Emma's Film Fanatics
Make this page your first port of call for information about films which are either currently on release in the UK or coming up for future release. has scouted around to find you film news, Hollywood titbits that won't feature in her gossip page because they often concern non-British stars. You will also be able to see a rundown of the top ten films at the British box office and a summary of what other reviewers have said about the films that everyone is talking about. Finally you can try your hand at Emma's quiz to see just how much of a film fanatic you really are!
News and Reviews
- With Premiere magazine's annual list of the '100 Most Powerful People in Movies' out again, Hollywood's power players both in front of the camera and behind it will be trying their best to look nonchalant as they casually flick through the pages to discover whether their particular star is in the ascendant or on the wane. The highest new entries this year, Johnny Depp and Will Ferrell, both have cause for celebration, while both Ben Affleck and his ex Jennifer Lopez have ample reason to rue both the circus that was 'Bennifer' and the gargantuan turkey that was Gigli as they plummet from 41 to 91 (Ben) and from 47 to 94 (Jen). Perhaps the most surprising new entry however, is in at number 100: following the huge success of Mel Gibson's The Passion of Christ, the final spot on the list is now occupied by none other than Jesus (yes, that one)!
- Director Roland Emmerich has destroyed the White House (Independence Day), several English soldiers (The Patriot) and much of the planet (The Day After Tomorrow) with great aplomb, so it is somewhat unfortunate for Shakespeare lovers that the next target apparently in his sights is the Bard's reputation! His latest film, which is scheduled to shoot in London next year, will question whether Shakespeare really penned the many masterpieces for which he is credited and, more than that, whether he even existed. American screenwriter John Orloff has developed a script which centres on the seventeenth Earl of Oxford, Edward de Vere, who is often said to have written a number of the plays attributed to William Shakespeare.
- The reported cast line-up for Robert Rodriguez's film adaptation of Frank Miller's "noir comic" series Sin City grows ever more stellar, with Benicio Del Toro (21 Grams, The Pledge, Traffic) and British actor Clive Owen (Gosford Park, The Bourne Identity) being the latest to join other such Hollywood heavyweights as Leonardo DiCaprio, Elijah Wood, Michael Madsen, Mickey Rourke, Brittany Murphy, Josh Hartnett, Jessica Alba, Nick Stahl (Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines) and Bruce Willis.
HARRY POTTER & THE PRISONER OF AZKABAN (PG):
The long-awaited third instalment of the boy wizard's adventures has finally arrived. Directed by Alfonso Cuaron, the film sees Harry, Ron and Hermione entering their third year at Hogwarts and meeting new teachers, challenges and enemies while also having to deal with the more traditional problems of adolescence.
Heat: "Cuaron takes the Potter movies to a whole other level, both in terms of the more-textured performances he elicits from his young actors, and especially in the vaster imaginative scope. Harry soaring over majestic Scottish Highland landscape on the back of a winged Hippogriff; a dark-skied rain-lashed quidditch match; the soul-sucking Dementors: this is big-screen film-making to the max. ...If the Warners execs are right now giving themselves a huge pat on the back, they do so with good reason - their maverick-seeming choice has delivered a massive creative jolt [to the franchise and] a summer blockbuster Hollywood can be truly proud of."
Daily Mail: "The first two Potter films, mega-hits though they were, didn't quite capture the magic or depth of the original novels. ...The third of the series, helmed by the Mexican Alfonso Cuaron, a very different director from Chris (Home Alone) Columbus, departs more from the letter of the book - it had to, or it would have run five hours - but does a much better job of capturing its spirit and flamboyancy of imagination. ...This [film] has a darker tone and is closer to classics such as Dracula and Frankenstein than it is to Disney. ...The first two were successful exercises in commercial calculation; this one, though no less worthy of being a box-office blockbuster, is starting to look uncommonly like art."
The Times (Screen): "Cuaron's appointment to this franchise is the most inspired Hollywood gamble of the year. He is not a proven director of blockbusters or indeed sequels, but any misgivings about his ability to bring home the lucrative bacon evaporate frame by lavish frame. The change of mood and purpose is palpable. Hogwarts is a far richer and darker retreat than Chris Columbus's gothic fairground... [and there is a] tension between friends and teachers that gives the film its gripping shape. The camera work is a sensual feast. Cuaron favours wide-angle lenses, and you could spend weeks drooling over the artwork in a single scene. If there's a weakness to his film it lies in the fiendishly ornate plot and the director's blind faith in our ability to follow it. The difficulty of distinguishing friend from foe is the film's potent theme. But it becomes a maddening handicap when the story starts galloping around the final hairpin bends like a Hitchcock thriller."
The Evening Standard: "The eagerly awaited third film in the Potter saga is particularly complicated and feisty. Any child seeing it should feel drawn, with simultaneous wonder and bafflement into its varied world. ...The film is familiarly restless and enthusiastic, but there's something here that was missing in the first two Potter instalments: real pain along with the thrills. Radcliffe is now old enough to get Potter's many hang-ups over to us convincingly and the actor looks like a trainee neurotic, frowning and gurning behind his glasses, his hair a wildly rumpled thatch. ...The film's frequently quite gloomy ambience makes it much more interesting for accompanying adults who may have yawned in front of Potter before, and we should all be thrilled to see Gary Oldman back on screen being so lyrical, threatening and wounded... Cuaron has drummed up a great, and piquant, show."
I'M NOT SCARED (15):
Based on Niccolo Ammaniti's best-selling novel, Italian director Gabriele Salvatores' subtitled film introduces us to Michele, a ten-year-old boy from an impoverished community in Southern Italy who, in the sweltering summer heat of 1978, discovers another child, a kidnap victim, chained up like an animal at the bottom of a deep hole. This discovery and the events that follow it teach him some uncomfortable truths about life and the people around him, finally forcing him to make some momentous moral choices.
Evening Standard: "Anyone who enjoys the unfolding of a suspenseful narrative, but doesn't require over-the-top shoot-outs or car-chases to jack up their adrenaline levels, will love [this film]. Much of the delight is visual. Salvatore and his cinematographer, Italo Petriccione, have responded to the vast skies and undulating landscape of Basilicata and Puglia by cutting between sustained long shots that show the human lost in the natural world, and precise close-ups that reveal the natural enclosed in the artificial. Michele, [his sister] Maria, and all the other children in this film, were played by local amateurs, and it is difficult to see how Salvatore could have garnered quite such naturalistic, ensemble performances from imported pros. On the other hand, the dubious adults are among Italy's most established screen performers, and all their poise is required to hold back the moral tension and uncanniness of their predicament... Niccolo Ammaniti and Francesca Marciano's screenplay... is a sparse creation. The characters' words are abrupt, allowing the viewer to join with Michele in first inferring and then, chillingly, overhearing the truth... The score, by Pepo Scherman and Ezio Bosso, also deserves a mention... [rising, as it does,] to the emotional demands of the film, threatening, but never too cloying. If you had despaired of Italian cinema ever regaining the lyricism of the Tavianis and Rossellini, I'm Not Scared will come as a welcome surprise. And if you seek a good yarn well spun, you won't be disappointed."
Heat: "The two lads cut through their class differences to form a touching friendship... [and] the kidnap story - events conspire to put the boys' lives at risk - combines smoothly with the slice-of-rural-life drama... This sweet rites-of-passage tale is welcome cinematic relief for the blockbuster-fatigued."
The Times (Screen): "The film is a terrific attempt to express a young boy's moral awakening using intense colour schemes, wide-angle lenses and unforgiving close-ups. The skill of the modest script resides in heartbreaking doubts about the moral rectitude of one's parents. ...What distinguishes the film is the way Salvatores grafts the mystery into the sky-blue horizons and spare landscapes. The picture thrums like Peter Weir's Picnic at Hanging Rock. This is Pasolini country at its most seductive and insular: a blanket of man-made beauty that hides countless natural hazards. ...Disney has scooped the rights to I'm Not Scared in the hope, perhaps, of repeating the 1992 Oscar success of Mediterraneo, a potty wartime fable which won Salvatores a gong for Best Foreign Film. It's a shrewd gamble: this is a dramatically superior film.
THE DAY AFTER TOMORROW (12A):
Based on The Coming of the Global Superstorm by Art Bell and Whitley Strieber, Roland Emmerich's film shows us what might happen if the already acknowledged global climate change suddenly gained pace, unleashing the might of Mother Nature upon the unconvinced and unprepared human race.
Daily Mail: "If [the] storyline sounds lame, it is. ...The film is terribly devoid of dramatic conflict. Whereas in Troy there was no one to root for, here there's no one to root against. The principal bad guy is the weather. Emmerich is as eager as Michael Moore to point an accusing finger and swing wild punches at the Bush administration. But even the stupidly obstructionist vice-president (who looks a lot like the real one, Dick Cheney) is won over to the Green Movement by the end. The characterisation makes that in Twister seem deep and the dialogue is as cheesy as any fan of bad movies could desire. ...The reason this movie is worth seeing is the special effects. The tidal waves, tornadoes and snow storms are easily the best ever."
The Times (Culture): "Directors like Emmerich always claim that, yes, their film has all these big special effects, but what really matters is the emotional heart of the story, the human drama. That's exactly what's missing here. ...But then, human drama is to a disaster movie what plot is to pornography. Emmerich and his co-screenwriter, Jeffrey Nachmanoff, haven't been able to create one character with any depth. The floods, hurricanes and ice storms all look real - it's the people who seem fake. Should we view The Day After Tomorrow as an ecological "wake-up call", one with a serious message about what we are doing to our environment, or is it pure escapist entertainment? ...What we really crave is the spectacle of destruction. Who cares about the message? And this Emmerich delivers brilliantly. For once the special effects [really] are special."
The Observer: "Having delivered his [ecological] message, Emmerich has to entertain us with all the things we expect from group jeopardy and disaster films, something he has given us before in Independence Day and Godzilla. The first ingredient is spectacular destruction, which his battalion of special effects experts provide. ...The second ingredient of the disaster movie is human interest. We need a small bunch of survivors to identify with, and here that role is assigned to the family of Professor Hall [Dennis Quaid], whose workaholism has led to a separation from his wife and neglect of his teenage son [Jake Gyllenhaal]. ...A third ingredient is the moral dimension, the apportioning of blame, and this usually reflects the temper of the times. ...Often there are negligent or hubristic scientists on hand to blame, but in this film they are all good men. Usually attendant priests are there to provide a religious message... but the references to prayer and God in The Day After Tomorrow are perfunctory. In this secular film the faults are laid firmly on the steps of the White House and the bureaucracy serving it... [And, finally,] a disaster movie must also offer hope for the future. Here we are consoled by the claim that mankind survived one Ice Age so can get over another."
The Quiz
Just how much of a film fanatic are you? Answer these questions, add up your scores and find out!
Easy (one point for each correct answer):
- Which actor, who can currently be seen as Paris in the big-screen epic Troy, is perhaps best known as the pointy-eared Legolas in Peter Jackson's Lord of the Rings trilogy?
- Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban sees Michael Gambon taking over from the late Richard Harris in which well-loved role?
Less Easy (two points for each correct answer):
- Linda Cardellini (Scooby Doo's Velma) has recently been seen romancing the handsome Dr Luka Kovac onscreen in hit U.S. hospital drama E.R. What is the name of her character?
- Which Australian actress, currently appearing in both Connie and Carla with Nia Vardalos and Japanese Story with Gotaro Tsunashima, shot to fame in 1994 playing the unfortunate Muriel Heslop in a popular P.J. Hogan film?
Difficult (three points for each correct answer):
- Which children's classic, based on the book by Frances Hodgson Burnett, did Harry Potter's Alfonso Cuaron direct in 1995?
- Can you give the full name of Kate Winslet's (Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind) character in the 1997 blockbuster Titanic?
(Answers at bottom of page.)
Film Chart
Since the figures are not always available until after the event, the Box Office chart may occasionally be a couple of weeks behind. Sorry!
UK BOX OFFICE (Weekend 18-20 June)
- Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban
- The Day After Tomorrow
- Mean Girls
- Troy
- Jersey Girl
- The Cooler
- Lakshya
- Van Helsing
- Connie & Carla
- The Whole Ten Yards
Quiz Answers:
- Orlando Bloom
- Albus Dumbledore, Headmaster of Hogwarts
- Nurse Samantha 'Sam' Taggart
- Toni Collette - the film was Muriel's Wedding.
- A Little Princess
- Rose DeWitt Bukater
How did you do?
0-4 points: Who needs film when you can listen to the radio, eh?
5-8 points: You're a fan all right, but you're not a fanatic yet.
9-12 points: Move over Spielberg, there's a new man in town!
Post to del.icio.us
