“10 Cloverfield Lane” makes you wonder how studio execs come up with film concepts… SCENE: The Production Office at Bad Robot. JJ Abrams and Bryan Burk are sat in front of a hat full of torn up bits of a Maltin’s Film Guide. ABRAMS: “I’ve got Bambi” BURK: “I’ve got Schindler’s List. No, that’s never … Read more
The British love a plucky loser. “Eddie the Eagle” tells the astonishing but true story of everyman plasterer Eddie Edwards who qualified for, and then competed in, the Calgary Olympics in 1988 (probably most famous for those other plucky losers – the Jamaican bobsleigh team of Disney’s “Cool Runnings” fame). I have absolutely no idea how … Read more
Shailene Woodley is one of my favourite young actresses. Ever since she did that dramatic ‘crying-underwater’ scene in “The Descendents” she’s been someone to watch. And, while it was another “Hunger Games” wannabe – “Divergent” was a good story, well acted and with good visual effects. Unfortunately the series has progressively gone downhill: “Insurgent” was … Read more
The name James Bulger brings a chill to many older British people. For James was the little boy abducted from a shopping centre in 1993 by two older boys, murdered and left on a railway line. But the subject of “Black Mass” is real-life hoodlum James “Whitey” Bulger (Johnny Depp) who grew to be the … Read more
In the Coen Brothers latest “Hail Caesar!” we have exactly the same Hollywood-based mix of communist writers and Hedda Hopper-style gossip columnists as recently seem in “Trumbo”: but the films could hardly be more different. “Hail Caesar!” is the film within the film: the latest Victor Mature style ‘God and Sandals’ epic for Capitol Pictures, … Read more