The Inbetweeners (UK, 2012)

There is a history of transferring British TV successes onto the big screen only to find they lose the quality that made them popular in the first place. There is a real challenge in turning a 23-minute per episode sitcom into a hour and a half feature. Clearly the box office suggests that The Inbetweeners [...]

Sherlock Jr. (US, 1924)

This is my favourite Buster Keaton film as it encapsulates his genius for stunts and the surreal world in which his character, the Great Stone Face, existed. The set piece where he rides on the handlebars of a motorcycle, unaware the rider has fallen off, must be one of the great comic scenes in cinema. [...]

Skeletons (UK, 2010)

After a summer when Hollywood seemed even more constipated than usual, writer-director Nick Whitfield’s debut feature is a wonderful blast of daftness and pathos. Mixing Dickian (ie Philip K) ‘reality’ with very English mundane humour (though the conversation between the protagonists does have a whiff of Tarantino), the film follows two characters who reveal what [...]

Anchorman: The Legend of Ron Burgundy (US, 2004)

This film takes the piss out of masculine self-aggrandisement; sometimes with hilarious results. The schoolboy behaviour of men when they are challenged professionally by a woman, and masculine posturing, when facing competitive men, offer ripe opportunities for puncturing ideas of masculinity. All good then but it is set in the ’70s, the era of transition [...]

Four Lions (UK, 2010)

In the current issue of Sight and Sound Chris Morris explains: ‘A bomb goes off. We tear about like headless chickens. Our dread infests the fabric. We change our laws. We restrict our freedoms. We lash out at strangers. Brilliant. Of course we long to laugh at our fears, but we don’t know how. Where’s [...]

Drag Me to Hell (US, 2009)

Sam Raimi goes back to his Evil Dead (1981, 1987) roots with this film that owes as much to Looney Tunes as it does to the Gothic. I would have preferred the banks to have been the evil Other, rather than eastern European gypsies, however the loan officer protagonist is a sympathetic character as she [...]

The Good, the Bad, the Weird (Joheunnom nabbeunnom isanghannom, S.Korea, 2008)

Undoubtedly the funniest film I’ve seen in a long time. It stars the man with the maddest hair in contemporary cinema, Song Kang-ho, and some of the best action sequences in any western. Clearly a homage to Leone’s spaghetti westerns the visual style, as you expect, is stunning but director Kim Ji-woon (also A Bittersweet [...]

The Band’s Visit (Bikur Ha-Tizmoret, Israel-France-US, 2007)

This is a beautifully observed ‘culture clash’ comedy, and when those cultures are Arabic and Israeli the resonances are large. Politics is largely absent but the Middle East conflict is so profound that it remains a loud subtext throughout. The film never becomes sentimental as the Egyptian band, marooned in Nowheresville, Israel, are befriended – [...]

Tropic Thunder (US-Germany, 2008)

Why is this film rubbish? Is it: the representation of Laotians as simple, violent people? Robert Downey’s mumbling so you can’t understand what he’s saying? the non -development of the implications of Downey’s character blacking up? the offensive representation of the agent’s son? the cack-handed way the promising premise is developed? All of these I [...]

Very Bad Things (US, 1998)

Brilliant and subversive movie. Christian Slater reprising a Heathers-type role; he slowly unhinges brilliantly. And the way the narrative incorporates the Cameron Diaz character into the madness is brilliant. An attack on America(n mores). DVD, 2 Powered by ScribeFire.