Jonathan Crocker

1. Fish Tank

Powerful, punishing, funny, beautifully observed… Way too easy to lob adjectives at Brit writer/director Andrea Arnold’s superb second movie. The film you probably missed this year is the film you can’t afford to.

Watch the trailer or find out more…  Read the rest of this entry »

How do you turn 10 sentences into a $100 dollar movie? Maverick moviemaker and Hollywood’s original Wild Thing Spike Jonze has spent five years mud-wrestling with his adaptation of Maurice Sendak’s ‘60s kiddie-lit classic. But Jonze’s big-screen rumpus might take even longer to grow on you. Read the rest of this entry »

Before he went galactic as Star Trek’s new-look Captain Kirk, Chris Pine was stuck with roles like this: a 22-year-old virgin who was born blind but might get his sight back thanks to experimental brain surgery. Casually rugged and charming, Pine does his best to manoeuvre past lines like “I love the sound of your smile” but can’t make this odd little movie work. Read the rest of this entry »

Hurtling at you like some surreal techno-nightmare, Gamer is… what, exactly? No easy way to describe this frenetic cyber-thriller from the makers of Crank 2, which imagines an amoral near-future where reclusive citizens control brain-implanted fellow humans like real-life videogame avatars. Sounds crazy? You can’t even guess. Read the rest of this entry »

Black and white! Bleak as winter! Starring no one you’ve ever heard of! Subtitled! Nearly three hours long! Sort of about the war but doesn’t actually have any war in it! Few films this year will be as head-smackingly uncommercial as the latest from Austrian arthouse giant Michael Haneke. Why head-smacking? Because few will be better. Read the rest of this entry »

Hot glances, forbidden desires, untamed passions and swooning hearts… Just some of things missing from this bloodless second bite of The R-Pattz Show. Sorry, the Twilight saga. But who are we kidding? You’ll see it anyway.

New Moon is apparently Robert Pattinson’s favourite book of the series. Maybe because it’s the one he’s hardly in. After yet another clumsy moment in the Cullen household (papercut, d’oh!), Edward (Pattinson) decides he must save Bella’s (Kristen Stewart) soul by dumping her – and the movie. Read the rest of this entry »

Just after he finished making True Lies, James Cameron picked up the phone and called Stanley Kubrick. They spend a day together watching Cameron’s film in the basement of the house in the English countryside where Kubrick was now a virtual hermit. Kubrick was fascinated by Cameron’s effects shots, wanted to know exactly how he’d hung a man on the missile of a harrier jump-jet and fired him through a skyscraper. Cameron must have been thrilled. He’d finally returned the favour. Read the rest of this entry »

Horror-thriller, gripping expose and devastating agitprop, The Cove takes us to “a little town with a big secret”. Every year in a pretty cove in the Japanese fishing heartland of Taiji, thousands of terrified dolphins are driven in from open water and savagely massacred. We know this thanks to activist dolphin-whisperer Ric O’Barry, who trained these near-sentient mammals for cult ‘60s TV show Flipper – until one of them died in his arms after a tortured existence. Read the rest of this entry »

1. The Cable Guy (1996)

“The Cable Guy is still one of my favourite films that I’ve worked on and it never ceases to make me laugh. I must say, however, the rough critical reaction made me doubt my instincts and sense of humour. If you email me, I will send you a list of every good review that movie got. Almost 20 percent of the reviews were good, not that I’m counting. I didn’t make another movie for eight years. Read the rest of this entry »

Take it straight up, no chaser: a strobing, surging shot of cine-adrenaline to be snorted straight through your eyeballs. Unafraid to burst blood-vessels in its own brain in the pursuit of higher, harder, faster thrills, the psychotically inventive Crank 2 showcases not only its makers’ canny tapping of videogame aesthetics, cartoon wit and reckless ultraviolence, but the wrecking-ball spectacle of Jason Statham himself. Read the rest of this entry »