James Mottram

Interview: John C Reilly on Carnage and Terri

The actor discusses his prolific rate of appearances in both higher and lower profile movies

1 Feb 2012

‘I have been a busy boy, haven’t I?’ grins John C Reilly. And it’s true. Last seen as the luckless father in We Need To Talk About Kevin, the Chicago-born actor now stars in Roman Polanski’s Carnage and US indie Terri. Factor in two major upcoming…

Carnage

Polanski's comedy of upper-middle class savagery is fast, funny and filthy

24 Jan 2012

(15) 79mins Roman Polanski’s adaptation of Yasmina Reza’s play Gods of Carnage opens with a playground spat. Set over the opening credits, it’s this innocuous bust-up that drives the bitterly funny four-hander, as the parents of both children try to…

Rampart

A compelling performance from Woody Harrelson can't quite support the weight of this cop drama

24 Jan 2012

(15) 108mins At this rate, Woody Harrelson should keep Oren Moverman on a retainer. The director guided Harrelson to an Oscar nomination in 2009’s The Messenger. And their latest collaboration Rampart sees the actor on similarly searing form. Set in…

Like Crazy

Sundance-wowing romance starring Anton Yelchin and Felicity Jones

24 Jan 2012

(12A) 89mins Winner of 2011’s Sundance Grand Jury prize, Like Crazy is a long-distance love story mired in the complications of modern-day living. Anna (Felicity Jones) is a British student living in Los Angeles who spends the perfect summer with…

Interview: Felicity Jones, star of Like Crazy

Young actress set to follow Sundance hit with films by Warren Beatty and Ralph Fiennes

17 Jan 2012

A year ago, Felicity Jones was asleep when she got a call from America. ‘I thought there’d been a terrible accident,’ she laughs. But this was no accident. On the line was the producer of her new film Like Crazy: the Sundance Film Festival had just…

One Day

Director of An Education tackles David Nicholls' novel

12 Aug 2011

(12A) 108min Following An Education, Danish director Lone Scherfig attempts to conjure the same magic on another slice of hit Brit lit – David Nicholls’ One Day. Fans of the book have already been protesting that the casting of Anne Hathaway as…

Red Hill

Australian modern-day western makes up for lacks in originality with bravado and tension

29 Jun 2011

(15) 97min With its tale of a convict on the loose and a rookie cop on his first day on the job, Red Hill is hardly original. Written and directed by debuting Aussie director Patrick Hughes, if you crossed No Country For Old Men with Assault on…

Hanna

A wonderfully curious, bold and original film

28 Jun 2011

(12A) 111min What a wonderfully curious and beguiling film this is. Hanna is the story of the eponymous 16 year-old (Saoirse Ronan), trained in the arts of combat and survival in the remote wilds of Finland by her ex-CIA father (Eric Bana).

Angels of Evil (Gli Angeli del Mal)

Flawed addition to the gangster movie genre

18 Apr 2011

(15) 128min The story of real-life Milan mobster Renato Vallanzasca, Angels of Evil has all the ingredients for a bloody gangster classic. For starters, there’s actor/director Michele Placido (who made the 2005 crime saga Romanzo Criminale) at the…

Win Win

Tom McCarthy's sterling comedy/drama starring Paul Giamatti

18 Apr 2011

(15) 105min Like his earlier two films, The Station Agent and The Visitor, Tom McCarthy’s new film Win Win makes no grand statements and is all the better for it. An expertly shaken comedy/drama cocktail, it tells of small-town attorney Mike Flaherty…

The Messenger

Ben Foster and Woody Harrelson film begins well but let down by unfocussed second half

18 Apr 2011

(15) 105min The Messenger is the perfect example of a film of two halves. The first segment is breathtaking, as injured US Army Staff Sergeant Will Montgomery (Ben Foster) is reassigned to the Casualty Notification Team. Partnered with career soldier…

Interview - Natalie Portman on Darren Aronofsky's Black Swan

Actress on the challenging role, extreme pain and dancing injuries

28 Mar 2011

A lot of people are saying your work in Black Swan is your best performance to date. How do you feel? I’m very unobjective! It was definitely the most challenging and the most rewarding. It’s sad that the cliché is true – the more you put in, the more…

The Way

Emilio Estevez directs dad Martin Sheen in measured hiking drama

18 Mar 2011

(12A) 128min How strange that The Way should emerge just as Charlie Sheen – brother, of course, to writer/director Emilio Estevez and son to star Martin Sheen – has completely gone off the rails. Estevez’s second film, following the impressive…

Nick Hamm's rock'n'roll comedy Killing Bono fails to hit its targets

Ben Barnes, Martin McCann and Pete Postlethwaite star in U2-envy film

18 Mar 2011

(15) 113min Killing Bono – it’s probably a thought more than a few have entertained over the years. Whether Neil McCormick ever did is another matter. Author of the exuberant rock memoir I Was Bono’s Doppelgänger, aspiring musician McCormick grew up…

Jim Loach's Oranges and Sunshine a worthy follower in dad Ken's footsteps

Emily Watson, Hugo Weaving and David Wenham solid in social drama

18 Mar 2011

(15) 104min Jim Loach, son of Ken, was always going to be on a hiding to nothing with his debut feature. Bringing a worthier-than-thou tale to the screen, the comparisons to his father’s immense body of work are inevitable, even more so given how…

Ironclad

Medieval seige movie starring Paul Giamatti, James Purefoy and Brian Cox

2 Mar 2011

(15) 120min If you’re partial to a bit of medieval madness, then Jonathan English’s Ironclad has it all. Set in 1215, this bawdy, bloody and brutal history lesson tells of what happened in the months following the creation of the Magna Carta, the…

Sofia Coppola's minimalist masterpiece Somewhere explores LA hedonism

Sofia Coppola on Californian hedonism, buddy movies and working with family

30 Nov 2010

To describe Sofia Coppola’s career as one of extremes is no exaggeration. Lambasted as an actress when she appeared in her father’s lamentable The Godfather Part III, she’s been celebrated as a director – not least for 2003’s Lost in Translation, which…

Eat Pray Love

22 Sep 2010

(PG) 139min From Nip/Tuck to Glee, director Ryan Murphy has the golden touch when it comes to television. Not so, however, with film. His 2006 adaptation of Augusten Burroughs’ memoir Running With Scissors was a middle-of-the-road misfire and much…

Takers

17 Sep 2010

(12A) 106min From its unsophisticated title onwards, Takers is a most basic heist movie. Frenetic action, headache-inducing score, minimal characterisation and a napkin-sized plot, if you’re looking for the new Heat then this certainly isn’t it.

Going The Distance

7 Sep 2010

(15) 102min Whisper it quietly, but Drew Barrymore is beginning to lose her touch. Her early likeable films Never Been Kissed and The Wedding Singer meant we cut her a lot of slack as the girl-next-door. But after Music and Lyrics, 50 First Dates…

The Runaways

7 Sep 2010

(15) 106min For all its rock’n’roll rebellion and punk power, there’s something quite conventional about music promo director Floria Sigismondi’s biopic about The Runaways, the ’70s all-girl group that gave the world the Joan Jett. Perhaps it’s that…

The Girl Who Played With Fire

22 Aug 2010

(15) 129min Since the UK release of The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo last summer, it’s fair to say the cult surrounding the late Stieg Larsson’s ‘Millennium’ books – of which Dragon Tattoo was the first in the trilogy – went over ground. Few films…

The Last Exorcism

Distinctly underwhelming faux-documentary

22 Aug 2010

(15) 87min From 1999’s The Blair Witch Project to last year’s phenomenon Paranormal Activity, the faux-documentary has become a frequent staple of the horror genre in the last decade. Produced by Hostel’s Eli Roth, Daniel Stamm’s effort is the latest…

Salt

12 Aug 2010

(12A) 99min ‘Who is Salt?’ asks the poster’s tagline. ‘Who cares?’ should be the reply. Phillip Noyce’s espionage caper, starring Angelina Jolie at her most proficient and humourless, has been dubbed a ‘Bourne with boobs’. But compared to that…

Trash Humpers - Harmony Korine interview

7 Jul 2010

As idiosyncratic as he is impish, director Harmony Korine may have long since shaken off the media tag of enfant terrible. But with a CV that includes such fiercely independent films as Gummo, Julien Donkey-Boy and Mister Lonely – the latter about a…