Jonathan Crocker

Dressed in S&M gear, playing a guitar with a sex-toy and driving a huge festival crowd wild with pure metal-rock. That was Anvil and frontman Steve ‘Lips’ Kudlow in the early ’80s, practically inventing the metal scene that would take the decade by storm.

And then? Nothing…  As Metallica’s Lars Ulrich and Guns N’ Roses’ Slash explain on longtime fan Sasha Gervasi’s documentary, Anvil! The Story of Anvil, the band’s first album Metal On Metal was ripped off by everyone on the scene. “You’ve gotta be at the right place at the right time,” growls Motorhead’s Lemmy. Anvil weren’t. Somehow, fame and fortune just never happened.

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Doomy mirror-image to the triumphant first two hours of Steven Soderbergh‘s epic anti-biopic, Che: Part Two – Guerilla leaps forward 10 years – and, controversially, past Che’s brutal role in hundreds of executions – to find the doctor-turned-icon attempting a another revolutionary smash-and-grab. Read the rest of this entry »

“Ever notice how you come across somebody once in a while that you shouldn’t have messed with? That’s me.” That’s scowling, growling Walt Kowalski. He’s a retired Detroit autoworker. He’s a Korean war veteran. And he’s Clint Eastwood’s first big-screen role since Million Dollar Baby. But really? He’s The Man With No Name. He’s Dirty Harry. He’s William Munny. He is Clint Eastwood. Read the rest of this entry »

Desert. Humvees. Marines. Military jargon. Machinegun fire. Searing yellow explosion. Man down, man down… Just as they did with their magnificent cop/crime epic The Wire, writer / producers David Simon and Ed Burns drop us neck-deep into Generation Kill‘s Iraq war saga without a word of briefing. “We wanted you to be disorientated,” says Simon, on the first episode yak-track of this three-disc set. “We’re willing to let you catch up on your own terms.” Read the rest of this entry »

“There’s a lot of drinking, a lot of smoking, a lot of steak-eating and unprotected sex. It’s Disneyland.” If only Mad Men creator Matt Weiner had written that on the first page of his script. We might not have had to wait seven years for the smartest US TV drama since The Sopranos. Read the rest of this entry »

Magic pearls, a black lion, unicorns, bandits, an ancient curse… Easy to see how fantasy novel The Little White Horse inspired JK Rowling. Harder to figure out why this big-screen adaptation can’t conjure any sense of magic. Read the rest of this entry »

Did he like me? What do you think? Should I call him? Or wait for him to call me? Etc…

He’s Just Not That Into You is not a film. It’s a very, very long episode of Sex And The City. But already, we’re giving it too much credit. Based on an almost-certainly awful ‘self-help’ bestseller, this rom-com sprang from a line of dialogue in an episode of Sex And The City. That right. Not even an episode. Just a line. Talk about making a little go a long way. Read the rest of this entry »

A Korean homage to Sergio Leone’s Spaghetti saddle-sagas is… what? A Noodle Western? Mad humour blasts through this Wild Wild East romp, as director Kim Ji-woon completely jettisons the measured chills of his immaculate horror A Tale Of Two Sisters. He also backs off from the gleaming ultraviolence of A Bittersweet Life as a Good bounty hunter (Jung Woo-seong), a Bad bandit leader (A Bittersweet Life’s Lee Byeong-heon) and a Weird thief (The Host’s Song Kang-ho) and chase a treasure map in ’30s Manchuria. Read the rest of this entry »

Exploring Watchmen’s 20-year journey to the big screen…

Forget what you know about the world. It’s 1986. America has won the Vietnam war. Nixon has been elected for a third time as US president. The world has a superhero with limitless power over space and time. Costumed vigilantes have been part of society for the last 50 years.

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Spanish sun and Sapphic snogs… How Woody Allen cooked up his hottest ever rom-com.

Woody’s not here. Ten minutes pass. Woody’s still not here. Twenty minutes. “Woody’s having his pudding,” explains his agent, as we wait patiently. Thirty minutes. She adds seriously, “Woody does love his pudding…”

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