Philip Seymour Hoffman

Moneyball

Star-studded baseball film mired in clichés and with scenes that fall flat

8 Nov 2011

(12A) 133min Moneyball is a baseball movie that aims for universal appeal by casting Brad Pitt as a maverick general manager, having climactic scenes revolving around a strained father/daughter relationship, and in its strongest moments, being about…

The Ides of March

Clooney's effective if by-the-numbers dissection of America’s political system

17 Oct 2011

(15) 101min George Clooney – more salt than pepper, more actor than director. Like Good Night, and Good Luck, his fourth feature directorial effort dissects America’s political system and surmises that it is fuelled of corruption and greed. The…

Jack Goes Boating

Philip Seymour Hoffman's directorial debut owes a lot to his theatre background

12 Oct 2011

(15) 90min Philip Seymour Hoffman goes back to his theatrical roots for his directorial debut, reprising the central role he played on stage in Bob Glaudini’s 2007 off-Broadway hit. Hoffman plays the titular Jack, a shy and withdrawn New York limo…

Profile: Philip Seymour Hoffman, director and star of Jack Goes Boating

The much-respected actor screens his directorial debut at the EIFF

27 May 2011

Born Fairport, New York, 23 July 1967. Background Known as the ‘character actor’s character actor’, Hoffman has been a jobbing actor since the early 1990s. After playing bit parts in television shows, shorts and features, Hoffman got his breakthrough…

Mary and Max

2 Nov 2010

(12A) 92min So who’s up for an Australian claymation feature dealing with loneliness, bullying, obesity, suicide and mental illness? No? Well, that’s a crying shame, as writer/director Adam Elliot, who won an Oscar for short Harvie Crumpet in 2003…

Synecdoche, New York: Crisis of faith

14 May 2009

‘How many roads must a man walk down / before you call him a man?’ Is Bob Dylan’s most famous protest song really a surrealist riddle? What’s the road made out of, and will it hurt the tender soles of my feet? That’s the thing about the Jewish…

The Boat That Rocked

2 Apr 2009

COMEDY/DRAMA Richard Curtis’ return to the big screen after six years back working in television is not as rockin’ as it is rolling, loose, baggy and freewheeling. It feels like a very long musical montage with little structure or direction. Some…

Doubt

5 Feb 2009

DRAMA If, as the old proverb goes, ‘doubt makes the mountain that faith can move’, then John Patrick Shanley’s powerful 2004 play, set in a Catholic school, posits a relative Kilimanjaro in the middle of the Bronx. When the headmistress Sister…

Philip Seymour Hoffman's economy music

Celebrity Gossip

3 Jan 2009

Philip Seymour Hoffman thinks 60s pop music will help people through the credit crunch. The Oscar-winning actor is convinced his new movie 'The Boat That Rocked' - set in a 60s pirate radio station loosely based on the infamous Radio Caroline that…

The Savages

17 Jan 2008

DRAMA (15) 114min Nine years after her 1998 feature debut Slums of Beverley Hills, writer-director Tamara Jenkins returns with this richly observed and terrifically acted character study. The Savages of the title are a pair of intellectual…

Laura Linney

17 Jan 2008

Breezing into a Soho hotel room on a sunny autumn morning during the London Film Festival, a smiling Laura Linney exudes a patrician charm and confidence. One of her fingers is encased in a splint, the result of a bathroom accident that very morning…