BRIGHTON ROCK (2010) - A noble failure

When writer-director Rowan Joffe introduced the preview screening of BRIGHTON ROCK at the BFI last night, he was apologetic. He apologised for daring to take on the Boulting Brothers' classic adaptation, but argued that his movie was borne out deep respect and love of Graham Greene's novel. In the production notes he went further, arguing that Greene's novel was so great, that it DESERVED...

Pantheon movie - BRIGHTON ROCK (1947)

This review reveals the plot of both the novel and the film.Full disclosure: I am the cliché. I converted to Roman Catholicism at Oxford and transferred the zeal of the convert into an obsession with the writings of the two most famous Catholic converts - John Henry Newman (now on his way to Sainthood) and Graham Greene (whose works appeared on the now thankfully defunct Index Librorum Prohibitorum)....

HOW DO YOU KNOW

HOW DO YOU KNOW is a truly execrable relationship drama that was, for some reason, marketed as a light-hearted romantic comedy. Reese Witherspoon plays a pro soft-ball player cut from the national team as she turns thirty - a move that sends her into a life crisis.  She simply doesn't know whether she wants to be a normal girl with a boyfriend and eventually a baby, let alone who she wants...

London Film Fest 2010 - Day 15 - BIUTIFUL

Alejandro González Iñárritu's last film, BABEL, prompted one of the most excoriating reviews published on this site, as guest reviewer Nikolai, mocked its pomposity and pretension.  I was completely in agreement: it seems to me that ever sense his breathtakingly raw and powerful debut, AMORES PERROS, Iñárritu has done little more than create boring, overly-complicated, emotionally sterile...

Mirai Mizue's Timbre A to Z, A Short-Short Animation Series (2011)

１日１アニメーション計画 『Timbre A to Z』[Timbre A-Z] A Short-short animation seriesLast year, it seemed that the abstract animator Mirai Mizue was moving in the direction of more and more complexity in his animation. His film Jam (2009), in his distinctive cell animation style literally jam-packed the screen with his little cell creatures. The number of cells and the complexity of movement increased along with...

Oscar nominations in full....

Person/film I think WILL win in blue; SHOULD win in red (if different to WILL); UNWORTHY of a nomination in green. Let the high stakes wagers begin!BEST FILM: Black Swan; The Fighter; Inception; The Kids Are Alright; The King's Speech; 127 Hours; The Social Network; Toy Story 3; True Grit; Winter's Bone; BEST DIRECTOR: Darren Aronofsky, Black Swan; David O Russell, The Fighter; Tom Hooper, The King's...

Panda! Go, Panda! Rainy Day Circus (パンダ・コパンダ 雨降りサー スの巻, 1973)

The sequel to Panda! Go, Panda! (1972), Isao Takahata’s Panda! Go, Panda! Rainy Day Circus (パンダ・コパンダ 雨降りサー スの巻, 1973) opens with the young heroine Mimiko still living harmoniously with her adopted Panda family in her large house in a bamboo forest. A circus ringmaster and his assistant come to pry around the house in search of a baby Tiger who has escaped their circus wagons. They boldly enter the...

Random DVD Round-Up 4 - JONAH HEX

JONAH HEX should've been superb in the way that SOLOMON KANE was superb.  Based on pulp comics written by John Albano and illustrated by Tony DeZuniga, Jonah was a late ninteenth century bounty hunter in the Old West, sold to the Apaches by his father, his face disfigured by scars in  a tribal ritual, bound to protect the innocent, and battling alcoholism.  Jonah had no superpowers...

Random DVD Round-Up 3 - THE EXPENDABLES

As a massive fan of eighties action flicks - everything from Arnie classics like RED HEAT and PREDATOR - to all those Sly Stallone ROCKY flicks - I was massively looking forward to Sly Stallone's nostalgia-fest, THE EXPENDABLES. Any movie features Sly, Dolph, Arnie, Mickey Rourke et al was going to be okay with me. It was a bit disappointing they couldn't get Jean-Claude van Damme too but hey, it...

Random DVD Round-Up 2 - SEX AND THE CITY 2

I didn't hate SEX AND THE CITY 2 as much as I thought I would, but then again, my expectations were very low indeed. I'd never been a fan of the series. I didn't relate to a bunch of women defined by their conspicuous consumption of luxury goods or the apparent contradiction of wanting to be both sexually liberated AND pining for a rich husband. The show, and indeed the first movie, wanted to both...

Random DVD Round-Up 1 - SHREK FOREVER AFTER

SHREK THE THIRD was a desperate movie - a commercial enterprise designed to squeeze every last buck from a franchise, no matter that the plot was confused and cobbled together. I barely sat through it, and hated every moment. When the franchise began, Mike Myers's Shrek was a loveable anti-hero subverting our idea of a fairytale Prince into a farting ogre and Cameron Diaz' Princess Fiona wasn't just...

Panda! Go, Panda! (パンダ・コパンダ, 1972)

If your children love My Neighbour Totoro (Tonari no Totoro, 1988), then they will be equally enchanted by the short film Panda! Go, Panda! (パンダ・コパンダ, 1972) and it’s 1973 sequel Panda! Go, Panda! Rainy Day Circus (パンダ・コパンダ 雨降りサー スの巻). The films were written and conceived by Totoro director Hayao Miyazaki and directed by his later Studio Ghibli partner Isao Takahata (Graveyard of the Fireflies, My...

BLACK SWAN - glorious trash

Darren Aronofsky's much-praised new film, BLACK SWAN, is beautifully-produced trash, and I say that with all respect and admiration. It brings an auteur sensibility to material that is basically a camp psycho-sexual horror flick, in the style of Polanski's REPULSION or Dario Argento's SUSPIRIA. While the material may superficially resemble Powell and Pressburger's seminal ballet melodrama, THE RED...

THE GREEN HORNET - in which Hollywood pisses on my eiderdown once more

I am HUGELY disappointed by THE GREEN HORNET. I know it had a "troubled" journey to our screens, with Kevin Smith's scripts hacked and directors dropping out like so many milk-teeth. But when it got to the final credit list, I was full of anticipation. After all, this was a superhero movie that was going to be set square in the tradition of fond mockery - the tradition that produced the brilliantly funny KICK-ASS and genre-pastiches like PINEAPPLE...

BLUE VALENTINE

BLUE VALENTINE is a justifiably praised indie drama about a young couple falling in and out of love. The stories of their meeting in the early twenties, and their disintegrating marriage six years later, and presented linearly, but inter-cut. Seeing the couple in their early heady romance juxtaposed so directly with their later frustrations brings an added pathos to what would have already been...