Reportedly, Russell Crowe was waiting ringside for nigh on a decade for the true story of depression-era boxing champ James J. Braddock to be made into a feature film, eventually asking director and friend Ron Howard to take to the helm. Undoubtedly, the wait, and the disappointing box-office turnover for its late-summer 2005 release, (‘we didn’t have capes, just shorts’ said Crowe after) may have lead to the famous ‘throwing-a-phone-at-a-receptionist’s-face’ incident, giving audiences a further excuse to stay away from [...]

It’s true that most of Austrian director Michael Haneke’s films are not the most accessible in the world, but his 8th feature film, Hidden, is his most accessible film so far. Like some of his other great works such as ‘Funny Games’ and ‘Benny’s Video’ , he focuses on families that are thrown into very difficult and unusual situations in which they find themselves becoming desperate, unable to cope and traumatised. Yet ‘Hidden’ is more than just a muse on [...]

Considering the unpredictability of Ang Lee’s previous filmic ventures: middle-class melodrama, high-wire Kung-Fu drama, English period-drama, and less successfully, the ‘Giant-Green-Man Drama’ it’s perhaps not such a stretch for Lee to opt for ‘shepherding-homosexual-drama’ as the choice for his latest; a tale of forbidden love against the oppressive homophobia of Southern America, 1963. Wisely released in time for an Oscars shoe-in, Brokeback Mountain started its life as a short story by E. Annie Proulx published in The New Yorker magazine, [...]

From when Peter Jackson’s name was synonymous with gore and splatter, rather than say, Orcs and Oscars; his films have always included a sprinkling of the geek an inherent wonder of what can be achieved with special effects (Bad Taste, Braindead, The Frighteners) and, in contrast, a maturity and natural ability to mould human drama (Heavenly Creatures). This contrast puts Mr Jackson a Middle-Earth beyond his peers, and is why this reviewer considers The Lord of the Rings to be [...]