I’m a child of the 60’s, and to me as a young boy the films of the 60’s and 70’s that really spoke to me were those involving cars doing dangerous things: Steve McQueen in ‘Bullitt’ tearing round the streets of San Francisco; the Love Bug; the Monte Carlo race in ‘Grand Prix’; Bond’s Lotus … Read more
The Monuments Men is allegedly a true story (though I suspect rather embellished) of a mission by allied art lovers to save the wealth of public and private art from being captured by Nazi Germany and/or destroyed on Hitler’s death. The real life photos over the end-titles indicate that it certainly wasn’t all made up. … Read more
When a film is narrated by Death himself, you know it’s not likely to be a laugh-a-minute sort of film. “The Book Thief” – a cinema feature debut by Brian Percival – starts impressively. Death stalks the skies muttering truisms about life and mortality. Decending throught the clouds we see a steam train chuffing through … Read more
After “12 Years a Slave” and “The Wolf of Wall Street” I’d thought I’d seen all of the serious best actor candidates for this year. That was before I’d seen Matthew McConaughey’s performance in “Dallas Buyers Club”. The performance is simply outstanding: less showy that DiCapprio’s in “Wolf”; certainly less worthy than Ejiofor’s in “Slave”; … Read more
The old student adage – “better a bottom in front of me than a frontal lobotomy’ – was never truer than in Martin Scorsese’s new film “The Wolf of Wall Street”. The film tells the bizarrely true story of Jordan Belfort (based off his autobiography): a rags to enormous riches story of the ugly … Read more