This week’s double feature is all about that great action movie staple, the maverick cop. He plays by his own rules, doesn’t care what the pencil-pushers down-town think, he won’t always go by the book but DAMMIT, he gets the job done.
There are countless examples to choose from. There are the golden oldies like Clint Eastwood’s Dirty Harry and Gene Hackman’s ‘Popeye’ Doyle (The French Connection) and modern day badasses like Denzel Washington’s Alonzo Harris (Training Day) or Nic Cage’s Terrence McDonagh (Bad Lieutenant). All of whom are well worth watching at the next given opportunity.
Aside from Pixar and Studio Ghibli, there is only one other animation studio that comes as an automatic seal of quality and that is Aardman Animations. They are synonymous with effortless storytelling, visual invention and a lot of sturdy belly laughs. They have branched out into CG animation with Flushed Away and Arthur Christmas, but they are best known for their stop-motion animation and The Pirates! marks their first stop-motion animated movie since Wallace & Gromit: The Curse of the Were-Rabbit (from all the way back in 2005).
Progression, as far as Renoir could understand, would be the death of the arts. Slumped opposite the tender-footed filmmaker, Jaques Rivette, the interview becomes distinctly mono. On the topic of technical advances in cinema, Renoir begins to gesticulate around his stool like a rabid pigeon. Holding fast to the New Waver’s pretence of superiority, Rivette merely sits in silence, appearing to remain aloof in the overpowering presence of his interviewee. Spiralling from one speculation to the next, Renoir rages on, frank and without interruption. “Technical perfection can only create boredom,” he barks across the table, “…because it only reproduces nature imitating nature, which can only lead to the death of an art form.”
Justice, originally released as Seeking Justice, stars Cage as mild-mannered, chess playing, high-school teacher Will Gerard. When his wife, January Jones, is brutally attacked and hospitalised Gerard is offered a Faustian bargain by an enigmatic vigilante organisation represented by Simon (Guy Pearce). In return for dealing with Laura’s assailant Gerard will be expected to return the favour at a time and in a manner determined by this shady group.
“Buon giorno, Principessa!” The gleeful exuberance of Roberto Benigni’s Guido knows no bounds for the first half of this Oscar winning movie. Guido, much like Benigni himself, is a charming, funny and loveable chap who falls for a local girl and vows to make her his own. Part hopeless romantic and part Chaplin-esque slapstick clown, Guido is an unlikely movie hero, keeping his humour to the last, even in the face of unrelenting misery.
If ever a film cried out for an English-language remake, it’s this one. It seems too big for its small-country setting. And for a Norwegian action thriller to send its central character out into the world with the very un-Norwegian name of Roger Brown seems a rather strong hint of its makers’ intention to court English-language interest.
Discussing The Cabin in the Woods at any depth would require spoilers and the spoilers are the most exciting things about the film so, not wanting to ruin the insane surprises that this movie has in store, I will try to be as vague as possible and come back to this movie for a post-release discussion in April.
Now a fully-fledged blockbuster director after last year's Thor, Kenneth Branagh has officially joined the production on the next Jack Ryan project for Paramount Pictures.
It’s the sequel many of us never thought we would see. Several years ago, in their infinite wisdom, Paramount studios decided they didn’t think an Anchorman sequel would attract a large enough audience and so the dream looked dead and buried.
The execs clearly overlooked the fact that, for people aged between 21-30, it’s one of the most loved comedies in recent times. If you were a student between the years of 2004-2006 it was basically compulsory viewing. How did they ever come to that conclusion in the first place? The mind boggles.
As the internet community continues picking up the pieces from the proverbial bombshell that was ‘Alien Turtle…gate’ (we’ll work on the name later), Michael Bay has continued to hype up his planned Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles movie to anyone who will listen. This time he confirmed that the movie would simply be called ‘Ninja Turtles’:
