I have mixed feelings about the direction in which John Lasseter has taken Disney animation since taking over leadership a few years back. While the situation now is undoubtedly far better than it was towards the arse-end of the previous...

Posted at 8:58 PM in BD Impressions

TAKEN: in which ex-secret service man Liam Neeson travels to Paris and basically kills everyone. I'd be lying if I said this was a thought-provoking or particularly inventive film, but damn it if it isn't hellishly entertaining. Produced and co-written...

Posted at 8:46 PM in BD Impressions

I wasn't really a fan of Christopher Smith's first feature, CREEP. Actually, that's putting it mildly: I thought it was, on the whole, dull and not particularly well-made or acted. I haven't seen his middle child, SEVERANCE, yet, but TRIANGLE...

Posted at 11:07 PM in BD Impressions

I believe PONTYPOOL first came to my attention thanks to Mark Kermode's Radio 5 show. He didn't review the film himself, but if memory serves me correctly several listeners wrote in to recommend it. I'm glad I decided to check...

Posted at 12:13 PM in BD Impressions

I've heard PONYO described as a minor entry in Hayao Miyazaki's impressive resume, and that may be true, but I personally enjoyed it more than a number of his supposedly meatier films. It's not, I feel, the best animated movie...

Posted at 7:42 PM in BD Impressions

I knew very little about Jacques Mesrine (pronounced "meh-reen" rather than "mez-reen") before watching this two-part biopic starring Vincent Cassel as the titular French ganster, and after watching it I wasn't convinced I knew all that much more, except that...

Posted at 3:35 PM in BD Impressions

For my thoughts on the film itself, please see my previous post. A quick summary: It's hard to put my finger on why, but THE GIRL WHO PLAYED WITH FIRE definitely FEELS like a TV movie rather than a theatrical...

Posted at 3:20 PM in BD Impressions

My first viewing of The Double Life of Veronique was a little on the disappointing side. Prior to watching it, I hadn't seen anything of Krzysztof Zieslowski's work outside of the "Three Colours" trilogy, which I found very impressive, particularly...

Posted at 3:59 PM in BD Impressions

For my thoughts on the film itself, please see my previous post. A quick summary: The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo is ultimately hampered by what it is: a faithful adaptation of a novel about a guy who sits around...

Posted at 1:38 PM in BD Impressions

Live and Let Die: in which James Bond discovers that every single black person in the world really is out to get him, and that they're all secretly communicating with each other by radio, tracking the whereabouts of this "honky"...

Posted at 12:45 PM in BD Impressions

The thing about a film like Antichrist is that, unless you were in the fortunate position of having viewed it at its premiere, every man and his dog will have expressed an opinion on it by the time you get...

Posted at 8:42 PM in BD Impressions

It's a shame I didn't see Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs before I posted my Top 10 UK Releases of 2009 or Movie Checklist 2009 lists, because it would have ranked pretty high on both. This may well be...

Posted at 11:37 AM in BD Impressions

As yet another take on the venerable "scary child" branch of the horror genre, Jaume Collet-Serra's Orphan has a handful of aces up its sleeve, primarily believable performances by Vera Farmiga as a recently bereaved mother who adopts a creepily...

Posted at 5:15 PM in BD Impressions

In some respects I'm almost tempted to look on Defiance as a more po-faced Inglourious Basterds, as least in so far as it belongs to the underpopulated "Jews who fight back" sub-genre of World War 2 films. I'm led to...

Posted at 4:44 PM in BD Impressions

Ne le dis à personne is an adaptation of Harlan Coben's novel Tell No One, which I haven't read. I'm not entirely clear as to why an American novel ended up being made in French first of all, but I...

Posted at 10:28 PM in BD Impressions

I wasn't going to bother with Jennifer's Body. I liked Diablo Cody's first produced script, Juno, but the buzz about this second offering wasn't good, and let's face it, Megan Fox isn't much of an actor. (At least going by...

Posted at 11:50 PM in BD Impressions

Combining two Clive Barker short stories, The Book of Blood and On Jerusalem Street, this low budget horror offering is actually a better film than the critics would have you believe, albeit one that is hampered by some major leaps...

Posted at 11:54 PM in BD Impressions

Generally speaking, my experience with films is that I tend to start out engaged, but then find myself flagging a little towards the end of the second act, only for me to reconnect with it during the final act as...

Posted at 9:42 PM in BD Impressions

I suspect I have a slight preference for From Russia with Love, but it's easy to see why Goldfinger is so popular and considered, by some, to be the quintessential Bond. It has it all: witty one-liners, absurd gadgets, intricate...

Posted at 11:45 PM in BD Impressions

The voice-over at the start of (500) Days of Summer assures us that "this is not a love story", but on reflection, I can't quite work out what it else was meant to be. Essentially a tale about a romantic...

Posted at 2:06 PM in BD Impressions

I'm not sure what else I expected, really. I won't be so presumptuous as to claim that Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen is the worst film of the decade. What I do feel fairly confident in stating is that, with...

Posted at 11:38 AM in BD Impressions

Yes, it's a better film than Dr. No. It's actually an improvement in just about every conceivable way: it's grander in terms of both scale and ambition, the narrative is consistently engaging, and despite the continued presence of SPECTRE (a...

Posted at 3:45 PM in BD Impressions

In his review of Inglourious Basterds, Mark Kermode said that the film had some good ideas in it but didn't really work as a whole, or words to that effect. While I like Quentin Tarantino's latest opus a lot more...

Posted at 5:03 PM in BD Impressions

Last night was my very first time watching the very first James Bond film, a title that has somehow managed to elude me all these years. Still, in a sense I'm glad I waited so long, because watching it for...

Posted at 2:01 PM in BD Impressions

I have a story to share with you. The other night, we decided to celebrate Christmas early and belatedly toast the dearly departed John Hughes by popping in the BD release of Home Alone 2: Lost in New York. It's...

Posted at 3:28 PM in BD Impressions