★★★☆☆There's an endearing nature to Liam Neeson's action-hero exploits - what CineVue's Chris Fennell dubbed "Neesploitation" - over the years. The man who won an Oscar nomination twenty years past for Schindler's List (1993) is now a more bankable hardman than Schwarzenegger and Stallone, and yet little before 2008's Taken suggested such a second career for someone of Neeson's gruff appearance. Perhaps the tragic death of his then-wife Natasha Richardson was the catalyst. There's a gravitas and indeed a tragedy that makes him effortlessly identifiable in these madcap parts. Just look at how many 'former' roles he plays - an ex-cia man in the Taken films, a reformed convict in The Next Three Days.
- 9/20/2014
- by CineVue UK
- CineVue
★★★☆☆ Once fierce box office rivals, the Sylvester Stallone and Arnold Schwarzenegger are looking as stacked as ever as they team up for their second film in as many years, Mikael Håfström's Escape Plan (2013). A retro-actioner of the same build as their eighties hits, this is a chance to relive the naff put-downs, demented plotting and low grade comedy-thrills which dominated the scene back then. Although it cannot hold a dumbbell to the memorialised camp of Rambo and Predator, it is a welcome rejoinder to the career-ending catastrophe that could have been The Expendables. For these two, the plot is appropriately ridiculous.
Stallone plays Ray Breslin, a man whose job it is to escape from prisons. His prowess is such that he is approached with an off-the-books assignment to test a new private facility housing the world's most dangerous criminals. Once there, he is double-crossed and forced to link up with fellow inmate,...
Stallone plays Ray Breslin, a man whose job it is to escape from prisons. His prowess is such that he is approached with an off-the-books assignment to test a new private facility housing the world's most dangerous criminals. Once there, he is double-crossed and forced to link up with fellow inmate,...
- 10/20/2013
- by CineVue UK
- CineVue
★★☆☆☆ James Wan certainly knows his way round a haunted house. Behind the camera, he's the de facto ghost in the closet: pulling the strings of our discomfort, trespassing from within, turning the reassuring, nurturing properties of what we identify with as home into a baleful, alienating spectacle. He showed this kind of familiarity with the genre in this year's The Conjuring, a thrilling Amityville Horror-like yarn that made the oldest tricks in the book somehow bold and refreshing. Sadly, his latest film, Insidious: Chapter 2, is a sharp reminder of the fine line horror directors tread between emphatic scares and dismal failure.
The returning Patrick Wilson, who was perfectly cast somewhere between saviour and lunatic in The Conjuring, is altogether less convincing here as the haunted John Lambert, who seeks refuge with his wife (Rose Byrne) after the traumatic events of the original Insidious (2010). Their son Dalton (Ty Simpkins) remains...
The returning Patrick Wilson, who was perfectly cast somewhere between saviour and lunatic in The Conjuring, is altogether less convincing here as the haunted John Lambert, who seeks refuge with his wife (Rose Byrne) after the traumatic events of the original Insidious (2010). Their son Dalton (Ty Simpkins) remains...
- 9/17/2013
- by CineVue UK
- CineVue
★★☆☆☆ We're the Millers (2013), the new comedy from Dodgeball director Rawson Marshall Thurber, has the rare distinction of being both offensive and tedious at the same time. It's like the bastard offspring of this year's The Guilt Trip and 2010's Horrible Bosses, languishing between a familial road movie and a gross-out comedy. Thurber aims for a please-all comic strategy that feels mischievously naughty while remaining ultimately safe and middle of the road, but the reality is a wholly unconfident, tonally disjunctive summer ride. Saturday Night Live stalwart Jason Sudeikis stars as David, a middle-aged drug dealer.
David recruits a band of misfits making up the nuclear idyll for a marijuana smuggling road to trip to Mexico and back. The script, written by the writers of Wedding Crashers and Hot Tub Time Machine, is quick to point out some crucial facts about the characters: David is a small-time dope-peddler, but he doesn't sell to kids,...
David recruits a band of misfits making up the nuclear idyll for a marijuana smuggling road to trip to Mexico and back. The script, written by the writers of Wedding Crashers and Hot Tub Time Machine, is quick to point out some crucial facts about the characters: David is a small-time dope-peddler, but he doesn't sell to kids,...
- 8/27/2013
- by CineVue UK
- CineVue
★★★☆☆ In what's been a difficult year for summer blockbusters, it seems Hollywood is returning to the venerable set up of the good ol' buddy cop comedy for cheap thrills and fast bucks; firstly with Paul Feig's The Heat, which opened last week, and now 2 Guns (2013) - a brisk, unpretentious crime caper from Icelandic director Baltasar Kormákur. The sub-genre lives and dies by the chemistry of its leads, and with Denzel Washington and Mark Wahlberg - who are always devilishly pleasing to watch, especially in comedy roles - Kormákur ensures that his own contribution is more Midnight Run (1988) than Samurai Cop (1989).
Washington and Wahlberg pick up the schtick of Mel Gibson and Danny Glover's Lethal Weapon duo as two mismatched friends: Wahlberg as garrulous tough nut Stig, a definite nod to Gibson's Riggs; and Washington as smooth operator Bobby, a sexier version of Glover's retiring family man. The difference this time,...
Washington and Wahlberg pick up the schtick of Mel Gibson and Danny Glover's Lethal Weapon duo as two mismatched friends: Wahlberg as garrulous tough nut Stig, a definite nod to Gibson's Riggs; and Washington as smooth operator Bobby, a sexier version of Glover's retiring family man. The difference this time,...
- 8/14/2013
- by CineVue UK
- CineVue
★★☆☆☆ We've certainly been heavily dosed with geriatric action thrillers in recent years, with Arnie taking on The Last Stand, Sylvester Stallone heading up The Expendables and Bruce Willis popping up in anything his agent prescribes. However, none can boast the hospital waiting room worth of talent of Red 2 (2013). Helen Mirren, John Malkovich, Catherine Zeta-Jones and Anthony Hopkins join Willis as contract killer OAPs codenamed REDs - Retired, Extremely Dangerous - who first moseyed onto our screens with the sleeper hit original in 2010. Willis reprises his role as former CIA officer Frank Moses, who's now settled into domesticity.
Alongside sweetheart Sarah (Mary Louise Parker), Frank is now more used to doing the weekly shop at Costco (the first of many shameless product placements) than pistol-whipping hired goons. He's lured out of retirement, again, by his unhinged pal Marvin (John Malkovich), when they are falsely tied with Cold-War era nuclear plot by the name of 'Nightshade'.
Alongside sweetheart Sarah (Mary Louise Parker), Frank is now more used to doing the weekly shop at Costco (the first of many shameless product placements) than pistol-whipping hired goons. He's lured out of retirement, again, by his unhinged pal Marvin (John Malkovich), when they are falsely tied with Cold-War era nuclear plot by the name of 'Nightshade'.
- 8/1/2013
- by CineVue UK
- CineVue
★★☆☆☆ In his 2010 review of Hot Tube Time Machine, the late, great film critic Roger Ebert stated that in 55 features, John Cusack has hardly ever made a bad one. He was referring to the ineffable 'Cusackness' he brings to every film he is in - that humble, genuine, over-articulate man-boy seen in his most memorable roles, including Say Anything and High Fidelity. In recent years however, he has been cast against type: as Edgar Allen Poe in The Raven, in The Paperboy as a sweaty murderer, and now in Scott Walker's The Frozen Ground (2013), where he plays real-life 1980s serial killer Robert Hansen.
From 1971 until he was convicted in 1983, Hansen abducted up to 21 girls, flew each one over in his personal plane to the remotest Alaskan wilderness, and murdered and buried them there. The film starts when teenage hooker Cindy (a scantily-clad Vanessa Hudgens) escapes Hansen's sadistic clutches and accuses him.
From 1971 until he was convicted in 1983, Hansen abducted up to 21 girls, flew each one over in his personal plane to the remotest Alaskan wilderness, and murdered and buried them there. The film starts when teenage hooker Cindy (a scantily-clad Vanessa Hudgens) escapes Hansen's sadistic clutches and accuses him.
- 7/18/2013
- by CineVue UK
- CineVue
★★★★☆ Blancanieves (2012), the new film from Spanish writer-director Pablo Berger, is rooted in the cinema of old. It's both a rude adaptation of a classic fairytale, Snow White, and a return to the postmodern glamour of silent film. Like Michel Hazanavicius' Oscar-winning The Artist (2011) and Michel Gomes' Tabu (2012), Berger has been drawn to the obscure purity of monochrome images, boxed ratios, overloaded gestures and silent film cards. Blancanieves is a nostalgic tribute to the lost innocence of early cinema, longing to recapture that magical sense of discovery and enchantment in a ruthlessly cynical age.
Set in Seville during the 1920s, the golden era of silent film, the film centres around another lost showpiece, bullfighting, and a dark eyed young girl called Carmencita (played first by Sofia Oria). The daughter of a noble matador (Daniel Giménez Cacho) and flamenco dancer (Inma Cuesta), when her mother dies in childbirth, her father...
Set in Seville during the 1920s, the golden era of silent film, the film centres around another lost showpiece, bullfighting, and a dark eyed young girl called Carmencita (played first by Sofia Oria). The daughter of a noble matador (Daniel Giménez Cacho) and flamenco dancer (Inma Cuesta), when her mother dies in childbirth, her father...
- 7/11/2013
- by CineVue UK
- CineVue
★★★☆☆ British director Ben Wheatley has a bold habit of experimentation, having previously married kitchen sink drama to comic crime thriller in 2009's Down Terrace, social realism to occult horror in 2011's Kill List, and British camping comedy to serial killing in Sightseers (2012). His new film, A Field in England (2013), is in much the same vein. An English Civil War era costume drama about a mystical hunt for buried treasure with psychedelic monochrome visuals, it lies somewhere between Michael Reeves' The Witchfinder General, Werner Herzog's Aguirre, the Wrath of God and Jim Jarmusch's Dead Man - a potent mix.
Co-written by Wheatley's off-screen and collaborative partner Amy Jump and shot by regular cinematographer Laurie Rose, A Field in England bears the same sardonic dialogue, stomach-churning violence and earthy English countryside as his previous films. Our voyage begins with Whitehead (Reece Shearsmith), a God-fearing alchemist who stumbles across deserters...
Co-written by Wheatley's off-screen and collaborative partner Amy Jump and shot by regular cinematographer Laurie Rose, A Field in England bears the same sardonic dialogue, stomach-churning violence and earthy English countryside as his previous films. Our voyage begins with Whitehead (Reece Shearsmith), a God-fearing alchemist who stumbles across deserters...
- 7/4/2013
- by CineVue UK
- CineVue
★★☆☆☆ This year's Google work placements had over 40,000 applicants. However, a few more films like Shawn Levy's The Internship and the next generation of graduates could turn towards Bing (or even Snap.do). Movies are often derided for their ultra-cynical product placement, but in The Internship this takes on worrying new significance as Vince Vaughn and Owen Wilson become guest stars in a two-hour corporate video. Vaughn and Wilson pick up their 2005 Wedding Crashers schtick as Billy and Nick, a pair of salesmen who can talk their way out of anything - except, it would seem, this film and its unabashed Google adoration.
Sacked from their watch-flogging jobs, these are two old-fashioned men looking for direction in the newfangled world of technology and unpaid work, who end up landing an unlikely summer internship at Google. Upon arrival at the hallowed GooglePlex in Santa Clara - a magical kingdom of free...
Sacked from their watch-flogging jobs, these are two old-fashioned men looking for direction in the newfangled world of technology and unpaid work, who end up landing an unlikely summer internship at Google. Upon arrival at the hallowed GooglePlex in Santa Clara - a magical kingdom of free...
- 7/3/2013
- by CineVue UK
- CineVue
★★★★★ Like most great artists, Roberto Rossellini experienced swings in critical opinion throughout his career. His reputation, especially in Italy, was built on what came to be known as his neorealist features - Rome, Open City and Paisa - but Journey to Italy (Viaggio in Italia, 1954), the third of five films he made with his then-wife Ingrid Bergman, was accused of betraying the cause of neorealism for a vein, self-serving involution. However, the critics at Cahiers du Cinema - the future Nouvelle Vague - were characteristically prescient, with Jean-Luc Godard learning that "All you need to make a movie is a man, a woman, and a car".
Re-released in a new restoration this month by the BFI to tie in with their 'Roots of Neorealism' season, its greater legacy perhaps lies in the French New Wave. Like Godard's Breathless (À bout de souffle, 1960), Journey to Italy starts as a road movie...
Re-released in a new restoration this month by the BFI to tie in with their 'Roots of Neorealism' season, its greater legacy perhaps lies in the French New Wave. Like Godard's Breathless (À bout de souffle, 1960), Journey to Italy starts as a road movie...
- 5/10/2013
- by CineVue UK
- CineVue
Most people get the three "R"s of green living: Reduce, reuse, recycle. Here's a fourth: Repurpose--As in turning a wine barrel into a hotel room or using glass bottles to decorate a temple. Repurposed buildings save material by reusing existing structures--it's also called adaptive reuse--or recycling otherwise landfill-bound objects as building materials. Here's what repurposing looks like around the world:
Bus Stop Shelter, Athens, Georgia Designer/sculptor Christopher Fennell used pieces from three yellow school buses of different years (1962, 1972, and 1977) to construct this bus stop shelter. The scraps were welded together with seats from an old city bus.
Recycloop, Amsterdam, The Netherlands Built by 2012 Architecten and Jeanne van Heeswijks of Jeanneworks, the multi-purpose cultural center is made entirely from reclaimed kitchen sinks and held together with wire, scaffolding, and waterproof insulation boards.
Brooklynite Gallery, Brooklyn, New YorkThe chic white patterns on the rear façade of this Brooklyn art gallery...
Bus Stop Shelter, Athens, Georgia Designer/sculptor Christopher Fennell used pieces from three yellow school buses of different years (1962, 1972, and 1977) to construct this bus stop shelter. The scraps were welded together with seats from an old city bus.
Recycloop, Amsterdam, The Netherlands Built by 2012 Architecten and Jeanne van Heeswijks of Jeanneworks, the multi-purpose cultural center is made entirely from reclaimed kitchen sinks and held together with wire, scaffolding, and waterproof insulation boards.
Brooklynite Gallery, Brooklyn, New YorkThe chic white patterns on the rear façade of this Brooklyn art gallery...
- 1/21/2010
- by Anne C. Lee
- Fast Company
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