Meryl Streep feasts once again at the shrine of foodie-ism in It's Complicated, this time playing a California caterer who juggles two men - one of them her ex-husband - in between rolling pastry dough. "Complicated"? Perhaps in terms of decision-making: what to bake? whom to bed? But the abiding fact of writer-director Nancy Meyers' latest foray into the world of adult chick flicks is how far from complex the worlds of her characters often are.
film reviews
sheila.johnston
He thought he owned his property - he had the title deeds to it, after all - but suddenly the ground shifted under his feet and there came an aggressive bid to snatch his home away. His savings became worthless in the economic chaos; the social order was crumbling. The nightmare has become all too familiar over the last 18 months. But in Mike Campbell's case there was a further cruel turn of the screw: he lived in Zimbabwe. Recently named Best British Documentary of 2009 and shortlisted for an Oscar, this film tells the remarkable story of how Campbell singlehandedly took Robert Mugabe to an international court to defend his right to his farm; and won.
Jasper Rees
The list of plays that have successfully migrated from the stage to the screen is not so very long. If Exam doesn’t belong on that list, it’s not quite for the reason you’d expect. With only ten characters and one windowless set, it has the shape, size and claustrophobic intensity of something that began its life in the theatre. But unless it has kept its roots very well hidden, the screenplay by Stuart Hazeldine appears here in its original incarnation. A film which doesn’t go anywhere spatially puts a whole lot more pressure on itself to perform in other areas. Does it pass the test?
anne.billson
Hey-ho. Just when you thought it was safe to go back into the cinema, it's the end of the world again. Where mankind would once have contemplated the apocalypse and its aftermath by way of triptychs and frescos, now it's repeatedly faced with its own extinction in widescreen, with Dolby Digital sound. And if you thought the collapsing CGI cities of 2012 were frivolous, never fear. John Hillcoat's The Road, adapted from the Pulitzer-prizewinning novel by Cormac McCarthy, is guaranteed to wipe that smile off your face.
Matt Wolf
The first movie in my experience to feature a Sarah Palin joke lends a glimmer of distinction to Did You Hear About the Morgans?, an otherwise excruciating romcom that finds Hugh Grant in tic-laden overdrive, his genuine charm jettisoned somewhere in the onscreen journey from New York to points west. Sarah Jessica Parker is on hand to trundle out her mightily-aggrieved-lover routine that she long ago patented on Sex and the City, but Marc Lawrence's film is probably best saved for those airplane trips that are now upon us where one isn't allowed to do anything but look at the screen. Sometimes, a blank stare is the best response.
sheila.johnston
In 2009 Hollywood sank deeper into the trough that it has busily been colonising over the last decade.
David Nice
Even for a narratorless animation of Prokofiev's Peter and the Wolf like Suzie Templeton's obsessively detailed gem of a film, you probably only need 14 words before you can get on with the business of screening and playing. Peter: strings; bird: flute; duck: oboe; cat: clarinet; grandfather: bassoon; wolf: horns; hunters: timps. The savvy middle-class children gathered with their parents in the Royal Festival Hall yesterday afternoon had only two for actor/presenter Burn Gorman's manic clot on a bike, wheeling in to set up the background. The longer he shillyshallyed affecting to remember a dream he'd had, the more they bellowed: Peter! Wolf! Which meant, cut to the chase, let the orchestra play and the film roll.
sheila.johnston
Family been bickering over games again this Christmas? Take the blighters to this fabulous supernatural melodrama and they'll learn soon enough what happens to a dirty card cheat. Long unavailable, Thorold Dickinson's 1949 adaptation of Alexander Pushkin's eerie short story, wherein a penniless Russian officer and crusty beldame sell their souls for the secret of winning at a simple game of chance, will be released on DVD, not before time, on 18 January. Meanwhile, it opens today for a short run in cinemas where its baroque imagery and outsize performances, from Anton Walbrook and Dame Edith Evans, properly belong.
Adam Sweeting
It’s been a very good year for Beatlemania, with all the albums re-repackaged and the group going virtual in Rock Band. The BBC lobbed in their own Beatles season-ette, and one of the more striking images from their riot of documentary footage was of John Lennon escorting his Aunt Mimi up the steps onto the plane taking them to America, with her handbag and Sunday-best hat.
Adam Sweeting
If James Bond could survive Roger Moore and George Lazenby, there must be grounds for optimism that Sherlock Holmes will eventually recover from this brutal mauling by Robert Downey Jr, under the gaudy directorial eye of Guy Ritchie. Holmesophiles are a doughty bunch, and will probably just carry on watching Basil Rathbone and Jeremy Brett as if Mr Madonna never happened.