Film, Eddie Harrison

Mickey Rourke: The Wrestler

8 Jan 2009

I’ve had a poster of Mickey Rourke on my wall for over 20 years now. A black and white blow-up from Alan Parker’s Angel Heart, it pictures Rourke as private detective Harry Angel, freshly demobbed after WWII, his hair back-combed into an untidy quiff…

The Wrestler

8 Jan 2009

DRAMA/SPORT ‘What happened, did the price of tights go up?’ a sneering store-manager taunts Randy ‘The Ram’ Robinson (Mickey Rourke) when the impoverished wrestling star comes looking for work. Fighting a losing battle with his own finances, Randy…

Beverly Hills Chihuahua

8 Jan 2009

COMEDY/ADVENTURE The gritty, seedy world of Mexican dog fighting evoked in Amores Perros is (unsurprisingly) entirely missing from this brightly-lit family comedy from Raja Gosnell, the auteur behind Scooby Doo 2: Monsters Unleashed. Beverly…

Defiance

8 Jan 2009

DRAMA/WAR The suggestion in Knocked Up that Steven Spielberg’s Munich was ‘Rambo for Jews’ seems to have inspired Edward Zwick’s latest project. After military epics Glory and The Last Samurai, Zwick arrives at the remarkable true story of the…

Far North

11 Dec 2008

(15) 89min After an auspicious debut with The Warrior, writer-director Asif Kapadia went to Hollywood with disastrous results in the form of super-lame Sarah Michelle Gellar horror flick The Return. Adapted from the short story True North by Sara…

Inkheart

11 Dec 2008

(PG) 106min Christmas may not have been cancelled, but the withdrawal of the latest Harry Potter instalment left a gaping hole in the festive cinema schedules, with Iain Backbeat Softley’s long-shelved adaptation of Cornelia Funke’s children’s novel…

Twilight

11 Dec 2008

(12A) 121min ‘I hope you enjoy disappointment,’ murmurs surly vampire-next door Edward (Robert Pattinson) in Catherine Thirteen Hardwicke’s adaptation of Stephanie Meyer’s vampire-romance novel, but Twilight is likely to be a matter of extreme…

Changeling

27 Nov 2008

CRIME/DRAMA Clint Eastwood’s feel for actors doesn’t desert him in this true story of 1920’s Los Angeles featuring Angelina Jolie in a similar Oscar-baiting vein to her role as Mariane Pearl in Michael Winterbottom’s A Mighty Heart. Jolie…

Madagascar 2: Escape 2 Africa

27 Nov 2008

COMEDY/ANIMATION When Alex the lion (voiced by Ben Stiller), Gloria the hippo (Jada Pinkett Smith), Melman the giraffe (David Schwimmer) and Marty the zebra (Chris Rock) escaped from their Manhattan zoo in 2005 hit Madagascar, they were leaders of…

Max Payne

13 Nov 2008

(15) 99min The film noir influences on the Max Payne video game series made a cinematic outing inevitable, but John Moore’s abortive fantasy-thriller exemplifies everything that’s wrong with console to big-screen crossovers. Jockstrap-fresh from…

My Best Friend’s Girl

13 Nov 2008

(15) 99min From Howard Deutch, the auteur behind the seminal teen movie Pretty in Pink starring Molly Ringwald, My Best Friend’s Girl is a 1980s throwback rom-com, updated with scatological language. Dane Cook, so disagreeable in last year’s Good…

Quarantine

13 Nov 2008

(18) 89min Jaume Balagueró and Paco Plaza’s grimly effective Spanish-zombie movie [REC] gets the Hollywood treatment in John Erick and brother Drew Dowdle’s scene-by-scene remake. Quarantine purports to be the surviving document of what happens…

W.

30 Oct 2008

The American aphorism that suggests 'any boy can grow up to be president' is blandly dramatised in Oliver Stone's outrageously timed film, the first biopic to consider the life story of a sitting US president. Fresh from his deadly pursuit by Anton…

Film & DVD Playlist - Paul Newman

30 Oct 2008

‘What we’ve got here is failure to communicate’ was the tagline of Cool Hand Luke, 1967’s chain-gang drama starring Paul Newman, who sadly died from cancer in October. The many obituaries covering his best-known performances in hits like Butch Cassidy…

Eagle Eye

16 Oct 2008

THRILLER Reuniting the talent from last year’s sleeper hit Disturbia and featuring a similar surveillance theme, Eagle Eye is a busy conspiracy thriller featuring manboy-of-the-moment Shia LaBoeuf and directed by DJ Caruso. With two major franchises…

Igor

16 Oct 2008

ANIMATION/COMEDY It’s a tough life for hunchbacked assistants of mad scientists. Igor (voiced by John Cusack) ekes out his precarious existence as humble servant to the sinister Dr Glickenstein (John Cleese), an evil genius set on winning the annual…

The Stone of Destiny

2 Oct 2008

The pedigree highlight of Charles Martin Smith’s career so far was directing Air Bud, the story of a basketball playing golden retriever. So how did he come to be directing a film about the Scottish National Party? Stone of Destiny is a feature film…

88 Minutes

2 Oct 2008

THRILLER Someone really should keep Al Pacino away from director Jon Avnet. The star of Sea of Love and Carlito’s Way has struck up an unfortunately productive relationship with the hack director of Red Corner and Up Close and Personal. Avnet…

Brideshead Revisited

2 Oct 2008

DRAMA Julian Jarrold’s revamp of Evelyn Waugh’s classic novel pares back the opulent trimmings of the television series to expose the bare bones of Waugh’s lament for the civilised past. Charting blithe social-climber Charles Ryder (Matthew…

Fly Me To The Moon

2 Oct 2008

ANIMATION A 3D film describing man’s first trip to the moon is a lively sounding prospect, and moments in Ben Stassen’s animation offer a genuine wow-factor, depicting a space-rocket blasting into the atmosphere, or the view from above the…

Mirrors

2 Oct 2008

HORROR Korea has recently surpassed Japan as the go-to guys for rubbish horror-movie ideas, with this remake of 2003’s Into the Mirror a good example of an already hokey plot getting seriously lost in translation. Alexandre Aja’s disposable shocker…

Death Race

18 Sep 2008

After a long gestation as a big budget vehicle for Tom Cruise, Paul W Anderson’s rehash of elements from Roger Corman’s 70s cheapie Death Race 2000 finally rolls into theatres to be met with suitably lowered expectations. It’s hard to cheapen the memory…

Playlist: Mashup and reworked movies

18 Sep 2008

Not enjoying the films you’re watching? Why not just re-cut them to reflect your own sick tastes? Reworking or ‘mashing-up’ classic films is a popular internet sport. Millions have already seen how much cuter The Shining’s father-son dynamic would look…

The Foot Fist Way

18 Sep 2008

Getting a cinema release through the endorsement of Will Ferrell and his Anchorman/Tallegeda Nights director Adam McKay, The Foot Fist Way is a low-budget mockumentary about a small-time martial arts training school. Made in 2006, the central role of…

Zombie Strippers

18 Sep 2008

There was a time in 70s cinema, and then again in 80s video, when putting the word ‘strippers’ in the title made for a guaranteed moneymaker. Competition from the super-pornography-highway of the internet has put the kibosh on such suggestive marketing…

Pineapple Express

4 Sep 2008

As with last year’s Superbad, male bonding lies at the heart of the latest Judd Apatow production which also comes from the screenwriting team of Evan Goldberg and Seth Rogen. After playing one of the cops in Superbad and starring in Knocked Up, Rogen…

Cut to the chase

4 Sep 2008

Eddie Harrison investigates the low fi, low budget revolution going on in Scottish filmmaking. Jean-Luc Godard said all you need to make a film is a girl and a gun. But anyone who has ever picked up a camera knows that cash in the bank helps too. The…

Reworking practice

4 Sep 2008

With the big screen adaptation of Brideshead Revisited on the horizon Eddie Harrison examines other upcoming revamps

College Road Trip

21 Aug 2008

Aiming for the generational conflict of Freaky Friday, director Roger Kumble’s family-comedy-drama focuses on trust issues between high-flying teen Melanie (Raven-Symoné) and her over-protective father, police chief James Porter (Martin Lawrence). When…

The Strangers

21 Aug 2008

THRILLER/HORROR Even in 2008, sleeper hits (low budget, low forecast films that become box office hits) still happen. Take writer-director Bryan Bertino’s taut thriller The Strangers which cost ten million dollars to make (a paltry amount in today’s…

Get Smart

21 Aug 2008

After the financial/emotional excremental woes of Evan Almighty and Dan in Real Life, comic Steve Carell shores up his career with a safe property: Peter Segal’s tent-pole blockbuster revamp of 1960s spy spoof Get Smart. Maxwell Smart (Carell) is an…

Mad Detective

21 Aug 2008

THRILLER ‘Apply emotions to investigate!’ is the motto of the mad detective at the centre of Johnny To and Wai Ka-fai’s follow-up to 2003’s My Left Eye Sees Ghosts. The an unfortunately-named Inspector Bun (Ching Wan-lau) is a police investigator…

Step Brothers

21 Aug 2008

COMEDY ‘Families is where our nation finds hope, where wings take dream’ is the George W Bush quotation which opens new Will Ferrell comedy Step Brothers. Such crude expression sets the tone for a sporadically funny but generally gross comedy in…

Wild Child

14 Aug 2008

ROMANCE/COMEDY (12A) 98min ‘What is this, Hogwarts?’ exclaims bratty Californian kid Poppy (Emma Roberts, niece of Julia) on her arrival at a genteel girls boarding school in England, ruled over by tough-but-fair headmistress (Natasha Richardson).

You Don’t Mess With The Zohan

14 Aug 2008

COMEDY (12A) 112min Anyone who tries to understand Middle Eastern politics based on the contents of an Adam Sandler comedy deserves all they get. Despite his good intentions he bites off more than he can possibly chew in this, his new comic opus. For…

The Fox and the Child

7 Aug 2008

FAMILY/ADVENTURE (U) 92min Luc Jacquet’s follow-up to March of the Penguins has a title which sums up the film’s content precisely. The Fox and the Child is the simple story of a giggly eight-year-old French child (Bertille Noël-Bruneau) who strikes…

Space Chimps

31 Jul 2008

ANIMATION/COMEDY (U) 80min Crowded out in the summer schedules by WALL-E and Kung Fu Panda, Space Chimps is the latest effort from Vanguard Animations destined to suffer the also-ran status of Valiant and Happily N’Ever After. On the whim of a…

The Love Guru

31 Jul 2008

COMEDY (12A) 86min Aside from his ongoing Shrek and Austin Powers properties, Mike Myers hasn’t come up with a new comedy character in over a decade. Myers claims his latest creation, Guru Pitka, has been honed by comedy-club appearances, but there’s…

Saturday’s child - Tina Fey - Baby Mama

17 Jul 2008

America’s newest great comedy phenomenon is Tina Fey. Eddie Harrison uncovers the comic genius in her first big screen adventure, Baby Mama

Baby Mama

17 Jul 2008

COMEDY (12A) 99min Each generation gets the Mary Tyler Moore it deserves; as creator and star of NBC’s 30-Rock sitcom, Tina Fey has earned herself the right to be 2008’s funny-girl. And even though writer/director Michael McCullers seems intent…

Donkey Punch

17 Jul 2008

THRILLER (18) 99min The first fruit of the UK Film Council’s collaboration with Shane Meadows’ regular producers Warp X, Donkey Punch is a misguided attempt by Brits to muscle in on the already hackneyed torture-porn genre. Tammi (Nichola Burley…

Mamma Mia!

3 Jul 2008

Set on a sun-kissed Mediterranean island, musical blockbuster Mamma Mia! features Meryl Streep as the mother of Sophie (Amanda Seyfried), a bride-to-be trying to identify her natural father amongst three wedding guests, played by Pierce Brosnan, Colin…

The Mist

3 Jul 2008

HORROR/SCI-FI (15) 126min After The Shawshank Redemption and The Green Mile, writer/director Frank Darabont continues his one-man championing of the Stephen King estate with an adaptation of novella The Mist. After a thunderstorm in an isolated rural…

WALL-E - Angus MacLane interview

Edinburgh International Film Festival

19 Jun 2008

Could you fall in love with a robot? Animation studio Pixar is betting that you will. The little metal critter with designs on your heart is called WALL-E, and this summer, he’ll be giving Indiana Jones and Carrie Bradshaw a run for their money at the…

Teeth

19 Jun 2008

HORROR/COMEDY (18) 93min Vagina dentata is the Latin name for a vagina with teeth, a primal fear which crops up in a number of different cultures and philosophies, now emerging at the centre of this teen flick written and directed by Mitchell…

The Ruins

19 Jun 2008

HORROR (18) 90min From Hostel to Paradise Lost, there are obvious political reasons for the current glut of horror films featuring groups of American teenagers holidaying abroad who get picked off one-by-one by mysterious forces. But even Marshall…

The Waiting Room

19 Jun 2008

DRAMA (15) 105min Elderly Roger (Frank Finlay) sits in a suburban London train station, forlornly waiting for his dead wife to arrive, his presence providing the catalyst for a Brief Encounter-style chance meeting between Anna (Anne-Marie Duff) and…

In Search of a Midnight Kiss

5 Jun 2008

COMEDY/ROMANCE (15) 99min Writer/director Alex Holdridge’s dispatch from the frontline of the LA dating scene is exactly what it depicts: a witty, slight affair. Wilson (Scoot McNairy) is a detached single desperate for a date to provide him with a…

Prom Night

5 Jun 2008

HORROR REMAKE (15) 87min With its extended disco dancing sequence and an uncomfortably serious role for Naked Gun star Leslie Nielsen, the 1980 slasher flick Prom Night hardly merits rediscovery. And yet somehow telly hack director Nelson McCormick…

Superhero Movie

5 Jun 2008

SPOOF/COMEDY (12A) 85min The presence of Airplane’s David Zucker amongst the executive producers and Leslie Nielsen amongst the cast raises hopes that Superhero Movie might offer a classier strain of parody than Date Movie or Meet the Spartans. Alas…

I Served The King of England

22 May 2008

COMEDY/WAR (15) 119min Czech writer/director Jirí Menzel’s adaptation of Bohumil Hrabal’s novel depicts the life of aspiring hotelier Jan Díte (Ivan Barnev) as a non-stop cavalcade of good food and even-better sex enjoyed under the darkening shadow of…

Mongol

22 May 2008

EPIC/DRAMA/HISTORY (15) 125min Life’s hard when you’re a Mongol. For Genghis Khan, starting life in 1192 as nine-year-old Temudjin (Odnyam Odsuren), the problems start when his selection of a bride is interrupted by the assassination of his father by…

Playlist

22 May 2008

The latest PlayList invites you to investigate the past, present and future through the remarkable reality tunnels detailed in the work of French film artist Chris Marker. Marker is due to celebrate his 87th birthday this year. If you recognise the…

O Lucky Man!

8 May 2008

COMEDY/SATIRE (15) 169min (Warner Home Video) Lindsay Anderson’s 1973 masterpiece is long overdue a proper DVD release, particularly since it’s rarely shown on our television or cinema screens. In O Lucky Man!, Clockwork Orange star Malcolm McDowell…

Charlie Bartlett

8 May 2008

DRAMA (15) 96min In a crafty move that befits its wheeler-dealer anti-hero, teen comedy Charlie Bartlett arrives on the coat-tails of the highly publicised Iron Man, which also features Robert Downey Jr. The star gives a pleasing supporting…

Doomsday

8 May 2008

HORROR/ADVENTURE (18) 108min In Neil Marshall’s derivative, dystopian fantasy, Scotland 50 years on is a no-man’s land ravaged by disease, cut off from England by a rebuilt Hadrian’s Wall, and presided over by streetwise gangs of cannibals driving…

Nim’s Island

24 Apr 2008

FAMILY/ADVENTURE (U) 95min Jodie Foster tries vainly to kick-start a career as a children’s entertainer in , a post-modern adventure aimed squarely at undemanding family audiences. Co-directed by Jennifer Flackett and Mark Levin, who made the…

P2

24 Apr 2008

HORROR (18) 97min P2 is another example of the bait-and-switch technique by which successful horror directors try and use their name as a brand to facilitate side-projects, in this case, a generic woman-in-peril melodrama set in a deserted parking…

Botched

10 Apr 2008

COMEDY/CRIME/HORROR (15) 94min If characters explode like tomatoes in microwaves, you’re probably witnessing the continuing rise of British splat-core comedy horror that’s had as many hits (Shaun of the Dead, Severance) as misses (The Cottage), the…

Strange Wilderness

10 Apr 2008

COMEDY (15) 84min Dude, where’s my countryside? From Adam Sandler’s Happy Madison company, Strange Wilderness is another stoner-meets-nature comedy from director Fred Wolf, writer of the similarly low-rent male-bonding opus Without a Paddle. Peter…

Model-Turned-Actor - The Hottie and the Nottie

27 Mar 2008

Paris Hilton’s latest celluloid foray, The Hottie and the Nottie earned a grand total of £20,000 at the US box office; considerably less than Hilton pockets to swan around for a couple of hours at a Hollywood shindig. Hilton’s rotisserie chicken…

Playlist - free online horror movies

27 Mar 2008

Do you like scary movies? Fancy watching one on the internet? Beware! The shaky camcorder techniques of video pirates can make the latest Hollywood blockbuster look as scrambled as Cloverfield. So, rather than pick a fight with the copyright-lawman, why…

First Sunday

27 Mar 2008

CRIME/COMEDY (12A) 97min When trousers fall down to reveal brightly-coloured underwear, any comedy is instantly revealed as low-brow, yet this vehicle for ex-rapper Ice Cube written, directed and produced by his old promo director friend David E…

How She Move

27 Mar 2008

DRAMA (12A) 91min The latest entry in the competitive step-dance cycle initiated by Bille Woodruff’s 2003 Honey, Ian Iqbal Rashid’s How She Move adds little to the tried-and-tested format of recent entries Step Up and sequel Step Up 2 The Streets.

One Missed Call

27 Mar 2008

HORROR/MYSTERY (15) 86min Actors Shannyn Sossamon (Wristcutters: A Love Story, The Holiday) and Edward Burns (Confidence, The Brothers McMullen) might have hoped that appearing in a remake of a Miike Takeshi 2003 J-Horror would give their stalling…

The List of Adrian Messenger

27 Mar 2008

MURDER/MYSTERY (PG) 95min (Metrodome DVD retail) John Huston’s playful 1963 thriller is the solution to a regular trivia question at film quizzes: which movie features the combined talents of Kirk Douglas, Frank Sinatra, Burt Lancaster, Robert Mitchum…

Horton Hears A Who!

13 Mar 2008

ANIMATION (U) 86min The magical rhyming whimsy of Dr Seuss was never more resistible than when rendered in live-action by comedians Jim Carrey (The Grinch) or Mike Myers (The Cat in the Hat). But technology has finally caught up with Seuss’s…

Meet the Spartans

13 Mar 2008

COMEDY (12A) 83min Date Movie and Epic Movie were unforgivable atrocities against comedy, but writer/directors Jason Friedberg and Aaron Seltzer manage to deal themselves a slightly stronger hand with their latest effort Meet the Spartans, which sets…

Redacted

13 Mar 2008

WAR/HORROR (15) 90min Could the war in Iraq be the first conflict to be lost, not at home or abroad, but on the internet? That’s the proposition featured in Brian De Palma’s Redacted, a disturbing account of how the war on terror has been ‘You…

The Game Plan

28 Feb 2008

FAMILY/COMEDY (U) 110min ‘Can you smell what The Rock is cooking?’ Although wrestler-turned-actor Dwayne ‘The Rock’ Johnson doesn’t get to use his trademark catchphrase in Disney family-values comedy The Game Plan, his charismatic presence turns some…

The Bank Job

28 Feb 2008

HEIST/TRUE CRIME (15) 111min You’ve probably not heard of 1971’s Baker Street bank robbery, and with good reason; a government D-notice was used to black out all media coverage. The cover-up was to protect the identity of a member of the royal family…

Crazy Love - interview with Don Klores

Glasgow Film Festival

14 Feb 2008

Crazy Love isn’t your everyday romantic comedy: boy meets girl, boy loses girl and arranges for hoods to throw acid in her face, boy goes to jail, then re-emerges to marry the very same girl. Arguably the darkest date movie ever, Dan Klores’ new film…

The Bucket List

14 Feb 2008

COMEDY/ADVENTURE (12A) 96min After four decades as one of cinema’s most personable superstars, Jack Nicholson deserves the extended curtain call he gets in The Bucket List, even if it is sentimental, mawkish and manipulative. Ideally cast as filthy…

Be Kind Rewind

14 Feb 2008

COMEDY (12A) 100min Michel Gondry’s freewheeling satire on copyright law features a frustrated filmmaker Mike (Mos Def), who works in a VHS-only video store in an apartment block due for demolition. When his dad (Danny Glover) is out of town finding…

Playlist

14 Feb 2008

The huge, mildly nauseating US box office returns of the new Hannah Montana/Miley Cyrus 3D concert film put PlayList in mind of some of cinema’s greatest ersatz bands and non-existent singers. So, let this faux guide help you differentiate between your…

Asterix at the Olympic Games

(U) 116min

31 Jan 2008

The third of the live action Asterix movies retains Gérard Depardieu as rotund sidekick Obelix, but sees Clovis Cornillac taking over from Christian Clavier as the diminutive warrior. Much like the first two entries in the series, Asterix at the Olympic…

Cloverfield

(15) 84min

31 Jan 2008

Nobody knows how to spin out a yarn like Lost creator JJ Abrams, but even at a short running time, his shaky-cam disaster horror flick Cloverfield turns out to be all spin and no substance. Essentially a marketing concept in search of a movie…

Juno

(12A) 96min

31 Jan 2008

This year’s Little Miss Sunshine style sleeper hit – Jason Reitman’s feelgood comedy about teenage pregnancy – owes its appeal to the performance of Ellen Page in the leading role. With the circumstances of the conception quickly glossed over with a…

National Treasure: Book of Secrets

(PG) 124min

31 Jan 2008

Replace the religious sub-plot from The Da Vinci Code with some spurious blather about the history of the US Constitution and you have the successful formula for the National Treasure franchise. The second instalment finds adventurer Ben Gates (Nicolas…

Underdog

(U) 81min

31 Jan 2008

‘This is so much more fun than sticking your head out the car window!’ whoops the gifted canine protagonist of Underdog, a live-action feature from Disney about a crime fighting dog with super-powers. Attractive as this proposition might sound to fans…

Water Horse: Legend of the Deep

(PG) 111min

31 Jan 2008

Blending monster thrills with a thoughtful pacifist message, director Jay Russell and screenwriter Robert Nelson Jacobs’ adaptation of Dick King-Smith’s well-loved children’s book is a family-friendly film about Nessie and a huge improvement on 1996’s…

Aliens Vs Predator – Requiem

17 Jan 2008

SCI-FI/HORROR (15) 86min In the ongoing saga of a faceless corporation which creates a monster it doesn’t know how to handle, there are obvious parallels between the universe featured in the Alien films and Fox’s treatment of the franchise itself.

In the Valley of Elah

17 Jan 2008

WAR THRILLER (15) 121min Having had his projects garlanded with Oscars for writing (Million Dollar Baby) and direction (Crash), the wheels finally come off the Paul Haggis bandwagon with In The Valley of Elah, a well-acted but deathly dull…

The Good Night

17 Jan 2008

COMEDY/DRAMA/ROMANCE (15) 93min Not above cashing-in on family connections, writer/director Jake Paltrow’s romantic comedy casts his older sister Gwyneth as the dowdy, disaffected partner of commercial jingle writer Gary (Martin Freeman). A kind…

Walk Hard: The Dewey Cox story

17 Jan 2008

MOCKUMENTARY (15) 96min ‘What do we think about, when we think about Cox?’ says an admirably straight-faced Eddie Vedder addressing an awards ceremony at the climax of writer/director Jake Kasdan’s accomplished musical mockumentry. Spoofing The…

Charlie Wilson's War

4 Jan 2008

REAL LIFE/DRAMA (15) 101min Directed by Mike Nichols (The Graduate, Primary Colors) and starring Tom Hanks and Julia Roberts, the chief virtue of Charlie Wilson’s War is a commendably tight script by Aaron Sorkin. The West Wing’s creator provides…

Playlist

4 Jan 2008

2007 was one wild ride for car-mageddon lovers, with pedal-to-the-metal automobile action featuring extensively in films like The Bourne Ultimatum and Quentin Tarantino’s Death Proof, which matched a 1969 Dodge Charger against Barry Newman’s 1970 Dodge…

PS I Love You

4 Jan 2008

COMEDY/ROMANCE (12A) 126min As the well-connected daughter of the current Taoiseach, author Cecilia Ahern could surely have pulled a few strings to ensure her novel PS I Love You avoided the abhorrent adaptation offered here by…

Balls of Fury

Comedy

13 Dec 2007

The prospect of a comedy about table tennis isn’t a particularly exciting one; somewhere over the course of Dodgeball, Talladega Nights, Blades of Glory and Hot Rod, the comedic possibilities of idiot sportsmen ran out of puff some time ago. Randy…

Bee Movie

Animation/comedy

13 Dec 2007

The buzz about Bee Movie is that it’s a cute animated fable for children that also showcases popular comic Jerry Seinfeld, who developed the project with the writers from his titular sitcom. The sting in the tale is that, while vaguely palatable to both…

We Own the Night

(15) 117min

13 Dec 2007

Despite sounding like a 1980s power rock anthem, writer/director James Little Odessa Gray’s tough cop melodrama owes its title to the motto emblazoned on the badges of New York’s lawmen. Entrepreneur Bobby (Joaquin Phoenix) and straight-laced policeman…

Codename: The Cleaner

29 Nov 2007

COMEDY (12A) 84min So-called comedian Cedric the Entertainer should change his name to Cedric the Complete Non-Event on the evidence of this painfully un-entertaining spoof on the Jason Bourne movies. Having directed genuinely unfunny vehicles for…

Fred Claus

29 Nov 2007

FAMILY/COMEDY (PG) 115min In his third film with director David Dobkin (Clay Pigeons, The Wedding Crashers) Vince Vaughn trades far too heavily on his familiar wise-guy charms in this cloying Joel The Matrix Silver-produced Christmas offering.

American Gangster

15 Nov 2007

Ridley Scott’s American Gangster opens with callous urban cruelty as a man is tied to a chair, doused with petrol and set on fire. But the reasons behind this violent act are less to do with anarchy than with good business, or at least that’s the lesson…

Sleuth

15 Nov 2007

Some typically terse Harold Pinter dialogue aside, Kenneth Branagh’s reworking of Anthony Shaffer’s theatrical two-hander is an annoyingly clueless affair. Having played opposite Laurence Olivier in the original, Michael Caine now switches to playing…

The Jane Austen Book Club

15 Nov 2007

Despite the literary title, the club in this adaptation of Karen Joy Fowler’s bestselling book is conceived after Prudie Drummond (Emily Blunt) goes to see the 1999 version of Mansfield Park at the cinema. Similarly, writer/director Robin Swircord…

Good Luck Chuck

1 Nov 2007

COMEDY/ROMANCE (15) 99min After demonstrating his lack of timing as editor on three Rush Hour films, Mark Helfrich makes an unsurprisingly awful directorial debut with this crude romantic comedy. US stand-up comic Dane Cook plays Charlie, a…

The Brothers Solomon

1 Nov 2007

COMEDY (15) 92min Comedians Will Forte and Will Arnet dumb down their already dumb strain of Saturday Night Live humour to exhausting effect in this lowbrow comedy. When their father (Lee Majors) lapses into a coma, the understandably single Solomon…

The Lookout

1 Nov 2007

THRILLER (15) 98min If life was a competition, then Chris Pratt (Joseph Gordon Levitt) would be seeded one millionth. Nursing a serious head injury after causing a fatal car accident, the unfortunately named Pratt has both physical disability and…

Stardust

18 Oct 2007

FANTASY (PG) 127min Matthew Layer Cake Vaughn’s scrupulous adaptation of Neil Gaiman’s novel looks set to take a space at the same box-office graveyard as several other recent fantasy pilots (Eragon, The Dark Is Rising). Vaughn quit his first big…