The Quotables Blog

UK Film Releases | Friday 4th March 2011

After two weeks of indulging ourselves silly on new and upcoming film releases at Glasgow Film Festival, the Quotables Review is back! We’re looking forward all of the Spring films which are ready to hit the screens. This week, all 3 major releases are catching our eye: Rango, The Adjustment Bureau, and Abel.

Rango

Johnny Depp stars as Rango, a pirate-obsessed chameleon who dreams of becoming a swashbuckling hero. When he finds himself in Western town plagued by bandits, he is forced to play his dream role in order to protect it. Directed by Pirates of the Caribbean’s Gore Verbinski, Rango also features the voices of Isla Fisher, Bill Nighy, Abigail Breslin, and Ray Winstone.

Spoofs such kiddie favourites as Fear And Loathing In Las Vegas, the mystical writings of Carlos Castaneda, and Sergio Leone’s Dollars trilogy.
— Robbie Collin, News of the World

Good news: the film lives up to the trailer. If we weren’t forced to judge every animated film by the impossibly high standards of Pixar, this would score higher still.
— Tom Charity, LoveFilm

The Adjustment Bureau

Matt Damon and Emily Blunt star in this thriller from Bourne Ultimatum writer George Nolfi. The affair between bookish politician David and ballet dancer Elise is held apart by the mysterious forces of fate.

For her part, this is the best Blunt has been onscreen since her early work in My Summer of Love and The Devil Wears Prada and certainly the film in which she seems most vibrant and alive in a romantic pairing… For the film to pay off, it’s imperative that you believe in these two despite it all. And you do.
— Todd McCarthy, Hollywood Reporter

By keeping the pace quick, the explanation light and the characters strong, Nolfi achieves the near-impossible: a film puzzle you won’t mind leaving unexplained.
— Helen O’Hara

Abel

Diego Luna’s Brazillian drama about a peculiar young boy who, as he blurs reality and fantasy, takes over the responsibilities of a family man in his father’s absence.

Part Freudian casebook, part satirical fable about absent or delinquent Mexican fathers, Abel is a straight-faced Buñuelian tragicomedy assaulting the absurdities of bourgeois life. After its edgy, deliberately puzzling first hour, it starts to run out of steam, but at 85 minutes it doesn’t overstay its welcome.
— Philip French, The Guardian

Perhaps unsurprisingly (he began acting professionally in his early teens), Luna also elicits fine performances from his cast, not least from real-life brothers Christopher and Gerardo Ruiz-Esparza as Abel and Paul. The result is a pleasingly unsentimental but affecting study of a kid whose behaviour is both a consequence of and a catalyst for family tensions fuelled by outmoded notions of masculinity. Engrossing, intelligent fare.
— Geoff Andrew, Time Out

Seeing any of these films over the weekend? Tweet us your own bite-sized reviews to @QuotablesHQ!

USA Film Releases | Friday 11th February 2011

After a dry first week at the February box office, screens are beginning to fill up with some new releases. The latest from Dreamworks Studio and the team who brought us Shrek, Gnomeo and Juliet, opens with reasonably good reviews, while Justin Bieber gets his screen debut. Kevin MacDonald’s eagerly anticipated The Eagle is our pick of the week.

Gnomeo and Juliet

Shakespeare’s classic tale is given a garden style redesign in Dreamworks latest CG film. The eponymous gnomes, in love but divided by family feuds are voiced by James McAvoy and Emily Blunt.

Given that writer/director Kelly Asbury is a veteran of the Shrek franchise (he directed Shrek 2) it’s hardly surprising to find that the film shares an irreverent pop sensibility, but this goes against it, as does the lack of a genuinely standout sequence.

— Rob Carnevale, The List

For adults, Gnomeo & Juliet lacks wit, but the gnomes, artfully chipped and scratched, have a nifty 3-D tactility, and the title duo makes for an off-kilter pair of romantic action figures… Gnomeo & Juliet is sweet and mildly touching, its feelings hinging mostly on a score of Elton John songs. (John is the film’s executive producer.) Every movie about cuddly dwarf statues in an English garden should have music this big.

— Owen Gleiberman, Entertainment Weekly

Justin Bieber: Never Say Never

Never Say Never tracks the rise and rise of Canada (and possibly the world)’s biggest teen pop sensation. Rendered in 3D, it’s a culmination of the star’s modest beginnings as a performer in Stratford, Ontario, all the way to his sold-out show at Madison Square Gardens.

A memento for the fans who have fuelled his meteoric rise over the last two years, Justin Bieber: Never Say Never is a fitfully engaging concert documentary that stays on message so strenuously it barely has room to breathe…. Never Say Never’s insistence on furthering the Bieber brand makes the movie feel more like a well-honed presidential campaign than an insightful look into the teen sensation.

— Tim Grierson, Screen Daily

Bieber mania reaches its zenith! Pessimists will liken Jon Chu’s polished and proficient all-access documentary to an apocalyptic sign of the times. (An adolescent phenom gets a triumphalist big-screen biography? Where’s that razor?) The converted shall preach the gospel with ear-shattering shrieks and hands raised in heart-shaped ecstasy. Can there be a middle ground?

— Keith Uhlich, Time Out NY

Pick of the week: The Eagle

Scottish director Kevin MacDonald returns to the mountains of Scotland in 140AD, twenty years after the disappearance of the Ninth Legion, Roman centurion Marcus (played by Channing Tatum) and his British slave (Jamie Bell) set out into the highlands to retrieve the lost legion’s emblem, the Eagle of the Ninth.

Director Kevin Macdonald, who fared poorly with historical drama in the factitious Idi Amin biopic The Last King of Scotland, performs an appreciable act of imagination here. The Eagle’s focus on Marcus’ personal mission avoids the specious allegory of the insulting Prince of Persia and steers clear of the dubious political metaphor in Macdonald’s contemporary espionage film State of Play.

— Armond White, New York Press

Without pretense, Macdonald regards landscape and tribal living mythically, and his collaging of visual planes throughout is practically expressionistic… The overall theme is the need and struggle for brotherhood, and it finds its most dazzling and poetic expression in a scene in which a warrior tribesman’s face makeup washes away with the tides—a murder that plays as the birth of a nation.

— Ed Gonzalez, Slate Magazine

What are you watching at the movies this weekend? Drop us a comment or Tweet your mini-reviews to us @QuotablesHQ!

UK Film Releases | Friday 11th February 2011

This week sees the release of a Hollywood rom-com and two of the most anticipated films of the year. Despite its small, quiet release in the US, Never Let Me Go was the opening hit of BFI’s London Film Festival. Meanwhile, the Coen Brothers’ latest, True Grit, is our (Oscar-Nominated) Pick of the Week.

Just Go With It

In this new romantic comedy, Danny, played by Adam Sandler, enlists the help of a woman, Katherine (Jennifer Anniston) and her kids to land the woman of his dreams.

With every scene choked with more tumbleweed than palm trees – no mean feat – the film gives up the comedy routine in favour of a Hubba-Hubba-Hula contest between the scorching Decker and forty-something rivals Aniston and Kidman (FILFs?).

— Elliott Noble, Sky Movies

As Adam Sandler movies go, Just Go With It is largely disappointing thanks to a general lack of laughs and a pitifully lazy script. However, as Jennifer Aniston movies go, it’s not that bad.

— Matthew Turner, ViewLondon

Never Let Me Go

Based on the novel from Kazuo Ishiguro, Never Let Me Go stars top young British actors Carey Mulligan, Andrew Garfield, and Keira Knightley.

Fashioning the book’s secrets into thriller-ish twists would have been the absolute worst decision Alex Garland’s screenplay might have made, and it’s much too smart and controlled for that. Still, it’s possible to wish it were a little more radical. Everything seems designed to reassure the book’s fans…while surreptitiously (and sensibly) pruning off its more self-conscious literary effects. Overcautious though the filmmaking tends to be, there’s a tactile emotional charge here which does cumulatively resonate.

— Tim Robey, The Telegraph

Romanek’s film is draped in sadness, from the aching tones of Rachel Portman’s piano score to cinematographer Adam Kimmel’s muted visual palette. But it’s a sadness that will be familiar, and in some way edifying to an audience, due to the deeply felt performances of Mulligan and Garfield.

— Paul Gallagher, The List

Pick of the Week: True Grit

The Coen Brothers return with this Oscar-nominated adaptation of Charles Portis’ True Grit. Newcomer Hailee Steinfeld stars as a young girl on a mission to avenge her father’s death alongside Jeff Bridges, who reprises the role of US Marshall Rooster Cogburn.

In some ways, much like Charles Laughton’s “Night of the Hunter,” which the Coens quote both musically and visually, “True Grit” is a parable about good and evil. Only here, the lines between the two are so blurred as to be indistinguishable, making this a true picture of how the West was won, or — depending on your view — lost.

— Manohla Dargis, New York Times

The Coens, not known for softening anything, have restored the original’s bleak, elegiac conclusion and as writer-directors have come up with a version that shares events with the first film but is much closer in tone to the book…Clearly recognizing a kindred spirit in Portis, sharing his love for eccentric characters and odd language, they worked hard, and successfully, at serving the buoyant novel as well as being true to their own black comic brio.

— Kenneth Turan, LA Times

Also out this week: Gnomeo and Juliet (see USA Edition for review.)

What are you opting to watch at the cinema this weekend? Drop us a comment or Tweet your mini-reviews to us @QuotablesHQ!

Welcome to Week 3 of The Quotables Review!

It’s a big week for cinema releases this weekend here in the UK, despite reports that it’s the worst day of the year for the US Box Office. Oscar contenders Rabbit Hole and The Fighter open alongside the dreamy New York, I Love You, revenge adaptation Brighton Rock, and Cameron-stamped thriller Sanctum 3D.

The US is having a quiet week, with just Sanctum and The Roommate on general release, so we’ve added these into the mix here instead of having a separate Quotables Review: US Edition this week.

UK Film Releases | Friday 4th February 2011

Rabbit Hole

This drama focuses on a couple mourning the death of their child. Nicole Kidman — Oscar-nominated for Best Actress for the role — stars alongside Aaron Eckhart as two parents trying to keep it together.

“Rabbit Hole” could easily have been maudlin, grim or exploitative, and it is none of those things. It is sensitive, considerate, and, in the end, not entirely persuasive… They are paper cutouts dressed in perfectly tailored mourning clothes.

— A. O. Scott, New York Times

Yes, Rabbit Hole’s a wrenching celluloid therapy session, but one leavened with unexpected humour and searing exchanges that ripple with insight.

— Matt Mueller, Total Film

Brighton Rock

Based on the novel by Graham Greene, Brighton Rock charts the fall of a disadvantaged teenager with a religious death wish. Starring Helen Mirren, John Hurt and Andy Serkis,

Graham Greene’s original prose might be tricky to recycle without losing some of its resonance, but when the individual components are this strong, it’s criminal that the end product is so bland.

— Adam Woodward, Little White Lies

It’s an intelligent and creative movie, not a masterpiece, but much better than some rather disobliging reviews have suggested, drawing less on the book than on the 1947 John Boulting film whose screenplay Greene co-wrote with Terence Rattigan. Fans of both, however, may be discontented with the way Joffe handles the ending, and the question of how to reveal what Greene’s novel describes as “the greatest horror of all”.

— Peter Bradshaw, The Guardian

New York, I Love You

Inspired by Paris, Je T’aime, this anthology film joins together individually directed love stories set in New York City.

As the short films from different directors are barely linked by shared themes of love, lust and relationships, New York, I Love You apparently exists only so the artists involved can work together and salute the Big Apple.

— Ben McEachen, The Sunday Times

It’s too much to expect the kind of New Yorkese wit spouted by Woody Allen characters in their prime, and Benbihy’s decision to hire non-Gotham helmers could have been a bold move, but the compendium’s greatest flaw is its overall homogeneous feel.

— Jay Weissberg, Variety

Pick of the Week: The Fighter

The Fighter stars Mark Wahlberg as boxer Micky “Irish” Ward and Christian Bale as his ex-boxer brother Dicky. Set in Lowell, Massachusetts, it chronicles the fighter’s rise to fame from small-town amateur to welterweight champion. The film has been nominated for 7 Oscars, including Best Picture and Best Director.

Russell’s visual sense is as strong as ever, creating a vivid, heightened portrait of ground-level life in what was then one of America’s roughest neighbourhoods. The result is a flawed, frequently ludicrous but overwhelmingly likeable film, old-school to the core and none the worse for it.

— Tom Huddleston, Time Out

The script is excellent, disguising the fact that, at heart, this is standard triumph-over-adversity fair (the comparisons to Rocky are more than justified) with punchy dialogue and a strong sense of place. It’s also darkly funny in places – for example, there’s a hilarious running gag about Bale’s character always jumping out of the crackhouse window when his family come looking for him.

— Matthew Turner, ViewLondon

UK & US Film Releases | Friday 4th February 2011

Sanctum 3D

Also known as “James Cameron’s Sanctum”, this new 3D flick borrows the movie mogul’s patented cameras to bring you this underwater cave diving thriller. Richard Roxburgh and Ioan Gruffudd star amongst the ensemble cast into an unexplored cave expedition.

As a template for aspiring screenwriters, an interactive “My First Disaster Movie” guide, Sanctum 3D is an invaluable resource. What does it tell us? First, choose your medium (don’t worry about characters, plot or dialogue – they come later). Mates with James Cameron? Do you think he’ll let you borrow those nifty 3D cameras he used to shoot Avatar? That’s sure to wow the plebs.

— Sophie Ivan, Film4

The characters are essentially types, and stupendously uninteresting ones at that. There’s the gruff master explorer who has little use for smooth Mr. Moneybags and his adventure-loving babe, and there’s the aggrieved son, who just tries to get along. The ancillary characters are even more one-dimensional, but they get dispensed with quickly.

— Claudia Pulg, USA Today

What are you opting to watch at the movies this weekend? Drop us a comment or Tweet your mini-reviews to us @QuotablesHQ!

Welcome to week 2 of the Quotables Review!

Whether you’re going on a hot date or catching a film with friends, look no further! The Quotables Review is here to help you choose which one to watch.

There are three major releases this week in the USA, including The Mechanic, Biutiful, and The Rite.

USA Film Releases | Friday 28th January 2011

The Mechanic

Jason Statham works his particular brand of action movie magic alongside Ben Foster and Donald Sutherland in The Mechanic. This time, he’s an elite hit man who he teaches his trade to a new apprentice who has a connection to one of his previous victims.

The Mechanic is no dumb guns’n’bombs romp, it’s is an impressively made action drama that is tense, exciting and excellently performed.
— Mark Adams, Sunday Mirror

An uneven ending leaves you wondering what the point was, and sums up this film’s problem. While Foster provides a touch of class, The Mechanic is like any other Jason Statham movie, except for one thing: West and Co. were clearly aiming for something better.
— James Luxford, Muveez

The Quotables Review Pick of the Week: Biutiful

Made in Mexico, Biutiful picked up a nomination for Best Foreign Language Film at the Academy Awards this week, as well as a Best Actor nomination for Javier Bardem. Directed by Alejandro González Iñárritu (Amores Perros, Babel), it’s the story of father of two, Uxbal, a man on the road to redemption.

The film asks whether the idea of ‘good’ is an irrelevance or a choice driven by some calling from within? Since even its title is drawn from a child’s innocent misspelling, it’s best not to expect ‘Biutiful’ to offer a rigorous thematic workout for these issues: this is a film assembled on instinct rather than reflection.
— Trevor Johnston, Time Out London

Inarritu can also rely on such longtime associates as editor Stephen Mirrione, composer Gustavo Santaolalla — who contributes a powerful, percussive score — and cameraman Rodrigo Prieto. The hand-held cinematography vibrantly renders such scenes as a police raid on the African vendors and finds an odd beauty in the muted colors and stained surfaces of back-alley Barcelona.
— Mark Jenkins, NPR

Check out this week’s picks for the other side of the Atlantic in The Quotables Review: Bitesized Edition (UK) #2!

Going to the movies this weekend? Tweet us your own bitesized reviews of the week’s releases at @QuotablesHQ!

Welcome to week 2 of the Quotables Review!

Whether you’re going on a hot date or catching a film with friends, look no further! The Quotables Review is here to help you choose which one to watch.

There are loads of new films out this week – 6 in total in the UK and 3 on general release across the pond in the USA. We’ve taken tidbits from the best reviews of each new release.

UK Film Releases | Friday 28th January 2011

Barney’s Version

Paul Giamatti picked up a Golden Globe for his performance as the impulsive, politically correct Barney. The 65 year-old television producer looks back on his life in Barney’s Version, based on the novel by Mordecai Richier. The film was nominated for the Golden Lion at Venice International Film Festival.

Whatever the film’s flaws, and like its protagonist, there are times when things get a bit out of control, watching Giamatti use Barney to wrestle with success, failure, friendship, love and increasingly with time is exhilarating. The rest of us should be so lucky.

— Betsy Sharkey, LA Times

Giamatti and Pike are backed by a strong cast, including Minnie Driver, lots of fun as Barney’s Jewish princess second wife, and Dustin Hoffman as Barney’s randy old Dad. Hoffman is fine, but he’s getting a little too cute these days. Here he does everything he can think of to be adorable short of putting on a plaid dress and singing “On the Good Ship Lollipop.”

— Mick LaSalle, San Francisco Chronicle

Hereafter

Hereafter, directed by Clint Eastwood and starring Matt Damon has split the critics. It follows three people who are each haunted by death and connected to the afterlife in different ways. Their lives intersect in their quest for the truth.

One problem that soon surfaces is the movie’s certitude. No Turn-of-the-Screw-y ambiguities, no mind games about whether the three might share some all-too-human delusion. Either you buy their Vaseline-lensed visions of the hereafter, or you watch in stony silence, as I did, wondering why there’s no one to care about.

— Joe Morgenstern, Wall Street Journal

The question that propels “Hereafter” is how these three yarns will eventually converge (the answer: creakily), and on the face of it, this fractured, globe-trotting tale of fate and mortality bears a strong resemblance to the work of scribe Guillermo Arriaga, specifically “Babel.” But while the film trades in too many coincidences… the mitigating charm of Eastwood’s approach is how subdued, unportentous and laid-back it is.

— Justin Chang, Variety

How Do You Know

How about a little romance? How Do You Know follows Lisa (Reese Witherspoon), a would-be athlete coping with being cut from her softball team. While re-evaluating her life, she finds herself in a love triangle… with Owen Wilson, Jack Nicholson, and Paul Rudd.

While not as bad as [James L. Brooks’] last outing, Spanglish, six years ago, it nonetheless shares the same sense of separation from real life, of having been hatched in some west-of-the-405 bubble that’s raised its drawbridge to the outside world. The high-pedigree cast will attract a measure of patronage through the holidays, but ticket sales will fall well short of the old Brooks standard.

— Todd McCarthy, Hollywood Reporter

Reese Witherspoon is always immensely cuddly, but it’s not Lisa’s heart that’s involved here, it’s her storyline. Nothing heats up. The movie doesn’t lead us, it simply stays in step. Jack Nicholson is one of the few actors who always inspires a quiet chuckle of anticipation when he first appears in a movie. This is a rare movie that doesn’t give him a chance to deserve it.

— Roger Ebert, Chicago Sun-Times

Tangled

Disney’s modern take on the classic fairytale, Rapunzal, gives the girl with mile-long golden locks a make-over. Working their CG magic with a new Disney Prince to die for, it’s a return to the made-to-measure Disney Princess fairytale, as well as Disney Studios’ 50th animated feature.

If last year’s Princess And The Frog was a toe dipped back in the water of Disney’s glory days, then Tangled’s a full-on, head-over-heels swan dive.

— Robbie Collin, News of the World

Tangled is the 50th animated feature from Disney, and its look and spirit convey a modified, updated but nonetheless sincere and unmistakable quality of old-fashioned Disneyness…. this film… is a lavish, romantic musical fairy tale. In keeping with the company’s current Pixar-dominated aesthetic, it has a story that takes some liberties with the genre; a nimble, kinetic visual style; and a willingness to marry complex psychology with storybook simplicity.

— A. O. Scott, New York Times

More UK releases: Zebra Crossing, Man on the Bridge, The Mechanic, & Biutiful (see the US edition for reviews of The Mechanic and Biutiful).

What are you off to see this weekend? Send us a tweet – @QuotablesHQ – or tell us in the comments.

This is the US edition of The Quotables Review, to view bitesized critical quotables on this week’s releases in the UK, click here.

We’re launching a brand new series on the Quotables blog - The Quotables Review. Here’s what to expect:

Bitesized Friday

An easily digestible guide to what’s on at the movies. Each week we’ll cherry-pick a selection of choice quotables from the world’s leading film critics on the week’s new releases. US & UK editions available each week!

The Sunday Supplement

Quotables get cultural. Weekly film, book and TV reviews, accompanied by a selection of related quotables. Brought to you by Nicola and Laura from Team Quotables, who both have secret identities as jet-setting film critics, when they’re not quoting up a storm in Quotables HQ. Between them they have written for: Film International, Big Picture Magazine, The Skinny, STV, Channel FM, Edinburgh International Film Festival, Cambridge Film Festival & more!

You can read the latest Quotables Review critical nuggets over on Quotables, and add your own favourites each week – just tag them “quotablesreview” and we’ll publish a handpicked selection every Friday.

USA Film Releases | Friday 21st January 2011

No Strings Attached

Natalie Portman and Ashton Kutcher star in this romantic comedy about the trials and tribulations of becoming friends-with-benefits.

As it is, “No Strings Attached” is content to be sweet rather than edgy, to make you go “awww” instead of “hmmm,” and in that respect, it more than fulfills its obligations as a commercial product. It also has a little something extra in Portman, who humorously and movingly charts her character’s gradual awakening to her true feelings.

— Justin Chang, Variety

The prospect was iffy at best: a romantic comedy, from a Hollywood studio, with a premise that smacked of “Last Tango in Paris”…Yet the outcome is delightful. Ashton Kutcher and Natalie Portman are the lovers in “No Strings Attached,” which Ivan Reitman directed, with great verve and unflagging finesse, from a terrifically funny script by Elizabeth Meriwether.

— Joe Morgenstern, Wall Street Journal

The Company Men

The movie debut of ER creator John Wells, The Company Men follows MBA Bobby Walker (Ben Affleck) who, made redundant through recession, loses his white-collar job and must keep his family afloat. Brother-in-Law  contractor Jack Dolan (Kevin Costner) gives him an unlikely hand up in this topical drama.

Taken as a whole, “The Company Men” is about what you’d expect from an old-school TV showrunner: straightforward topical melodrama, with a throbbing social conscience, sympathetic characters, good actors and a script that regularly grabs a hammer from Jack’s tool belt and attacks you with it, just in case you’ve wandered away from the theme. (In other words, it’s a John Sayles movie in spirit, if not in fact.)

— Andrew O’Hehir, Salon.com

It’s simple stuff, but the movie’s heart is in the right place. And there’s something cathartic if not wholly effectual in Company’s message: Even for the Italian sports car set, things are tough.

— Scott Bowles, USA Today

The Way Back

Inspired by the (disputed) memoir entitled The Long Walk by Polish army lieutenant Slavomir Rawicz and directed by Peter Weir (Dead Poet’s Society, The Truman Show), the movie follows a group of World War 2 prison camp escapees on their long and arduous pilgrimage to freedom.

The Way Back is a robustly made picture, heartfelt, well executed with an exhilarating sense of reach and narrative ambition. Where it falls down is a lack of personal intensity to match the spectacle. [...] Weir has put together a good film – oddly, though, considering its scale, it feels like a rather small one.

— Peter Bradshaw, The Guardian

It is overwhelmingly satisfying to see Farrell continue the career rebound that began with In Bruges. A challenging, off-beat choice like this is worth a dozen Miami Vices.

— Mary Pols, TIME.com

Check out this week’s picks for the other side of the Atlantic in The Quotables Review: Bitesized Edition (UK) #1!

Going to the cinema this weekend? Tweet us your own bitesized reviews of the week’s releases at @QuotablesHQ!