Anna

News, Reviews & Features
  • Sex And The City 2

    Movie Review | Anna | 1st June 2010

    If you've seen the freaky poster for this movie, that should tell you all you need to know without having to purchase a ticket. This film is plastic, with no heart and very little brain. Fans of the TV series beware; this ill-advised sequel is a major letdown and it makes the first movie look like The Godfather in comparison.

  • Bad Lieutenant: Port Of Call - New Orleans

    Movie Review | Anna | 19th May 2010

    Ah, Nicolas Cage. Regulars to this site will know we're all pretty devoted to the mighty NC. If you're expecting an impartial review you better look elsewhere. It's been a rocky road for Nic of late, even we can see that through the smoke of adoration, but we can all breathe a collective sigh of relief at the news that, along with turning the Christmas lights on in Bath (okay, and a little movie called Kick-Ass), Bad Lieutenant is Cage's best work in an age.

  • Four Lions

    Movie Review | Anna | 5th May 2010

    "Terrorist cells have the same group dynamics as stag parties and five a side football teams," states director Chris Morris. It is this dynamic that he brings to Four Lions, his debut feature film about a group of young men from a city in the North of England planning to blow themselves up. In many respects Morris' protagonists could be planning the ultimate stag night or trying to win their five a side league; they just happen to be talking about suicide and murder.

  • The Ghost

    Movie Review | Anna | 18th April 2010

    Polanski's first film in five years has been met with a very mixed response. Little White Lies said "the whole movie is actually Polanski being, well, shit." The Guardian, however, considers the movie to be Polanski's "most purely enjoyable film for years." I'm going to have to embrace my inner Lib Dem and come down squarely in the middle with a solid-but-not-mind-blowing three stars.

  • Whip It

    Movie Review | Anna | 11th April 2010

    Brace yourself for an education in jamming, whipping and blocking courtesy of Drew Barrymore and her fictional roller derby team. Essentially, roller derby is a sport for people who don't like sport; it's the anti-sport sport, attracting the girls who never got picked to be in the team and got sneered at by the jocks and cheerleaders. In other words it's the perfect set-up for a traditional underdog story.

  • Beyond The Pole

    Movie Review | Anna | 22nd March 2010

    Documentaries made by self-righteous pricks overtly flaunting a ''message'' are an obvious but deserving target for satirists. You know the ones, second rate Michael Moores with a bee in their smug bonnet, out to change the world. It's the modern equivalent of standing on a high street with a placard saying ''Jesus loves you''. Imagine the sort of film Chris Morris could have made with this subject matter. In the hands of director David Williams however, Beyond The Pole is less sassy satire, more mediocre buddy movie.

  • A Single Man

    Movie Review | Anna | 16th February 2010

    Did everyone in the 1960s walk around with perfectly bouffanted hair, expertly lined eyes, a martini glass poised in one hand and a cigarette hanging artfully from the other, chattering about the Cuban missile crisis? We, the modern audience, would like to think so and Tom Ford is only too happy to indulge us. Consequently, A Single Man has an unreal, dreamlike quality to it - this is life through a Vaseline smeared lens, the 1960s as seen in a vintage Vogue magazine.

  • Precious: Based On The Novel Push, By Sapphire

    Movie Review | Anna | 1st February 2010

    This year's Oscar race will be in an interesting one. It basically poses the following question to the Academy - what do you place most value on, breathtaking seamless effects and cinematic wow-factor, or films that are propelled by characters and great performances? In other words, it's Avatar versus the little guys. And ironically, given Gabourey Sidibe's size, the littlest of them all is Precious.

  • A Serious Man

    Movie Review | Anna | 21st November 2009

    According to the Shr'dinger's Cat paradox, if you put a cat in a sealed box with a vial of poison that has a 50-50 chance of being released and killing the cat (sorry cat lovers), then until the box is unsealed, the cat is neither alive or dead. It exists in both states until the box is unsealed and the cat is observed to be one thing or the other.

  • An Education

    Movie Review | Anna | 28th October 2009

    When we meet Jenny (Carey Mulligan), she lives a regimented existence of Latin homework and lectures from her father (Alfred Molina) about the importance of getting the grades to make it to Oxford University. This is 1960s Britain and the education Jenny and her peers receive shows them how to bake cakes and walk in a straight line with a book balanced on their heads.