However you look at it, the very existence of this film is a stroke of genius. What with Disney’s animation department having seen a Lion King-sized resurgence with Frozen, it seems tipping a hat to traditional Mouse House fairytales whilst gently pushing them down subversive new avenues might be the key to the company’s future … >
What with our politicians recently posing for photos in wellies and pointing at rising water levels, it seems now is a good time for a screen adaptation of the Bible’s most eco-conscious tale. Russell Crowe fulfils his usual duty of squinting and grunting as the titular Noah, a man in a time before BBC Weather … >
Poor Divergent. No matter what it did, it would be compared to The Hunger Games. Perhaps with good reason, seeing as the film adaptation of Veronica Roth’s dystopian Young Adult trilogy was apparently greenlit the minute the credits started rolling on The Jennifer Lawrence Franchise. However, the similarities pretty much end at ‘dystopian Young Adult … >
The first Captain America film set itself apart from the rest of the Marvel franchise by being essentially a period piece, with most of the action taking place in the 1940s. The second instalment finds itself firmly rooted in the modern day and the real world, perhaps more so than any other Marvel film to … >
If you thought The Lego Movie was going to be the most fun you’d have in the cinema this year then you’re sorely and rather gratifying mistaken as the sequel to 2011’s The Muppets arrives. Jason Segel and Amy Adams may well be absent from Muppets Most Wanted but the talented director James Bobin and … >
Adapting Michel Faber’s curious novel Under the Skin was always going to be a Herculean task. An alien comes down to Earth, roams the Scottish highways for bulky men and lures them away to be farmed for the home planet – and that’s only the half of it. Hardly Richard Curtis stocking-filler. Instead of trying … >
Believe the hype. The Lego Movie is as good as everybody’s been saying it is, perhaps even better. This film is an absolute blast – it’s endlessly entertaining and has a really strong narrative core that works because it is simplistic, optimistic and joyful. It captures something very particular about childhood and it’ll work especially … >
American Hustle is acclaimed director David O. Russell’s follow-up to the Academy Award-winning Silver Linings Playbook. And even though he took on that film’s two co-stars once again — Bradley Cooper and Jennifer Lawrence, the latter fresh off The Hunger Games — Russell went in an entirely different direction with the two of them and the plot itself.
He’s abandoned his more of-the-time approach, with help from co-writer Eric Warren singer, and transported audiences back the late ’70s/early ’80s for a comedy-crime film. But does it work? Absolutely.
Cinema is a young person’s game. How many Hollywood-produced films do you see where the main cast are all “of a certain age”? Sure, there are great roles for older actors in most films, but a whole movie of older performers? Very rare.
Ben Stiller is one of those performers who’s created such a recognisable niche in comedy that he’s almost become a genre in and of himself.
If you go and see a Ben Stiller film, you pretty much know what you’re going to get. That’s not a criticism – Stiller is an able performer, and frequently very funny. With The Secret Life of Walter Mitty, however, Stiller defies expectations and proves that he has far more strings to his bow.