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Non-Review Review: The Peacemaker

It’s interesting to look back at George Clooney’s early road to movie stardom. Indeed, the actor’s first leading roles seem like movies that really should have been star-making turns, but just weren’t. There’s obviously his portrayal of Bruce Wayne in Batman & Robin, a performance not quite as bad as the film around it, but there’s also his roles in films like The Peacemaker. The Peacemaker also was the first film released under Spielberg’s Dreamworks company, and it’s hardly an auspicious début. It’s not that The Peacemaker is a bad film. It’s a very well made, and the production values are excellent.

However, the problem is the premise itself, the plotting, the pacing and the script. The Peacemaker feels like it really wants to be a Tom Clancy thriller, and it really wants us to accept George Clooney as a more dynamic Harrison Ford. Unfortunately, it feels like all the plot points, characters and motivations all came second-hand. There isn’t one thing here that hasn’t been done before, and done better, and those parts aren’t even assembled in an especially original way.

The name’s Clooney. George Clooney.

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Tintin: Tintin in the Land of the Soviets (Review)

In the lead-up to the release of The Adventures of Tintin: The Secret of the Unicorn, I’m going to be taking a look at Hergé’s celebrated comic book character, from his humble beginnings through to the incomplete post-modern finale. I hope you enjoy the ride.

The two earliest Tintin adventures, Tintin in the Land of the Soviets and Tintin in the Congo, are looked back upon as the black sheep of the Tintin novels produced by Hergé. While Tintin in the Land of the Soviets is shameless anti-Communist propaganda (and does contain a hint of the foul racism we’d see a lot more of in Tintin in the Congo), one can detect a lot of the charm that Hergé brought to his iconic creations, scattered throughout the work, from the surreal sense of humour to the writing style to the love of ridiculous suspense, seemingly for the sake of suspense. The best was definitely yet to come, but it all started here.

The collection isn't Tintin at his finest...

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X Marks the Spot: Taking the X-Men Back to Relevance…

I am quite looking forward to Matthew Vaughan’s upcoming X-Men: First Class, which looks to be the first “retro” superhero film. You could, of course, make the claim that the accolade belongs to Watchmen, which was set in the eighties, but it was an alternate eighties at that – where Nixon was President and big blue men wandered around with their glowing privates on display. However, it’s fascinating that the X-Men are the film franchise to really do that, to actually construct a period piece set amidst the Cuban Missile Crisis while John F. Kennedy was squaring off against the Soviet Union. Perhaps it’s ideal, because the sixties and seventies were undoubtedly the time at which the mutant metaphor was at its most potent.

Click to enlarge...

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Non-Review Review: GoldenEye

This post is part of James Bond January, being organised by the wonderful Paragraph Films. I will have reviews of all twenty-two official Bond films going on-line over the next month, and a treat or two every once in a while.

GoldenEye saved James Bond. Bond had wallowed in obscurity for six years by the time that Pierce Brosnan’s first appearance in the role was released. As a kid, James Bond was something that was dead to me. Sure, it came on television from time to time (mostly on holidays) and they filled up a shelf at the videostore, but I always felt like they were something that had happened in the past – like the original Star Wars movies, or any Star Trek films featuring Captain Kirk. Even though I lacked the sophistication to articulate it at the time, I think I felt that the entire James Bond franchise would be reruns for me. There was nothing new happening.

And then GoldenEye was released.

Brosnan is Bond...

And it meant business.

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Non-Review Review: The Living Daylights

This post is part of James Bond January, being organised by the wonderful Paragraph Films. I will have reviews of all twenty-two official Bond films going on-line over the next month, and a treat or two every once in a while.

The Living Daylights is a forgotten Bond film, sitting as it does between the twin “duds” of A View to a Kill and Licence to Kill (although I am not quite as critical of those films as most). It’s the first of the Bond films to feature Timothy Dalton, taking over from Roger Moore – who by this stage seemed as likely to be getting a free bus pass as he was to foil enemy spies. Although the word didn’t quite exist in media circles when the movie originally came out, there’s a strong smell of “reboot” about the film, as if the powers behind the scenes are attempting to consciously remodel the franchise in the wake of a disappointing previous film. Though not quite as obvious (or as far-reaching) as subsequent reboots in GoldenEye and Casino Royale, The Living Daylights isn’t a bad Bond film – it’s just a really poorly dated one.

Tim, you scared the Living Daylights out of me…

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Non-Review Review: Dr. Strangelove (Or: How I Learnt to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb)

What I’m about to say is grounds for excommunication from the church of film geekdom, but I am not a huge Stanley Kubrick fan. I admire and appreciate his work from a technical level and there are a few of his films I would credit as genuine classics – and yet there are others that I am markedly indifferent to. Cinematic purists will balk when I suggest The Shining – that most commercially Hollywood production – is my favourite of Kubrick’s film. Dr. Strangelove (Or: How I Learnt to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb) is widely regarded as a classic of Cold War cinema, but I must concede that I can’t help but feel a little disconnected from it. Of course quite a large portion of the film (particularly the broader comedy) is still hilarious, but the film refers to a world that I never really knew – I was born in the twilight of the Soviet Union, disconnected from this heated level of nuclear paranoia.    

There's nothing strange about the love for this film...

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