Kodi Smit-mcphee

News, Reviews & Features
  • The Congress

    Movie Review | Becky Suter | 12th August 2014

    Talk about kicking a girl whilst she's down. Just moments after staring longingly at a younger version herself on the poster for The Princess Bride in the opening minutes of The Congress, Robin Wright is scolded by her agent (Harvey Keitel) for continually making lousy choices in her career as well as life, then by a studio head for having the audacity to get old. Clearly The Congress isn't afraid to make a difficult point, but its problem is that it wants to make so many of them.

  • Dawn Of The Planet Of The Apes

    Movie Review | Ali Gray | 14th July 2014

    CGI guys: I think it's safe to say the monkeys look enough like monkeys now. So could we maybe move the focus onto, y'know, the humans? Dawn Of The Planet Of The Apes is similar to its predecessor, Rise Of The Planet Of The Apes, in that the revolutionary effects work is so impressive, it successfully distracts from the film's complete and total lack of three-dimensional human characters. Though Dawn is a sturdy sequel that really gets into the swing of things about an hour or so in, it slips on that same banana peel – in making monkey more interesting and more fully-rounded than man, you question why they even bother giving the humans any screen time at all. I can confidently say that a third Apes movie featuring no human characters whatsoever would be the perfect evolution for an otherwise thrilling series that has itself evolved way beyond reasonable expectations.

  • ParaNorman

    Movie Review | Ed Williamson | 13th September 2012

    Like any right-thinking adult, I make it my business to scare a child at least once a week. Otherwise there's a risk they could grow up soft, I always think, what with their Bebos and their Sylvanian Families. Happily, I can now take the day off every once in a while, because stop-motion animation ParaNorman should put the frighteners on them. Might even make them laugh a bit too, but then you can do that just by tickling them.

  • Let Me In

    Movie Review | Matt | 5th November 2010

    Ugh, remakes. Am I right, guys? Take a perfectly good Swedish vampire film, strip the subtitles, gloss it up and re-release it for American audiences to cash in on the Twilight craze. Sound about right? Well no, actually we were all wrong. I was expecting to walk out of the cinema spitting vitriol at Let Me In's vast inferiority to the 2008 original (already cult favourite) film Let the Right One In, but this remake is actually pretty good. No, it's better than that - it's almost just as good.

  • Let Me In trailer: a vampire remake that doesn't suck?

    Movie Trailer | Ali | 1st July 2010

    The first trailer for the US remake of Let The Right One has emerged online, and ... er, it looks pretty ace, actually. See for yourself.

  • The Road

    Movie Review | Ali | 13th January 2010

    Given that most of my articles on literary adaptations start with the line, "I haven't read the book, but..." it's quite rare that I actually have the opportunity to compare the film to the source material. Cormac McCarthy's The Road has the honour of being one of the finest novels I've ever read (and I've read two) but unfortunately suffers from being so downcast, bleak and utterly, utterly grim, this largely faithful adaptation makes for uneasy viewing.

  • Let The Right One In remake cast

    Movie News | Ali | 2nd October 2009

    Cloverfield director Matt Reeves is moving forward with Let Me In, his remake of Swedish vampire epic Let The Right One In, and has found his young cast - who I guessed without even reading the article.