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The Finest Hours (Cinema Review)

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finest-hours-slideStarring: Chris Pine, Casey Affleck, Ben Foster, Eric Bana
Directed By: Craig Gillespie
Running Time: 117 Minutes
UK Release Date: 19th February 2016
BBFC Certificate: 12A

Our Score

Disney presents ‘The Finest Hours’, which based on the true…. Hang on, Disney presents? Disney didn’t present the new Star Wars movie or any of the Marvel Cinematic Universe films. I guess it wants to maintain its family friendly image when dealing with films that don’t focus on action or violence. Although in the above films they do mostly paint a binary picture of good vs evil, where good will always win with a fist, a blaster or a lightsabre.

Back on track, The Finest Hours is based on the remarkable true story of an oil tanker that is ripped in two by a massive storm off the coast of Chatham Massachusetts in February 1952.  30 sailors were trapped in the slowly sinking stern of the ship, and 4 brave coastguards in a small boat are sent on a mission to rescue them against all odds. [Read more…]

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The Program (Blu-ray Review)

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the-program-review-slideStarring: Ben Foster, Chris O’Dowd, Jesse Plemons, Lee Pace, Guillaume Canet
Directed By: Stephen Frears
Running Time: 103 mins
BBFC Certificate: 15
UK Release Date: February 15th 2016

Our Score

Over the years, numerous movies about Lance Armstrong have been in the works but never got made. Indeed, one was about to move forward just as he admitted he had doped for his entire career. It’s almost a shame we don’t have a movie from when he was almost universally admired as a hero, so we could compare it to the darker world of The Program.

At the start of the movie Lance (Ben Foster) is an okay but unexceptional cyclist, who few think will ever do anything special. After overcoming testicular cancer, he returns with a passion to win, and knowing the world of cycling is riddled with cheats taking performance-enhancing drugs, he decides he will do the same, enlisting the help of Michele Ferrari (Guillaume Canet) to allow him to set up a ‘Program’ that will help him win, as well as arranging to have a team built around him that will ensure a Tour de France victory. [Read more…]

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Bill (DVD Review)

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bill-review-slideStarring: Mathew Baynton, Simon Farnaby, Martha Howe-Douglas, Helen McCrory, Damian Lewis
Directed By: Richard Bracewell
Running Time: 94 mins
BBFC Certificate: PG
UK Release Date: February 15th 2016

Our Score

I doubt that when the team that created the TV version of Horrible Histories were putting the show together they thought that what they were making would not only became one of the most popular children’s series in the UK, but would also have massive crossover appeal, with adults tuning in for the educational silliness. The same team then went on to create the puppety fantasy of Yonderland, and have now gone cinematic with Bill.

While Horrible Histories was careful to stick close enough to the truth of the past to ensure it could teach youngsters a few things, Bill features plenty of real historical figures but takes far more liberties with the truth. [Read more…]

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Hotel Transylvania 2 (DVD Review)

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hotel-transylvania-2-slideStarring: Adam Sandler, Andy Samberg, Mel Brooks, Selena Gomez, Kevin James
Directed By: Genndy Tartakovsky
Running Time: 89 mins
BBFC Certificate: U
UK Release Date: February 15th 2016

Our Score

Hotel Transylvania was a far bigger success than many people expected. Indeed, even Sony Pictures appeared to be taken by surprise, but it didn’t take them long to decide a sequel was needed. That follow-up quickly takes us through the next few years of the story, which sees monsters and humans starting to get along better across the world.

Dracula’s daughter Mavis marries slacker boyfriend Jonathan and they have a child, Dennis. As Dennis is only half-vampire, it’s not clear whether he will end up being a monster or not, but Dracula is determined that before he’s five, his grandson will spout fangs, as he knows that otherwise he will remain human forever. Mavis meanwhile feels that if Dennis is indeed more human than monster, perhaps it would be better if they went to live in the ‘normal’ world. [Read more…]

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Zoolander 2 (Cinema Review)

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zoolander-2-poster-slideStarring: Ben Stiller, Owen Wilson, Penélope Cruz, Will Ferrell
Directed By: Ben Stiller
Running Time: 102 Minutes
UK Release Date: 12th February 2016
Certificate: 12A

Our Score

Derek Zoolander returns after a 15-year absence and is thankfully none the wiser. This belated sequel hits the ground running with the assassination of a well known pop star and a great Instagram gag, and initially has the feel of a spy thriller.

A news montage through the credits fills you in on the last 15 years since a tragedy at the ‘Derek Zoolander school for kids who can’t read good and want to do other stuff good too’. Model Hansel (Wilson) is seemingly disfigured and living in the desert with his group of lovers, and Derek (Stiller) has since lost his son to child services and is living as a hermit somewhere snowy. They both receive an invitation from fashion guru Alexanya Atoz (Kristen Wiig) to attend a fashion show in Rome, and end up working with agent Valentina (Penelope Cruz, who is clearly having fun in this film) from Interpol’s fashion division to solve the mystery behind the deaths of several famous pop stars. As you would expect it is all part of a bigger, yet muddled plan. [Read more…]

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Trumbo (Cinema Review)

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trumbo-slideStarring: Bryan Cranston, Diane Lane, Helen Mirren, Louis C.K., Elle Fanning, John Goodman
Directed By: Jay Roach
Running Time: 124 minutes
UK Release Date: February 5th 2016
BBFC Certificate: 15

Our Score

Dalton Trumbo (Brtan Cranston) was a hugely successful screenwriter of the 1940s, 50s and 60s. A family man and an eccentric in many ways, he did much of his best work writing in the bath. He was also a Communist and one of the notorious “Hollywood Ten” who were blacklisted throughout the 1950s.

With a few notable exceptions, such as Martin Ritt’s Woody Allen starrer The Front and, more recently, George Clooney’s Good Night, And Good Luck, there are very few films about the anti-Communist paranoia which consumed the United States after the Second World War. This is largely because Hollywood was hit particularly badly by it and only now as the last of the surviving few participants die off is it becoming a generally acceptable topic for filmmaking. It remains a touchy subject though. Many careers and lives were ruined. [Read more…]

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