The fake moon landing conspiracy has been a fertile myth for many years and even inspired a decent thriller in 1977’s fake Mars landing romp, Capricorn One. Now, the amiable, old fashioned and slightly clunky Fly Me to the Moon, starring Scarlett Johansson and Channing Tatum, attempts, with middling success, to build a rom-com and a good old American propaganda
Read moreThe Book of Love With the amiable but often weirdly flat and unfunny culture clash rom com, The Book Of Love, Sam Claflin seems to be trying to grab Hugh Grant’s now vacant title as the resident charming, floppy-haired, bumbling Brit. Unfortunately, a performance that’s often shouty, whiny and confused deprives him and the film overall of anything like Grant’s
Read morePolitically themed rom-com, The Long Shot is often predictable and occasionally crass but is at least partly saved through sporadic moments of genuine humour and ballsiness. The film involves a concept less likely than a Norse god coming to earth and fighting aliens with a man in flying robot suit, namely the pairing of the stunning and elegant Charlize Theron
Read moreTop End Wedding mixes a typically quirky and erratic feel-good Aussie rom-com with an occasionally moving story of personal and cultural discovery. The Sapphires, Redfern Now and recently Get Krackin’s Miranda Tapsell and Brian May from Bohemian Rhapsody, Gwilym Lee, star as a lawyer couple, Lauren and Ned, who are about to marry. Determined to have her family present, Lauren
Read moreBased on the Nick Hornby novel, the low-key but quirkily charming Juliet, Naked is, like many Nick Hornby stories, a gentle but insightful examination of romance and middle-aged male music obsession. Rose Byrne stars as Annie, a woman living in an English seaside town with her Media Studies lecturer boyfriend Duncan (Chris O’Dowd). Their relationship has been largely built around
Read moreSomewhere between endearingly quirky and irritatingly pretentious writer director Rebecca Miller’s Maggie’s Plan is the latest in what could be termed the alternative rom-com genre, a filmmaking style typified by the works of Noah Baumbach. It’s also part of that growing cinematic sub-genre, the Greta Gerwig film, in which Gerwig plays the lovably ditzy but still capable and philosophical young
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