The Movie Waffler

The Movie Waffler The Movie Waffler

New Release Review - Man On A Ledge

Directed by: Asger Leth
Starring: Sam Worthington, Elizabeth Banks, Jamie Bell, Genesis Rodriguez, Ed Harris

When Worthington steps out the window of a 21st floor hotel room, logic doesn't waste any time following him.

Directed by: Joe Carnahan
Starring: Liam Neeson, Dermot Mulroney, Frank Grillo, Dallas Roberts

The plot of this is basically "Alive" with wolves but where the focus of that film was on staying alive this takes a different route. This is a movie about preparing for death.

Directed by: Drake Doremus
Starring: Felicity Jones, Anton Yelchin, Jennifer Lawrence, Alex Kingston

It's very annoying watching a terrible film made by talented people but it can be a whole lot of fun watching something like this, a terrible film made by untalented people.

Directed by: Josh Trank
Starring: Dane DeHaan, Alex Russell, Michael B Jordan

The found footage genre has sparked a curious phenomenon, that of Hollywood trying to make big budget movies look like amateur productions. It's similar to how white musicians repackaged black music in the sixties and the effect is the same, soulless.

First Time Watches - January 2012

Snowbeast (2011)

Although not a remake of the Seventies Yeti classic, it may as well be.

Directed by: Tom DeSimone
Starring: Linda Blair, Vincent Van Patten, Peter Barton, Kevin Brophy, Suki Goodwin

Nowadays nobody who wants a legitimate career in the film industry would dream about starting in porn but that wasn't always the case.

Directed by: Ralph Fiennes
Starring: Ralph Fiennes, Gerard Butler, Vanessa Redgrave, Brian Cox, Jessica Chastain

The concept of staying faithful to a Shakespearean text is antithetic to film-making yet most film-makers insist on such reverence when tackling the bard.

Directed by: Alexander Payne
Starring: George Clooney, Shailene Woodley, Amara Miller, Robert Forster

Clooney is the only bright spark in this otherwise dull, charmless Golden Globe winner.

Directed by: Clint Eastwood
Starring: Leonardo DiCaprio, Judi Dench, Naomi Watts, Armie Hammer

This film faces the same hurdles as "The Iron Lady", how do you humanise such a controversial and largely reviled figure?

Directed by: Steven Soderbergh
Starring: Gina Carano, Michael Angarano, Ewan McGregor, Michael Douglas, Michael Fassbender, Channing Tatum, Antonio Banderas, Bill Paxton

Some movies are so insultingly bad that you actually leave the cinema with a headache from trying to figure out how something so awful could ever have been greenlit.

Directed by: Steve McQueen
Starring: Michael Fassbender, Carey Mulligan, James Badge Dale

There have been some excellent films made on the subject of addiction, films like Nicholas Ray's "Bigger Than Life" and Karel Reisz' "The Gambler". There have also been some awfully judgemental right-wing propaganda pieces like "Reefer Madness" and "Assassin Of Youth". "Shame" falls in to the latter camp, it's the "Reefer Madness" of sex-addiction movies.

Directed by: Steven Spielberg
Starring: Jeremy Irvine, Peter Mullan, Emily Watson

They say you can't polish a turd but in bringing Lee Hall and Richard Curtis' awful screenplay to the screen Spielberg has applied liberal amounts of Mr Sheen to a steaming pile of horseshit.

Directed by: Phyllida Lloyd
Starring: Meryl Streep, Jim Broadbent, Olivia Colman, Alexandra Roach

The biopic is a tricky genre. If the character doesn't interest you to begin with chances are you won't enjoy the movie.

Directed by: Michel Hazanavicius
Starring: Jean Dujardin, Berenice Bejo, John Goodman, James Cromwell

Despite being black and white, silent and French, "The Artist" could be one of the most accessible movies to come from outside the Hollywood system in quite a while.

Directed by: Ti West
Starring: Sara Paxton, Pat Healy, Kelly McGillis

Ti West is regarded by many as the best American horror director of this generation and with such poor competition it's hard to argue this claim.

Directed by: Fred Andrews
Starring: Mehcad Brooks, Serinda Swan, Daniel Bernhardt, Sid Haig, Amanda Fuller

If movies have taught me one thing it's that you don't wanna go travelling through rural Louisiana.

Directed by: Erle C. Kenton
Starring: Charles Laughton, Richard Arlen, Bela Lugosi

Kenton's adaptation of HG Wells' "Island of Doctor Moreau" has been an unfairly forgotten work of pre-code horror.