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Film
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Friday, 28 July 2006 |
 I've been a massive fan of fast-talking bullshit artist Vince Vaughn since his Swingers days, and I had an embarrassing crush on Rachel in Friends
– or on Jennifer Aniston, more likely, since every role she plays is
exactly the same. I love both leads, and detested this film, so I can only
wonder what those less well-disposed towards them think of this
appallingly poorly-judged attempt at romantic comedy – the first I've
ever seen without even an attempt at romance.
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Film
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Friday, 28 July 2006 |
 How do you make a movie about a superhero whose time is clearly past?
Whose catchphrase "truth, justice and the American way" – always an
incongruous value set for a space alien – sounds so hokey you can only
use the first two parts of it as an ironic wink? Superman Returns
struggles with this challenge in much the same way that its brooding,
oddly passive hero does. Ultimately, though, the sure hands of The Usual Suspects’ Brian Singer have constructed a film that derives reasonably sophisticated fare from an increasingly corny-seeming comic-book.
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DVD
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Thursday, 27 July 2006 |
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In the eyes of Hollywood,
Terry Gilliam is like Robert Oppenheimer – brilliant, talented, but best known
for building The Bomb. The Adventures of
Baron Munchausen was made almost twenty years ago, but its shadow still
falls on the director, and on The
Brothers Grimm. Watch the movie, and it’s clear that some nerveless
bureaucrat at the studio made a grab for the controls. As a result, this
flight-of-fancy never really takes off, and instead just swerves all over the
place.
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Film
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Thursday, 27 July 2006 |
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This exceptionally promising but flawed Korean film carefully
crafts an ironic, delicate picture of an "odd couple" friendship, develops it,
runs it aground on the plot, then finally and unforgivably scuttles the whole
enterprise.
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Film
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Thursday, 27 July 2006 |
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The pop-corn was still. The choc-top wrappers lay quiet. The
audience watching United 93 was
silenced absolutely, and so were the questions - the most pressing of which is
not "is it too soon?", but "why again?" Paul Greengrass (Bloody Sunday, The Bourne Supremacy) wipes that query away with one of the most
affecting films in recent memory, and replaces it with another. If United 93 was thrashed at the box office
by R.V., are the terrorists winning?
And are they deserving victors?
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