Category Archives: The Best View

Film review | Kill for Me – Getting steamed-up over a Strangers on a Train for girls

Posted on 19 May 2013 by Jason Best

Hitchcock’s classic suspense thriller Strangers on a Train has inspired a host of lesser movies and Canadian thriller Kill for Me clearly owes it a debt too. Katie Cassidy’s Amanda is the story’s innocent dupe, a college student who quickly … Continue reading →

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Film review | The Great Gatsby – Baz Luhrmann gives Gatsby glitz but true class is missing

Posted on 16 May 2013 by Jason Best

Baz Luhrmann’s much-hyped adaptation of F Scott Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby is everything you’d expect: brash, glitzy and bursting with the director’s trademark razzle-dazzle. If Fitzgerald’s Jazz Age classic is the Great American Novel, then this frantically jazzed-up 3D film … Continue reading →

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Film review | Mud – Beguiled on the Mississippi by Matthew McConaughey’s tale-spinning outlaw

Posted on 11 May 2013 by Jason Best

With its story of a scrappy teenage boy aiding a fugitive on the Mississippi River, writer-director Jeff Nichols’ beguiling coming-of-age adventure Mud can’t help but evoke that great American classic Huckleberry Finn. The setting, though, is the present-day Arkansas Delta … Continue reading →

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Film review | Deadfall – Eric Bana is the bad guy with a gun in a whiteout thriller with a nifty noir vibe

Posted on 10 May 2013 by Jason Best

A B-movie with an A-list cast, crime thriller Deadfall sets its plot in motion with some bracing shocks in its first few minutes. Eric Bana and Olivia Wilde’s incestuously close brother-and-sister crooks, Addison and Liza, are fleeing from a casino … Continue reading →

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Film review | Star Trek Into Darkness – JJ Abrams’ sci-fi sequel hits warp speed from the start

Posted on 9 May 2013 by Jason Best

JJ Abrams hits warp speed right from the start of Star Trek Into Darkness, the sequel to his cracking 2009 reboot of the classic sci-fi series, kicking off the movie with a breathtaking sequence that combines breakneck thrills, deadpan comedy … Continue reading →

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Film review | Quartet – Maggie Smith & Tom Courtenay access all arias in Hoffman’s cosy comedy-drama

Posted on 9 May 2013 by Jason Best

Dustin Hoffman makes his film-directing debut with heart-warming ensemble comedy-drama Quartet – and it’s no surprise that he should get the best from a classy line-up of veteran British stars led by Maggie Smith and Tom Courtenay. Based on the … Continue reading →

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DVD review | Life of Pi – Beauty and the Beast: Ang Lee’s dazzling fable of boy adrift with hungry tiger

Posted on 29 April 2013 by Jason Best

Putting Yann Martel’s bestselling 2001 novel Life of Pi on screen seemed an impossible task, but it’s one that director Ang Lee pulls off spectacularly with this awesome adventure tale of shipwreck and survival. The story’s resilient young hero, Pi … Continue reading →

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Film review | The Look of Love – A flavour of Partridge for Steve Coogan’s porn playboy Paul Raymond

Posted on 27 April 2013 by Jason Best

Steve Coogan and director Michael Winterbottom follow up previous collaborations 24 Hour Party People, Cock and Bull Story and The Trip with The Look of Love, a biopic of porn ’n’ property tycoon Paul Raymond, once the richest man in … Continue reading →

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Film review | Bernie – Jack Black’s small-town mortician is a marvel in tragi-comic true story

Posted on 26 April 2013 by Jason Best

In an inspired stroke of casting, Jack Black and Shirley MacLaine play sweet and sour in Bernie, an offbeat comedy based on a stranger-than-fiction true story. Texas funeral director Bernie Tiede (Black) is cheerful, public-spirited and beloved by everyone in … Continue reading →

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Film review | Iron Man 3 – Third time’s a charm as Downey Jr’s Tony Stark turns up the superhero snark

Posted on 25 April 2013 by Jason Best

Robert Downey Jr is back for his third solo outing as billionaire inventor Tony Stark, aka metal-suit wearing superhero Iron Man, and he’s in splendidly sardonic, wisecracking form. Joss Whedon gave Downey plenty of knockout zingers in last summer’s Avengers … Continue reading →

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