Posts Tagged ‘british’
Something On
Big TicketIn 1970, British playwright Michael Frayn watched a performance of one of his own comedies from the wings of the theater and found that the action going on backstage was funnier than what was happening on the stage itself. From...
Two by Spielberg
The director adapts children’s books. One comes out well.KRISTIAN LIN
Only a filmmaker of Steven Spielberg’s stature could convince two rival Hollywood studios to put out two films by him in the same week, and during Christmas, no less. The Adventures of Tintin is based specifically on three 19...
Among the Killer Elite
Survival is all that matters in Jason Statham’s latest and cruelest.KRISTIAN LIN
Seeing the poster for yet another Jason Statham movie, you’re probably thinking that Killer Elite is exactly like all the others. You’re right, too, except that it’s actually quite good. That’s the thing about Jason Sta...
Nowhere Boy: It’s Real Love
Aaron Johnson kicks ass as the young John Lennon.KRISTIAN LIN
It’s mesmerizing to watch Aaron Johnson in Nowhere Boy. The extraordinarily pretty 20-year-old has been performing on screen since his childhood, but the native of High Wycombe, England, didn’t gain wide exposure until he p...
Death at a Funeral: Back from the Grave
A British farce returns, African-Americanized and slightly better.KRISTIAN LIN
Marginally less annoying than the British movie that it’s based on, Death at a Funeral stars Chris Rock as a tax accountant/unpublished novelist named Aaron who’s dealing with a host of troublesome family issues after his f...
The Ghost Writer: A Real Roman à Clef
Polanski’s thriller happily skewers the war on terror.KRISTIAN LIN
We’ve had examples of prison literature throughout history, but The Ghost Writer may be the closest we’ve ever had to prison filmmaking. Roman Polanski shot the footage prior to his arrest last year, after which he proceede...
One-Part Drama
Another British import loses its flavor in America: Edge of Darkness.KRISTIAN LIN
The key to understanding what’s right and what’s wrong with Edge of Darkness is knowing that it’s based on a British TV miniseries. Our friends across the Atlantic regularly make intelligent multiple-hour opus...
Holmes for Christmas
KRISTIAN LINIn a series of 1940s Hollywood films, Basil Rathbone played Sherlock Holmes as a suave, unflappable Victorian gentleman. His interpretation held sway until a British TV series in the 1980s, when Jeremy Brett re-interpreted the ...
About a Girl
KRISTIAN LINThe radiant and gently heartbreaking An Education opens in Grapevine this Friday and is still playing at the Modern this weekend. It richly deserves to be seen, in a week when the buzz machine is at full roar for that other mov...
Don’t Rock the Boat
KRISTIAN LINThe opening credit sequence of Pirate Radio fooled me momentarily into thinking I was being shown a trailer for the movie rather than the movie itself. This fatally innocuous British comedy uses zippy editing, frames within the...