Bill Camp

News, Reviews & Features
  • Molly’s Game

    Movie Review | Ali Gray | 4th November 2017

    If it wasn’t immediately obvious from the impenetrable wall of dialogue that looms over the opening scene, Molly’s Game was written by famed fast-talker Aaron Sorkin. If it wasn’t immediately obvious he directed it too, the clues are there to be found: scenes that smash cut through shot lists like a machine gun play home to worldly and wise characters who spew dictionaries of insightful dialogue. Molly’s Game is adapted from the biography of a poker hostess who ran high stakes games for big game players, but the movie has more of Sorkin’s fingerprints on it than his own typewriter. Often if a writer-director can’t remove their own ego from the equation it can be problematic, but thankfully the story of Molly’s Game feels tailor-made for Sorkin’s style: though occasionally weighed down by sheer volume of dialogue, it’s nonetheless smart, slick and - thanks to a towering Jessica Chastain performance - more than a bit sexy.

  • #LFFtovers: Compliance

    Movie Review | Ali | 25th October 2012

    I figure as we're still technically in the same week that the London Film Festival closed, I can just about get away with posting reviews for films that I saw over its duration. We've all moved on from LFF mania now, but let this leftover review of Compliance act as a timely reminder of just how good us film fans had it slightly less than a week ago. Good times indeed.

  • Tamara Drewe

    Movie Review | James | 13th September 2010

    A frequent idiom of broadsheet reviewers putting pen to paper on the subject of Tamara Drewe is to describe it as a more debauched variant of The Archers, something which is certainly true to an extent, tinged as proceedings are in the cosy trappings of Radio 4 teatime dramas. However, to do so risks dismissing this adaptation of Posy Simmonds' serial as yet another rustic folly laced with the standard Curtisian saccharine associated with most modern British comedy. Instead, director Stephen Frears has produced a film which not only contains the expected biting hyper-sexuality, but also a refreshing streak of bittersweet sincerity.