Because Everybody Else Has One

I haven't seen The Three Stooges but as it stands, this is probably the most noteworthy film being released this week. That doesn't necessarily means it's the best but if it is, it's probably best to stay home this weekend and rent a DVD.  This review is also up at Channel24  What it's about A retelling of the classic fairytale where a young princess, Snow White, has to escape the clutches of her evil stepmother before finally returning – with eight (?) dwarves and a huntsman who was sent to kill her in tow – to defeat her stepmother and return peace and tranquillity to her kingdom. What we thought Like so many “re-imaginings” and “re-interpretations”, Snow White and the Huntsman neither re-imagines,nor re-interprets the classic fairy tale enough to ever stand up as more than a forgettable cliff-note within the long and storied legend of Snow White. The film does stick rather closer to the original fairy tale than the classic Disney cartoon w...

Oops, almost forgot! But then, considering the film, can you really blame me? The Lucky One is exactly what you might think a romantic drama based on a book by Nicholas Sparks would be like. Or, at least, that's the theory. I have somehow managed to miss every film based on one of his books to date. That's right. Even the Notebook. Still, I was willing to give it a chance because I certainly like romantic dramas (at least in theory) and I didn't want to be yet another critic being sniffy about another Zac Efron film. Unfortunately, The Lucky One didn't exactly have me wanting to run out and rent the entirety of the Nicholas Sparks oeuvre. Worse, while I'm usually willing to defend Mr Efron after some very solid work in the likes of Charlie St Cloud and, most especially, Me and Orson Wells, he is very bland here. Of course, save for a spunky Blythe Danner, everything about the film is incredibly dull, if pleasantly so, so that's hardly surprising. At least, e...

Well, who the hell saw this coming. Also up at Channel24 What it's about After Agent K (Tommy Lee Jones) is murdered in his youth by a time-travelling, villainous alien, it's up to Agent J (Will Smith) to go back to 1969 to prevent this from happening. Teaming up with a young Agent K (Josh Brolin), J finds himself in a race against the clock to both save his partner and prevent a future alien invasion from taking place. What we thought However much comic book movies are all the rage right now, it's hard to imagine that anyone was clamouring for a resurrection of the cinematic adventures of the Men In Black – certainly not after the frankly woeful Men In Black II did everything it could to torch all the goodwill that the original film engendered way back in the mid 1990s. And yet, here we are, ten years later and the Men In Black are back and in far, far better form than anyone could reasonably have hoped. If nothing else, it's a true pleasure to ...

To make up for all the recent late reviews, here's an early review of a film opening this week. Based on an early Hunter S Thompson novel that only saw the light of day in 1998, The Rum Diary can best be appreciated - to steal a phrase usually associated with superhero comics - as the "Secret Origin" of the man who would go on to establish gonzo journalism, write a classic cult novel and create a public persona that was in equal parts laughable and laudable but always larger than life. Love him or hate him - and, lets be honest, there's plenty of reason to do both - Hunter S Thompson was a literary and journalistic icon whose mixture of righteous anger, humanistic compassion and drug-fueled weirdness makes him an intriguing figure even years after his his less-than-glorious death-by-suicide. On screen, he has already been portrayed by Bill Murray in the middling Where The Buffalo Roam and more pertinently by Johnny Depp in the maddeningly inconsistent but undeniab...

Catch up time. To be honest, there's not a lot here worth bothering with so these will be hopefully short and to the point. I should say that I still need to see Dark Shadows and Shame but if and when I do, I would imagine that they will both deserve full reviews.  One Life: Beautiful nature documentary but you have to wonder why this, of all documentaries, deserved a cinematic release. (?/10) The Cup: Unassuming and underwhelming sports drama that belongs on the small screen despite the presence of the always great Bendan Gleeson. (4/10) The Grey: Actually rather good, if increasingly nihilistic survival drama with a very strong performance from Liam Neeson. Less fun than it looks, but more interesting than it could have been. (7/10) Battleship: One of the most dull films I've seen in a cinema since Paranormal Activity 2. Exactly what you'd expect of an alien-invasion film based on a pen-and-paper game with ZERO inherent narrative. This makes Transformers 3 look li...

A film that seems to be weirdly misunderstood by a good number of people - not least of which are its distributors who have somehow deemed this shameless b-movie to be art-circuit worthy. The Raven might seem to have literary pretensions in that it is a film about the last days of Edgar Allan Poe, a genuinely legendary author, with a title that is an obvious nod to what may well be his most famous epic narrative poem. It's also set up to make you want to read Poe's work as its entire plot revolves around Poe teaming up with a detective to catch a serial killer who is using Poe's stories as inspiration for his crimes. For all of that though, the aspect of Poe's work in which The Raven is most interested, is its undeniable influence on the pulp fiction of the early 20th century - and, by extension, on everything that was in turn influenced by the pulps. It's not for nothing, after all, that The Raven shares a director (James McTeigue) with the seriously pulpy fi...

OK, wow, so due to some personal stuff I have fallen way behind so there's a lot to catch up with. I'll do a roundup of these past few weeks but first a few full-ish reviews of the more notable films released. Admittedly, everything has fallen by the wayside thanks to The Avengers - kinda deservedly at that - but released here on the same week was this charming little comedy drama with the unlikely title of Salmon Fishing in the Yemen .  And make no mistake, it is a weird title. It may be based on a well-received and fairly successful book, but Salmon Fishing in the Yemen sounds - to me at least - like its either a weird bit of surrealism or an edgy political drama or, heaven help us, another Kite Runner, but it really isn't any of these things . What it is, essentially, is a good romantic comedy with a rather strange and messy backdrop. The messy backdrop involves a rich, eccentric sheikh who hires a stodgy scientist to help indulge his personal passion by constru...

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...