Is Marvel Avengers Assemble the worst film title ever?
Joss Whedon's blockbuster has a terrible name – but it faces stiff competition from the likes of B*A*P*S, Gleaming the Cube, They, Eegah, Sssssss and Phffft!What's claimed to be "the most highly anticipated movie event of the year" is now upon us. It...
The Hunger Games fails to give teenagers food for thought
Much has been made of The Hunger Games' supposed gritty relevance to our own world. But Katniss Everdeen's adventures are about as relevant as those of Harry Potter or Twilight's BellaSo the kids are being moved on from boarding-school wizardry and gen...
Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close: why do so many people hate it?
'Tacky', 'mawkish', 'offensive', 'bizarre': just what is it about Stephen Daldry's adaptation of Jonathan Safran Foer's novel that has provoked such negativity?Sometimes cinema poses a question so unsettling that it just won't go away. Extremely Loud &...
Why is there no trace of forensic action in Guy Ritchie’s Sherlock Holmes?
Conan Doyle's creation isn't just any old action hero, as portrayed in A Game of Shadows; he invented forensic scienceSherlock Holmes has made the Guinness Book of Records as the most frequently portrayed literary character in film history. More than ...
Schlock and awe: Woody Allen routs the US with Midnight in Paris
Only the city of light could dazzle American audiences into worshipping Allen's latest film. Do I smell merde de taureau?So Woody Allen has at last restored his fortunes in the America that so cruelly forgot him. Yet it's not a fresh helping of his tra...
There is no Eyre of feminism about this modern Jane
Charlotte Brontë's Jane Eyre is viewed by some as a feminist work, but the heroine in Cary Fukunaga's film adaptation stays true to the book by refusing to be a feminist role modelWomen have been fascinated by Jane Eyre since the book was published in...
One Day: a waste of a good tome
David Nicholls's perceptive chronicle of wasted youth has been hastily transferred to the big screen as a banal romcomThe announcement that a hugely successful book is to become a film often provokes dismay. We're usually warned that the outcome is bou...
X-Men: First Class – mutant heroes of the teenage outsider
Marvel's mutants have been reinvented in the latest X-Men spin-off as standard-bearers for today's alienated youthThe X-Men entered our world in an era very different from our own. They were launched in September 1963 in the first issue of what was to ...
Red Riding Hood shrinks from female sexuality
Film-makers are more fearful of young women's carnal desire than were the fairy-tale tellers of oldThe story of Red Riding Hood has its roots in ancient Asian myth, but the version that's come down to us was pretty much shaped by the first known printe...
The Adjustment Bureau’s will won’t be done
A would-be panegyric to the glory of free will makes determinism seem preferableThe question of whether or not human beings possess free will has kept philosophers out of mischief for millennia. The case for determinism may look neat, yet it's always b...
Rabbit Hole burrows into our ideals
As this psychologically accurate child-loss drama suggests, the nuclear family isolates the grieving when they most need supportIf you're a regular cinemagoer, what befalls Rabbit Hole's suddenly bereaved parents will come as no surprise. Like their co...
Hereafter? Sorry, there isn’t one
Clint Eastwood's film champions the afterlife but ends up exposing the hollowness of the ideaIn films such as A Matter of Life and Death, Heaven Can Wait, Field of Dreams, Truly Madly Deeply or The Lovely Bones, cinema has used the afterlife as a conve...
