Movies

   The Help is one of the most moving, inspirational movies I have seen in quite some time. Set against the first stirrings of the civil rights era in the 1960s in Jackson, Mississippi where for over a century black woman have been house slaves then maids (sadly in terms Continue Reading

  Rise of Planet of the Apes is a brilliant, if confronting, movie. While it descends into shoot-em-up action in the final act, and the number of apes mysteriously multiplies, it by and large movie addresses some very real current social and ethical concerns – should we be manipulating genetics Continue Reading

Here’s the poster for the new Muppets movie. I have loved the Muppets for years. From the age of 5, when Sesame Street’s Big Bird (so sad they couldn’t see his friend Snuffalapagus at first), Bert & Ernie, Grover (my absolute favourite Muppet still, with the possible exception of Animal Continue Reading

First my confession : I haven’t read the books! Yes I know start the stone throwing, vitriolic forum posts, upload videos to YouTube denouncing me, and get the rabble ready to storm the cyber battlements with poorly articulate and spelt brickbats. All done? Feel better? Good. Now, I may not Continue Reading

  What an odd movie. I mean truly odd. Watching it felt like we’d entered the cinema late and missed the beginning, and then someone forget to tack the end onto it. Now I need to say straight off that I like movies that are more experience-driven than narrative-driven, since Continue Reading

  Super 8 I loved this movie! It promised a return to feel good 1970s family movies with a 21st Century knowing postmodern edge and it didn’t fail to deliver. Media wunderkind, JJ Abrams of LOST and Alias fame, continues to show that spending his childhood in the 70s making Continue Reading

  Two great movies but vastly different. WATER FOR ELEPHANTS is a movie that surprised me completely. I had expected a love story, set in a Depression-era circus travelling across the United States, and while that is in part, largely what I saw, it was also a movie with great cruelty Continue Reading

My lord it’s been a mainstream movie fest this week! Usually I avoid a lot of these big tentpole blockbusters, not because I am some sort of twisted movie snob preferring only movies about suffering Romanian peasants during the Depression – although that could be kind of gripping….or not – Continue Reading

  I am not a fan of slasher flicks generally. It’s not the fear of what might happen next that truly bothers me, although I appreciate that is largely what draws most people to them. No, the reason I avoid them like a, um, serial killer, is that the thought of Continue Reading