Reviews & features: James Mottram
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Interview: Emile Hirsch on Killer Joe
25 May 2012
William Friedkin’s violent thriller set to open 2012 Edinburgh International Film Festival
‘Oh man, the human punching bag is here!’ laughs Emile Hirsch, as he walks into the room. Don’t worry, though the 27-year-old star of Speed Racer and Into The Wild is not covered in bruises (unless you count a bruised ego). He’s recounting his time on…
Moonrise Kingdom
17 May 2012
Wes Anderson's latest echoes his earlier triumphs, but breaks no new ground
Wes Anderson’s seventh film feels like a Greatest Hits package. Which if you’re a Wes fan will make you very happy. Set on a New England island in the summer of 1965, the opening sequence of Moonrise Kingdom, with its incessant camera-pans around the…
A Fantastic Fear of Everything
11 May 2012
Crispian Mills' directorial debut starts well but quickly loses pace
A film by the former lead singer of Kula Shaker might not sound an appetising prospect. But before dismissing A Fantastic Fear of Everything, we should remember that Crispian Mills’ film pedigree is pretty spot-on. He is, after all, the son of Hayley…
Ill Manors
11 May 2012
A jarring, grimy and a searing indictment of Broken Britain, from debut director Ben Drew aka Plan B
To say Ill Manors doesn’t pull punches is like saying Mike Tyson hits quite hard. Raw, uncompromising and brutal, this urban tale of violence, prostitution and drugs smacks you round the face, then kicks you in the groin for good measure. It marks the…
Dark Shadows
10 May 2012
A fun, if forgettable vampire movie, starring Johnny Depp, Eva Green and Michelle Pfeiffer
Like a kid who turns up late to a Halloween party, Tim Burton arrives with his latest, vampire movie Dark Shadows. After Twilight, 30 Days of Night and Let The Right One In, not to mention TV’s True Blood…aren’t fangs, dusty coffins and dissolving in…
Piggy
23 Apr 2012
Ultra-violent London-set thriller starring Martin Compston
(18) 106mins Fight Club meets Death Wish in this ultra-violent vigilante movie, one so gratuitous it will turn even the strongest of stomachs. Set in a modern-day London where hoodies wielding knives seem to lurk on every street corner, Martin…
Albert Nobbs
18 Apr 2012
Glenn Close's period drama passion project is a squandered opportunity of intriguing premise
(15) 113mins Fifteen years in development, Rodrigo Garcia’s adaptation of George Moore’s short story The Singular Life of Albert Nobbs arrives on the back of two deserved Oscar nominations for stars Glenn Close and Janet McTeer. And while it’s just…
Interview: Jason Segel on Jeff, Who Lives at Home
17 Apr 2012
The Forgetting Sarah Marshall on new slacker comedy and future plans
Jason Segel may well look back on 2012 as his year. Already the 32-year-old actor-writer has seen The Muppets, his nostalgia-tinged feature film revival of the beloved TV show, gross $158m around the world. Even better, the film’s signature tune ‘Man or…
The Cabin in the Woods
19 Mar 2012
Excellent horror has something in its box of tricks to scare everyone
(15) 94min A film that’s almost impossible to talk about without ruining its multiple pleasures, The Cabin In The Woods is the most original horror movie of the year. Reverential to the genre, yet shaking it up simultaneously, it’s exactly what you’d…
The Divide
19 Mar 2012
A nasty and nihilistic portrait of rapid decline of civilisation
(18) 108mins Rarely will you see a film as nasty and nihilistic as Xavier Gens’ The Divide. The Frenchman scored a cult hit with 2007’s Frontier(s) before making his first foray into the studio system with the by numbers video game adaptation Hitman.
Project X
1 Mar 2012
Major league mayhem with a dark, twisted edge
(18) 88mins Animal House meets The Blair Witch Project, only this time the horror is very real in a movie that will undoubtedly give all parents nightmares. No, this is not a film about paranormal activity, but a high school party that gets…
The Raven
17 Feb 2012
Thriller hypothesing final days of Edgar Allan Poe falls prey to genre cliches
(15) 111min As the opening titles to The Raven tell us, until he was found near death on a park bench in October 1849, Edgar Allan Poe’s final days remain a mystery. Spinning a macabre tale that might feel at home in one of Poe’s stories, this…
Interview: John C Reilly on Carnage and Terri
1 Feb 2012
The actor discusses his prolific rate of appearances in both higher and lower profile movies
‘I have been a busy boy, haven’t I?’ grins John C Reilly. And it’s true. Last seen as the luckless father in We Need To Talk About Kevin, the Chicago-born actor now stars in Roman Polanski’s Carnage and US indie Terri. Factor in two major upcoming…
Carnage
24 Jan 2012
Polanski's comedy of upper-middle class savagery is fast, funny and filthy
(15) 79mins Roman Polanski’s adaptation of Yasmina Reza’s play Gods of Carnage opens with a playground spat. Set over the opening credits, it’s this innocuous bust-up that drives the bitterly funny four-hander, as the parents of both children try to…
Rampart
24 Jan 2012
A compelling performance from Woody Harrelson can't quite support the weight of this cop drama
(15) 108mins At this rate, Woody Harrelson should keep Oren Moverman on a retainer. The director guided Harrelson to an Oscar nomination in 2009’s The Messenger. And their latest collaboration Rampart sees the actor on similarly searing form. Set in…
Like Crazy
24 Jan 2012
Sundance-wowing romance starring Anton Yelchin and Felicity Jones
(12A) 89mins Winner of 2011’s Sundance Grand Jury prize, Like Crazy is a long-distance love story mired in the complications of modern-day living. Anna (Felicity Jones) is a British student living in Los Angeles who spends the perfect summer with…
Interview: Felicity Jones, star of Like Crazy
17 Jan 2012
Young actress set to follow Sundance hit with films by Warren Beatty and Ralph Fiennes
A year ago, Felicity Jones was asleep when she got a call from America. ‘I thought there’d been a terrible accident,’ she laughs. But this was no accident. On the line was the producer of her new film Like Crazy: the Sundance Film Festival had just…
One Day
12 Aug 2011
Director of An Education tackles David Nicholls' novel
(12A) 108min Following An Education, Danish director Lone Scherfig attempts to conjure the same magic on another slice of hit Brit lit – David Nicholls’ One Day. Fans of the book have already been protesting that the casting of Anne Hathaway as…
Red Hill
29 Jun 2011
Australian modern-day western makes up for lacks in originality with bravado and tension
(15) 97min With its tale of a convict on the loose and a rookie cop on his first day on the job, Red Hill is hardly original. Written and directed by debuting Aussie director Patrick Hughes, if you crossed No Country For Old Men with Assault on…
Hanna
28 Jun 2011
A wonderfully curious, bold and original film
(12A) 111min What a wonderfully curious and beguiling film this is. Hanna is the story of the eponymous 16 year-old (Saoirse Ronan), trained in the arts of combat and survival in the remote wilds of Finland by her ex-CIA father (Eric Bana).
Angels of Evil (Gli Angeli del Mal)
18 Apr 2011
Flawed addition to the gangster movie genre
(15) 128min The story of real-life Milan mobster Renato Vallanzasca, Angels of Evil has all the ingredients for a bloody gangster classic. For starters, there’s actor/director Michele Placido (who made the 2005 crime saga Romanzo Criminale) at the…
Win Win
18 Apr 2011
Tom McCarthy's sterling comedy/drama starring Paul Giamatti
(15) 105min Like his earlier two films, The Station Agent and The Visitor, Tom McCarthy’s new film Win Win makes no grand statements and is all the better for it. An expertly shaken comedy/drama cocktail, it tells of small-town attorney Mike Flaherty…
The Messenger
18 Apr 2011
Ben Foster and Woody Harrelson film begins well but let down by unfocussed second half
(15) 105min The Messenger is the perfect example of a film of two halves. The first segment is breathtaking, as injured US Army Staff Sergeant Will Montgomery (Ben Foster) is reassigned to the Casualty Notification Team. Partnered with career soldier…
Interview - Natalie Portman on Darren Aronofsky's Black Swan
28 Mar 2011
Actress on the challenging role, extreme pain and dancing injuries
A lot of people are saying your work in Black Swan is your best performance to date. How do you feel? I’m very unobjective! It was definitely the most challenging and the most rewarding. It’s sad that the cliché is true – the more you put in, the more…
The Way
18 Mar 2011
Emilio Estevez directs dad Martin Sheen in measured hiking drama
(12A) 128min How strange that The Way should emerge just as Charlie Sheen – brother, of course, to writer/director Emilio Estevez and son to star Martin Sheen – has completely gone off the rails. Estevez’s second film, following the impressive…
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