The Raid – inexplicably subtitled “Redemption” in some Western territories – opens on a watch and weapon. With one shot, director Gareth Evans has told you everything you need to know about the next 101 minutes. Unburdened by the convoluted narratives and romantic B-plots of so many Hollywood blockbusters, this brutal Indonesian martial arts picture is interested in one thing, and one thing only: bone-breaking, neck-snapping, jaw-shattering action. Despite some [...]

In an age where comedies needn’t actually contain any comedy – a loophole commonly referred to as Adam Sandler’s career – 21 Jump Street is breath of fresh nitrous oxide-infused air. No, it’s not an instant classic like Jonah Hill’s breakout comedy Superbad, nor is it as hilariously zany as directors Phil Lord & Chris Miller’s previous outing Cloudy with a [...]

In a Filipino slum, a desperate mother fights back tears as she chaperones her daughter to the doorstep of an elderly Caucasian man, ready to make a transaction that she’ll forever regret. This sequence, preceded by a child publicly defecating in the street, is the very definition of poverty porn, almost to the point where you expect to see UNICEF listed in the production credits.

Redeemably, however, the above sequence invites [...]

From Abrams (Super 8) aping Spielberg,  Allen (Midnight in Paris) namedropping Bunuel and Scorsese (Hugo) paying homage to one of cinema’s earliest icons, lately we’ve seen filmmakers increasingly looking back. It’s a trend born, one suspects, of a desire to return to what many perceive as a simpler, more innocent time; a time when artists, not accountants, decided when and how a movie was to be made. Call [...]

Now that we’ve collectively agreed Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull never happened, let us return to fawning over Steven Spielberg for that kind of “gee whiz, let’s do that again!” giddiness you get from watching movies like The Adventures of Tintin: The Secret of the Unicorn. The director might be working from a collection of mid-20^th century comics by Belgian artist Hergé, but this is undeniably [...]

Bennett Miller’s Moneyball is not like most other sports movies. In most sports movies, no matter which game they concern, the drama takes place in the arena – on the basketball court and the football field, in the boxing ring and the baseball diamond. It is there that muscular athletes conquer pain, adversity and inevitably sharp odds to steal victory (or occasionally suffer honourable defeats) in front of lights, cameras, [...]