The Horseman on the Roof is an incredible film. Not because of the plot – though that’s interesting enough: freedom fighters, secret police, damsels in distress, a rampaging epidemic, romance. And not because of the leads, though Juliette Binoche and Olivier Martinez do sufficient duty as the Lady and the Cavalry Officer respectively.
No: this [...]

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A couple of years ago, in the middle of the night, we were woken by the sounds of shouting in the streets outside our loft. Sounded unnervingly like a riot – which would be unusual but not entirely unheard of in South Africa, after all. It turned out to be a movie production, featuring people [...]

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Wolfman – baah, so-so. There’s plenty of spooky mist rolling in over wild and woolly moors, lots of flickering candles at night, lots of swoopy Victorian costumes, there’s even a troop of gor-blimey-guvner Gypseys. Blah blah blah. Reminded me of that other corker: Van Helsing. If anyone gets the kudos for this howler, it’s the [...]

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Oh God. Watching Gosford Park is a lot like watching a car crash. Not that it’s a bad movie (though the swirl of inter-related characters at the start is a tad confusing); it’s a fascinating study of the utterly ugly, alien, repressed, hypocritical, upstairs / downstairs world of the British class system. Offensive, odious, awful. [...]

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OK, so I’m jumping ahead of myself somewhat, but I’m back in Serbia for a couple of weeks of hoopla, including the first days of filming of Ralph Fiennes directorial debut Coriolanus.

Set in the early years of the Roman Republic, Coriolanus is one of Shakespeare’s most politically challenging examinations of the way power corrupts. Quite [...]

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A lot was made of the fact that Galaxy Quest – the 1999 movie starring a shirtless Tim Allen, a pneumatic Sigourney Weaver and a host of other huge stars in early roles – managed to spoof Star Trek fans but simultaneously honour them. Which is true. This is, after all, the story of a [...]

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And while we’re still on the oldies, we’ve also been working our way through an Agatha Christie box set, which has been rather marvellous. Although I’ve never quite seen the glamour factor of the tween-War years (wet wool, no deodorant, the rise of fascism, hanging) the movies are all great little period pieces, all cocktails [...]

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Five survivors of a deadly plane crash are assigned to therapist Anne Hathaway (I know). Most are traumatised, one (Patrick Wilson) is giddy and euphoric and positively flirty. But something strange is happening; a creepy airline employee lurks in the shadows, the airline itself is denying the account of the eyewitnesses, and those eyewitnesses start [...]

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I have to say I’m bemused at the negative critical reception for Sunshine Cleaning. I thought it was great; thoughtful, tender and quietly entertaining. Admittedly it’s got Amy Adams in it, so I’m biased (really biased) but the story of sisters Rose and Norah finding personal redemption in the sanitisation of dead people’s homes [...]

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Defiance is an odd movie. Not the story itself, which is a remarkable true tale of the rough-edged Bielski brothers who led a troupe of Jews into the forests of Belorus in the early years of World War II, and survived there, against the odds, in the face of hunger, exposure, sickness, Communist partisans and [...]

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