Jack Black – Hollywood’s funniest fat bloke – as a Mexican priest who dreams of being a wrestler! What could there possibly be to dislike about this film? Weeellll… here’s the thing, it’s not really that funny. You can kind of see the creative minds behind Nacho Libre bubbling away with what they WANT the film to be. Jack Black wants to extend his range after effectively playing himself (to excellent critical and commercial reaction) in School of Rock, here [...]
“You know that guy who can get any girl? I’m him. On crack.” – This is Nick Naylor. Nick speaks on behalf of cigarette lobby Big Tobacco. Nick publicises the benefits of an industry which kills 10 times more people in a year than there were British casualties in World War Two. And Nick is very, very good at what he does. This is one of those films that makes you sit up and pay attention right away. Debutante director [...]
If the hyperbolic damnation of Brass Eye’s Paedophile Special taught us anything, it is not that paedophiles can disguise themselves as schools, it’s that paedophilia is a touchy subject. British Director David Slade knows this, and has used the media preconceptions of paedophilia, as well as the moral hysteria it generates, and crafted one most fraught and claustrophobic thrillers in recent memory. Hand Candy (internet slang for under age female) was released in Britain amidst a surfeit of topical circumstance. [...]
‘Inspired by real events’ is a tag often adopted by lacklustre film producers to give their film more gravitas, more depth, give it a more controversial slant. If there was ever a topic weighty enough not to resort to a cheap marketing ruse, it is the Israel / Palestine conflict, it is the media-squall that was the 1972 Olympic Massacre, and it is Steven Spielberg’s Munich. Yet being ‘inspired by real events’ was in no way an easy ride for [...]
Before the production of X-Men and X-Men 2, Bryan Singer was a tender-foot to the world of comic books, yet, before long, he knew all about the people with special powers, people who, with a tipper-tap of their fingers, could reduce multi-million-dollar developments to rubble and make whole cinema audiences disappear. Yet, these weren’t mutants, no super-powers did they have, no… these people were simply internet-savvy comic-clutching renegades; so protective of their beloved X-Men that they probed the young Singer’s [...]