Ensconced in my favoured aisle seat in NFT1 at the BFI, the lights came up at the end of Room and, as I attempted to look manly as I wiped the tears from my eyes, I felt shattered. Last year Son of Saul had left me feeling like I’d taken a good kicking, with Room, it felt like every emotional sinew had been wound taut and then played by Rodrigo y Gabriela for two hours. Room is a remarkable achievement.
Read MoreA New Bond film is a special thing. You see all kinds of people excited for something that at the best of times is plain silly fun. With the forth Daniel Craig Bond film, SPECTRE, upon us, we have been having a bit of a golden time with our old 007. While I had issues with Skyfall, hopes for the second Sam Mendes Bond are high. SPECTRE has been out for over a month now and by the half full cinema I saw it in, it is engaging with the masses and raking in a fair amount of coin. The thing is, I really can't see why? This is a Bond film that makes no sense whatsoever and that is based against the history of a franchise where sense has never been a reliable commodity.
Read MoreWhenever a Steven Spielberg movie lands, you know two things, it will be beautifully made and it will get lost in sentimentality with a sweeping score to tell exactly how you should feel. A film by Steven Spielberg is cinematic manipulation done to perfection. Spielberg is the master of this and you always get your money's worth, despite the quality of the overall product. Now, we have Spielberg turning his hand to the cold war thriller and finally gets his hands on Mark Rylance, a move which works a dream.
Read MoreHave you ever done something you didn't want too? Well, having a job, that happens every morning when the alarm goes off. But, looking back at history, people have done incredibly evil things simply because they were asked to do so. At Nuremberg, the standard defence was that "I was following orders". It seems like a weak defence when you are defending the indefensible. But what, just if, it was true? What if, you were asked really nicely? In the 1960's, Stanley Milgram created the "Obedience to Authority Figures" test, now known as The Milgram Experiment, to find out just that.
Read MoreYou never walk into a film cold. You always carry something with you. These days, with them interwebs, it is even harder not too. Trailers tell every bit of a film, the days of mystery are gone. Yet, when you walk into a film about the Holocaust, no matter what the film's pedigree, there is a sense of foreboding. When you are walking into a Cannes Grand Prix winner and your fellow festival goers troop in with buckets of popcorn, frankly, I thought I was in the wrong cinema. I'd opted for a beer, which, as it turns out, was not strong enough.
Read MoreClimbing is one of those things that most see people look at and think "Why?" It is dangerous, requires a high level of skill and physical fitness. It involves being very high up with not much more than a rope, reinforced ballet slippers and a mate who you hope will catch you when you slip. It is a truly wonderful thing. The feeling of being on the rock, having the confidence of gripping or standing on an edge no wider than a credit card is beyond exhilarating. I wish I was good enough to do a mountain. Which is why the very names of the great mountains elicit awe in even people who have never even been to their local climbing centre. Everest is the great popular mountain.
Read MoreHaving grown up with Westerns, you'd think I'd come to them predisposed to loving them. Not so much. For every good Western, there are a saddlebag of worthless entries to go alongside. But, the Western is the one genre where, against the backdrop of a huge, never ending sky, just about any tale can be told. The Western in itself has been around since before cinema and hold a place etched in the public's mind. Given that the period depicted in most Westerns, normally called "The Old West", lasted only about four years, it has been a magnet for our imagination since the dime novel of the 19th Century. The Western has evolved, slowly, from Cowboys and Indians, to White Hats versus Black Hats, to Revisionism and then to Realism.
Read MoreThe credits rolled and the house lights slowly started to come up at the end of Mad Max: Fury Road. I turned to my companions, Stevie (of many Croydon bands you've never heard of) and Ali (podcast editor for a rather well known movie magazine, whom I’d held to ransom to get us in), and we shared the same look of confused, exhilarated, bliss. Even now, 18 hours or so after we walked back into Leicester Square, my head is still spinning at the experience of returning to George Miller’s wasteland road war.
Read MoreNearly twenty years ago, I settled down to watch Kenneth Branagh's unabridged adaptation of Shakespeare's Hamlet. I'd only ever read Hamlet in its entirety and getting comfy, I settled in for the four hours of what turned out to be one of the most beautiful films I've ever seen. Branagh's Hamlet is utter gorgeous to look at and the cast are on top form. Alex Thomson's camera uses every millimetre of the frame to great effect, capturing the opulence and the squalor that only nestle in great adaptations of Hamlet. So why am I prattling on about a film that is older than most of the audience of Branagh's live action take on Disney's 1950 crown jewel, Cinderella? Well, frankly, there are moments in Cinderella that blow me away the same way Hamlet did.
Read MoreAs The Voices ended, I found myself sat there with a massive grin on my face. Which was rather odd, considering that The Voices is a film about a serial killer. Jerry (played with élan by Ryan Reynolds) is, frankly, the nicest serial killer you’d never want to meet. Here is my review of Marjane Satrapi's surprising pitch-black comedy.
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When is a film about a murder, not a film about a murder? Well, when it is The Face of an Angel. Michael Winterbottom's new film tries to look at a murder from the viewpoint of someone looking at the people who are creating the viewpoint we consume. Lost yet? It is an ambitious attempt to try and get past the hyperbole and look at the impact of a murder. And the murder they have chosen is one of the most well documented murders of our times, that of Meredith Kercher.
Read MoreEveryone need a Big Hero. Every once in a while, six come along together! Thanks to Den of Geek and Disney, Ellie and I were treated to a day out at Dolby HQ with co-Director Don Hall and producer Roy Conli. We got to see the film too! Here is what we thought.
Read MoreI hand this review over to my Daughter, coughing from the dust of my Paddington, given to my mother in 1973. It is only right that given how this film made me feel, someone of that nearer that age (Ellie is nearly 12 now... She promised she'd stay 8 too...) should have the final say.
Read MoreAs a paid up geek who earns his living fighting with computers, it goes without saying that Alan Turing has always been a hero of mine. But I didn't come to him through computers, but through Ridley Scott's Blade Runner. Trying to understand the Voight-Kampff test, used by Deckard and the other Blade Runners to find Replicants, led me to the Turing Test and the amazing mind of Turing himself. We know so much more now about the work at Bletchley Park and the machines that cracked Enigma that it is a shame that Turing himself has remained such an enigma himself.
Read MoreThere are fewer triggers in life that get me into a cinema quicker, other than a western and Mads Mikkelsen. Starting with Westerns, well that is easy, it is my Granma's fault. She loved a western, good, bad or indifferent, she was nut when it came to them. And the Rockford Files, for that matter. Going round to my grandparents would mean a good western, usually staring The Duke or Clint.
Read MoreThe American Civil War in popular history is remembered as one of the "Good Wars". The North fighting for emancipation and freedom, the South for slaves, cotton and molasses. And to a greater and lesser degree, that was the case, the big picture. The problem with any war is in the detail, there are no good wars.
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