Author: Jack Harding
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Archive: Apocalypse Now (1979)
Jack Harding explains why Francis Ford Coppola’s film must be seen by all
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Archive: Shot on a shoe-string budget, Aranofsky’s film Pi enigmatic indie hits a new peak of low-budget, original film-making
Jack Harding explains his love for this weird, brilliant film.
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Archive: Why Batman Begins is a blockbuster with heart and brains
Jack Harding argues why Christopher Nolan’s Batman opening chapter is a movie to remember
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Archive: How Christopher Nolan’s Batman Begins changed the superhero genre forever
Jack Harding charts how Christopher Nolan’s version of the Caped Crusader champions all others.
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Archive: X-Men: First Class is the best of the series by far
First class by name, first class by nature, this explosive chapter in the wilting X-Men film anthology is not just the best of the bunch by an absolute mile, it’s also a complete game- changer. Following the abysmal Last Stand, it couldn’t get much worse for mutant buffs. Then it did; the awful Wolverine origins […]
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Archive: Funny Games U.S. is an eccentric and highly compelling remake
Vindictive. Exploitive. Malicious. Audacious. Psychotic. Neurotic. Subversive. Oppressive. Impressive. Disturbing. Outstanding?…Perhaps. Pointless?….Perhaps. For esoteric and darring director Michael Haneke’s American based revamp of his own cult-classic does pack a punch, but why remake our own film? Why not. Another question, though- how does a violent film with no on-screen violence obtain an 18 certificate in […]
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100 Discs of Christmas #44 – Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas (1998)
Despite plans to translate Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas from print to screen some 40 years back (with the likes of Scorsese, Akroyd and Belushi supposedly keen to chip in), it wasn’t until the unsung success of Bruce Robinson’s Withnail and I that anything had come close to capturing the spirit, motifs and sheer mayhem […]
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100 Discs of Christmas #42 – Deliverance (1972)
John Boorman’s Deliverance is a taut, tense and truly haunting meditation on man, nature and the nature of man that bitterly chews on the themes of rape, religion, society and survival. 40 years on from its original release, this masterfully shot and structured thriller remains a seminal piece of American cinema that has lost none of […]
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100 Discs of Christmas #40 – Drive (2011)
Much more than just the coolest film of 2011, director Nicholas Winding Refn’s Drive is an instant cult classic and a career defining film for both the Dane himself and lead man Ryan Gosling: measured, memorable and ultra violent. A modern day Taxi Driver with shades of Memento and like a 1970’s Scorsese, Winding Refn […]
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100 Discs of Christmas #39 – Memento (2000)
Beginning with the end, Memento, put simply, is a revenge tale in reverse that maps out onetime claims investigator Leonard Shelby’s (Guy Pearce) path to kill the man who brutally raped and murdered his wife. The plot is not configured in this manner to merely show-off, though. There is a reason for during the attack […]
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100 Discs of Christmas #38 – Bronson (2008)
Michael Peterson a.k.a Bronson (Tom Hardy), was sentenced to 7 years in prison back in 1974 for robbing £26 from a Luton post office and has only seen 69 days of daylight since. Why so serious? You ask, well, behind bars, Bronson made a name for himself as a loose canon, sticking his middle finger […]
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100 Discs of Christmas #37 – Requiem for a Dream (2000)
Directed by Darren Aronofsky and based on the equally titled seventies drug novel by Hubert Selby Jr, Requiem for a Dream examines the consumption of illegal drugs in a way never previously attempted on screen before, or since. Through an intense use of uncanny film-making techniques including split-screens, intercuts, wipe-cuts, hip-hop montages and over three […]
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100 Discs of Christmas #36 – Batman Begins (2005)
There was a time when you couldn’t even mention “Batman” without having to bare some idiot’s rendition of “na na na na na na na na na na na na”….And if it wasn’t that then you were left with little more than images in your mind of a camp crusader chasing down clowns and cats […]
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100 Discs of Christmas #35 – Paranoid Park (2007)
Adapted from Blake Nelson’s best selling novel and shot masterfully in director Gus Van Sant’s hometown of Portland, Paranoid Park hinges on an act of acute violence. Alex (Gabe Nevins) is a confused schoolboy skater whose life hits the bricks following his role in the death of a local security guard. The film itself, then, […]