With a string of successful and critically acclaimed films such as The Fighter, Silver Linings Playbook and American Hustle, David O Russell was poised to become one of the defining film makers of the 2010’s. But after 2015’s Joy, he seemed to disappear from our screens and became the subject of reports of controversial on-set incidents. One of those confrontations
Read moreIn the early 1960s the Ford motor company was losing market share as, in a rapidly changing cultural landscape, its mass-produced vehicles looked decidedly uncool to the youth of the time. Convincing his boss, Henry Ford the Second, the grandson of the famous Henry Ford, that they needed to sex-up the brand, marketing head Lee Iacocca decided that Ford needed
Read moreThe Big Short sounds like the title of a caper comedy and in a sense it is although the caper is a particularly dubious one, the multi-billion dollar exploitation of a dysfunctional and seemingly corrupt financial system by greedy unscrupulous bond traders that led to the GFC and the financial devastation of millions of working people in 2008. Directed by
Read moreExodus: Gods and Kings sounds disturbingly like the title of a violent video game and some people may feel this is what they have experienced after seeing Ridley Scott’s cgi-heavy take on the story of Moses. The obvious point of comparison for this film is Cecil De Mille’s 1956 biblical epic The Ten Commandments and like that film Exodus: Gods
Read moreThere’s little doubt that writer/ director Scott Cooper is a fan of The Deer Hunter as he sets his latest film, Out Of The Furnace, in a Pennsylvania steel town, has major characters returning from a contentious war and has in Christian bale, a lead character who, like Robert De Niro in The Deer Hunter, is taciturn, resourceful, goatee-bearded and
Read moreAmerican Hustle is an intoxicating mix of 1970’s nostalgia, slow-burn crime drama and comedy that probes themes of deception and identity and constantly asks the question “who’s playing who?” American Hustle is, along with Silver Linings Playbook director David O. Russell’s second film of 2013 and together they reassert him as one of American cinema’s most important contemporary auteurs. Set
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