Because Everybody Else Has One

Hide those razors... This review is also up on Channel 24 What it’s about Roy Cady is a professional hitman who has just been diagnosed with lung cancer and after escaping a trap set up for him by his own boss, he finds himself on the run with a young prostitute and her kid sister. The trio soon find themselves laying low in a hotel in Cady’s hometown, Galveston, where they are forced to confront where they came from and where they’re going. What we thought Galveston marks the English-language directorial début of Melanie Laurent, the fantastic French actress probably still best known to international audiences for playing Shoshana in Tarantino’s Inglorious Bastards. I have never seen any of the French films she directed (South African cinemas seem to show less and less foreign language films with each passing year) but her first crack at the American and English-speaking market may be far from entirely successful but it does show a director very much in command of her abil...

Begging for an Oscar, deserving a raspberry.   This review is also up on Channel 24 What it’s about Erin Bell is a washed-up, self-destructive detective who is drawn into a new case involving a group of criminals whose gang she infiltrated years previously in a disastrous undercover operation. Will this case drag her even further down as it reopens old wounds or will it giver her one final shot at redemption? What we thought Continuing Nicole Kidman’s return to prominence, Destroyer casts her in the sort of role that is almost entirely the opposite of the sort on which she built her name. Where once she was typecast in roles that called for a certain brittleness and fragility (see the underrated horror film, The Others, for arguably the best example of this), here she plays someone tough and almost entirely emotionally closed off. She is, in short, excellent as our anti-hero Erin Bell. Sadly, she is hampered by having to act her way through some distractingly overb...

And now, for the big movie of the week! Well, OK, considering its abysmal box office numbers, "big" might not be the word I'm looking for... This review is also up at Channel 24 . What it's about Returning once again to the stylish-noir world on Frank Miller's Sin City, we meet old faces and new as their paths cross and criss-cross in often deadly ways. What we thought As I haven't revisited the first Sin City in film in many a year, nor having caught up with any of the comics in even longer, I'm not sure if my luke-warm reaction to Sin City: A Dame to Kill For is a result of my having outgrown the property or if, very simply, this sequel just isn't anywhere near as good as the first film. Either way, though it certainly has its pleasures – even if those pleasures are more often that not on the guilty side – A Dame to Kill For is a definite misfire. To be sure, even if the first film was genuinely good (and I am starting to h...

And now for your regularly scheduled capsule reviews. Now You See Me. This ridiculous but hugely entertaining thriller about a group of stage magician anarchists/ thieves who rob banks as part of their stage show has largely been overlooked but for all of its unabashed daftness - that final twist really makes no sense - it's light, frothy and funny with a kick ass cast and a snappy pace. But please, enough with the Prestige/ Inception/ Oceans Eleven comparisons - Now You See Me is far too unassuming to warrant it. (7/10) Great Expectations. As the five millionth adaptation of Dicken's classic novel, this Great Expectations is a fairly straightforward, if condensed, take on the story that has plenty of style and a very strong cast but is let down by its shallowly and quite annoyingly drawn lead characters and an abundance of plot that drags the film's energy down to zero far too often. Literary purists may like it but give me the very flawed but at least somewhat interes...

As I hadn't yet seen Gambit, I decided to hold off last week's roundup until I had so, once again, here's what's been happening over the past two weeks in South African cinemas. Last week did seem to be the week to release extraordinarily ordinary films and Epic was only the start of it. I, like all but one of Johannesburg's film critics somehow managed to miss I'm So Excited but, from what I hear, it seems to be one of Pedro Almadovar's worst ever films - though what I did see hardly fares much better. First, we have Broken City , an overly generic crime/ noir thriller that may be perfectly watchable but is as predictable as it is forgettable - which is a bit of a problem since I saw it last November when it was originally supposed to be released. Since then, it's been pushed back by distributors in this country for a solid seven months, finally finding its place among this period's huge blockbuster films. I don't know why they bothered....

Arthur Christmas certainly wasn't the only film to come out this week. It wasn't even the only good one. On with the show, then... Don't Be Afraid of the Dark may be produced and co-written by dark-fantasy master, Guillermo Del Torro, but Pan's Labyrinth it ain't. Hell, it's not even half as good as Chronos. The problem isn't so much that it's badly made - performances, direction and production values are all perfectly solid - but that it's boring where it's supposed to be scary; never building up so much as a passingly creepy atmosphere. At least, it doesn't once you get past the film's 5 minute pre-credits sequence, which manages to be more unsettling than the rest of the film put together. Aside for occasionally evoking Pan's Labyrinth, which is a risky move for even better horror flicks, the film's biggest mistake is assuming that tiny CGI creatures are scary. This is hardly the first genre work to feature "scary toot...