Rating: MMMMM

Clint Eastwood’s latest film, Invictus tells the story of the true events that followed the 1994 election of Nelson Mandela as President of South Africa, and Mandela’s subsequent attempt to unite his fragile and divided country with the help of South African rugby captain, Francois Pienaar.

Director: Clint Eastwood
Starring: Morgan Freeman, Matt Damon,
Running time: 133 mins

Rating: MMMM

From celebrated director Jane Campion comes a biopic of nineteenth century Romantic poet John Keats, exploring his romance with Miss Fanny Brawne, beginning in 1818.

Director: Jane Campion
Starring: Abbie Cornish, Ben Whishaw, Kerry Fox, Paul Schneider
Running time: 119 mins approx.

Rating: MMMM

Review of ‘geezer’ director Guy Ritchie’s adaptation of Arthur Conan Doyle’s classic character (and the world’s most famous detective) the inimitable Sherlock Holmes.

Director: Guy Ritchie
Starring: Robert Downey, Jr., Jude Law, Mark Strong, Kelly Reilly, Rachel McAdams
Running time: 128 mins

Rating: MM

Review of the latest fantasy feast for the eyes from ‘maverick’ director Terry Gilliam.

Director: Terry Gilliam
Starring: Heath Ledger, Christopher Plummer, Lily Cole, Verne Troyer, Tom Waits, Andrew Garfield
Running time: 122 mins

Rating: MMMM

Review of Julie & Julia, the meeting of two true stories about love, cooking and the love of cooking.

Director: Nora Ephron
Starring: Meryl Streep, Amy Adams, Stanley Tucci, Chris Messina
Running time: 123 mins

Rating: MMMM

Review of Coco Avant Chanel, biopic of  French fashion designer and style icon,
Gabrielle ‘Coco’ Chanel, starring Audrey Tautou and Alessandro Nivola. French with English subtitles.

Director: Anne Fontaine
Starring: Audrey Tautou, Alessandro Nivola, Benoit Poelvoorde, Marie Gillain
Running time: 105 mins

Currently finishing airing on BBC2 is HBO’s ‘reconstruction’ of the cop show, ‘The Wire’ (2002-2008), which for me has set a new standard in television drama. Not since ‘The West Wing’ have we seen such a rich and frankly rewarding series.

Rating: MMMM

Review of Michael Mann’s ‘biopic’ of the notorious American criminal, John Dillinger.

Director: Michael Mann
Starring: Johnny Depp, Christian Bale, Marion Cotillard, David Wenham, Stephen Dorff
Running time: 140 mins

Watching last week’s Friday Night with Jonathan Ross, I was struck by the eponymous host interviewing Hollywood screen actress Sandra Bullock, promoting her new film The Proposal. In their conversation, Ross and Bullock briefly discussed the romantic comedy genre (to which The Proposal supposedly belongs) and how the name has morphed into the word ‘rom-com’ which Ms. Bullock suggested refers to how these types of films cannot be called ‘romantic comedies’ anymore as they are neither romantic or funny – therefore ‘rom-com’ can be used to categorise them as it represents “a little bit of what they have”.

Rating: MMMM

Review of Frost/Nixon first published in a January 2009 issue of Spark*, the newspaper of Reading University Students’ Union.

Director: Ron Howard
Starring: Michael Sheen, Frank Langella, Kevin Bacon, Sam Rockwell
Running time: 122 mins