mon 06/01/2025

Hollywood

War Horse

The thrilling does battle with the banal and just about calls it a draw, which is a synoptic way of describing the effect of Steven Spielberg's film of War Horse, based on the Michael Morpurgo novel that spawned the now unstoppably successful play....

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DVDs for Christmas: Film and TV

Over the year we have reviewed many a new film and television drama in theartsdesk's Disc of the Day slot. As our series of DVD recommendations comes round to the movies, we have chosen to concentrate not on individual titles but box sets. For...

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Hugo

It's tempting to say that Martin Scorsese's first so-called "family film" works like clockwork, except that the movie possesses considerably more soul than that statement suggests. What's more, it would help to be a clan of thoroughgoing cinéastes...

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50/50

It’s always struck me as an odd sort of desire: to go to see a movie in which you know someone is going to die a long and painful death, while someone else – or maybe a whole gaggle of people – stand and watch, shedding tears and beating breasts. Of...

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Moneyball

It's a problem many a cash-strapped Premier League football manager is familiar with. The über-teams like Chelsea and Manchester United have loads more money than you, and can simply spend you out of contention. Over in California, this was what was...

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Anonymous

Everyone is working against type, or so it would seem, in Roland Emmerich's deeply bizarre Anonymous, which asks us to accept a celluloid slob (Rhys Ifans) as an aristocrat, a vaunted republican (Vanessa Redgrave) as Elizabeth I and a highly...

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The Ides of March

If you were to play a game as to who should play former US President Bill Clinton in a fictionalised account of his life, then George Clooney – liberal, politically active and drop-dead gorgeous – would surely be your number-one choice. So he must...

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Contagion

What goes around, well, goes around in Steven Soderbergh's Contagion, which manages the dual feat of being at once scare-mongering (hypochondriacs should stay well clear) and stultifyingly dull. A variant on the we're-all-essentially-connected...

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DVD: Green Lantern

Green Lantern was meant to make Ryan Reynolds a major star, and ignite another superhero franchise. Expectations deflated so quickly on its cinema release that, if this DVD didn’t exist, it would be hard to be certain it came out at all.Warners have...

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The Greatest Movie Ever Sold

A movie about advertising and product placement entirely paid for by advertising and product placement? It's a Koh-i-Noor diamond of a concept, and zealous documentarian Morgan Spurlock has applied himself to his task with the efficiency of a...

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Cool Hand Luke, Aldwych Theatre

The human spirit won't be easily vanquished, or so we're led to believe from Cool Hand Luke, which in itself should provide succour to those trapped at this stage adaptation of the novel that inspired the movie - still with me? - in the days and...

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Crazy, Stupid, Love

"I'm going to help you rediscover your manhood," a self-described sexual "tomcat" called Jacob (Ryan Gosling) tells his new friend, and project, Cal (Steve Carell). And with that, the awkwardly titled Crazy, Stupid, Love sets off on its none too...

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