Based very, very loosely on the Hasbro board-game, Battleship (as in, “you sunk my…”) is the latest, loudest and stupidest example of the hyper-jingoistic, military-fetishising, intellect-lowering alien invasion movie of which Hollywood has recently become so fond.  Directed by Peter Berg of Hancock fame, the film boasts a budget and firepower roughly akin to that of the entire US armed forces. But as with an increasing number of blockbuster action [...]

With a narrative as flat and barren as the red Martian landscape, Disney’s John Carter is a big-budget sci-fi spectacle that fails to excite or entertain. Adapted from the novels by Tarzan writer Edgar Rice Burroughs, the film follows an American civil war soldier who is transported to the alien inhabited plains of Mars where another civil war is being fought. Although splendorous on a visual level, the film’s mediocre [...]

Man on a Ledge is a fairly apt title for what is, undeniably, a movie about a man on a ledge. But given that it stars action drone Sam Worthington, you’ll be wishing they called it Man off a Ledge before long.

Here I thought Hollywood was well aware of the limited range of Worthington, having restricted him in the past to roles that don’t require much emoting, such as playing [...]

“All it takes for evil to succeed is for good men to do nothing”. Never has this famous saying been truer than in the case of the brutal stabbing murder of Kitty Genovese in New York in 1964, a crime that occurred within earshot of thirty-eight people, none of whom lifted a finger to prevent it. A grim indictment of human cowardice and apathy, the case has been referenced and [...]

If ever there was a movie made for movie critics, it is Hugo. Directed by Martin Scorsese (Shutter Island), the film, based on the children’s book by Brian Selznick, is on its surface a bright and colourful 3D fantasy about a Parisian orphan boy in the 1930s, whose friendship with the granddaughter of an enigmatic toy-shop owner yields secrets about his own relationship with his father. But peel back [...]

When twenty-something Bernhard (Christoph Luser) discovers that he father is sleeping with a prostitute, he thinks that’s bad enough. But after learning that his father asks to call the woman “Lydia” – the name of his own daughter and Bernhard’s younger sister – the reverberations threaten to tear apart his entire family. Still Life [Stillleben], from Austria, boasts a challenging but fascinating conceit, only to waste it amidst long stretches [...]