(Philadelphia, Jonathan Demme, USA, 1993, 125 mins) Justified. Philadelphia is the first Hollywood film to acknowledge the danger and consequences of AIDS, but also the ignorance that many people become susceptible to because they don’t understand this pandemic. Tom Hanks won the Academy Award, Golden Globe Award, and a Silver Bear for Best Actor, and [...]
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Creative Tension (Mandelson: The Real PM?, Hannah Rothschild, UK, 2010, 75 mins) It’s a testament to the transient nature of politics and its biggest actors that the New Labour era, barely six months dead at time of writing, already feels like a lifetime ago. Hannah Rothchild’s dying days portrait, billed as an intimate document of [...]
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Another world is opened wide When I look in to your eyes A world that’s miles away from this Where butter flies and rainbows kiss. A different world becomes real When you touch me, just that feel, A world you wouldn’t think exists Where time stands still and lifts the mists A world beyond this [...]
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The Origin of an Icon Sherlock Holmes: The Complete Stories by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle (Wordsworth Editions, RRP £6.99, 1408pp) Guinness World Records list Sherlock Holmes as being the most portrayed film character, being played by 75 actors in 211 films. This does not take into account the many plays, TV shows, radio serials and [...]
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The Right One (Let Me In, Matt Reeves, US, 2010, 116 mins) The second cinematic outing for John Ajvide Lindqvist’s Låt den rätte komma in (Let the right one in), is still a supernatural film blanc of the first order, though now it comes under the classic Hammer banner and swaps the icy Stockholm environs [...]
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Wee C*nts (Neds, Peter Mullan, UK, 2010, 124 mins) I first encountered the acronym NEDS (Non-Educated Delinquents) when I arrived at my Scottish University, back in 1998. In common with other regional underclasses, the Chavs of London, the Wastrels of Buckinghamshire and The Gentry of Wales, Neds were a source of derision; jesters employed in [...]
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Last Rites (A Congregation of Ghosts, Mark Collicott, UK, 2009, 93 mins) Laurence Olivier once referred to him as the man with a name that sounds like a fart in a bathtub. To many, he was better known as a celibate British policeman, burned alive by Scottish cultists. To a generation of television viewers, he [...]
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Crime and Punishment, Fyodor Dostoevsky (Oxford World Classics, 1980, RRP £6.99 ) Warning- This contains epic spoilers, but everyone knows what happens anyway. Living in a hovel, subsisting almost entirely on tea and spending days sleeping or wandering aimlessly around town is pretty much a standard part of the normal student experience. I once fainted [...]
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The Middle Age of Middle England (Another Year, Mike Leigh, UK, 2010, 133mins) [Warning: This review discusses the film's final scene] Another Year opens with a stand alone prologue in which Imelda Staunton plays an agitated insomniac receiving counselling for her sleepless nights, root cause unknown. The scene, involving two peripheral characters, only seen again [...]
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The Longest Yard Sale (Everything Must Go, Dan Rush, US, 2010, 96 mins) [Warning: This review discusses key plot points] Dan Rush’s drama is flecked with comic touches but is noteworthy for cementing the tartrazine-blooded Will Ferrell’s status as an actor who can reign it in as well as vomit it out via wild gesticulatory [...]
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