Tag: US
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The Fighter
David O. Russell has continually pushed the Hollywood conventions over his short but illustrious career. Although beginning his career with indie comedies Spanking the Monkey and Flirting with Disaster, it was with the controversial yet heavy-hitting and darkly comic Gulf War action film Three Kings (1999) that put the director on the map. Yet since his…
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The evolution of the western: Part 2 – The Man with No Name
In The Evolution of the Western – Part 1: The Last Gunslingers, we discussed the changing nature of the cowboy over the first half of the 20th century. From the earliest days of cinema through to John Ford’s The Searchers (1954), the gunslinger turned from hero of legend to “a figure of pathos, not tragedy”…
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The Green Hornet
In an interview with Total Film several years ago, legendary comic book creator Alan Moore said that “The main reason why comics can’t work as films is largely because everybody who is ultimately in control of the film industry is an accountant”. Those accountants have certainly been counting their receipts over the last few years,…
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Yogi Bear
Whether it is all some kind of marketing ploy or a genuine wave of nostalgia triggered by their sudden availability on DVD and retro-themed television channels, everything old is suddenly cool again. From the big-budget blockbusters of the Transformers films and the bafflingly successful Alvin and the Chipmunks films, through to the forthcoming revivals of…
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The Dilemma
Opening with a dinner conversation that discusses the very topic of knowing one’s friends and family, the film unravels the dynamic between smooth-talking salesman Ronny Valentine (Vaughn, Couples Retreat) and his scientist buddy Nick Brannen (James, Grown Ups). With Ronny’s girlfriend Beth (Jennifer Connelly, Creation) and Nick’s wife Geneva (Winona Ryder, Black Swan) the pair…
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The evolution of the western: Part 1 – the last gunslingers
With the release of the Coen Brothers’ True Grit, a remake of Henry Hathaway’s 1969 John Wayne late-vehicle, the American western has been brought back into focus. Set to become the second highest grossing western of all time, behind Kevin Costner’s revisionist western Dances with Wolves, True Grit may be just the blockbuster the genre…
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Gulliver’s Travels
Jonathan Swift’s novel Gulliver’s Travels, a parody of the popular travel literature at the time, has been endlessly adapted since it was first published back in 1726. A satire on British society and human nature in general, Gulliver’s travels took him to lands of giants, pirates…and even Japan. However, it is his voyage to Lilliput, a…
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Review: Somewhere
REVIEW: Sofia Coppola observes the lifestyles of the rich and infamous.
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The Tourist
Florian Henckel von Donnersmarck made his mark on the film world with his 2006 debut feature The Lives of Others, the winner of the Best Foreign Language Film of the Year at the Academy Awards. The study of the German Democratic Republic in the 1980s, during the height of the ‘Stasiland’ era, was a subtle…
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Fair Game
In 2003, the formerly classified CIA operative Valerie Plame was outed in a Washington Post article. Her husband, former Ambassador Joseph C. Wilson, went on record in various media outlets as saying that the outing was the direct result of his formally contradicting the US position on weapons of mass destruction (WMDs) in Iraq in…
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