Sarah Paulson

News, Reviews & Features
  • Review: Glass is a fragile follow-up with wasted promise

    Movie Review | Matt Looker | 17th January 2019

    No one knows the importance of a good ending like M. Night Shyamalan. He has built his entire career on them. He knows that many film flaws can be forgiven along the way if, right before the credits roll, he can suddenly wow an audience so that they leave only talking about that ending. It’s a circus approach to storytelling, saving the big top narrative stunt for the final act, but it works. In the case of Split - an otherwise divisive film - it worked so well that the ending itself manifested a whole sequel. But no one should be in any doubt that it’s a cheat. A big last-minute reveal teasing a forthcoming crossover might be an original way to have a shock twist, but it doesn’t automatically make for a good ending to what came before it. Just as it doesn’t automatically make for a good beginning for what comes next.

  • Mud

    Movie Review | Ed Williamson | 6th May 2013

    For a pigeonholed Hollywood star, performing a dramatic volte-face and stubbornly refusing to take on the types of project for which you're famous can't be easy. Our relationship with stars is tied up too fully in the idea of recognisable archetypes to make it so. Planning on casting Ray Liotta as a romantic leading man any time soon? Nope, but we've got an opening for a crooked cop if he's interested. So what Matthew McConaughey has achieved in the last couple of years is truly remarkable: to graduate from lightweight romcom go-to-guy to one of the most magnetic screen actors around.

  • Martha Marcy May Marlene

    Movie Review | Ali | 4th February 2012

    Despite success on the festival circuit and early talk of Oscar buzz, Martha Marcy May Marlene has found itself released in the UK on the busiest weekend of the year so far – sharing screens with Young Adult, Carnage, Chronicle, Man On A Ledge, Journey 2: The Mysterious Island and, of all things, Jack & Jill – without so much as an Oscar nomination to its name. It'd be a tragedy if such a delicate movie was left shattered by the elbow-swinging of the annual awards season rush: Martha Marcy May Marlene might not have campaign funding or grandstanding performances, but it has heart and soul, two qualities which are slowly corrupted throughout for your viewing pleasure.

  • The Spirit

    Movie Review | Ali | 3rd January 2009

    There's no question Frank Miller's graphic novel Sin City - and the subsequent Robert Rodriguez movie adaptation - glorified violence. In Miller's own adaptation of Will Eisner's '40s superhero serial The Spirit, he's guilty of glorifying something else: tits. Rather than swing with Sam Raimi's light and frothy Spider-Man movies...