Clive Owen

News, Reviews & Features
  • Review: Gemini Man proves a blunt instrument can't have a cutting edge

    Movie Review | Ali Gray | 6th October 2019

    Gemini Man, to its credit, is a film that couldn't feasibly have existed until this precise moment in time. Ang Lee, perennial pusher of envelopes, has created a movie of such terrifying technological oomph, it simply could not have been made before now - it feels so new and box fresh, if you squint, you can still see the price tag on all the pixels. The ultra-high 100fps frame rate - suck it, The Hobbit! - in combination with native 3D and mind-boggling de-ageing CG imagery gives Gemini Man the feel of a cutting edge tech demo on an impossibly expensive John Lewis TV that you could never dream of affording. What's truly baffling, then, is why a movie boasting such impressive visuals would be sold so short by a story that feels like something Steven Seagal would have passed on in 1998.

  • Valerian And The City Of A Thousand Planets

    Movie Review | Matt Looker | 27th July 2017

    Anyone who has read this site's review of Jupiter Ascending or pretty much any of the Transformer films will know that we tend to be more lenient than most when it comes to over-ambitious sci-fi epics. We forgive atrocious dialogue and overlong running times in order to reward dumb fun alien shit. So, frankly, Valerian And The City Of A Thousand Planets is lucky to have us, because this is a movie in which legendary filmmaker Luc Besson doesn't bother looking at the script twice nor his watch once while he continuously plays with an endless line-up of CGI distractions. This is him procrastinating with his own imagination in the same way that you or I would dick about on Twitter rather than get on with any real work. This is Luc Besson's Faff Element.

  • Top 10 films of our lifetime #2: Children Of Men

    Movie Feature | Ali Gray | 25th September 2014

    I bloody love a good apocalypse. I think if I were a director, being given the chance to ruin the world and set up camp at ground zero would be like being a kid in a sweet shop: so much potential for iconic imagery, so many stories to tell, so many angles. In Children Of Men, Alfonso Cuaron tells the biggest story - the imminent extinction of mankind - yet manages to make it small and personal at the same time. And, true to form, he captures some unforgettable imagery along the way. I hope the real apocalypse looks this good - Ali.

  • Shadow Dancer

    Movie Review | Ed Williamson | 22nd August 2012

    Unlike its namesake, a game for the Megadrive in which a ninja and his dog beat up a lot of other ninjas, James Marsh's Shadow Dancer is about the Troubles. This puts me in the awkward position of having little background knowledge of the Troubles to contribute, largely because I spent too much of my youth not doing my history homework so I could play Shadow Dancer on the Megadrive. You can see the bind I'm in.

  • Saturday smackdown: Killer Elite 2011 vs The Killer Elite 1975

    Movie Feature | Luke | 25th June 2011

    Kick! Punch! It's all in the mind! Renowned Prince of Subtlety Jason Statham will be exploding all over cinemas this September, in Killer Elite. But it's not the first time the title has seen used, with Sam Peckinpah beating him to it by over 35 years. So which film is the most elitist? There's only one way to find out... fiiiight!

  • Ross From Friends directs Clive Owen in Generic Thriller #673

    Movie Trailer | Ali | 2nd August 2010

    Here's a trailer from Trust, a cyber-thriller from 'director' David Schwimmer. (*sniggers*)

  • Shoot 'Em Up

    Movie Review | Ali | 18th September 2007

    A few years ago, I was speaking to a Manga-obsessed friend of mine about the state of action films. "I've got a billion cool ideas," he said confidently, going on to list several ludicrous action scenes with absolutely zero basis in reality, including - but not limited to - a gunfight while falling through the air and a gunfight...

  • Children Of Men

    Movie Review | Dave | 25th September 2006

    Say what you will about Clive Owen, (for example that he's dull, almost completely inanimate, and has the charisma of Steve Davis on Ritalin), but there's no one out there more suited to the role of a disillusioned British bureaucrat. Whilst his King Arthur had all the dynamic leadership skills of the average Tory party candida...

  • Closer

    Movie Review | Ali | 22nd June 2005

    Four painfully attractive people meet each other and proceed to jump into each other's beds like an inter-continental gang bang - on paper, Closer sounds awful, like one of those British films starring a Fiennes brother where you want each and every person involved to suffer a horrible and torturous death. However, on film, Clo...

  • Sin City

    Movie Review | Pand | 19th April 2005

    Sin City is the latest attempt to bring a successful comic to the big screen, and damn, if it isn't the yardstick that all future movies following this route should take. It's not so much a movie of a comic as the comic itself in movie form. Robert Rodriguez and author Frank Miller, together with "guest director" Quent...