John Cusack

Cannes 2012: The Paperboy

Lee Daniels’ plot hole-ridden latest film is still a compelling, if occasionally ludicrous, ride

25 May 2012

Lee Daniels follows up his sleeper hit Precious with an enjoyably trashy, if often misguided, story based on the book by Pete Dexter. It’s 1969 and journalist Ward (Matthew McConaughey) returns to his hometown of Lately, Florida to investigate what…

The Raven

Thriller hypothesing final days of Edgar Allan Poe falls prey to genre cliches

17 Feb 2012

(15) 111min As the opening titles to The Raven tell us, until he was found near death on a park bench in October 1849, Edgar Allan Poe’s final days remain a mystery. Spinning a macabre tale that might feel at home in one of Poe’s stories, this…

Gulliver's Travels

Jack Black vehicle unfunny and lacking in cohesion

14 Dec 2010

In the ten years since his breakout performance as John Cusack’s slacker workmate in High Fidelity, Jack Black has become a big name movie star, but his CV is surprisingly short of hits. Only Richard Linklater’s family comedy School of Rock has managed…

Hot Tub Time Machine

28 Apr 2010

As with Snakes on a Plane, the best thing about this charmless movie is its title. Director Steve Pink did much to kickstart the cinema bout of 80s nostalgia when he wrote Grosse Point Blank, starring that consummate 80s icon John Cusack. Nonetheless…

2012

13 Nov 2009

(12A) 158min Roland Independence Day Emmerich’s ludicrous apocalypse disaster movie balances spectacular special effects with signposted speeches of withering environmental pomposity. Some old fashioned fun is to be had but there is also some tedium…

John Cusack's world-ending spree

Celebrity Gossip

7 Nov 2009

John Cusack would run up a massive debt if he knew the world was to end. The 43-year-old actor - who stars in the new film '2012' where he plays the hero in a world which is ending - believes the apocalypse would draw people closer together, but he…

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…

Stopping Power proves worryingly apposite

4 Oct 2007

There was some excitement at the announcement deadpan quirk-o-phile John Cusack was going to be starring in a new Jan De Bont action movie going by the name of Stopping Power. Sadly that excitement must now be replaced in its box and nonchalantly…

1408

23 Aug 2007

Mikael 'Derailed Håfström'’s mild chiller is pretty much a one-man horror vehicle for John Cusack as Mike Enslin, a world-weary writer who makes his living from staying in supposedly haunted locations and describing his experiences. After a mysterious…

Cusack and Isaacs team up for de Bont

23 Aug 2007

Actionphobe John Cusack is set to join scene-stealing Harry Potter actor Jason Isaacs in Jan de Bont’s new movie Stopping Power. Cusack last tried on his action trousers for the superlative Con Air and in the Twister director’s latest flick is set to…