Following the success of The 40 Year Old Virgin, a touching comedy which made funny sense of that eponymous condition and its protagonist’s recovery from it, America’s King of Comedy Judd Apatow brings us Knocked Up, a similarly touching comedy about a more familiar situation – the inconvenient consequences of a one-night stand. Though the cast is mainly made up of Apatow’s family and friends, he is never tempted to laziness or in jokes. Rather a sharp script and stellar cast offer sweet and mature observations on the trails and joys of childbirth and awakening romance.
Alison (Heigl), a pretty and ambitious career woman has just landed a job as an on-air reporter for the E! Entertainment network. She is thrilled, and celebrates her success with a night on the tiles alongside her older housewife sister Debbie (Leslie Mann). Several drinks too many leads to a one night stand with 23-year-old Canadian stoner Ben Stone (Rogen). Under the influence in the dark of the nightclub, Alison is smitten with her new friend. But in the sober light of day, Ben turns out to be no more than a drugged-up slacker with no job, no money and the social habits of a teenager. (more…)
Director Tsai Ming Liang returns to his native Malaysia to present this melancholy study of human alienation. I Don’t Want to Sleep Alone was among several films commissioned by Peter Sellars’ New Crowned Hope Festival in Vienna in 2006, to commemorate the 250th anniversary of Mozart’s birth.
As expected, British film Slumdog Millionaire triumphed at the Oscars this morning winning eight Academy Awards. The rags-to-riches tale set in Mumbai about an orphan who goes on to win the Indian version of Who Wants to be a Millionaire? won Oscars for Best Picture, Best Director for Danny Boyle, Best Adapted Screenplay, Best Cinematography, Best Sound Mixing, Best Film Editing, Best Score and Best Song.
Watching Renee Zellweger scribble frantically into a notebook whilst musing to herself in characteristic British staccato, you could be forgiven for thinking you’d stumbled upon another Bridget Jones sequel. But whilst Brigit and Beatrix may share some character traits, the latter emerges as a brilliant, headstrong woman whose continual struggle against her restrictive upper-class background pays its returns.
The newly released double box set of Ang Lee’s enigmatic epic Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon (2000) and Stephen Chow’s slapstick farce Kung Fu Hustle (2004) couldn’t offer two more different perspectives on the Wuxia genre of filmmaking.
Guy Ritchie’s RocknRolla has one thing in its favour: it is better than his last two movies – Swept Away, the awful Madge-on-a-beach romantic comedy that fared so badly in the US it never even made it to British cinema screens, and the nearly incoherent Revolver. Here Guy Ritchie returns to the familiar territory of London’s seedy underworld that we saw in the 1998 Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels and its 2000 follow-up Snatch.