Home truths
You will be wondering why I haven’t seen Fifty Shades of Grey as this is very much Fifty Shades of…
Stealing a march
Selma, the civil rights film that stars David Oyelowo as Martin Luther King, undoubtedly contains the best and most powerful…
Cruel to be kind
Trash is the sort of film one desperately wishes to be kind about — heart supremely, if not burstingly, in…
Great coat
A Most Violent Year is a riveting drama even though I can’t tell you what it’s about, or even what…
Puke the line
Wild is yet another film based on a true story, as currently seems to be in vogue for some reason.…
Slowly, slowly, catchy, catchy
Foxcatcher is a crime drama (of sorts) that has already been dubbed ‘Oscarcatcher!’ as it barely puts a foot wrong.…
Birdbrained
Alejandro González Iñárritu’s Birdman, which stars Michael Keaton as a one-time superhero movie star (just like Keaton himself), is audacious…
Norwegian wood
Kon-Tiki is a dramatisation of Thor Heyerdahl’s 4,300-mile, 101-day journey across the Pacific by balsa-wood raft, which took place in…
Bear necessity
‘Please look after this bear,’ reads the famous label hanging round Paddington’s neck, and this film does that, admirably, handsomely,…
On the Wayne
The Homesman, which stars Hilary Swank and Tommy Lee Jones and is set in the Nebraska territory in the 1850s,…
In the closet
The Imitation Game is a biopic starring Benedict Cumberbatch as Alan Turing, the brilliant mathematician who broke the German’s Enigma…
Dumb and dumber
Christopher Nolan’s futuristic epic Interstellar isn’t a clever film, or even a dumb film with a clever film trying to…
Art of grunting
Mr Turner may be the gruntiest film of the year, possibly the gruntiest film ever. ‘Grunt, grunt, grunt,’ goes Mr…
Signifying nothing
Fury is a second world war drama that plays with us viscerally and unsparingly — I think I saw a…
See it and sleep
Take tissues to The Best of Me, I’d read, as it’s such a weepie, so I took tissues, being a…
Effie off
Effie Gray, which has been written by Emma Thompson and recounts the doomed marriage of Victorian art critic John Ruskin…
Playing it for laughs
Gone Girl is David Fincher’s adaptation of the bestselling thriller by Gillian Flynn, a relentless page-turner which I’ve heard people…
Disaster movie
What We Did On Our Holiday is written and directed by Guy Jenkin and Andy Hamilton, the pair who created…
Brain drain
Before I Go To Sleep is Rowan Joffe’s adaptation of S.J. Watson’s bestselling thriller of 2011, but whereas the book…
Dambusters
Night Moves is a film by Kelly Reichardt, who also made the heart-wrenching Wendy and Lucy (2008), which may be…
Into the bush
The first Inbetweeners film made £45 million at the box office, and was such an unexpected smash there was always…
Monster in our midst
Wakolda is not a sunny film for a sunny day, just so you’re aware, but as there is so little…
All whimsied out
Your enjoyment of Michel Gondry’s Mood Indigo may entirely depend on how much visual whimsy you can take, what your…
The trying game
The trouble with Believe is that, unless you are ten years old or under, which I’m assuming you are not,…
Private eye
Finding Vivian Maier is a documentary about the American nanny who led a wholly secretive life as a photographer and…
