Jonathan Crocker

After Jennifer Lawrence’s first audition, talent agents told her mother it was “the best cold-read by a 14 year old they had ever heard”. Six years later, she was scorching down the red carpet at the Academy Awards in a Calvin Klein dress looking hotter than the sun. Oscar-nominated in indie drama Winter’s Bone, blockbuster babe in X-Men: First Class and now starring in her own killer franchise The Hunger Games… Lawrence is raising the temperature in Hollywood. Read the rest of this entry »

Santa Claus Conquers The Martians (voted one of the worst movies ever). Mission To Mars (Rolling Stone: “DePalma has never made a dull movie. Until now.”). Red Planet (Variety: “Mission To Mars had style to burn compared to Red Planet”). Ghosts Of Mars (killed John Carpenter’s career for nine years). Doom (one of Time magazine’s 10 Worst Ever Videogame Adaps). Mars Attacks! (Budget: $100m. US box-office: $38m). Mars Needs Moms (the biggest box-office bomb of all time).

If history has taught us one lesson, it’s that if you’re going to make a movie about Mars, it had better star Arnold Schwarzenegger and a lady with three boobies. Read the rest of this entry »

Someone doesn’t want you to see this film – it was stolen, not once but twice, before its premiere at the Berlin Film Festival. That adds further dark spice to this elusive, fascinating glimpse at modern Russia through the life of imprisoned tycoon Mikhail Khodorkovsky. Splicing investigative interviews with stylish animated sequences, filmmaker Cyril Tuschi’s involving documentary tries to discover how Khodorkovsky went from being the world’s richest man under 40 to a seemingly indefinite prisoner in Siberia. Edged with cynicism and wit, Tuschi’s film can’t hide its admiration – but real answers lurk tantalisingly out of reach. Read the rest of this entry »

Taking cocaine and sleeping with your patients? Psychoanalysis sure ain’t what it used to be. David Cronenberg’s A Dangerous Method reveals the fascinating battle of wills between the two great minds – Sigmund Freud and Carl Jung – that invented modern head-shrinking. It’s a movie about ego, intellect and ambition. It’s a movie about spanking Keira Knightley. It’s also Cronenberg’s third film in a row with Viggo Mortensen, concreting one of modern cinema’s most fearless, fascinating partnerships. The two men sit down together on the couch. Let today’s therapy begin. Read the rest of this entry »