Jonathan Crocker

“The edge… There is no honest way to explain it, because the only people who really know where it is are the ones who have gone over.” Lightning-powered by a hot cocktail of tequila, mescaline, anger and idealism, Hunter S Thompson spent his life hunting that edge. But as Alex Gibney’s overlong documentary does make clear, Thompson’s deadliest vice wasn’t substance but style: it was fame that fried his brain more than drug or drink. Read the rest of this entry »

Popularity: 12% [?]

Ricky Gervais could be a fat Jack Lemmon. In his first Hollywood leading role as a miserablist New York dentist who can’t stand other people, Gervais nails funny, fumbling pathos as smartly as his trademark bum-puckering quips and deadpan sarcasm. He’s Bertram Pincus (“It’s Pink-Ass, right?), a man who, after flatlining briefly during bowel surgery, wakes to find he sees dead people. Everywhere. And they all want to talk to him. Think Ghost, The Frighteners, The Sixth Sense and Over Her Dead Body: it’s the dead who show Pincus how to live. Read the rest of this entry »

Popularity: 7% [?]

How do you turn 10 sentences into a $100 dollar movie? Maverick moviemaker and Hollywood’s original Wild Thing Spike Jonze has spent five years mud-wrestling with his adaptation of Maurice Sendak’s ‘60s kiddie-lit classic. But Jonze’s big-screen rumpus might take even longer to grow on you. Read the rest of this entry »

Popularity: 7% [?]

Before he went galactic as Star Trek’s new-look Captain Kirk, Chris Pine was stuck with roles like this: a 22-year-old virgin who was born blind but might get his sight back thanks to experimental brain surgery. Casually rugged and charming, Pine does his best to manoeuvre past lines like “I love the sound of your smile” but can’t make this odd little movie work. Read the rest of this entry »

Popularity: 7% [?]

Hurtling at you like some surreal techno-nightmare, Gamer is… what, exactly? No easy way to describe this frenetic cyber-thriller from the makers of Crank 2, which imagines an amoral near-future where reclusive citizens control brain-implanted fellow humans like real-life videogame avatars. Sounds crazy? You can’t even guess. Read the rest of this entry »

Popularity: 6% [?]

Hot glances, forbidden desires, untamed passions and swooning hearts… Just some of things missing from this bloodless second bite of The R-Pattz Show. Sorry, the Twilight saga. But who are we kidding? You’ll see it anyway.

New Moon is apparently Robert Pattinson’s favourite book of the series. Maybe because it’s the one he’s hardly in. After yet another clumsy moment in the Cullen household (papercut, d’oh!), Edward (Pattinson) decides he must save Bella’s (Kristen Stewart) soul by dumping her – and the movie. Read the rest of this entry »

Popularity: 8% [?]

Horror-thriller, gripping expose and devastating agitprop, The Cove takes us to “a little town with a big secret”. Every year in a pretty cove in the Japanese fishing heartland of Taiji, thousands of terrified dolphins are driven in from open water and savagely massacred. We know this thanks to activist dolphin-whisperer Ric O’Barry, who trained these near-sentient mammals for cult ‘60s TV show Flipper – until one of them died in his arms after a tortured existence. Read the rest of this entry »

Popularity: 6% [?]

Boy meets girl. Boy falls in love. Girl doesn’t. That bitter twist to the indie rom-com formula is what gives (500) Days of Summer such a surprising emotional kick. Surprising, because the set-up is what-evah: Tom (Joseph Gordon-Levitt) is a greetings-card writer who thinks The Graduate has a happy ending, Summer (Zooey Deschanel) is the carefree new-girl-in-the-office who breezes away with his heart. Read the rest of this entry »

Popularity: 4% [?]

Having sex and kids were the jutting funny bones of The 40-Year-Old Virgin and Knocked Up, but for his third film as director, Hollywood powerhouse Judd Apatow completes an oddball trilogy-of-life with a serious comedy about death.

It’s Apatow’s richest, riskiest movie yet – and his most personal. Read the rest of this entry »

Popularity: 22% [?]

A violent film without on-screen violence. A film where dogs are dead meat instead of rescuers. Where leg wounds mean you can’t walk, where daring escapes fail, where victims wet themselves in fear. Just like his throat-grabbing crossover stunners The Piano Teacher and Hidden, Michael Haneke’s 1997 chiller Funny Games was never what it appeared to be. Read the rest of this entry »

Popularity: 21% [?]