Category Archives: Reviews

Film review | The Muppets – The green frog and his old pals show off some new tricks

Posted on 10 February 2012 by Jason Best

For the first time since 1999’s Muppets from Space, the madcap Muppets are back on the big screen with their trademark blend of innocent wonder, gleeful musical spoofs and knowingly cheesy jokes in their new movie The Muppets. But the … Continue reading →

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Film review | The Woman in Black – Radcliffe strives to put Harry’s ghost to rest in this eerie Gothic chiller

Posted on 9 February 2012 by Jason Best

Daniel Radcliffe may have put the cares of Harry Potter behind him to star in The Woman in Black, but this chilling screen adaptation of Susan Hill‘s hit ghost story finds him once more contending with supernatural evil. Again brimming … Continue reading →

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Film review | Journey 2: The Mysterious Island – Duck! The Rock is coming at you in 3D!

Posted on 3 February 2012 by Jason Best

An old-fashioned adventure romp that wraps newfangled cinematic trickery around a ramshackle plot, Journey 2: The Mysterious Island is a knockabout sequel to 2008’s Journey to the Center of the Earth, notable at the time for being the first feature … Continue reading →

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Film review | Carnage – It isn’t pretty when the mask of politeness slips

Posted on 3 February 2012 by Jason Best

Human nature red-in-tooth-and-claw is stripped bare in Carnage, Roman Polanski’s darkly comic screen adaptation of Yasmina Reza’s hit stage play God of Carnage, a wickedly satirical four-hander in which two ostensibly well-mannered middle-class couples meet on polite terms to patch … Continue reading →

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Film review | Man on a Ledge – It’s mission: implausible for this daft but daring heist thriller

Posted on 3 February 2012 by Jason Best

Vertigo sufferers and sticklers for plausibility will want to give Man on a Ledge a miss, but if you’ve a head for heights and a nonchalance about gimmicky plots then you’ll probably get a rush from this contrived action thriller. … Continue reading →

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Film review | Like Crazy – Felicity Jones & Anton Yelchin are mad for each other. But will it last?

Posted on 27 January 2012 by Jason Best

A big hit at the 2011 Sundance Film Festival, bittersweet romance Like Crazy is a grown-up film about young love. As so many others have done before, 28-year-old director Drake Doremus captures the giddy excitement of courtship; what makes his … Continue reading →

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Film review | The Descendants – Clooney and Payne mine the human condition for tragicomic gold

Posted on 27 January 2012 by Jason Best

A poignant, funny, warm-hearted tragicomedy set in Hawaii, The Descendants is director Alexander Payne‘s first film since the Oscar-garlanded Sideways seven years ago. He hasn’t lost his assured feel for the comedy and drama of ordinary life, and his deft … Continue reading →

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Film review | J Edgar – Clint and Leo’s warts’n'all study of FBI boss Hoover: one for the waxworks museum

Posted on 21 January 2012 by Jason Best

Leonardo DiCaprio puts his pin-up days well and truly behind him to play notorious FBI chief J Edgar Hoover from youthful idealist to paranoid old age in Clint Eastwood’s solid but stodgy biopic J Edgar. It’s not a flattering portrait. Playing … Continue reading →

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Film review | Haywire – Gina Carano punches above her weight in Soderbergh’s cracking thriller

Posted on 20 January 2012 by Jason Best

Betrayed by her bosses, a freelance black-ops agent goes on the run in Steven Soderbergh’s Haywire, a taut action thriller that is as briskly efficient and muscular as its heroine. Played by mixed martial artist Gina Carano, lean, mean ex-Marine … Continue reading →

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Film review | Shame – Michael Fassbender bares all in McQueen’s searing tale of sex, lies and emotional pain

Posted on 14 January 2012 by Jason Best

Following their critically acclaimed 2008 film Hunger about IRA prisoner Bobby Sands, actor Michael Fassbender and director Steve McQueen (no relation) reunite for a project that is almost as controversial – a fearless, unblinking, full-frontal portrait of a sex addict. … Continue reading →

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