Dan Mazer

News, Reviews & Features
  • Review: Borat Subsequent Moviefilm arrives on time, but is it too little, or too much?

    Movie Review | Luke Whiston | 29th October 2020

    How do you lift the veil from someone who doesn't care what people think of them? This is the challenge facing Sacha Baron Cohen as he resurrects his Borat character, 14 years after the first film, in an attempt to snare the big figures of American politics prior to the upcoming election. The knowingly flimsy premise for this return is a meta plot in which Borat has now become so famous he has to continue his interview series in disguise - a process he's putting himself through in order to deliver a gift to U S. Vice President Michael Pence, otherwise he faces execution back home. Although you'd be mistaken for thinking Borat had turned up dead already.

  • I Give It A Year

    Movie Review | Ali | 5th February 2013

    I gave it half an hour. 30 minutes is more than enough time to establish whether or not you're going to like a film and its protagonists: if you're not on board after the first act, chances are the second and third acts aren't going to be to your tastes either. To its credit, I Give It A Year starts where most romcoms end: the happily-ever-after wedding between its two leads – writer Josh (Rafe Spall) and prissy ad agency miss Nat (Rose Byrne) – mercifully sparing us the agonisingly tedious meetcute routine and fast-forwarding straight to the good bits i.e. the bickering, the adultery and the break-up. In other words, the bits romcoms are otherwise scared to show.