I thought An Education would be terribly worthy. I bought my ticket, thinking that it would probably be quite well made, and looking forward to seeing Carey Mulligan’s star making turn. I’ve always found Peter Sarsgaard remarkably watchab[…]

1: Zombieland has lots of zombies in it.
Adventureland has scant adventure in it.
A: 0 Z:1
2: Adventureland is a sweet romance disguised as a slightly older version of Superbad!
Zombieland is a sweet romantic comedy disguised as a zombie film.
A: 0 Z[…]

There is a point about two thirds of the way through Jennifer’s Body when Megan Fox’s Jennifer visits her best mate and explains to her exactly why she has been acting weird (where weird = not being grief stricken about mass deaths / eati[…]

I have never been directly involved in an African civil war. I have read a fair bit about them, the tragedies drawn up on racial lines, the devastating effect upon the population and the vicious cycles it seems to set up. And more recently the storie[…]

I was in Tokyo in 2002 for a week. I left the day before the World Cup started. If there was ever a point that Japan was geared up to deal with foreigner visitors, it was that week. And whilst the script was incomprehensible to me, and I spoke about […]

Whilst I hate answering the question “what is your favourite movie”, there is a fair chance that if you ask me, and I give you an answer, it will be After-Life directed by Hirokazu Kore-eda. Ten years old now its a terrific fantasy about […]

I saw three films last week set in Tokyo. None of them, not even the one with the city in the title, would claim to be about Tokyo, but they ended up creating a triptych of Tokyo which, more than any individual film, reminded me of that crazy city. A[…]

An occasional series where we mock the nonsense written on crisp packets.
“It takes a more adventurous homegrown spud to volunteer for our sizzling Jamaican Jerk Chicken. Some spuds simply ‘dreaded’ not being picked so they went bac[…]

When I was a kid, I used to get great School reports. High marks for attainment through the whole booklet, nice phrases. The only letdown was under physical education where I would often get an A for effort, but a 4 or 5 for attainment. When it came […]

Whatever I found whimsical and interesting about Wes Anderson’s early films (mainly Rushmore to be fair) had worn its welcome remarkably thin by the the time The Darjeeling Limited came around. They were always nice to look at, and the soundtra[…]