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Released 20th November 2009
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This is a seriously smart and touching dark comedy with gloriously subtle, funny undertones, coupled with outrageous moments, from the seriously smart Academy Award-winning writer/directors Ethan and Joel Coen - even if it is slightly self-indulgent about their faith. That said the brothers really do deliver an absolute gem, here, taking an ordinary man, as usual, and thrusting him into a seemingly ordinary situation in a microcosm to see how he copes. This compelling human interest story set in 1967’s America, the land of opportunity but declining moral standards, follows timid and down-on-his-luck physics professor, Larry Gopnik, who is trying to find the meaning of life and his faith, Judaism, after his family life implodes around him because his wife decides to leave him for a rival in their religious community.
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Released 20th November 2009
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Forks, Washington is back on the map this Friday 20th November, where all the feral action will be taking place. And if you don’t know what’s meant by the previous line, you aren’t a true ‘Twi-Hard’ - yet. The sequel to the smash-hit film, Twilight, last year’s adaptation of the first of Stephenie Meyer’s vampire books, is New Moon, where central characters Bella and Edward find even more trouble in store for their usual relationship, and a new love interest crops up for Bella that just complicates matters further. Considering the latest film has a new director, Chris Weitz (The Golden Compass), who replaces indie-visioned Catherine Hardwicke, the look, feel and style of the sequel is well-matched to the first.
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Released 20th November 2009
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A film about a price-fixing conspiracy at a US agri-business giant sounds like the driest of plots in itself, but add a delusional nut job with an inner monologue of verbal diarrhoea in the shape of character Mark Whitacre, brilliantly played by a porkier and ‘uglified’ Matt Damon in 1970s attire, and the story begins to prick the interest. Throw in the illusive FBI, whom in other films comes across as ultra efficient but bungles its way through the current corporate investigation, and director Steven Soderbergh’s biopic crime comedy is on track to entertain in a deliciously deranged fashion.
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Released 20th November 2009
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Writer/director Stephen Poliakoff’s passion for all things theatrical and dark secrets hidden in families is given a cinematic setting with his first feature film, Glorious 39. Not only does the acclaimed playwright recreate some absorbing theatrics that we are used to seeing in his stage and TV work, in this chillingly original, if rather hysterical dramatisation, but he also explores another historical fascination of his: How Britain came close to doing a deal with Hitler, and staying out of the Second World War. The result is a genuinely eerie, almost Hitchockian suspense thriller, and a reasonably commendable, if indulgently lengthy big-screen debut that fuels interest in learning more about the shady goings-on of this time.
