romantic comedy
The Decoy BrideTuesday, 06 March 2012
With its near-simultaneous cinema and DVD release ringing alarm bells to rival Big Ben, The Decoy Bride takes talent and stuffs it into a GM turkey of a film. This insincere romantic comedy from director Sheree Folkson is replete with wobbly accents... Read more... |
Hobson's Choice, Birmingham Royal Ballet, Birmingham HippodromeThursday, 23 February 2012
It's a rare ballet where the culmination you hope for is that the young guy gets to take over the business (an idea for a Murdoch ballet there, one day?). David Bintley's Hobson's Choice is surely his very best work, unmitigated pleasure for the... Read more... |
New Girl, Channel 4Saturday, 07 January 2012
Since the departure of Friends and Frasier from our screens, fans of the genre have been waiting for the next generation of mates-based US sitcoms. A few - including Two and A Half Men and The Big Bang Theory - have crossed the Atlantic and... Read more... |
The ArtistFriday, 30 December 2011
One of film’s most inspiring artists, Walt Disney, once said, “Of all of our inventions for mass communication, pictures still speak the most universally understood language.” With the seemingly anachronistic The Artist, French director Michel... Read more... |
DVD: BridesmaidsFriday, 18 November 2011
Like a fist to the face of the traditionally insipid, female-fronted rom-com, Bridesmaids marks a departure from the oft-derided norm, not by being brassy or crude (OK, there might be a sizeable helping of the latter) but because of its authentic... Read more... |
Terrible Advice, Menier Chocolate FactoryFriday, 30 September 2011
Saul Rubinek is an established actor in American television programmes such as LA Law and Frasier, where he played Daphne's fiancé Donny. Now the Canadian has turned his hand to playwriting and the result – Terrible Advice – receives its world... Read more... |
Crazy, Stupid, LoveThursday, 22 September 2011
"I'm going to help you rediscover your manhood," a self-described sexual "tomcat" called Jacob (Ryan Gosling) tells his new friend, and project, Cal (Steve Carell). And with that, the awkwardly titled Crazy, Stupid, Love sets off on its none too... Read more... |
Friends with BenefitsFriday, 09 September 2011
A time-tested formula gets tantalisingly tweaked in Friends with Benefits, in which Justin Timberlake and Mila Kunis attempt to confine their relationship to the purely sexual without the ick factor of emotions getting in the way. Here's a Hollywood... Read more... |
BeginnersTuesday, 19 July 2011
The early gurglings of love, full of vulnerability and risk, thrill and discovery, are the very stuff of the movies. Romance is cinema’s basic currency. Whenever the familiar heroic faces of the big screen are not firing pump action weapons from the... Read more... |
Larry CrowneWednesday, 29 June 2011
What is it with Hollywood and education? Hot on the heels (shamelessly come-hither pumps, in fact) of Cameron Diaz in the lamentable Bad Teacher, we now get Julia Roberts as a disaffected babe who, we're told, is a teacher even though she spends... Read more... |
Love's KitchenMonday, 20 June 2011
Foodies will have a good laugh at Love's Kitchen, the British rom-com that casts Simon Callow as a bibulous restaurant critic and Gordon Ramsay as, well, himself. But cineastes are likely to chuckle, as well, at the filmmaking-by-numbers... Read more... |
Bad TeacherThursday, 16 June 2011
As if the education profession wasn't beleaguered enough at present in America, along comes Bad Teacher, the Cameron Diaz vehicle dedicated to the proposition that the only sector of society more deserving of contempt than students is filmgoers.... Read more... |
