Film Review: Frost Nixon
Back in 1977, British satirist turned talk show host David Frost managed to secure unprecedented access to former American president Richard Nixon, still a global pariah and national disgrace following his 1974 fall from office after the notorious Watergate scandal. Little-known in the US, despite having managed to get Nixon's agreement to an almost insane 28-hour interview, stretched over 12 days, Frost had failed to sell the interviews to any television networks, funding the project out of his own money.
Film Review: The Spirit
Liked the over-the-top, heavily stylised Sin City, with its quirkily graphical black-and-white, comic-book feel? Can't wait until 2010 for the sequel? Well, this might just keep you going until then.
Film Review: Defiance
Actors who get cast as James Bond all too often find it hard to shake off that iconic character. Our last 007, Pierce Brosnan, has been finding it particularly tricky, picking up roles as sleazy losers in the likes of The Matador and cheesy all-singing, all-dancing clichés in Mamma Mia in a desperate attempt to show that he can do things other than look good in a tuxedo while fighting baddies and performing spectacular stunts. Bond before him Timothy Dalton spent a good decade carefully picking parts that would shake off the threat of typecasting, from villains to more nuanced and subtle characters on stage and small screen.
Film Review: Slumdog Millionaire
As unlikely award contenders go, a film about the Indian version of popular TV quiz show Who Wants To Be A Millionaire? made by the guy who brought us that classic piece of mid-90s drug-addled madness Trainspotting has to be up there with the weirdest of them.
Film Review: Bedtime Stories
After the release of the fun family adventure Inkheart two weeks ago, you may think that there's not much call for another movie about children's stories coming to life. But this is a very different take on a similar basic idea, and certainly shouldn't be written off right away. Where Inkheart opted for thrills and spectacle in a relatively straight, classic fantasy quest, this offering has instead gone for the comedy route – as the presence of Adam Sandler in the lead should attest.
Film Review: Che
Argentinean revolutionary Ernesto "Che" Guevara has long been a student hero – his beret-wearing, long-haired image adorning countless walls in university buildings world-wide even before his death, aged 39, by a Bolivian military firing-squad in 1967.
Film Review: Australia
Romantic epics, and especially romantic epics set amid tragedy and destruction, have long been some of the most popular – yet hard to pull off – of all film genres. The proof is in the money this type of film can make. 1997's Titanic, decidedly a romantic epic set on the most famous sinking ship of them all, is the highest-grossing film of all time.
Film Review: Inkheart
As with buses, so with films – you wait ages for a movie with a certain basic premise, then two come along at once. Be it alien invasion movies Independence Day and Mars Attacks! back in 1996 or asteroid strike flicks Armageddon and Deep Impact in 1998, or even the ultimate double-whammy of Fail Safe and Dr Strangelove back in 1964 (both based on the very same book), the history of cinema is littered with similar ideas hitting the big screen at around the same time. It's still rare, however, for two movies with such similar basic ideas at their heart to come out in the same month – but with Inkheart out this week and Disney's Bedtime Stories out on Boxing Day, that's precisely what's happened: two children's films about men who can – quite literally – bring stories to life.
Film Review: Madagascar - Escape 2 Africa
In 2005, Madagascar ambled into our cinemas as just one of countless computer-animated kids' films featuring talking animals getting into scrapes. It's tale of a bunch of New York zoo animals who end up having to fend for themselves in the jungles of Africa, following the Shrek mould of chucking in movie references in an attempt to appeal to adult audiences, and on the surface had little to make it stand out amidst the seemingly never-ending line of similar talking animal animations that the last decade has brought us. Yet somehow, something clicked. It wasn't a classic, certainly, but something about the ninja-style penguins, or perhaps the talented voice cast – principally Ben Stiller, Chris Rock, David Schwimmer, Jada Pinkett Smith and Sacha Baron Cohen – helped it to rise above the herd.
Film Review: Hamlet 2
There was a time during the mid to late 90s that Steve Coogan was almost unanimously regarded as Britain's best comedian. He came from a strong troupe of comics, first coming to the public's attention via the cult Radio 4 satirical series On The Hour - that also launched the careers of the likes of master satirists Chris Morris and Armando Iannucci as well as Jerry Springer: The Opera writer Stuart Lee and his erstwhile comedy partner Richard Herring. First broadcast in 1991-2, it was On The Hour that saw the first appearance of the comedy character with whom Coogan will forever be associated – the Terry Wogan-inspired presenter Alan Partridge.
Film Review: Waltz With Bashir
It seems that the old idea that cartoons are for kids has finally been shattered. Hot on the heels of the stylized black and white animated exploration of the Iranian Revolution that was last year’s multiple award-winning (and Oscar-nominated) Persepolis comes another intriguing, award-winning take on another aspect of recent Middle Eastern history that’s largely unknown outside the region. And as with Persepolis, the animated approach may be unusual, but it is also an ideal way of increasing the accessibility of a subject that would, were it dealt with in more traditional forms, almost certainly turn many of us off before we even considered going to see it. Were this – or Persepolis – a documentary, few would have paid much attention. The gimmick of animation, especially animation done well, has worked a treat in expanding the potential audience.
Film Review: The Baader-Meinhof Complex
If you've been reading the papers over the last few years you could be forgiven for thinking that we're in the midst of an unprecedented surge of terrorist activity. Every day, the press is full of tales of bomb plots and terror threats. Government announcements constantly inform us of the need for new laws and new powers to deal with a rising tide of violent extremism. Yet if you consider the number of successful terrorist atrocities that have been carried out in the West since the turn of the millennium, though the scale of attacks like those of 9/11, 7/7 and Madrid may have increased, the number has dropped significantly.
Film Review: W.
In the run-up to what was already being touted as the most significant presidential election in years before the recent global financial upheavals that have added so many extra concerns to the race, it is perhaps unsurprising that Hollywood has tried to cash in on the massive political interest that has surrounded the vote. What is surprising is that the only major film of the election season is a biopic of the outgoing president, rather than a more general political piece looking at the state of the union. What's even more surprising is that the mastermind behind this George W Bush movie is Oliver Stone.
Film Review: Quantum of Solace
Not quite the traditional Halloween movie this, yet somehow it's still strangely appropriate for the second Daniel Craig-starring Bond film to come out on a date long associated with the dead. Because this is one film series that has well and truly risen from the ashes like some kind of latter-day Dracula. James Bond hasn't been this cool for years – and to think that just two short years ago, as we awaited the release of Casino Royale with a mixture of hope and dread, many had written off the Bond franchise for good.
Film Review: Where the Wild Things Are
After the sheer madness of his only two feature films to date, 1999's Being John Malkovich and 2002's Adaptation, it's a safe bet that Spike Jonze must have been low down on anybody's list as the ideal director for a big screen adaptation of a hit series of children's books.
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