The Lady In The Van review: With two Alan Bennetts and Maggie Smith...
The Lady In The Van, which Alan Bennett adapts from his own memoir and first performed as a play at the National Theatre in 1999, is a richly entertaining delight.
View ArticleThe Hunger Games: Mockingjay, Part 2 review: How DID a franchise that’s made...
The triumph of the original Hunger Games film was to somehow make it acceptable for a commercial audience to watch a film that was, in essence, about teenagers killing each other.
View ArticleCate Blanchett in Carol: Oh, Carol... It's Oscars all round for the...
Cate Blanchett’s new film, Carol, may not be the best film you’ll see in 2015 but it will, almost certainly, be the best-looking. Visually, this Fifties New York love story is a sumptuous cinematic...
View ArticleAgyness Deyn in Sunset Song: Stunning Sunset...shame the script's not on song.
I had high hopes for Sunset Song. It’s set in the beautiful north-east of Scotland, features humble Scottish farming folk and stars the model-turned-actress Agyness Deyn. What’s not to like?
View ArticleAngelina Jolie and Brad Pitt film By The Sea: Sacré bleu! Brad and Angelina...
It has been described as ‘too European’, ‘too self-indulgent’ and ‘the ultimate vanity project’. I have to say I rather warmed to it, despite its obvious lack of commerciality.
View ArticleStar Wars: The Force Awakens: Thrilling, spectacular and unexpectedly...
Star Wars has finally embraced the dark side, although in saying that I must quickly add that there is still a lot of humour and a deep-seated affection for the franchise’s history.
View ArticleThe Heart Of The Sea: The tale that inspired Moby Dick, you're in for a...
Ron Howard has made another entertaining film with In The Heart Of The Sea, which unfolds in the dangerous world of the Nantucket whaling community in the 19th century.
View ArticleThe Danish Girl review: Go, girl! No, Eddie Redmayne, we don’t mean you. You...
In his portrayal of the transgender Danish artist who was born Einar Wegener but died as Lili Elbe every simper, every bashful flutter of the eyes seems to be played out on the big screen at length.
View ArticleThe Hateful Eight: Hands up... If you've lost the plot
As a writer always inclined to the prolix, Quentin Tarantino takes his verbosity to new lengths in The Hateful Eight, undeniably establishing an interesting premise but then overworking.
View ArticleThe Revenant: Bravo, Leo! (Give the bear an Oscar, too.) Visceral,...
The Revenant is film-making of the very highest order, brilliantly combining all the heritage and history of the epic adventure picture with the very latest in movie-making technology.
View ArticleDad's Army: There's no need to panic after all because the hotly anticipated...
The show’s creators would still recognise their baby, although, like me, I’m sure they’d have shuddered at the couple of lines of mild but modern sexual innuendo that have needlessly crept in.
View ArticleBreaking Bad's Brian Cranston an Oscar contender in Trumbo, an...
Helen Mirren and Diane Lane are Cranston's co-stars in the biopic covering one of the most shameful periods in Hollywood history when Dalton Trumbo was blacklisted by the film industry.
View ArticleA Bigger Splash review: Ripples of sexual tension. Metaphors by the gallon....
Superficially, everything is idyllic at the luxurious hillside villa on the Mediterranean island of Pantelleria. Marianne (Tilda Swinton), a rock star recovering from surgery, seems blissfully happy.
View ArticleTriple 9: Kate Winslet's latest film is unpleasant, unlikeable and...
Triple 9 is one of those films during which you spend the first two-thirds desperately trying to work out exactly what is happening, and the final third wondering why you bothered.
View ArticleGrimsby: Sacha Baron Cohen's new creations are much funnier than Borat and...
I’m a smart, sophisticated critic-about-town – but I was still so amused by a film that is as lavatorial as it is gynaecological that on several occasions I had to wipe tears of laughter from my eyes.
View ArticleHail, Caesar! review: Smug, long-winded and wretchedly unfunny - Hail,...
The Coen brothers have been making films for almost my entire adult cinema-going life, and it’s easy to mistake such longevity for reliable creative genius.
View ArticleThe Witch review: There be witches in them thar woods! A creepy family of...
These days we tend to like our witches on the sexy, sensual side, preferably dancing naked around a fire or placing all manner of fleshly temptations in the paths of men too feeble to resist.
View ArticleHigh-Rise has towering ambitions and hunk du jour Tom Hiddleston, but it has...
That’s the problem with this adaptation of the 1975 J G Ballard novel of the same name. Somewhere along the provocatively violent, sex-festooned way, its deeper meaning seems to have gone missing.
View ArticleBatman V Superman: Dawn Of Justice: Holy face-off! Two men in tights and one...
At least one thing – whether this is a Batman film or a Superman film – is swiftly resolved. It’s very much a Superman movie, a sequel to the excellent Zach Snyder-directed Man Of Steel.
View ArticleEddie The Eagle: Taron Egerton is excellent and Hugh Jackman's a soaring...
To be honest, I can’t remember a better example of a film that shows why God created film stars. I mean, Eddie The Eagle looks like any other low-budget British film going nowhere.
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