Favourite Film Series - The Lives of Others

The Lives of Others was the first feature film of Florian Henckel von Donnersmarck’s career, it was a stunning debut film taking the Best Foreign Picture award home in the 2006 Academy awards (beating Del Toro’s Pan’s Labyrinth) and receiving critical acclaim in the process. Donnersmarck’s follow up was the Hollywood tosh The Tourist, what a waste...

Batman - The Dark Knight Rises

Before I begin this review, it would be an opportune time to leave condolences to those who have lost loved ones during that brutal killings on Friday, July 20^th 2012. 

Towering above the likes of The Avengers and The Hobbit in the list of this years’ most anticipated movie is The Dark Knight Rises. To drive anticipation to the max director Christopher Nolan kept his cards close to his chest, very rarely revealing his hand to those outside until the final few months. The Batman franchise has found its place among the public and critics as one of the biggest trilogies of this current generation.

The Devil Inside and Batman tickets.

The Blair Witch Project is like the Halloween of the Found footage/docu-drama genre, it may not have created the genre, but it certainly was the driving force that popularised the genre, prompting the release of similar films such as Cloverfield, Paranormal Activity and The Devil Inside, to name but a few.

Rampart, Contraband and Once Upon a Time in Anatolia

James Elroy (LA Confidential, The Black Dahlia) combines with director Oren Moverman (The Messenger) to create Rampart, a film that follows the corrupt, violent cop Dave ‘date rape’ Brown (Woody Harrelson) during the Rampart scandal that plagued the LAPD in the late 90s. 

This Means War and Young Adult

Before I start my short review of This Means War I have to say if I was Lauren Scott (Reese Witherspoon) and female this would be a very short movie as, in my mind, Lauren’s dilemma was not much of a dilemma at all.

John Carter of Mars

Andrew Stanton’s John Carter of Mars caused a huge dent in Disney’s financial status and as a result the film’s failure was largely to blame. So poor was John Carter of Mars’ box office performance that Disney had to put the movie’s sequels on hold, but John Carter of Mars has performed better in the home media market as well as gaining a rather feisty fan base. 

A Royal Affair,The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel and A Dangerous Method

Set in the 18^th century A Royal Affair is a romanticised telling of the marriage of Caroline Mathilde (Alicia Vikander) and the mentally ill king Christian VII of Denmark (Mikkel Følsgaard). The king’s use of whores and excessive drinking leads to the queen (Caroline) to fall in a doomed love affair with the King’s new physician, Johann Friedrich Struensee (Mads Mikkelsen), who uses his close relationship with the king to bring about positive reforms in the country. A Royal Affair is almost seductive in its glorious cinematography (shot by Rasmus Videbæk) and excellent costume and set designs. The performances from the whole cast are terrific, Mads Mikkelsen and Mikkel Følsgaard in particular. However the passionate romantic aspects (the central part of the story) are not quite as interesting as the political aspects of Struensee‘s rise to power and his backtracking on policies he has made in the past to maintain that power by censoring harmful material that may lead Denmark back into its old ways of government. It does drag out its ending somewhat, but the film so visually brilliant and well told by director Nikolaj Arcel that A Royal Affair is a period drama that almost reaches the heights of The Remains of the Day.