Truth be damned! Emerging from a fug of frozen-peas ads, crappy health and burst projects, Orson Welles’ final film as a director was one last rabbit out of the hat: a definition-defying examination of trickery itself. Derailing a BBC documentary about legendary art forger Elmyr de Hory, Welles shreds it into a subversive, self-indulgent cine-essay on “two world leaders in fakery”: Hory and his biographer/fellow-faker Clifford Irving. Gatecrashing into the edit come Howard Hughes, Pablo Picasso and a fascinating dissection of reality, falsehood, bluff and narrative in a ludic comedy of secrets and lies. Read the rest of this entry »Truth be damned! Emerging from a fug of frozen-peas ads, crappy health and burst projects, Orson Welles’ final film as a director was one last rabbit out of the hat: a definition-defying examination of trickery itself. Derailing a BBC documentary about legendary art forger Elmyr de Hory, Welles shreds it into a subversive, self-indulgent cine-essay on “two world leaders in fakery”: Hory and his biographer/fellow-faker Clifford Irving. Gatecrashing into the edit come Howard Hughes, Pablo Picasso and a fascinating dissection of reality, falsehood, bluff and narrative in a ludic comedy of secrets and lies. Read the rest of this entry »
What do you get if you cross a Norse god-king with an ego the size of a planet, a nervy science boffin with gigantic anger issues, a WWII super-soldier with a very silly costume and a genius billionaire playboy with flying power-armour? Arguments, that’s what.
With great power comes great banter in writer/director Joss Whedon’s blockbuster multiplier, which isn’t the best superhero movie ever – but might well be the funniest. Read the rest of this entry »
After Jennifer Lawrence’s first audition, talent agents told her mother it was “the best cold-read by a 14 year old they had ever heard”. Six years later, she was scorching down the red carpet at the Academy Awards in a Calvin Klein dress looking hotter than the sun. Oscar-nominated in indie drama Winter’s Bone, blockbuster babe in X-Men: First Class and now starring in her own killer franchise The Hunger Games… Lawrence is raising the temperature in Hollywood. Read the rest of this entry »
Santa Claus Conquers The Martians (voted one of the worst movies ever). Mission To Mars (Rolling Stone: “DePalma has never made a dull movie. Until now.”). Red Planet (Variety: “Mission To Mars had style to burn compared to Red Planet”). Ghosts Of Mars (killed John Carpenter’s career for nine years). Doom (one of Time magazine’s 10 Worst Ever Videogame Adaps). Mars Attacks! (Budget: $100m. US box-office: $38m). Mars Needs Moms (the biggest box-office bomb of all time).
If history has taught us one lesson, it’s that if you’re going to make a movie about Mars, it had better star Arnold Schwarzenegger and a lady with three boobies. Read the rest of this entry »
Someone doesn’t want you to see this film – it was stolen, not once but twice, before its premiere at the Berlin Film Festival. That adds further dark spice to this elusive, fascinating glimpse at modern Russia through the life of imprisoned tycoon Mikhail Khodorkovsky. Splicing investigative interviews with stylish animated sequences, filmmaker Cyril Tuschi’s involving documentary tries to discover how Khodorkovsky went from being the world’s richest man under 40 to a seemingly indefinite prisoner in Siberia. Edged with cynicism and wit, Tuschi’s film can’t hide its admiration – but real answers lurk tantalisingly out of reach. Read the rest of this entry »
Taking cocaine and sleeping with your patients? Psychoanalysis sure ain’t what it used to be. David Cronenberg’s A Dangerous Method reveals the fascinating battle of wills between the two great minds – Sigmund Freud and Carl Jung – that invented modern head-shrinking. It’s a movie about ego, intellect and ambition. It’s a movie about spanking Keira Knightley. It’s also Cronenberg’s third film in a row with Viggo Mortensen, concreting one of modern cinema’s most fearless, fascinating partnerships. The two men sit down together on the couch. Let today’s therapy begin. Read the rest of this entry »
He has no friends, no past and no name. “I drive,” he says. He does. Opening with its coolest set-piece – an intense, tightly constructed stop/start getaway – Drive immediately shows us how.
Having spun the story of Brit criminal Charles Bronson into a 21st-century Clockwork Orange, hotshot Danish director Nicolas Winding Refn joins forces with Ryan Gosling to take a classic American genre-engine– a girl, a hero, a dark lord, cars, guns, dirty money – and give it a gleaming new Euro-cool chassis. Read the rest of this entry »
For once, no one gets whacked, stabbed in the neck with a pen or beaten to a bloody pulp. For once, it isn’t that kind of ‘Family’ movie. In fact, the film most unlike anything Martin Scorsese has ever made is really the most personal of his career.
Swooping from the sky through tumbling snowflakes, volcanoes of steam and crowds of travellers, Hugo’s exuberant opening shot arrives at a pair of peering wide eyes. Hugo Cabret (Asa Butterfield, The Boy In The Striped Pajamas) is a 13-year-old orphan (aren’t they all?) who lives behind the giant clock in a Paris train station in 1931. Read the rest of this entry »
She’s married to a martial-artist, she’s friends with the 300 stuntmen and she busted out in Prison Break. Last seen killing zombies in TV series The Walking Dead, actress Sarah Wayne Callies reveals the secret to a great marriage, how to train all day and the smell the beats stress.
1. Canada’s cure
“Poutine is a great French-Canadian hangover cure. It’s fries with beef gravy and cheese curds. It’s just salt and fat, so it replenishes your body and makes you feel better. You should start off each morning-after with poutine. I did when I was at university…” Read the rest of this entry »
1. Jamie Lee Curtis
Arise, your Majesty. Graced with a killer combo of legs and lungs, Curtis ran screaming through the genre. Debuting in Halloween, she survived six slashers in five years (including The Fog, Prom Night and Terror Train). Tender yet tough, Curtis redefined horror heroines forever. Her mother must have been proud… Read the rest of this entry »
