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Good People - Trailer Trailer


Tom and Anna Reed are a young married couple who have moved all the way to London with the intention of restoring the house that Anna grew up in and subsequently starting a family. However, it isn't long before the pair fall on hard times and they are faced with losing the house they have been so desperate for. One day, they fail to get a response from their basement tenant Ben and go down to his apartment to check on him, only to be faced with a brutal murder scene. Their luck seems to change, however, when they discover a bag of £220,000 in bank notes stashed in the ceiling tiles. They take the money, agreeing to only use what is needed to cover their mortgage and credit card bills. Unfortunately, there are people after the money. People who Ben made a mistake to cross. People intent on hunting down the Reeds.

Continue: Good People - Trailer Trailer

Jack O'Connell Is 'Starred Up' And Critically Acclaimed


Ben Mendelsohn Rupert Friend Sam Spruell

“Starred Up” is prison slang for a young offender so violent and uncontrollable that he makes the step up to adult prison early. That’s Eric Love – played by Jack O’Connell. Things look bleak for Love; a life behind bars beckons for the psychologically damaged 19-year old. Until, that is, the prison’s therapist becomes determined to rehabilitate him, aided by Neville, Eric’s father.

Starred UpJack O'Connell stars in 'Starred Up'

For U.K cinemagoers, this violent and brilliantly written thriller offers up the best viewing this weekend. Hitting cinemas tonight, ‘Starred Up’s’ main contender is Svengali, another – albeit very stylistically very different - British film. 

Continue reading: Jack O'Connell Is 'Starred Up' And Critically Acclaimed

Starred Up Review


Very Good

Rising star Jack O'Connell delivers a ripping performance as a young convict with more baggage than you'd think humanly possible. And he's ably supported by Ben Mendelsohn and Rupert Friend in career-best performances. So even if the film indulges in just about every prison-movie cliche imaginable, the focus on intensely realistic characters makes it stand out from other movies.

O'Connell plays Eric, who at 19 is so violent that he has been "starred up" from his young-offenders prison to the big house. The hitch is that he's now on the same wing as Neville (Mendelsohn), the father he's never known. Eric is such a brute that the harsh governor (Sam Spruell) wants to keep him in a hole, but concerned therapist Oliver (Friend) thinks he can help Eric channel his anger in more positive directions. On the other hand, by attending therapy sessions Eric is putting himself right in the middle of his father's rival prison gang.

The demands of the plot are obvious from the start, as the film makes it clear that prison is a hopeless place where violence rules. So while director David Mackenzie (Young Adam) lets the usual vicious nastiness swirl through each scene, he also tries to keep the focus on Eric's more internal struggle against his lifetime of abuse and abandonment. This is of course far more interesting than the prison-life plot, giving O'Connell a chance to deliver a strikingly involving turn as a young guy who's outwardly terrifying but also thoughtful and intelligent.

Continue reading: Starred Up Review

The Counselor Review


OK

This film proves that all the right ingredients don't necessarily make a movie work. Even with top-drawer filmmakers and actors, this dramatic thriller simply never grabs our interest. It looks great, and everyone is giving it their all, but the story and characters remain so badly undefined that we can't identify with either.

The story's set on the US-Mexico border, where a slick lawyer (Fassbender) known as "the Counsellor" has slightly too much going on in his life. He has just proposed to his dream woman Laura (Cruz), while he's planning to open a nightclub with Reiner (Bardem). For extra cash, he's organising a massive cocaine shipment with Westray (Pitt). And it's this drug deal that goes wrong, creating a mess that engulfs Reiner and Laura, as well as Reiner's shrewd girlfriend Malkina (Diaz). As his life collapses around him, the Counsellor scrambles to salvage what he can, even as he realises that it'll be a miracle if anyone survives.

There are problems at every level of this production. McCarthy's first original script is simply too literary, putting verbose dialog into the actors mouths that never sounds like people talking to each other. Fassbender and Bardem are good enough to get away with this, but Pitt and Diaz struggle. Both Fassbender and Cruz bring out some wrenching emotions in their scenes, but their characters are never much more than cardboard cutouts. In fact, no one in this story feels like a fully fleshed-out person. And the little we know about each character makes most of them fairly unlikeable.

Continue reading: The Counselor Review

The Counsellor Trailer


'The Counsellor' tells the story of a naive lawyer who holds the belief that dabbling in drug-trafficking is the best way to earn a little extra cash. However, that dabbling evolves into full-blown dealing which consumes his life and infects with all the corruption, betrayal and pain he thought he could avoid. Now with some seriously ruthless criminals on his tail, he begins to realise that there is nothing that these people will not do to get what they want and the odds on his life begin to get higher and higher. Unless he can work out who his friends are, he has no hope of returning to his normal life, but in a world where disloyalty affects everyone's relationships, he begins to wonder if he really has anyone there for him at all.

Directed by the triple Oscar nominated Sir Ridley Scott ('Prometheus', 'Gladiator', 'Alien'), this high-energy, gritty thriller is all about corruption and how smalls mistakes can lead to major consequences. The screenplay has been written by novellist Cormac McCarthy ('No Country for Old Men', 'All the Pretty Horses') and it features an exciting, star-studded cast ensemble. It is set to reach UK cinemas everywhere on November 15th 2013.

Click here to read The Counselor Movie Review

Snow White And The Huntsman Review


Weak
There's an oddly over-serious tone to this fairy tale, as if the filmmakers thought they were making a massive action epic on par with The Lord of the Rings. But the plot has all the complexity of, well, a bedtime story. And a little more camp attitude would have helped.

After the gorgeous Ravenna (Theron) marries and then murders a benevolent widower king, she locks his beautiful daughter Snow White (Stewart) in a tower.

All the better to continue draining the youth from the entire kingdom. But just as she prepares to take the now of-age Snow's heart, Snow escapes into the woods, and Ravenna hires huntsman Eric (Hemsworth) to find her. Of course, Eric switches sides when he finds her, joining with Snow's childhood sweetheart William (Claflin) and a gang of dwarves to end the evil queen's reign.

Continue reading: Snow White And The Huntsman Review

Snow White and the Huntsman Trailer


The Evil Queen, Ravenna, is very beautiful but very deadly. Early in her reign, she despaired over 'battles fought and lives lost' but now, she draws strength from the cries of war. Each day, she looks in her magic mirror and asks 'who is the fairest of them all?' The answer is always her.

Continue: Snow White and the Huntsman Trailer

K-19: The Widowmaker Review


Very Good
K-19: The Widowmaker is based on a true story about a Russian submarine sent to test a nuclear missile at the height of the Cold War. The boat is ill-equipped for its task, and Capitan Mikhail Polenin (Liam Neeson) loses his command by insisting that the sub won't be ready in time for its scheduled launch. Captain Alexei Vostrikov (Harrison Ford) is given control of the ship, and his stern demeanor and commitment to military efficiency soon make him enemies onboard.

He runs the crew through relentless drills, offers little encouragement, and seems to take unnecessary chances. We soon learn that Polenin -- who remains aboard the sub -- is a father figure to the sailors, while Vostrikov aims to inspire fear. These opposing command styles lead to power clashes throughout the movie, a la Crimson Tide.

Continue reading: K-19: The Widowmaker Review

Sam Spruell

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Sam Spruell Movies

Valerian and the City of a Thousand Planets Movie Review

Valerian and the City of a Thousand Planets Movie Review

It's been 20 years since French filmmaker Luc Besson shook up the sci-fi genre with...

Valerian And The City Of A Thousand Planets Trailer

Valerian And The City Of A Thousand Planets Trailer

Valerian (Dane DeHaan) and Laureline (Cara Delevingne) are partners. Skilled government agents whose job it...

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For Luc Besson's latest foray into the sci-fi stratosphere, he has decided to bring the...

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In these faux featurettes, the crew of Ares 3 talk us through some of the...

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Legend - First Look Trailer

Legend - First Look Trailer

Throughout the 1950s and 1960s, London was at the mercy of the terrifying Kray twins...

The Voices Movie Review

The Voices Movie Review

Utterly bonkers, this movie confounds any attempt to categorise it, blending comedy, romance, horror and...

Child 44 Trailer

Child 44 Trailer

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Taken 3 Movie Review

Taken 3 Movie Review

As with the first two films in this dumb but bombastically watchable franchise, writers Luc...

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Taken 3 Trailer

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Starred Up Movie Review

Starred Up Movie Review

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