Because Everybody Else Has One

There's really no need for an introduction for this film but just a quick note to let everyone know that I haven't forgotten about last week's films, I just haven't gotten around to them yet. Look out for those soon. Not that anyone's so much as going to remember that those films even exist after this weekend. Before moving on to the review itself, I realize that The Avengers only opens up in the US next week so for those who are worried about reading on any further, this is a strictly spoiler-free review. I tend not to give away plot details in my reviews anyway but that goes doubly so here. Anyway, on with the show...  It's just unfair how talented Joss Whedon is. He has, in his very prolific career worked on and created TV shows, films, comics and even used the writers strike of a few years back as an opportunity to launch a sensational web-exclusive musical short. Along the way he has written songs, blended genres and created some of the most beloved...

This is the last of this week's films for the time being. I do hope to see Pirates soon but I'm going to wait to see it in 3D. For now though, we'll just put a cap on this week's new releases with a really rather odd little film.    That Albert Nobbs somewhat unnerved me has little to do with its subject matter of a woman dressing like a man in order to get work in late 19th century England (that's just a reversal of the old Shakespeare plot device anyway, isn't it?) and it certainly has nothing to do with the fact that the woman in question is a lonely lesbian trying to find love. What it comes down to- and ultimately the real reason to watch the otherwise fairly ordinary film - is Albert Nobbs himself/herself, played by Glenn Close in typically excellent form. Much can be and has been made about the sexual persuasion and identity of the title character, but the reason why Albert Nobbs is so compelling a character is not because of his/her sexuality but ...

Another film that I saw ages ago but I probably have a bit more to say about this than yesterday's entry. Despite what the poster might suggest, Young Adult features the reunion of both the writer and director of Juno - Up In The Air is good enough and all, but why mention it rather than underlining the fact that this is a film by the same team behind Juno? Weird marketing aside, though, that this is a follow up of sorts to Juno does mean that it comes with certain expectations. Juno is a mostly beloved little film with a flavour very much its own so it's not unfair to expect Young Adult to go some way towards recapturing a bit of that old magic. And, you know what, it kind of does exactly that. It's worth mentioning that since Juno, its director, Jason Reitman, went on to make a multi-Oscar nominated film in the form of Up In The Air, while writer Diablo Cody indulged her inner geek and made the largely ignored, but actually damn entertaining Jennifer's Body. You...

OK, so after two relatively lengthy reviews, here's a bit of a quickie about a film that I saw months ago and, as such, took me a little while to remember. This doesn't mean it isn't any good, though... Now, admittedly, though Puncture is not the most memorable of films, having read the IMDB's plot synopsis, I do actually remember liking it quite a bit. For a start, Chris Evans is really good in it and he proves once again that he is way more versatile than one would think on first glance. In fact, it's kind of his Erin Brokovich, if Erin Brokovich was more drug-addled-mess and less blonde-bimbo-or-is-she. It's based on a true story and, it has to be said, the true story is pretty damn interesting. In short, Evans plays a very troubled lawyer who ends up taking on Big Medicine, after one of the US's biggest medical corporations stops its hospitals from making use of a life-saving, but not cost-effective, syringe whose retractable and one-use-only needl...

Moving onto this past weekend's releases, lets starts off with yet another review of The Hunger Games. Reactions have been mixed, but read on to find out what I thought. With Harry Potter done and dusted and the Twilight saga limping to its conclusion in a few months, it's no surprise that Hollywood has turned to another kids/ teenage/ young-adult literature phenomenon for its next big cash cow. To its credit though, The Hunger Games draws more heavily on the likes of Kick Ass , Hannah , Lord of The Flies and Battle Royale than on the adventures of sparkling vampires and boy-wizards. It's not perfect and, yes, questions of originality are not ill-deserved, but The Hunger Games is a refreshing change of pace after the dreariness of the Twilight Saga and comes dangerously close to actually living up to the hype. You may have heard much of this before but the story of the Hunger Games is set in a dystopian future where a great war has left the "have" an...

There's no two ways about it, it's been a busy couple of weeks at the cinema and though I really do still need to see Aardman's Pirates! there's still plenty to talk about.  However, though I will probably still do roundups when the films really pile up, I've decided to from now on give each film its own specific post, regardless of how short the review is. This basically means that new reviews may well come out on a more regular basis from me and that it should be easier to find what you're looking for when navigating the site. I may go back and do this for older reviews as well but for now, this will be the new format going forward. Anyway, on with the show with one of the more interesting films released this year, Take Shelter.  Take Shelter is, at its heart, about a subject that isn't often tackled in American Cinema: the thin line between insanity and religious revelation, specifically the idea of prophecy. Now, admittedly, this does make Take...

I do also want to review the fairly excellent Take Shelter but I will leave that for the near future, probably to be covered with next week's releases. For now, I simply have to throw my two cents in about a film that virtually everyone in the world saw before me and about the mind-bogglingly stupid idea to "retrofit" it into 3D.  Now, before getting to my thoughts of the film itself, which, as I have mentioned previously, I had never seen before the screening for this 3D re-release, we need to deal with the whole 3D thing. James Cameron apparently spent millions of dollars and two years converting Titanic into 3D and, would you know it, he really needn't have bothered. Say what you want about films designed and shot in 3D, post-converted, "retrofitted" 3D films always look terrible and, even if the millions of dollars and thousands of working-hours thrown at the film prevent Titanic 3D from looking entirely naff, it's still an entirely pointless...

We actually have one of the better weekends for films coming up so we might as well begin with a very pleasant little surprise - especially for those of us who have also been out of school for a mind boggling thirteen years... Also up at Channel24 What it's about Jim, Stiffler, Oz, Michelle and the rest of the American Pie gang reunite at their old hunting grounds for their thirteen-year school reunion where they find that however much has changed for them over the years, some things can't help but stay the same. What we thought Being in matric (our equivalent of the US's “senior year”) and 17 years old at the time, I was at exactly the right age to get the most out if it when the original American Pie hit our screens way, way back in 1999. Not only was I the exact target audience for the film, I was also the same age and at the same point of my education as all of the main characters in the film. And now, thirteen years later and at the horrifyingly old...

This coming Friday (or, well, Thursday presumably, what with Easter and whatnot) we have a number of noteworthy films coming out but, before I get to the five or so releases that I want to talk about, lets just finish off last week's new movies with Margaret - a film that spent half a decade in the editing suite alone.  It's tempting to simply write Margaret off as an irredeemably awful exercise in self-indulgence - which it is - but it's not often that a film comes along where its sheer badness is actually something worth examining, something that is in many ways the most interesting thing about it. This isn't a Project X or a Born To Be A Star: The Bucky Larson Story where the film's failings are obvious and are clearly the work of the kind of unimaginative, creatively-bankrupt idiots that give mainstream Hollywood a bad name. No, this a film with a potently effective premise (girl tries to come to terms with the part she played in the death of an innocent...