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The Lego Batman Movie review – relentlessly funny superhero parody
8 hours ago
Will Arnett voices a brilliantly gruff, macho, humourless Dark Knight in this expressive, cinematic and subversive Gotham City satire
It was already brave of the custodians of the Batman franchise to let The Lego Movie mock their prize asset so mercilessly in 2014. The fact that they’ve doubled down with this feature-length parody suggests they figure either Batman can take it, or that he’s reached that point in the superhero cycle where it’s no longer possible to take him seriously. Either way, this gag-packed, knockabout action-adventure has a lot of fun with the character, while also broaching his pathologies in a way the “serious movies” rarely do. It doesn’t have the heart, the depth or the novelty of the first Lego movie, but it is relentlessly, consistently funny – which excuses everything.
Voiced with Christian Bale-like gruffness by Will Arnett, this is the macho, humourless, self-regarding Dark Knight we get here, »
- Steve Rose
Taraji P Henson: 'I'm glad I kept my ego in check'
8 hours ago
After years of bit parts, low pay and a breakthrough role in Empire, Taraji P Henson is taking the lead as a Nasa scientist
Some of the impact of Hidden Figures, a movie in which Taraji P Henson stars as Katherine Johnson, a brilliant mathematician and one of the few African American women at Nasa during the early part of the space programme, comes from the assumption of progress. The film opens in the 1950s, with Johnson being harassed by a white cop when her car breaks down on the way to work, and closes with footage of President Obama giving the now 98-year-old the Presidential Medal of Freedom. The implication is clear: just look how far we’ve come.
Today, Henson is in a New York hotel room, shimmering with exhaustion and the thrill, after years of playing second and third fiddle in movies, of assuming a starring role. »
- Emma Brockes
Why I love Emma Stone
13 hours ago
I first saw Stone Superbad. The film has many flaws, but she is not one of them
Sometimes, when it comes down to it, you just like a thing because it’s likable. No one reason looms large; generally it is just pleasurable. That’s kind of how I feel about the American actor Emma Stone. I simply want good things for her.
I first saw Stone, 28, in 2007’s Superbad. The film has many flaws (is anyone this interested in teenage boys’ lives?) but she is not one of them. As Jules, she’s a breath of fresh air: husky-voiced, knowingly wide-eyed, and somewhat gawky (but not in the usual romcom-heroine-in-mild-peril way). A lot of her allure is in her eyes, if I have to pin it down: they are bug eyes, and they make her face arresting, which is more interesting than uncomplicated beauty (perhaps it’s no surprise »
- Bim Adewunmi
Rings review – spooky Ringu reboot smoothly reinvents the wheel
3 February 2017 10:07 AM, PST
F Javier Gutiérrez’s update of the Japanese cult horror flick comes up with a fair mystery and an admirably loopy finale featuring swarming cicadas
Circles within circles. It’s been 15 years since The Ring, Gore Verbinski’s American translation of the cult Japanese horror Ringu, which means an entire generation of westerners might not have been scared or bored to death by the sight of lank-haired spooks emerging from the gogglebox. This update for the era of iPhones and .Mov files has very quickly to acknowledge that the VHS players that perpetuated this curse circa the millennium are now practically occult items, less likely to be found occupying cherished home-cinema space than collecting dust, along with Ouija boards in junkshops.
Related: Ghost in the system: has technology ruined horror films?
Continue reading »
- Mike McCahill
Falling DVD sales put boot into profits at Sony Pictures
3 February 2017 8:16 AM, PST
The rise of streaming, in a golden era for television drama, has spelt trouble for traditional film studios
‘Choose Facebook, Twitter, Instagram,” says Renton in T2 Trainspotting, in his update of the famous “choose life” speech from the original film. For Sony Pictures, which released the movie and saw the value of its film division written down by $1bn (£800m) last week, that is exactly the problem: too many consumers are choosing the digital lifestyle.
The owner of Columbia Pictures cited an “acceleration of market decline” in people buying DVDs and Blu-ray discs, brought about by the global boom in streaming and on-demand viewing on services such as Netflix, Amazon Prime and iTunes. It is a crisis Sony shares with its Hollywood peers. In the UK and the Us, revenue from streaming and downloads of films and TV shows passed sales of DVDs and Blu-ray discs for the first time last year. »
- Mark Sweney
Do you have a Valentine's Day dilemma? Post your question for our expert
3 February 2017 7:10 AM, PST
Despite its best intentions, Valentine’s Day is a magnet for romantic strife. If you have a romantic or sex-related dilemma, we’d like to hear from you
Love, romance and sex are wonderful, but they also bring with them an unappealing flip side: problems. Valentine’s Day, like other official commercially-driven days, pulls love or the lack of it into sharp focus. It can be a day when those love or sex-related issues surface from the depths of your subconscious.
But do not fear. Our next Token podcast will be answering your dilemmas in a special edition dedicated to love and sex. Alix Fox, a sex educator and expert on matters of the heart, will be on hand to offer advice – no matter how unique the problem.
Continue reading »
- Guardian readers
Don't Take Me Home trailer: documentary follows Wales's incredible Euro 2016 – video
3 February 2017 6:12 AM, PST
Don’t Take Me Home tells the story of Wales’s Euro 2016 campaign in France where Chris Coleman’s side reached the last four the tournament. The documentary comes from Welsh film-maker Jonny Owen and will be released across the UK on 3 March, with limited screenings taking place on 1 March, St David’s Day
Euro 2016: Guardian writers pick their highs and lows from France Continue reading »
- Guardian Staff
Ghost in the system: has technology ruined horror films?
3 February 2017 4:40 AM, PST
Well-dwelling Samara gets streamed in Rings, an HD reboot of The Ring, yet the genre has shown that a tech update doesn’t always lead to more scares
Nearly 12 years after The Ring Two – and 15 years after The Ring and 19 years after Ringu, the original Japanese horror movie that inspired it – Rings opens in theaters this Friday. The producers, Walter F Parkes and Laurie MacDonald, have stuck around for all three American versions, but there are no holdovers from the cast and crew – no Naomi Watts, no Gore Verbinski (director of The Ring) or Hideo Nakata (director of Ringu and The Ring Two), no Ehren Kruger (screenwriter of both the first and second Americanizations). In terms of continuity, it feels like a game of telephone where the line has been severed completely and we’re not even hearing gibberish on the other end. We need to be reminded why, exactly, »
- Scott Tobias
Paul Verhoeven: cinema's mischievous satirist is more vital than ever
3 February 2017 3:45 AM, PST
After a childhood under Nazi occupation, the director has made a career of laying bare society’s cruelty. Revenge drama Elle is his latest message from the danger zone
Jonathan Swift insisted his intention was not to entertain but to unsettle, “to vex the world rather than divert it”. Today, we have few satirists worth the name, few artists willing – let alone eager – to alienate audiences in order to nudge them into contemplating society’s hypocrisies and their own role in them. One film-maker, however, has made a career out of whipping away the upholstered chair of diversion to leave viewers nursing a butt-hurt sense of vexation: Paul Verhoeven. After a decade’s hiatus, he’s back on the big screen with Elle, a characteristically provocative rape-revenge drama laced with black comedy. And we need him more than ever.
Related: Elle review: Paul Verhoeven's brazen rape revenge comedy is a dangerous delight
Continue reading. »
- Ben Walters
Lena Dunham: 'We're doing the Girls movie'
3 February 2017 3:23 AM, PST
Girls creator suggests big-screen outing would arrive in cinemas long after the popular HBO show’s current and final sixth series
As the TV show Girls heads into its sixth and final series, its creator, Lena Dunham, confirmed a big-screen adaptation was being seriously considered.
Speaking to the Hollywood Reporter as part of an “oral history” of Girls, showrunner Jenni Konner suggested that “if someone wants to do the [Girls] movie, we’ll do it”. Dunham replied: “Oh, we’re doing the movie.”
Continue reading »
- Andrew Pulver
Middle Eastern cinema has so much to say, and we need to be listening now more than ever
2 February 2017 6:54 PM, PST
Trump’s travel ban bars these artists from entering the Us or attending the award ceremonies, and has overshadowed some critically acclaimed work
In Asghar Farhadi’s The Salesman, a husband seeks the truth behind a violent assault on his wife. In Hussein Hassan’s The Dark Wind, two families are torn apart by the ramifications of an Islamic State ambush. And Orlando von Einsiedel’s documentary The White Helmets follows Syrian volunteers as they help rescue women and children from airstrike rubble.
All three films have collected awards, nominations and critical acclaim for, among other things, the insights they offer into countries of the Middle East. But in a time when we need to be engaging with these stories most of all, Donald Trump’s travel ban has caused the artists behind them to cancel Us festival and award ceremony appearances – either as a direct consequence of the executive order, »
- Glenn Dunks
Loving review – Ruth Negga is this film's beating heart
2 February 2017 3:00 PM, PST
The Irish-Ethiopian actor gives an Oscar-worthy performance in Jeff Nichols’ film about the effects of Jim Crow racism on a mixed-race couple in 1950s Virginia
Ruth Negga is the beating heart of this film: subtle, gentle, emotionally generous, possessed of integrity and power. Revisiting this film and her own Oscar-nominated performance has confirmed my admiration for what she achieved here, but also reminded me of the issues that were apparent when I saw Loving in Cannes last year, when I thought there might be something a little reticent and even occasionally underpowered about it. The film seems weakest in showing the legal contest and is reluctant to dramatise the central characters’ intimacy. Sometimes their on-screen relationship seems constrained and subdued. These are still considerations, although the film’s delicacy lies in removing the emphasis from the couple’s physical relationship – a subject that preoccupied the racists.
Continue reading »
- Peter Bradshaw
Angelina Jolie on travel ban: 'Response should be based on facts, not fear'
2 February 2017 2:55 PM, PST
In an op-ed for the New York Times, the actor and humanitarian criticized Donald Trump’s strict executive order surrounding immigration
Angelina Jolie has spoken out against Donald Trump’s controversial travel ban, criticizing his restrictions as a response based on fear.
In an op-ed penned for the New York Times, the actor, director and Un ambassador expressed her anger at the recent decision to limit travellers from certain countries.
Continue reading »
- Guardian staff
Gold review – Matthew McConaughey is insufferably hammy
2 February 2017 2:45 PM, PST
This film about a 1990s financial scandal lacks the requisite insight and satirical wit, leaving McConaughey’s gold miner hero to seem smug and grandstanding
Matthew McConaughey is insufferably hammy and tiresomely self-regarding in this shapeless, unsatisfying movie, taken from a real-life South Sea Bubble case of credulity and greed. But the film has neither the steel and wit necessary for satire, nor the insight for an engaging human drama in the style of something like The Treasure of the Sierra Madre. Finally, McConaughey’s smug hero makes an unearned claim on our sentimental affections; he is the roistering entrepreneur who wants to be both the victim of a fraud yet somehow also its lovably cheeky beneficiary. Moreover, McConaughey has zero bromantic chemistry with his co-star, Edgar Ramírez, who phones in a dull, blank performance.
Related: Matthew McConaughey: ‘My agent said no to romcoms. And then there was nothing’
Continue reading. »
- Peter Bradshaw
Tower review – powerful reconstruction of Us gun crime history
2 February 2017 2:30 PM, PST
Mixing animation, film and verbatim accounts, this bold memorial of the first school massacre in Texas in 1966 is compelling and terribly sad
Keith Maitland’s Tower is a bold dive into the past. It’s a collage mixing rotoscope animation, in the style of Bob Sabiston and Richard Linklater, with dramatic reconstruction and verbatim testimony. It immerses you in the bad dream that was Us history’s first “school massacre”: the University of Texas (Ut) Tower shooting. In the summer of 1966, former marine Charles Whitman went up to the observation deck on the 28th floor of the Ut Tower and opened fire, killing 14 people and injuring 31, before being shot dead by two officers and one deputised civilian. Maitland has interviewed dozens of witnesses, and got actors to speak their words to camera as these eyewitnesses’ younger selves and enact key dramatic moments in digitally captured rotoscope, mixing in genuine »
- Peter Bradshaw
Resident Evil: The Final Chapter review – more dull and deafening antics
2 February 2017 2:15 PM, PST
Milla Jovovich returns for yet another high-impact action thriller set in a zombified world dripping with yucky horror-violence
The violence keeps coming in this movie, but, if there’s one thing more devastatingly brutal than the law of the jungle, it’s the law of diminishing returns. The sixth film in the Resident Evil franchise might pick up some farewell-tour custom by calling itself The Final Chapter, but the ending naturally leaves things open for a seventh. Just as Kate Beckinsale climbed back into the skintight leathers for another Underworld outing, so Milla Jovovich is back in residence for yet another high-impact action thriller set in a gruesome zombified world, with Iain Glen reprising his turn as the creepy megalomaniac scientist. There’s a great deal of yucky horror-violence testing the limit of that 15 certificate. It often features Jovovich on a motorbike roaring sexily, endlessly, across a post-apocalyptic landscape where »
- Peter Bradshaw
Strike a Pose review – excitable reunion of Madonna's dancers
2 February 2017 2:00 PM, PST
This watchable documentary, focusing on New York as the crucible of gay liberation politics, brings together performers from the Truth or Dare tour
An emotionally effusive film, this – sometimes excitable and indulgent but watchable, and an interesting addition to a growing documentary genre focusing on New York City as the crucible of gay liberation politics. Film-makers Ester Gould and Reijer Zwaan seek out and reunite the backing dancers recruited by Madonna for her 1990 Truth or Dare tour and its accompanying documentary. This became a scandal for “backstage” footage of an all-male kiss, noted here as an under-remembered historical moment in gay openness. But it also became a cause of terrible legal acrimony as the men involved were not ready for it to be used in the film.
Some of the dancers reveal that, for all the tour’s emphasis on defiant openness, they had not revealed that they were HIV positive. »
- Peter Bradshaw
‘People just want a bully’ - director Mike Mills on how the Us picks its president
2 February 2017 11:00 AM, PST
The film-maker behind Oscar-nominated 20th Century Women talks about why some Americans still only want a powerful, patriarchal figure in the White House
When Mike Mills was young, his mother often showed him her post. Most of it was unremarkable; Janet was a draughtswoman for the Continental Canning Company who liked amateur aviation and Ginger Rogers. But she was also head of Santa Barbara’s anti-handgun lobby, which meant a steady stream of “really nasty Polaroids of men’s private parts next to guns”, recalls Mills, buttering his toast. “‘Michael,’ she’d say. ‘This is what the world is like. Now move on.’”
Mills’s upbringing was nothing if not frank – in real life and on film. The dick pics didn’t make the final cut of his new movie, 20th Century Women, but the rest is airlifted from memory: punch-ups, pregnancy tests, feminist tomes lent to him by women a decade older, »
- Catherine Shoard
Disney and diversity: women and black Americans not making director's chair
2 February 2017 10:05 AM, PST
Hollywood’s major studios get failing grade on diversity as report finds that only 5.1% of top Us films were by black directors and only 4% were helmed by women
Disney is the worst performing of the “big seven” Hollywood studios when it comes to hiring black directors, according to a new report.
USC Annenberg’s Media, Diversity and Social Change Initiative collected data from the top 100 films at the box office every year for the last decade, and found that 5.1% of directors were black – and none of their films were made or distributed by Disney.
Continue reading »
- Andrew Pulver
From Sean Connery to Harrison Ford: actors who secretly played roles gay
2 February 2017 9:10 AM, PST
The sexual orientation of film characters isn’t always what it first seems – some leading men have reinterpreted their parts as they move from page to screen
Gus van Sant’s feel-good drama Finding Forrester, which arrives on Blu-ray and DVD this month, has been forgotten with good reason. It recycles from his earlier film Good Will Hunting the story of a wayward teenage genius nurtured by an older mentor, only this time the boy’s talents are literary, not mathematical. But it does have some curiosity value thanks to its title character.
The reclusive novelist William Forrester, played by Sean Connery, has a secret that is never mentioned on screen. I discovered it by accident when I met Van Sant in 2008 while he was editing Milk, his film about the openly gay politician Harvey Milk. It was odd, I suggested, that despite being out himself, Van Sant hadn’t »
- Ryan Gilbey
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