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Ghost in the Machine: Daniel Craig’s James Bond Hunts Sam Mendes’s Spectre
‘James Bond will return…’ Barring a short period in the early 1990s, when the future of the series was up in the air thanks to legal issues, this statement has been as sure as death and taxes for more than five solid decades. Three years after the gargantuan success of Skyfall, the British super spy […]
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Sexual Healing: Charlotte Gainsbourg Enters the Dark Side in Lars von Trier’s Nymphomaniac: Vol. II
The second act of Nymphomaniac isn’t the first sequel shot by notorious Danish director Lars von Trier; that honor belongs to the horror movie Epidemic. Yet his latest two-part film carries the distinction that it comes with the first cinematic cliffhanger in his storied career – one that works almost like a coitus interruptus in […]
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Lust for Life: Charlotte Gainsbourg Becomes Lars von Trier’s Nymphomaniac: Vol. I
Lars von Trier has never run away from controversy. The Danish enfant terrible has rather made a career out of embracing it – whether by being banned from the Cannes Film Festival for fascist remarks or by tackling the lives of mentally challenged people in Idiots. Whereas his 2011 feature, Melancholia starring Kirsten Dunst, was […]
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The Golden Mile: Simon Pegg, Nick Frost & Edgar Wright Celebrate The World’s End
Acting duo Simon Pegg and Nick Frost have worked together on and off the screen ever since the British late 1990s cult sitcom Spaced. With the zombie spoof Shaun Of The Dead, comedians the two and their director friend from the same show, Edgar Wright, entered the film landscape with a bang in 2004. Three […]
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Please Hammer, Don’t Hurt ‘Em: Captain Kronos – Vampire Hunter, or a Different Kind of Sucker
The movies by British studio Hammer Film Productions might be among the most fondly remembered shockers in the history of cinema. Some of them have even held a cult status in fan circles for decades and made their leading men and women world-famous. Christopher Lee, who – at an advanced age – has recently entered […]
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Misty Mountain Hop: Middle-earth Revisited in Peter Jackson’s The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey
Fans have been clamoring for it for almost a decade, through numerous delays, changes in the director’s chair, and alterations in the general concept. Pan’s Labyrinth mastermind Guillermo del Toro wanted to shoot it, but eventually The Lord Of The Rings veteran Peter Jackson gave in and decided to travel to J.R.R. Tolkien’s fantastic Middle-earth […]
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Sail Away Sweet Sister: Early Alfred Hitchcock Rediscovered in Graham Cutts’s The White Shadow
Now that we’ve survived the apocalypse and the end of 2012, let’s kick off the new year with a piece of early cinema long considered lost forever. Most of us know Alfred Hitchcock as a director of thrillers and, occasionally, bizarre comedies, who frequently adapted novels, short stories, and plays for the screen. Yet few […]
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Brothers in Arms: A Different ‘Holiday Season’ in Nagisa Ôshima’s Merry Christmas Mr. Lawrence
Christmas – it’s the holiday season of giving that allows you to look back at the year behind you, reflect it, enjoy the little things in life, and all the people around you. Sometimes we take for granted just how lucky we are, despite the world of today being a scary place now and then. […]
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Eyes of a Stranger: Voyeurism and Horror in Michael Powell’s Peeping Tom
Norman Bates from Alfred Hitchcock’s Psycho is universally regarded as the quintessential movie psychopath. Nowadays, he’s simply an indispensable member of the greatest onscreen characters of all time. Psycho’s importance becomes obvious when we consider that its filming is about to become the topic of a feature called Hitchcock by Sacha Gervasi with Anthony Hopkins, […]
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Best Exotic Marigold Hotel
When I first heard of the Best Exotic Marigold Hotel from my boss who introduced this movie to me, I scoffed. Old people, and British humor for that matter was enough to make my mind go “Oh, bollocks!”. After watching this movie however, I found how gravely mistaken I was. Beautifully written by Deborah Moggach, […]
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The Man Who Never Was
Do you fancy spy flicks? How about World War II era films where there are Nazis at every turn? Perhaps you just enjoy films from the Golden Age. Maybe, by chance, you also enjoyed the 1990s comedy flick Weekend At Bernie’s. So, now you’re probably wondering what could spies, World War II and a random dead […]
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Double Agents: Cold War Revisited in Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy
Spy thrillers have long fascinated the masses. Ever since the two World Wars, people have shown great interest in intelligence and counterintelligence, which only increased during the Cold War with its two adversarial camps. The most famous of the literary and cinematic secret agents is James Bond, the super-spy by English author Ian Fleming. He […]