Get on your bike and look for work (Ghost Rider: Spirit of Vengeance, Mark Neveldine and Brian Taylor, US, 2012, 95 mins) Before proclaiming Ghost Rider: Spirit of Vengeance a dehumanising spectacle, consider this: Johnny Whitworth’s villain has been invested with the power of decay by suited Satan Ciarán Hinds, a palsying process that’s collapsed [...]
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The House on Hokum Hill (The Woman in Black, James Watkins, UK, 2012, 95 mins) [Warning: This review reveals the film’s ending] I’ve never read Susan Hill’s novel, The Woman in Black, and I never will, but I once attended Stephen Mallatratt’s stage adaptation. It was an okay sort of evening; harmless hokum; in which [...]
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Sex and Death (A Dangerous Method, David Cronenberg, UK/Ger/Canada/Switzerland, 2011, 99 mins) Any self-respecting film scholar will argue that a biographical take on the two fathers of Psychoanalysis, hated Fathers from an infant’s perspective (if Freud was right), is long overdue. The field and the medium were made for each other. Lacan will tell you [...]
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Disney’s New Darlings (The Muppets, James Bobin, US, 2011, 103 mins) When there was first talk of getting things started on a muppet-ational revival of Jim Henson’s troupe of felt vaudevillians, competing with super-fan Jason Segel for the right to write was Miss Piggy herself, Frank Oz. In the event, franchise owners Disney, whose sticky [...]
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Cultural Vandalism (Star Wars: Episode I – The Phantom Menace, George Lucas, US, 1999/2012, 136 mins) It was with much trepidation that I took to the cinema to see a new version of my all-time favourite movie, The Phantom Menace. I did so despite news that George Lucas, the tinker, interned in his Xanadu, had [...]
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Cult Following (Martha Marcy May Marlene, Sean Durkin, US, 2011, 102 mins) When the lost Martha is inducted into her boyfriend’s “commune”, the first act of group leader Patrick, a Catskills Christ made of sinew, beard and vest, is to change her name. “You look like a Marcy May” he tells her. His attempt at [...]
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To fetch a pail of DASANI ® (Jack and Jill, Dennis Dugan, US, 2011, 91 mins) Anyone who’s serious about sitting through this execrable Adam Sandler money printing wheeze, should first watch Mike Stoklasa and Jay Bauman’s autopsy; a one hour episode of their Half in the Bag web series, that left the rest of [...]
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Mind Games (Chronicle, Josh Trank, US, 2012, 83 mins) A philosopher, a jock and a tormented loner are endowed with telekinetic powers after stumbling upon a hole and a psionic device of undetermined origin, in Josh Trank’s enjoyable debut. If you need to guess which of the three lapses into megalomania and fascism, becoming the [...]
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The month is toast but there’s still plenty of January fodder out there. Here are a few that full reviews might have shortchanged. Haywire (Steven Soderbergh, US, 2011, 93 mins) The battle of the sexes is comprehensively settled in this retro-styled thriller, punctuated by 60’s arthouse touches including sober fistfights and a snazzy, jazzy soundtrack. [...]
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A Shock to the System (Margin Call, J.C.Chandor, US, 2011, 107 mins) J.C Chandor’s disaster movie literally evokes the business end of the 2008 market meltdown; the crisis that ushered in the period we’ve affectionately named The Age of Austerity. Though a false witness, endowed with hindsight, it’s a commendably sober and even handed drama, [...]
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