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If you’re looking to catch up on films you’ve missed this year over the Christmas vac, you can’t do any better than an evening in with Alan Partridge. Ardent Partridge fans approached the film with trepidation upon the release of Alan Partridge: Alpha Papa (not the most catchy title, but mightily better than the first […]
Continue ReadingAmerican Horror Story is back and is weirder than ever, a feat that I didn’t believe possible. I’ll admit I was excited when I heard the new season would be centered around witches but I’m not so enthused now that it’s actually begun. Creator/writer Ryan Murphy is continuing to push the envelope of what can […]
Continue ReadingIt is refreshing to see new television comedies taking risks and not sticking with the tired old sitcom formula, and the best example is The Wrong Mans. A comedy-thriller-espionage-drama, in the mould of 24 according to its creators, but more like “Carry on Hitchcock”, it’s been a rip-roaring ride that carefully toes the line between […]
Continue ReadingFor decades the BBC has dominated the genre of medical drama with its soapy duo Casualty and Holby City. This month ITV are attempting to fight back with new creation Breathless, a drama tracking the doctors and nurses of a new NHS hospital in 1960s London. In the depiction of the ‘60s ITV owe as […]
Continue ReadingMovies love a good bank heist; prison breaks aren’t bad either – you could probably base some kind of long-form television drama on those. In Ain’t Them Bodies Saints though, these dramatic situations are merely off-screen plot points to enable the telling of the dark romantic tale at its centre. Young and besotted couple Ruth and […]
Continue ReadingAlong with action blockbusters, the horror genre is probably the one which gets accused of stagnancy the most; the perception that films are only greenlit if they follow the money-making cinema trends is a popular one, and a largely correct one. Franchises like Paranormal Activity stretch on past their welcome, but still inexplicably turn profits. […]
Continue ReadingThe Lone Ranger, director Gore Verbinski’s latest collaboration with Johnny Depp is a film with a long and complex history behind it. The character of the Lone Ranger (Armie Hammer) is based on Texas Ranger Captain John R. Hughes who has been an inspiration to writers as early as 1915. From then on, the Lone […]
Continue ReadingAs a genre, the comedy road trip movie is not often the site of great originality. Failing inspiration, competency is the least required, and We’re The Millers is a fine example of how low ambitions can reap modest rewards – an amusing and raunchy but ultimately predictable and unoriginal comedy. Jason Sudeikis, a man many will […]
Continue ReadingFoxfire, the eponymous group of Laurent Cantet’s new film, is a secret organisation created by teenage girls who refuse to accept the inferior social status dictated by their age, gender and, in some cases, poverty. They don’t intend to get married, nor see being a secretary as the height of their intellectual ambitions. Most importantly, […]
Continue ReadingYou could be forgiven for thinking that Patrick Wilson enjoys being scared witless. After his turn in Insidious as a terrified father combating supernatural forces, and with that film’s sequel due out next month, Wilson is back in the meantime in The Conjuring, a horror film which plays it too safe, but doesn’t do all […]
Continue ReadingI felt compelled to write this article upon seeing the publicity for the new Paul Feig comedy, The Heat. Feig, hailed by one liberal-minded broadsheet as “Hollywood’s accidental feminist”, was the director of Bridesmaids, and co-creator of Freaks ‘n’ Geeks, a cult 90s sitcom that shot Judd Apatow (Superbad, The 40 Year Old Virgin, Pineapple […]
Continue ReadingIt takes something special to make a big splash at the Cannes Film Festival, but director Nicholas Winding Refn (Drive) hit upon one sure-fire technique this year: lash your film with almost unreal amounts of gore. Only God Forgives was booed off the screen at the festival, mauled in first-look reviews, and come release, is suffering from similar […]
Continue ReadingThe World’s End (2013), a film that Simon Pegg calls a ‘unifying chapter’ of the Three Flavours Cornetto Trilogy, is meant to tie up all the themes that dominated the two previous instalments, Hot Fuzz (2007) and Shaun of the Dead (2004). The aim of the films was to show extraordinary events against the backdrop […]
Continue ReadingMaintaining a burgeoning TV addiction and attempting to do a degree on the side can be an incredibly difficult task for any student in Oxford. Tutors often have the gall to set huge amounts of time-consuming work that can tear you away from the JCR TV or your laptop screen, and place you in the […]
Continue ReadingOK, so, The Apprentice final: Leah Luisa blah cakes blah cosmetics blah Alex’s eyebrows… can I just say – Francesca’s dancing. Oh my gosh. This surely had to be the highlight of the show. The way she stormed onto that stage, clad in white Lycra, twirling and whirling her streamers around to Enya – owned […]
Continue ReadingA crime drama set in a town called ‘Paradise’ on a remote lake in New Zealand is setting itself up for the portrayal of an idyllic landscape hiding the ugliness of the lives of those who live there. If this was what we were looking for from Top of the Lake, then it fulfils both aspects. […]
Continue ReadingIt is so long ago (six years to be precise) since the release of Hot Fuzz, that the film, and Shaun of the Dead, are now part of the endless repeats on ITV2, along with Notting Hill and Bridget Jones. The work of the triumvirate of Edgar Wright, Simon Pegg, and Nick Frost has become […]
Continue ReadingDocumentaries about clever people do not generally give a good impression of clever people. BBC 2’s Wonderland episode on University Challenge contestants served to poke fun at the odd-ball quizzers, and indeed previous incarnations of the Child Genius documentary series on Channel 4 have often seemed more focused on the intelligent children’s interpersonal deficiencies rather […]
Continue ReadingIt can be refreshing to watch a film that commits to its premise as thoroughly as new release This is the End – no snarky twist or waking up from a dream at the end, just a following through of the twin questions – what if all us famous actors played caricatures of ourselves, and […]
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