sat 14/12/2024

Ewan McGregor

Birds of Prey review - the DCU is back on track

Back in 2016, David Ayer’s infantile Suicide Squad burst upon us in a wash of lurid greens and purples. Ayer’s film had a myriad of problems, not least the hyper-sexualisation of Harley Quinn, played by Margot Robbie. While controversy abounded,...

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Beauty and the Beast

This is, as the voiceover has it, “a tale as old as time” – or pedantically one that goes back to 1740, when the French fairytale was first published – so maybe it was time for a modernising reboot. The stars – Emma Watson as Beauty and Dan Stevens...

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T2 Trainspotting

"This had better not be shite, Danny," was the warning delivered to director Danny Boyle from his cast, amazingly reunited from the original Trainspotting 21 years later. They had reason to be fearful, knowing how things often go with sequels, but...

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American Pastoral

Ewan McGregor has been judged unworthy of adapting Philip Roth in the US. But his directorial debut is finely crafted, and powered by visceral emotion embodied in one of his best performances. As Seymour “Swede” Levov, he’s an All-Jewish-American...

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Our Kind of Traitor

John Le Carré made it quite clear what he thinks of the new world order in The Night Manager. All together now: a nexus of corrupt money and sinister establishment interests make for cynical realpolitik. It’s a persuasive weltanschauung that plays...

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Miles Ahead

Catching the essence of the mercurial, secretive and notoriously abrasive Miles Davis on film might reasonably be described as a mission impossible, but Don Cheadle has put his heart and soul into it. He directed it and plays the title role, he co-...

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DVD: August: Osage County

Blood is thicker than water. Or is it? For anyone who’s struggled with this proverb, August: Osage County is a fascinating exploration of the ties that bind us. Examining an extended, quintessentially American family in the sticky summer heat of...

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August: Osage County

Anything planned as Oscar-bait never works – although the Pulitzer Prize-winning play that underpins the film August: Osage County has a pedigree to please the Academy. By some accounts, it began with a lunch between Harvey Weinstein and Emmy-...

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Jack the Giant Slayer

This is a fairy tale which may send children to sleep before the good bits, then wake them up screaming at the first glimpse of loping, bestial giants. Splicing Jack the Giant-Killer (subject of a 1962 kids’ monster movie which gave me nightmares)...

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The Impossible

You will cry primal tears by the end of The Impossible, a family disaster drama by director Juan Antonio Bayona - because we can’t handle its overpowering truth. A delver of emotion, Bayona (The Orphanage) bases this spectacular drama on Sergio G...

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DVD: Haywire

In one of the DVD featurettes included here, Ewan McGregor puts his finger on what gives this movie its curious air of detachment. Director Steven Soderbergh, says McGregor, is "meticulous" and "like a surgeon", master of every detail from script to...

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Salmon Fishing in the Yemen

Getting on for three decades ago Lasse Hallström was introduced to audiences outside his native Sweden with My Life As a Dog. An emotionally continent, directorially restrained picture of the pains and pleasures of a rural childhood, it was...

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