1992. Nirvana had just blasted Michael Jackson from the top of America’s Billboard album chart and the search for the next big guitar band from the indie underground was underway. For a brief, glorious time, major label A&R men were falling over themselves to sign up acts with radio-unfriendly
Author: Lance Harris
The integrity of the real-world man he is based upon is hotly disputed, but the cinematic character of Captain Phillips in Paul Greengrass’s film of the same name is one of the most nuanced portrayals of heroism we have seen on film this year. As played by Tom Hanks, Phillips is a model of
Forget the ominous title and the fact that it is directed by Alan Taylor of television’s Game of Thrones. Thor: The Dark World is about as dark as an episode of He-Man & the Masters of the Universe. The sequel to 2011’s Thor is another of those likeable but lightweight comic book films that Marvel
The most remarkable thing about Gravity, the new film from director Alfonso Cuarón, is how quiet it is for long stretches of its running time. Minutes go by where the only sounds you hear are radio chatter between its stranded astronauts and Houston – space is a vacuum, after all – and perhaps a few ominous
Ashton Kutcher, in the titular role of Jobs, promises at a pivotal moment of the movie to “make Apple cool again”. His dull, functional biographical picture about the late Apple founder and CEO, however, is about as cool as a Dell Latitude. It ticks off a list of features, but there isn’t much art or
Little is spared in Grand Theft Auto V’s toxic take on contemporary American culture, but it saves its most poisonous barbs for the movie industry. Vinewood, the game’s fictional version of Hollywood, is a world of washed-up stars and paunchy producers pumping out products that don’t matter
With District 9 in 2009, South African expat Neill Blomkamp established himself as a filmmaker of promise with a highly individual vision and a distinctive voice. But a cack-handed script means Blomkamp’s new film, Elysium, doesn’t quite deliver on the potential of his breakthrough debut
Michael Bay’s usual tools of choice are the bludgeon and the chainsaw rather than the scalpel and the microscope. That makes the “chaos cinema” auteur about as well suited to making a film that dissects the American dream as a bull is to running a china shop. So it’s hardly surprising that you won’t find the subtlety
The Place Beyond the Pines announces its ambitiousness with an opening tracking shot so striking that film students will be admiring it for years to come. A shirtless Ryan Gosling, his abdomen tapestried with tattoos, lights a smoke and armours himself in a Metallica T-shirt and leathers as he strides across a
There is a cursory amount of dialogue and plot and perhaps even some human characters doing stuff in Pacific Rim, but who cares? The grown-up voice in your head will find it rather ridiculous, but your inner 10-year-old will be giddy with joy. And if you’re actually 10 years old, this film will probably change your life