JRR Tolkien’s sweet, 320-page fantasy has presumably been turned into a monstrous three-part film in order to make as much moolah as possible. Â Â Â Â
Tom’s always telling his siblings that he wants to meet Metallica’s drummer Lars Ulrich, so Kate (a journalist) and Will (a film-maker) try and make it happen, organising a trip to the US to see his hero. The real hero here, though, is sister Kate, who gains backstage access. Very lovely
David O Russell’s Oscar-winning comedy stands out from the Hollywood crowd by having a polished and punchy screenplay, rather than acres of self-indulgent improv, and a hero (Bradley Cooper) who has genuine mental-health issues, rather than simply being an arrested adolescent.
Available in the UK after a four-year wait, this American sitcom is heavily indebted to The Office and all its mock-doc stylings – there’s a sideways glance to camera every 30 seconds – but it has a sweetness and richness all of its own.
A muscular, tattooed Santa (Alec Baldwin) and his fellow guardians require the services of maverick Jack Frost (Chris Pine) to defeat misery guts Pitch Black (Jude Law), a bogeyman who wants to engulf the world in darkness. My children (ages three and five) were transfixed, but this weak DreamWorks animation lacks humour and wonder.
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Argo is further proof, after the excellent Gone Baby Gone and efficient The Town, that Ben Affleck is an accomplished film-maker. The 1979 Iranian hostage crisis is the catalyst for this bizarre true story, in which a CIA agent (Affleck) sets up a fake fantasy film in order to smuggle six Americans, hiding at the Canadian embassy, out of Tehran. He recruits a foul-mouthed producer (Alan Arkin …
“What I see in him is compulsive psychosis,” grumbles Viggo Mortensen’s William Burroughs-like character about Dean Moriarty (Garrett Hedlund, convincingly hedonistic/idiotic).
James Bond’s 50th anniversary film was a phenomenal hit in the cinema, even by 007 standards – and fair enough.
A hymn to adolescent self-absorption, Ol Parker’s Now Is Good stars Dakota Fanning as a teenage girl with one of those rare strains of terminal cancer which don’t make you look unhealthy.