Tag Archive: Tom Hanks


DUNKIRK Try to contain your excitement but it’s almost Oscars night again!

This year, the Academy will doubtless be relieved if the ceremony passes without a hitch and that it makes the headlines for all the right reasons.

After spectacularly goofing up the best film award last year and being under the shadow of the Weinstein-related sex scandals, the spotlights in 2018 will be about as comforting as interrogation lamps.

Under this kind of intense public scrutiny, the stakes are high. Political correctness used to be routinely ridiculed but is now the order of the day and woe betide those who step or speak out of line. Continue reading

BRIDGE OF SPIES directed by Steven Spielberg (USA; 2015)

220px-bridge_of_spies_posterAs a self-confessed movie nerd I can’t get enough of the ironic post-modernism to be found in directors like David Lynch, Wes Anderson and Jim Jarmusch. I identify strongly with the cynical and often surreal gaze they direct towards the modern world.

In my book, The Coen Brothers fit squarely into this category so it comes as something of shock to find Ethan and Joel’s names (alongside British playwright Matt Charman) on the screenwriting credits for Spielberg’s very conventional drama. Apparently, their remit was to add some zip to a story which, with shades of Fargo, is “inspired by real events”.

Lawyer James B. Donovan played by Tom Hanks is the decent, upstanding all American family man appointed to defend the devious Russian spy Rudolf Abel (Mark Rylance) in what is initially conceived as little more than a show trial.

I suspect it is the Coens who came up with the best line in the movie when, in response to Donovan’s comment that Abel never seems to worry, the spy asks “Would it help?” This is funny the first time around, but when he poses the same question on two further occasions, it loses its novelty value. Otherwise, the script is tight and workmanlike although has none of the wisecracks or lively verbal exchanges you come to expect in Coen Brothers movies. Continue reading

EXTREMELY LOUD & INCREDIBLY CLOSE directed by Stephen Daldry (USA, 2011)

Having read a few reviews prior to seeing this movie (always a mistake), I was all set to entitle this post EXTREMELY LAME & INCREDIBLY CONTRIVED. This only goes to show that you should always keep an open mind and shouldn’t take what critics say as gospel.

Steven Daldry’s movie is contrived but it is not lame.

The British director actually makes a pretty decent stab at translating a tricky story on such a sensitive topic to the big screen without laying on the sentiment too thickly. It isn’t perfect but is not the turkey some make it out to be. Continue reading