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 »
Popularity: 1% [?]
Captain America: First Avenger ends with the saddest last line in blockbuster history. Chris Evans delivers it beautifully: unexpected, gentle, agonisingly poignant. But the movie doesn’t seem to notice. It triumphantly roll the credits, you walk out of the cinema wondering why your heart just decompressed inside your chest, and off we zoom to next year’s superhero-a-thon The Avengers. 
For you, it’s been nearly 20 hours of cinema. For them, it’s been a lifetime. After 10 years, seven movies, four directors and a truckload of exposition, the Harry Potter’s saga finally matures into the spectacular, propulsive and emotionally satisfying blockbuster it should have been from the start. 
Two things before we start on Terrence Malick’s philosophical, spiritual, experimental, transcendent, cosmic odyssey. One: it’s shorter than Transformers 3. Two: it has dinosaurs in it. But really, where on earth do we start? Not on Earth. Not at the start. Further back. In The Beginning… 
Love has taken a battering lately. Blue Valentine, Rabbit Hole and The Kids Are All Right have all shown it busting up, breaking down and dying hard. Love’s had it tough. Love’s had Twilight, for pity’s sake. But things weren’t always like this. 
On paper, it really couldn’t look much better. A romantic thriller from The Lives Of Others director Florian Henckel von Donnersmarck. A script inked by him, Christopher McQuarrie (The Usual Suspects) and Julian Fellowes (Gosford Park). A first ever on-screen pairing of Hollywood super-idols Angelina Jolie and Johnny Depp. Oscar-winners, every one of them. 
The scowl. The muscles. The senseless acts of violence. Jason Statham IS The Transporter! No, hang on – The Mechanic! Oh, who are we kidding? By now Statham is essentially his own subgenre and Con Air director Simon West’s first film in three years wastes no time in serving up some full-frontal Stath-porn. 
Crashing in as a 10-tonne metaphor, Michael Bay’s deafening mega-blockbuster sees humanity attacked by a destructive new super-technology. Well, quite. Yawping a stunning new age for digital animation, Hasbro’s 60ft alien robots transform from helicopters and hi-fis in a seamless spectacle of hydraulic crank and whir, as the evil Decepticons battle the heroic Autobots for mankind’s future. Cue the in-built irony: in Bay’s world, moving parts aren’t for the actors. 
If you watch Eat Pray Love with your brain switched on and two eyes open, there’s plenty to turn your stomach. Bon appetite: wealthy, beautiful, successful woman (Julia Roberts) with handsome, loving husband (poor Billy Crudup) decides it’s just not good enough and chucks it all away. She instantly and inexplicably pulls hottie toy-boy James Franco. Then chucks him. Then flounces round the world, doing nothing except eating delicious food in gorgeous countries. Feel sick yet? We’re not done. 
Scott Pilgrim is a weakling, socially awkward, doesn’t drink, rarely gets a haircut, only wears his favourite T-shirts. If you just read your own bio, this is your new favourite movie. Adapted from Brian O’Malley’s comic-book saga with breakneck stylistic verve by director Edgar Wright, Scott Pilgrim Vs The World is the ultimate geek wish-fulfilment flick. 
