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In an increasingly mobile world where people and news travel fast, Contagion is a timely reflection on this brave new world. The conspiracy theorists will look to the movie for vindication while the script has a shot across the bow of everyone from the pharmaceutical conglomerate to the independent blogger. It plays on our fears and ask questions of recent events including the swine flu epidemic and a world where super bugs crawl and adapt.

Looking at the movie poster you could be forgiven for thinking we’ve ended up back in the era of the 70s movie making. Remember ‘disaster greats’ like 1974’s Towering Inferno? You look down the cast list and see Newman, Wagner, McQueen, Astaire, Dunaway and even O J Simpson! That was the feel I had for Contagion with a cast list that reads like a red carpet who’s who to includes Matt Damon, Gwyneth Paltrow, Jude Law, Marion Cotillard, Lawrence Fishburne and Kate Winslet.

Now I’ve got that little retro flashback off my chest let’s look beyond the poster and ask how the ensemble cast measured up under Steven Soderbergh’s direction. The direction of this movie is superb. While taking a ‘real world’ plot and fleshing it out to a world changing event, Soderbergh has woven the credible with the personal. The opening scenes involving Matt Damon, Gwyneth Paltrow and their child played by Griffin Kane will challenge anyone not to be connected to the plot and a possible personal outcome when in touch with a virus that infects, spreads, adapts and kills. Read the rest of this entry »

It’s a reasonably safe bet to say that very rarely will a remake of a film meet the standard set by an original, as of course if the source material was bad in the first place, a remake would likely not even be considered. The number of times a remake is better than the original can probably be counted on one hand. Steven Soderbergh’s Ocean’s Eleven and David Cronenberg’s The Fly spring to mind as a couple of those rare examples. And, of course, John Carpenter’s 1982 masterpiece The Thing, which goes beyond being a superior remake to being considered one of the finest sci-fi/horror films ever made. As for prequels, it’s hard to come up with a single example that improved on its predecessor. In modern Hollywood, there are prequels, there are remakes, and then there is Matthijs van Heijningen Jr.’s 2011 version of The Thing.

Ostensibly a prequel of a remake, The Thing finds itself uncomfortably torn between the two. The story concerns the initial discovery of an alien artifact buried deep under the ice of Antarctica, and the events that follow lead directly to the opening scene of Carpenter’s 1982 film. So, it’s a prequel, right? Well, not quite. The way the events unfold is almost a beat-for-beat copy of the earlier film, and a number of well-known scenes from Carpenter’s version are recreated. So maybe it’s a remake? I don’t know, and it seems like van Heijningen doesn’t know either. There’s only one sure way to clarify what this movie is: terrible. Van Heijningen’s The Thing is derivative, pointless, four-quadrant filmmaking at its absolute worst. It tries so hard to recreate the atmosphere of paranoia and claustrophobia of Carpenter’s film, but fails to engage on any level.  Read the rest of this entry »

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A quest that begins as a personal vendetta for the fierce Cimmerian warrior soon turns into an epic battle against hulking rivals, horrific monsters, and impossible odds, as Conan realizes he is the only hope of saving the great nations of Hyboria from an encroaching reign of supernatural evil. Read the rest of this entry »

Sporting hot-pink opening titles Nicolas Winding Refn’s highly anticipated Drive kicks off to a blaring 80s-esque soundtrack like some kind of long-lost and dislocated Miami Vice episode. But if you’re thinking “oh shit, this is gonna be a lesser Michael Mann style douche-fest” that is where the similarities start and end. Instead, Refn – director of such brutishly visceral spectacles as the Pusher trilogy and 2008 shocker Bronson – creates a noirish caper possessed of the director’s characteristic taste for violence whilst being constrained inside an almost meditative dramatic structure; full of silent, meaningful glances, contrasting visual and emotional tones, and an unsentimental contemplation of Los Angeles and its byways.

Gosling, as with his character (simply entitled “Driver”), totally inhabits the cool, calm centre of this picture. Variously clad in signature scorpion jacket, grease stained overalls, or stunt driver protective gear, the driver drifts through the action a man apart. There is no denying Refn’s purposeful and compelling hand or Gosling’s magnetism even in the face of such an emotionally restrained role. At once wistful, longing, even as he displays a self-awareness of his inability to truly connect and assimilate into the world around him; the heroic stranger that rides, or in this case drives, off into the sunset.  Read the rest of this entry »

Happy Thank You More Please is a quirky little rom-com about a writer whose just been told that his first novel isn’t quite there – which is pretty much the case with Sam’s life.

But things are about to get a heck of a lot more complicated for Sam, when he does the Good Samaritan thing with a small boy he finds on the train. Sam’s indecision with life is immediately transferred into his inability to do the right thing with the boy, and rather than handing him in to the Police, decides that the boy can stay with him.

All the while he’s trying to find his writing mojo, start a relationship with a cute bar girl, and then keep it going, whilst hanging out with his best friend – who also happens to be a girl – who is dealing with her own set of relational issues.  Read the rest of this entry »

A political thriller advancing the theory that it was in fact Edward De Vere, Earl of Oxford who penned Shakespeare’s plays; set against the backdrop of the succession of Queen Elizabeth I, and the Essex Rebellion against her. Read the rest of this entry »

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