Fool’s Gold wants to be an adventure-cum-romantic comedy yarn about a Caribbean hunt for buried treasure that rekindles the romance of a mismatched husband and wife. Problem is, the plot is somewhat plodding, the romance is so-so and the comedy is mostly made up of pratfalls and funny voices (they are accompanied on their journey […]

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88 Minutes is about a serial killer put away on the evidence of a celebrity psychiatrist. Said killer may be innocent OR he may be trying to frame the good doctor before he’s executed. There’s a death threat in there too, somewhere.

So let’s start by saying “It’s an Al Pacino film.” In alternative universes “It’s […]

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Not exactly an advert for tourism to the City of Light, Taken revolves around a human trafficking ring that’s kidnapping tourists newly arrived in Paris, and shipping them off to cruel sexual slavery. Unfortunately for one particular gang of Albanians (this year’s recipient of Most Vilified Nation in Hollywood Award…..  that’s right, Albanians), the girl they’ve […]

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The Ruins starts with the typical premise of standard slasher-horror-fayre; a group of nice, naive, corn-fed American tourists wander off the beaten track and into the arms of particularly gruesome and bloody danger. The difference though is that the predatory threat here is not a mad-eyed axemurderer, but a land-locked island of mobile, talkative, carnivorous plants.

It sounds […]

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I’m not quite sure what to make of Tropic Thunder - Ben Stiller’s raucous romp through Indochina (Zoolander meets Apocalypse Now). Some belly laughs (mostly covering my mouth going “Oh my god!”), some knowing smiles, a whole lot of “what now?”s. I got all of the jokes and everything; I just didn’t find them all that hilarious. Or […]

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Yes, Mamma Mia! is cheezy. Yes, it’s uneven and it’s unlikely and, if you look at it dispassionately, it’s all ridiculously silly. But the thing is, you simply cannot watch it dispassionately……
Blame those damn catchy tunes. Blame the fact that absolutely everyone seems to be having an absolute blast (you know it’s daft when career vamp Christine […]

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Love this: IFC has a list of the top ten “disturbingly powerful” fictional film corporations.
 
They don’t mention Resident Evil’s Umbrella Corporation though - which is pretty damn scary if you ask me….. 

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I saw another apocalyptic destruction of London over the weekend - the TV mini-series, Flood.

The only thing that kept me going was when my friend Victoria appeared carrying flowers from one side of the room to the other but (evidently) going nowhere very fast at all. You see, although the movie focuses on a fictional […]

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As if day-to-day reality wasn’t quite scary enough, a lot of South African literature focuses on the what-ifs? of a post-apocalyptic Azania. By that, I don’t mean post-nuclear apocalypse as it might normarily apply to you good folks in the rest of the world. I mean post-liberation, post-independence, post-ANC apocalypse. Time and again, books (though rarely movies, which rely on government funding) […]

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In Vantage Point, there’s an assassination attempt on the life of the President of the United States whilst he’s attending a big anti-terrorism summit in Salamanca, Spain. This chaotic exposition of bullet and bomb unfolds piece-by-piece, via six separate points-of-view, culminating in a car chase that features some of the best stunt driving action you’ll see in a […]

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