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for this week’s ‘Tribune’: CORIOLANUS [6/10]; HAYWIRE [4/10]; W.E. [2/10]

A smirking gallery of big-screen notables turn up in supporting roles, clearly in on the gag, and among these the biggest impact is made by Michael Fassbender – who gets to use his own Irish accent for once (the picture refreshingly uses Dublin as backdrop for international intrigues) and shows off his tuxedo’d suaveness in what is in effect an elaborate 007 audition.

January 19th, 2012 more >
for this week’s ‘Tribune’: SHAME [6/10]; A USEFUL LIFE [5/10]

Fassbender has been racking up critics’ awards for Shame en route to that much-predicted Oscar nod, he’s probably best known to the multiplex-going public for his turns as Magneto in X-Men – First Class and as dashing but ill-fated film-critic Archie Hicox from Quentin Tarantino’s Inglourious Basterds. Suave, heroic Hicox is that great rarity: a highbrow cinephile movie-character who isn’t a hopelessly nerdy-schlubby social outcast

January 11th, 2012 more >
All that labour to be (re-)born: David Rudkin’s ARTEMIS 81

The BBC1 offerings the night before Artemis 81′s transmission were more typical festive fare: 1976 war-movie The Battle of Midway, followed by the news; at 9.10 the ‘easy-listening’ delights of Val Sings Bing (Irish crooner Val Doonican saluting Bing Crosby); at 9.55 popular Cockney comedy Only Fools and Horses; at 10.40 the BBC’s resident movie-critic Barry Norman’s Films of the Year.

January 9th, 2012 more >
for ‘Tribune’: THE IRON LADY [5/10]

As Thatcher shuffles home, ‘The Iron Lady’ maintains an air of stately calm as we observe, at close quarters, the lioness in winter – still capable of a chilling growl, but increasingly fogged in confusion.

January 5th, 2012 more >
for ‘Tribune’: THE ARTIST [7/10] – new UK release

“Arriving in our multiplexes while Martin Scorsese’s ‘Hugo’ is still drawing (limited) audiences, ‘The Artist’ is another rousingly heartfelt tribute to a bygone, unfairly neglected cinematic era.”

December 29th, 2011 more >