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Jayde Philips
Lymelife: infected by the American Dream
Despite its predictable warning about personal ambition, Derick Martini’s comedy is a cut above the usual indie fare.
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| Tuesday 15 June 2010 |
Nathalie Rothschild
Will Generation X ever grow up?
Noah Baumbach’s Greenberg is a heartfelt film about midlife crisis and relationships amongst an angsty generation.
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| Tuesday 1 June 2010 |
Brendan O’Neill
A right ‘Carrie On’ in the Arabian desert
The execrable Sex and the City 2 offers an accidentally fascinating insight into the crisis of American values.
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| Wednesday 12 May 2010 |
Neil Davenport
The slapstick side to Islamic terrorism
Chris Morris’s depiction of jihadists as dunces who hate slags and Maccy D’s is scarily accurate.
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| Tuesday 20 April 2010 |
Tim Black
Still haunted by The Ghost of Blair
Polanski’s film of Harris’s novel shows that Blair-bashers can’t quite explain their anger with New Labour.
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| Monday 15 March 2010 |
Joe Jackson
Crazy Heart: another Hollywood sermon
Musician Joe Jackson on why drinking, smoking singers are now depicted as dangerous rather than glamorous.
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| Friday 12 March 2010 |
Rob Lyons
Sons of Cuba: a knockout doc
Andrew Lang’s moving and punchy debut film is a tale of young pugilists’ triumph over adversity in Havana.
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| Wednesday 10 March 2010 |
Neil Davenport
The Miles Davis of anti-capitalism
Riffing off one glib observation after another, Michael Moore’s Capitalism: A Love Story is his weakest film yet.
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| Monday 8 March 2010 |
Rob Lyons
What’s wrong with exploiting nature?
Shock-doc Dirty Oil wants us to hate the massive oil operation in Alberta, Canada. But I couldn’t help feeling awestruck.
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| Tuesday 23 February 2010 |
Rob Lyons
Is this Food, Inc. or Monsters, Inc?
An Oscar-nominated documentary about America’s food industry is simply ‘outrage porn’ for organic eaters.
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| Friday 19 February 2010 |
Tim Black
A Single Man: all style, no substance?
With its ruminations on death, modernity and sentiment, there is more to Tom Ford’s directorial debut than some critics suggest.
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| Friday 12 February 2010 |
Tim Black
Haneke: films for middle-class masochists
The director is popular with the arthouse crowd because he gives their prejudices a gloss of seriousness.
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| Thursday 11 February 2010 |
David Bowden
Raising awareness, denigrating the audience
Hollywood’s post-Philadelphia love-in with all things gay has less to do with equality than with feeling superior to the redneck masses.
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| Wednesday 10 February 2010 |
Sharmini Brookes
You need more than rugby to bury Apartheid
Clint Eastwood’s Invictus reproduces the euphoria of South Africa's 1995 Rugby World Cup win, and many of its illusions too.
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| Tuesday 9 February 2010 |
Mark Adnum
Get ready for the annual Meryl Weep
It is right and proper that Meryl Streep hasn’t won an Oscar since Sophie’s Choice in 1982. But just try telling her fans.
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| Monday 8 February 2010 |
Brendan O’Neill
Precious: a new kind of ‘blaxploitation’
It’s tipped to win Oscars, yet Precious is black-trash porn designed to titillate Oprahites and Hollywood liberals.
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| Thursday 21 January 2010 |
Rob Lyons
A romcom with an anti-capitalist touch
Yes, ‘money can’t buy you happiness’ is a cliché, but it’s made to feel fresh in the new George Clooney film Up in the Air.
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| Friday 15 January 2010 |
Neil Davenport
Ian Dury: je t’adore, ich liebe dich
Sex & Drugs & Rock’n’Roll is a fantastic evocation of Seventies Britain and the funny, aggressive world of an unlikely pop star.
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| Thursday 7 January 2010 |
Frank Furedi
The Road: there’s more to life than biological survival
Those who welcome the film version of The Road as eco-propaganda for the masses have missed the point of McCarthy’s literary masterpiece.
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| Tuesday 5 January 2010 |
Steve Bremner
Avatar: misanthropy in three dimensions
James Cameron’s latest extravaganza is technically stunning yet promotes a bleak view of humanity.
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