Trust (2010)

Ah, the internet. It brings us such pleasure, connects us in so many ways (you’re even using it right now to read this very review) and if we’re being honest it’s almost impossible to imagine the world without it now. Yet it also allows people to prowl around, protected by anonymity,...

April 22nd, 2012 | Film Reviews | Read More

Corman’s World: Exploits of a Hollywood Rebel (2011)

“If you want something done right, you gotta do it yourself.” That seems to be one of Roger Corman’s many mottos, as this documentary amply clarifies. Roger Corman was a rebel from the beginning, never bowing down to authority. He started as a script analyst for 20th Century Fox, and when he finally...

April 22nd, 2012 | Film Reviews | Read More

Hotel Lux (2011)

The ways in which the modern-day Germans deal with the atrocities committed by the Nazis in WWII can be complicated. Most Germans are very ashamed of what happened, and this is manifested in many different ways, ranging from refusal to talk about it and to searing soul-searching about its causes. But...

April 21st, 2012 | Feature, Film Reviews | Read More

Life As We Know It (2010)

Perhaps it’s the fact that she seems to get herself a bad reputation, perhaps it’s the fact that she’s not a very good actress, perhaps it’s the fact that her choice of movie roles, quite frankly, suck but there’s just something easy to dislike about Katherine Heigl. I can’t...

April 21st, 2012 | Film Reviews | Read More

By Day and By Night (2010)

Mexican science fiction. I don’t know much about if (if indeed there is much to know); the only experience I remember having with it is the 2008 movie Sleep Dealer, which is a nice little sci-fi gem with decent production values, although not enormously exciting. Then along comes By Day and By...

April 21st, 2012 | Film Reviews | Read More

Faust (2011)

The story of Faust is an old German legend first written down in Latin in 1587, translated to English in 1592, forming the basis for Christopher Marlowe’s Doctor Faustus in 1604. The most famous version of it, however, is the two-part play by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, written in 1808, and often held...

April 20th, 2012 | Film Reviews | Read More

Lockout (2012)

Lockout, starring the always watchable Guy Pearce, is the sci-fi B-movie guilty pleasure of the year. Produced by Luc Besson and directed and written by a pair of first timers, Irish lads James Mather and Stephen St. Leger, who inject a whole lot of love of 80′s action films into this compact...

April 20th, 2012 | Feature, Film Reviews | Read More

La Grande Illusion (1937)

*** Warning ‘ere be spoilers *** Jean Renoir’s La Grande Illusion was first released in 1937 as storm clouds were once again gathering over Europe. Rightly considered to be a cinematic masterpiece, La Grande Illusion is a powerful and provoking look at the senselessness of war. The title itself...

April 20th, 2012 | DVD Reviews, Feature | Read More

The Watermen (2011)

It has to be said that the presence of Jason Mewes in any movie that doesn’t have Kevin Smith in the director’s chair is not something to look forward to. I like Mewes, I really do, but I’ve heard nothing but horrible words about his work outside of the View Askewniverse (with the exception...

April 20th, 2012 | Film Reviews | Read More

Transit (2012)

Starting with a quick armed robbery, Transit really sets off at a pace it tries to keep up until the very end. It doesn’t quite manage it but it has a good go. After the armed robbery comes the hard part – avoiding the cops and getting away with the loot – so the four [...]