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The Deep Blue Sea (Review) | By Tom Clift

Tom Clift — Thu, 12 Apr 2012 01:32:00 +0000

Terence Davies’ The Deep Blue Sea is a miserable slog of a movie. Adapted from the 1952 award winning play by Terence Rattigan, the film is set in depressive post-war England, and recounts — with all the formality of a “Dear John” letter — the romantic turbulence that culminates in the attempted suicide of Hester Collyer (Rachel Weisz; The Whistleblower). Of a time and place where emotional outbursts are [...]

The Darkest Hour (Review) | By Tom Clift

Tom Clift — Fri, 20 Jan 2012 05:44:11 +0000

A group of American youths are besieged by invisible attackers in the Russian capital of Moscow in The Darkest Hour, an alien invasion movie so woefully written, directed and acted that it makes Cowboys & Aliens, Battle: Los Angeles and Skyline all look positively award worthy by comparison. That this movie exists makes me sad. That I’m writing about it makes me sadder. But is does. And [...]

Melancholia (MIFF Review) | By Tom Clift

Tom Clift — Sun, 14 Aug 2011 06:20:15 +0000

In both its nihilistic themes and art-house attributes that border on the satirical, Lars von Trier’s Melancholia serves as a very clear successor to his controversial previous effort, 2009’s Antichrist. Both films begin with a shamelessly pretentious but inescapably beautiful opening prologue that drips with mesmerising slow-motion photography and heart-rending classical overtures. From there, however, von Trier leads us down a very long and arduous path of cheerless monotony, one [...]

Something Borrowed (Review) | By Sam Fragoso

Sam Fragoso — Tue, 28 Jun 2011 01:22:42 +0000

Something Borrowed is one of the most contrived, unfunny, and unrealistic endeavours to be produced in quite some time. Here’s a romantic comedy that doesn’t offer a lick of genuine sentiment, nor a good laugh. But after years of rom-com banality, that should hardly come as a surprise.

The film follows humble New York City lawyer Rachel (Ginnifer Goodwin), who on her 30^th birthday, finds herself in bed with her long-time [...]

Your Highness (Review) | By Anders Wotzke

Anders Wotzke — Tue, 10 May 2011 08:06:01 +0000

For once, the trailer for a new comedy — in this case David Gordon Green’s medieval mockery Your Highness – didn’t spoil the best bits. Unfortunately, that’s because there aren’t any.

In a series of firsts, Your Highness isn’t just the first stoner comedy to exist without Seth Rogen, it might also be the first stoner comedy to exist without any comedy. With its unparalleled number of phallic references (I’m reluctant [...]

Meet the Parents: Little Fockers (Review) | By Anders Wotzke

Anders Wotzke — Fri, 31 Dec 2010 03:13:31 +0000

Spoiler alert: Focker sounds a lot like F*cker.

Good. Now that you know the sole punch-line of Little Fockers, you’re without a single justiifiable reason to go see this abomination of celluloid. Here is a film that doesn’t just take the once-tolerable Meet The Parents franchise down a step, it slips and misses the entire flight of stairs, breaks its neck upon impact and proceeds to bleed out all over the [...]

Devil (Review) | By Paj Sandhu

Paj Sandhu — Fri, 03 Dec 2010 04:22:35 +0000

M. Night Shyamalan (The Last Airbender) has done it again. Only this time, he wasn’t even in the director’s chair.

Devil, directed by John Erick Dowdle and written by Brian Nelson, is based on a story by Shyamalan, who also serves as the film’s producer. Yet despite his indirect involvement with the film’s production, the movie has Shyamalan all over it – and not in a good way.

Beginning with [...]

The Other Man (Review) | By Alex Lindsey Jones

Alex Lindsey Jones — Fri, 24 Sep 2010 00:12:26 +0000

Richard Eyre’s The Other Man is one of those infuriating films that starts out with an engaging premise but fails to deliver on any of its promises.

Liam Neeson (Taken, The A-Team) stars as Peter, a successful software developer. He is happily married to Lisa (Laura Linney) and they have one grown daughter. When Lisa seemingly disappears, Peter is devastated to discover that she has been [...]

Killers (Review) | By Anders Wotzke

Anders Wotzke — Tue, 27 Jul 2010 10:02:32 +0000

Ladies and gents, the first sure-fire awards contender of 2010 has landed! It’s called Killers and it’s going to take the Golden Raspberries by storm. If you thought the similarly themed Knight and Day was bad, wait till you see this vacuous spy comedy from The Ugly Truth director Robert Luketic. Killers sees Luketic take a desperate swing at genre after genre in a hope he might eventually strike it lucky, but he does so with the dexterity of a blind swordsman suffering from an inner-ear infection.

Clash of the Titans [2010] (Review) | By Anders Wotzke

Anders Wotzke — Thu, 01 Apr 2010 10:05:24 +0000

I don’t think it was particularly unreasonable of me to assume that in Clash of the Titans – a remake of the 1981 stop-motion epic that has aged about as well as everything from the 80s – there was going to be a few instances where Titans would, in fact, clash. It turns out, however, I was expecting too much; not once does the film live up to its title. And the disappointments don’t end there.