All User Reviews

“Garrison” (Michael Douglas) has been working on the US Presidential Secret Service detail closely, indeed a lot more closely than even his boss realises. Then, one of their number is slaughtered on his own doorstep and with the G8 summit in Canada looming, they get wind of a plot to assassinate the President. Somehow his colleague “Breckinridge” (Kiefer Sutherland) gets it into his head that it’s his long-time friend who is behind what have to be serious security leaks and so now with his erstwhile protégé disgusted at what “Garrison” might have done and instituting an investigating that coul…

Deep amidst an arid desert, a creature emerges from the sand craving some water. It has the shape of an human, but looks more like a mummy that has been rolling around in the hoover dust - and that could well explain it's thirst. There is an empty bottle nearby and we can all hear what sounds like the trickle of a stream nearby, so off we set across a terrain that seems to be made of paper and metal in search of a drink. Where is this place? What is this place? What chance this water is ever going to appear? Now, to be fair there are as many holes in what constitutes the plot as there are in t…

The distinctly earthy “Ernst” (Jens Jørg Spottag) has just landed and called his wife before setting off on the drive home. It’s a pretty miserable evening and so he stops to pick up an hitchhiker en route. This fellow claims to be Jesus. Yes, that Jesus. Of course, “Ernst” is highly dubious but as their trip proceeds he starts to wonder if his passenger really is whom he claims to be - and that’s when the conversation starts to get quite peppery. Many of the questions posed are those you might ask yourself, not least about the role of him and his dad and just how they might be relevant two mi…

**_A naïve girl goes to Nashville to make it in the country music biz_** No doubt inspired by the success of Altman’s “Nashville” from the year prior, this is a stripped-down version by Corman’s company that focuses on the single storyline of an almost-17 years-old girl wanting to become a country star. She’s played by winsome Monica Gayle whose known for the gang leader in “Switchblade Sisters” a year earlier. Monica’s reminiscent of Sissy Spacek, just with a prettier face. I bring that up because this flick obviously influenced “Coal Miner’s Daughter” four years later. Whilst “…

She ought to be settled in life. “Annie” (Bebe Neuwirth) is turning forty, married with two children and holds down a fairly decent job in publishing. Perhaps it’s something about her birthday that inspires her to document the next twenty four hours of her life, and that’s what she shares with us. The nature of this does mean there’s a great deal of dialogue, and even though she delivers it quite entertainingly at times I found I just got a little weary listening as her life seemed to cram in as many incidents as possible into this timeframe. Some of it is quite funny, especially as she looks …

This movie is a comedy with a mission. The fight scenes were great. I thought the main characters Woo Su Han (Kim Yeong Kwang) and Yoo Da Hee (Lee Soon Bin) had very good chemistry. I really liked their comedic timing. The supporting cast was great also. It was funny and the story was entertaining so I would recommend this one. Perfect for a date night.…

Guillermo del Toro's "Frankenstein" is visually sumptuous and emotionally powerful, but it arrives at precisely the wrong moment in history with precisely the wrong message. While somewhat more faithful to Shelley's narrative structure than other adaptations, del Toro diverges widely in emotional context. He has recast Victor's hubris and the sin of playing God into a story about generational violence: abusers of children are often abused themselves and unhealed. The novel's cruelty has been transformed into human understanding and forgiveness. This would be admirable if we lived under the …

I reckon the fact that so many nations put this on their awards radar must suggest a lot of resonance with families, not just in Britain, who are having to come to terms with a myriad of contentious circumstances as they try to live day to day. This centres around the drink-loving “Cynthia” (Brenda Blethyn) who lives with a daughter “Roxanne” (Claire Rushbrook) who has a lively rapport with her boyfriend “Paul” (Lee Ross). Then she gets a phone call from a woman calling herself “Elizabeth”. No, not her dead mum but her long-since adopted daughter. Yep, it’s that brutal. Not surprisingly, “Cynt…

Anders Thomas Jensen doesn’t make films; he builds meticulously crafted, tonally volatile explosive devices disguised as character studies. Den sidste viking is no exception, representing both a triumphant return to form and a deepening of the writer/director’s singular obsessions. It is a film that seamlessly stitches together gut-punch drama with absurdist comedy, resulting in a work that is as emotionally resonant as it is unpredictably hilarious. At the core of The Last Viking are dad issues and the lingering scars of childhood that shape entire lives—a theme Jensen has mined before, bu…

Paul Thomas Anderson's "One Battle After Another", from Thomas Pynchon's novel, is recognizably a PTA film, yet profoundly different in ways that set it apart from everything he's done before. This is Anderson evolving, and stepping into territory he's previously only circled. For the first time, PTA is blatantly political and urgently timely. He tackles immigration and racism with direct engagement, addressing issues currently tearing through the United States. The "Christmas Adventurers Club," a white supremacist secret society, is openly satirical, bordering on actual humor. This is a ra…