Jessica Barden

News, Reviews & Features
  • Hanna

    Movie Review | Ali | 1st May 2011

    Joe Wright must be secretly pissed that Mark Millar's Kick-Ass came along and pooped on his doorstep, because Hanna is a pretty hard sell, post Hit-Girl. Teenage assassin trained as a killing machine since birth? Unless your movie has Nicolas Cage dressed like Batman with a paedo-tache, you're fighting a losing battle from the start.

  • 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.