315] Christina Ricci’s unfeasibly large head turned out to be the most eye-catching feature of Pan Am‘s pilot episode. I’m exaggerating, of course, but no more than the carping British TV critics who built up BBC2’s new US import… Continue Reading →
You must remember this. For me the love affair with movies began with Humphrey Bogart and Lauren Bacall and a world of smoke, cynicism and smouldering looks. I discovered a copy of Joe Hyams’ biography, Bogart and Bacall, while I… Continue Reading →
[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VXkmL3T0xPI&w=560&h=315] “You stole five years of that man’s life” said an angry Paul (Steven Mackintosh) at the end of ITV1’s five-part legal drama The Jury. He’d recently found out that the attractive blonde (Lisa Dillon) who’d been wooing him… Continue Reading →
“It’s been dross from the start, I never understood the appeal.” (Guardian reader, @thedozerator, 4 November 2011) As you probably know, Season Two of Downton Abbey comes to an end tonight on ITV1. Short bursts of badly scripted and indifferently… Continue Reading →
Who made The Conversation? In between the first two Godfather films, Francis Ford Coppola wrote and directed this devastating psychological thriller about the downfall of virtuoso surveillance expert Harry Caul (played by Gene Hackman). But in a story that hinges… Continue Reading →
“Was Shakespeare a Fraud?” Roland Emmerich’s rollicking costume drama Anonymous depicts Shakespeare as merely the over sexed and ill-educated front man for the real literary genius of the age — Edward de Vere, 17th Earl of Oxford. If you care… Continue Reading →
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