The Cinemasitter

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  • Review: Oz the Great and Powerful (2013)

    Disney’s return trip to the wondrous world of L. Frank Baum’s Oz, as laid out in MGM’s classic 1939 adaptation of The Wizard of Oz, is a well-judged one, and certainly a lot more commercially sound than its ill-fated 1985 attempt, Return to Oz. In Sam Raimi’s hands, the tale of a circus magician who inadvertently precipitates a civil war in a magical land somewhere over a rainbow delivers a ravishing and emotionally satisfying adventure. This is a prequel of course, which means there’s little doubt over what the outcome will be, but the journey is sufficiently different from – and faithful in spirit to – its illustrious predecessor as to feel quite fresh. All things considered, it just about manages to have its cake and eat it.

    Full review: Oz the Great and Powerful | Cinema Review | Film @ The Digital Fix

  • Review: Side Effects (2013)

    Steven Soderbergh’s final film (allegedly) before he puts his feet up with pipe and slippers, Side Effects is a dark Hitchcockian game of smoke and mirrors, and is certainly up there with the director’s best work. Beginning as a medical drama in the vein of his 2011 flick Contagion, the story takes a left turn into conspiracy thriller territory while asking some pretty searching questions about the drugs industry. By the end though, these have been more or less been forgotten in favour of the conventional thriller format, but you’ll be too engrossed in trying to figure out what on earth is going on to mind too much.

    Full review: Side Effects | Cinema Review | Film @ The Digital Fix

  • Interview with John Logan

    Last week at Watersprite (the Cambridge International Student Film Festival) I was given a chance to sit down with one of their guest speakers, John Logan. He was very funny, clearly passionate about his trade, and generous with his time. The full interview is now up at Take One (link at the bottom of this article). Thanks again to all those at Watersprite who pulled off what was, by all accounts, a great festival.

    John Logan – the writer behind GLADIATOR, THE AVIATOR, HUGO and SKYFALL – was in energetic and affable form at this year’s Watersprite Student Film Festival in Cambridge. A lively speaker, he extolled the virtues of poetry as a means to learning the craft of scriptwriting: “Poetry teaches economy.” The 51 year old playwright-turned-screenwriter, nominated for three Oscars over the course of his brief yet productive film career, is keen to raise awareness of the debt owed to history in today’s cultural landscape: “Know the continuum of writers”, he urges. “If you want to learn how to write, read Shakespeare’s Hamlet. And then read it again and again, until you know and understand it completely.”

    Full article: Interview with John Logan | TakeOneCFF.com

  • Review: Cloud Atlas (2012)

    Exactly what is Cloud Atlas? That would be telling, but it’s a mystery well worth making the journey to discover. It’s certainly one of the most ambitious tales to be tackled on the big screen in recent memory; a sprawling, staggering epic that steadfastly refuses to collapse under its own weight, despite a near-three hour running time. On the contrary, it dances through its multiple plots and time periods with a lightness that belies its complexity. It’s unlikely to shift The Matrix from the top spot of most people’s favourite Wachowski films, but it’s almost certainly bound to reward multiple viewings, something you’ll be keen to do as soon as possible.

    Full review: Cloud Atlas | Cinema Review | Film @ The Digital Fix

  • Review: This Is 40 (2012)

    Judd Apatow’s latest comedy drama, spun off from his 2007 hit Knocked Up, is a long and extremely bumpy ride across the well-worn turf of the mid-life crisis. Funny only in fits and starts, it is likely to infuriate and entertain in equal measure – those with low patience thresholds need not apply. The increasingly vocal grumblings about whether Apatow should spend longer in the editing suite before releasing his films are not entirely without merit. Yet there’s fun to be had too, thanks to a pair of enjoyable lead performances and a sprinkling of comedic highlights which rubs shoulders (occasionally uneasily) with more serious-minded drama.

    Full review: This Is 40 | Cinema Review | Film @ The Digital Fix

  • Review: Song for Marion (2013)

    A modest film with modest charms, SONG FOR MARION sees Terence Stamp on impressively dour form as a husband faced with the prospect of losing his wife to cancer. After the darker subject matter of earlier works like THE COTTAGE and LONDON TO BRIGHTON, director Paul Andrew Williams’ latest is – despite the subject matter – a slighter affair, and perfectly timed to capitalise on recent ‘grey pound’ hits like QUARTET and THE BEST EXOTIC MARIGOLD HOTEL. In truth, there is nothing here that hasn’t been seen many times before, but its most affecting moments can be put down to the strength of its cast, who provide much-needed dramatic ballast when the plot’s flimsiness threatens to sink it.

    Full review: Song for Marion | TAKE ONE

  • Review: A.I. Artificial Intelligence (2001)

    Steven Spielberg’s futuristic, melancholic take on the Pinocchio story is arguably the director’s most uncharacteristic and yet most personal film to date. It might not be an obvious choice for Valentine’s viewing, but this is a tale of unrequited love: maternal love, childhood love, innocent love. The irony, of course, is that the source of this love is a machine, not a man, but that doesn’t stop it from being a deeply affecting fairy tale in its own right.

    Full review: A.I. Artificial Intelligence | TAKE ONE

  • Review: The Last Stand (2013)

    Arnold Schwarzenegger’s comeback movie is a pretty standard action thriller, which updates Rio Bravo and Assault on Precinct 13 to the present day. Arnie plays a US sheriff in the small, quiet town of Somerton on the Mexican border. The leader of a major criminal gang has just escaped the clutches of the FBI (led by a slumming Forest Whitaker) and is headed straight for Somerton in order to escape justice forever. Only Arnie and his ill-equipped buddies stand in the way. Director Jee-woon Kim (whose The Good, the Bad, the Weird also harked back to the westerns of yore) fails to add much visual interest to this routine adventure, while the lazy casting of Luis Guzmán and Johnny Knoxville as comedy sidekicks pretty much says it all. Even so, after a slow start it does become an enjoyable, if somewhat silly, adventure. Arnold’s acting is creakier than ever, but if you’re in the right mood it’s good for some nostalgic kicks.

    [xrr rating=2/5]

  • Review: Django Unchained (2012)

    Quentin Tarantino digs in to the darker side of American history with Django Unchained, a vitriolic attack on the slave trade masquerading as a homage to the spaghetti western genre. In the same way that Inglourious Basterds rewrote history to provide bloody retribution for the persecuted and right a hideous injustice, so Django does the same for slavery. It marks an interesting new phase in Tarantino’s work, one where content is of equal, if not greater, importance than style. That’s not to say this is any more accomplished than his best works – there’s a good argument to be made for it being a little too long – but it’s as nerve-jangling and violently OTT as anything the writer-director has delivered before.

    Full review: Django Unchained | Cinema Review | Film @ The Digital Fix

  • Review: The Ghost That Never Returns (1929)

    Note: This review was written during the British Silent Film Festival which ran in April 2012 in Cambridge. For various reasons it was ‘lost in the post’, but I thought, better late than never. 

    Made in the dying days of the silent era, THE GHOST THAT NEVER RETURNS is proof (if proof were needed) that cinema was exploring some very interesting places before talkies came along and stopped much of its innovation dead in its tracks. This occasionally dazzling Soviet-produced tale of rebellion in South America follows prisoner Jose Real (Boris Ferdinandov) who, after serving ten years inside, is entitled by law to a single day of freedom – a day from which no-one has ever returned alive.

    Full review: BSFF 2012: The Ghost That Never Returns | TAKE ONE