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Once again, I'm somewhat late to the party. Virtually everyone I know has seen DISTRICT 9, and given what a major talking point it has proven to be, having to patiently explain to people that I hadn't actually seen it...

Posted at 6:11 PM in BD Impressions

Q: What's funnier than Jason Statham trying to act? A: Jason Statham trying to do an American accent. At least he makes up for his lack of skill as a thesp with his physicality and apparent willingness to try pretty...

Posted at 11:04 PM in BD Impressions

THE IMAGINARIUM OF DOCTOR PARNASSUS is typical Terry Gilliam: imaginative, unconventional and downright frustrating. I've only seen a handful of the man's films, but I can't recall ever liking a single one of them unconditionally. For me, they all contain...

Posted at 7:29 PM in BD Impressions

I see no point in making all the predictable "DANCES WITH SMURFS" and "POCAHONTAS II" jokes that I'm sure you've all heard a hundred times before. Yes, AVATAR's script is incredibly derivative. Let's move on. Unlike just about everyone else...

Posted at 8:19 PM in BD Impressions

I knew a little about the Red Army Faction (RAF), a terrorist group which was active in Germany from the 1970s through to the late 90s, but I had no knowledge of the people behind it and never heard the...

Posted at 1:31 PM in BD Impressions

I loved VOLVER, director Pedro Almodóvar's previous collaboration of Penélope Cruz. In fact, I ranked it number 9 in my Top 10 Films of the Decade list. It was the only Almodóvar I had ever seen, which remained the case...

Posted at 6:14 PM in BD Impressions

Generally speaking I try to avoid politics on this site, since I think it's fairly safe to assume that people come here for my latest impressions on films and BD transfers, not who I'm going to vote for in the...

Posted at 11:15 AM in BD Impressions

I like all the Walt Disney classics (by which I mean the ones produced while Walt himself was still around) to one degree or another, but I can't help wishing he'd made more like DUMBO. Whereas the likes of FANTASIA...

Posted at 9:24 PM in BD Impressions

It's good to be back; to be back is good. After nearly a month with no way of watching movies on the big screen, I'm glad we picked ZOMBIELAND as the first film to watch via my brother's newly repaired...

Posted at 1:24 PM in BD Impressions

What do you do when you're sitting on the rights to one of the best horror movies - scratch that, THE best horror movie - of the last decade? Answer: you make a shameless cash-in that lifts the core elements...

Posted at 8:45 PM in BD Impressions

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 Kieslowski'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