“A load of lovely old crooks just having a laugh” is how one of the old boys in King Of Thieves describes the crew that pulled off the Hatton Gardens Job, the biggest robbery in British history. But King Of…
There is, at the heart of A Star Is Born, a truly great film. There’s a reason why this story keeps getting remade — it was first filmed in 1937 with Janet Gaynor in the lead, that film itself based,…
Upon hearing of a movie about the life of Neil Armstrong, the biggest question I wanted answered was why he was such a quiet, undemonstrative, even shy figure. Although he lived a public life after becoming the first human to…
Perhaps some events are simply so awful that the only way to deal with them on film is to pare back the storytelling. Find a script where the actors talk like ordinary people. Don’t use big name actors who may…
I have to say the trailer for this film didn’t grab me. And although I try not to read other reviews before watching a film, I couldn’t escape the headlines, and those headlines told a sorry story about Venom, the…
In the seventieth — seventieth! — episode of Crave! Steve struggles to convince Simon of the merits of A Simple Favour, the new Blake Lively—Anna Kendrick two-hander; while Simon rates it, he isn’t as taken in with the film’s charms…
Essentially, this is a collection of gags. Most of them, as you’d expect from Rowan Atkinson, are of the physical variety. Some are without doubt laugh out loud funny, but others feel rather tired and predictable. Overall, this is a…
Two films of very different calibres have been occupying Simon and Steve’s attention this week. BlacKKKlansman, the Spike Lee joint about a black detective who infiltrates the Ku Klux Klan, made a very positive impression; The Happytime Murders simply managed…
What’s most frustrating, perhaps, about The Happytime Murders is that there is the germ, the nubbin, of a potentially really enjoyable film hiding somewhere inside it. That really enjoyable film, however, has been crushed by the weight of the monumental…
Steve and Simon have been to see Bob Dylan in Auckland, and while Simon came away from the show duly impressed, Steve’s really not quite sure what to make of it all. He does, however, know what to make of…