The Great Wall (長城) isn’t a bad film. The problem with it is that there’s simply not enough about it that, well, works. The story is, if we’re being kind, slight — William (Matt Damon) and Tovar (Pedro Pascal, last…
It’s not entirely clear who the intended audience is for Fifty Shades Darker, the second film adaptation of EL James’ “mummy porn” series of embarrassments. It can’t be fans of actual porn, or even erotica — you’ll find a lot more…
In the thirty-third episode of Crave!, Simon and Steve are divided in their opinions of La La Land, with Simon being rather more impressed than Steve is. But Steve’s very impressed with Hidden Figures, while Simon has a few more reservations.…
Writer director Kenneth Lonergan offers a detailed, honest and well informed examination of the impact of loss and tragedy on the lives of ordinary people in this seriously well put together drama. Manchester-by-the-Sea is a town about forty minutes north…
A crowded California freeway, cars crawling along in the heat, and the camera swoops across the tableau to rest on a young woman listening to music in her car. She starts to sing. She gets out of the car, dancing…
Hidden Figures tells the little-known story of Katherine Goble, a computer — in the sixties, the word was a job description, not the name of a machine — who computed trajectories for the embryonic American space programme’s first rocket launches,…
The Matthew McConaughey that appears in Gold is not so much the annoyingly charming star of too many questionable rom-coms, and more the overly-energised, eye-popping, slightly manic Matthew McConaughey who played Mark Hanna in The Wolf Of Wall Street. In Gold, McConaughey…
In episode 32 of Crave!, Steve and Simon are both totally impressed by Lion, the astonishing true story of a young Indian boy who is adopted by an Australian family and then manages to find his home in India using…
This movie of a gay black man’s journey from childhood to adulthood has gained rave reviews, and a Golden Globe for best drama, and I approached Moonlight wondering if the the acclaim was for its storytelling, or for it focussing…
Moonlight, the new work from writer/director Barry Jenkins, is a Very Important Film. Its Importance is clear throughout the film — long, lingering takes, lots of silent pauses, plenty of dodgy focusing, no shortage of shaky-cam shots, extended sequences of very…