The Dossing Times

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Despite slushy streets I found myself wanting to walk with more of a swagger on leaving the cinema tonight, trying to carry my umbrella with some air of poise and readiness akin to Robert Downey Jnr’s Sherlock Holmes, so that I could beat up some rougheon in a bowler hat, should one approach me. Guy [...]

The reviews are coming back readers, slowly but surely. Bear with us.
‘A Christmas Carol’ (2009) ***
Whatever tired cynics may choose to say or believe, Christmas should you let it, can restore you. Some 3 years ago, it aches me to say, I was sat in a Christchurch hostel, November shorts, T-Shirt, a slowly approaching New [...]

The unique selling point for ‘District 9′ is worth discussing and having seen the movie is due praise. It won’t ruin the film for you to say to say that District 9 is a movie which indirectly comments on racial and ethnic differences, looking to responses from within communities and from governments. In the opening [...]

There is no doubting that a Quentin Tarantino movie can be a love or loathe experience – people label him as over indulgent, dialogue heavy, stylised and serving his own geeky interests. But while Tarantino can deliver a reviled movie like ‘Death Proof’ (undeservedly so in this writers opinion) remember that Francis Ford Coppola has [...]

As with the book, ‘Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince’ opens and concludes with ominous events which are pivotal to propelling events forward as to the dark story arc involving Voldemort and the boy who lived, one Harry Potter. A 6 year veil of ambiguity is seemingly lifted from the motivations of Severus Snape in [...]

Set a light by a starry cast and looking to an infamous character for inspiration, ‘Public Enemies’ was the movie primed to save the summer. The movie had the furthest to fall and unfortunately the finished product never ratchets close to the similarly themed ‘Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford’ nor delivers [...]

Plot Heavy
 
At a point where 7, 000 people have died, references have been made to the real time President of the United States, national security and even 9/11, Transformers 2 takes a poignant moment, where a troop of military men walk slowly towards the remains of a now deceased leader on an airbase concourse. Director [...]

Rather than look to the words of poets, writers, religious leaders or political revolutionaries, this collection of wisdom, mantras, advice or instructions tailored to navigate whatever should cross your path, comes from where else but movies and TV. Pay heed. All the choices are effective, the sentiment of No.2 may not initially sit well with [...]

MILD SPOILERS
Despite the crimes they commit, the damage they inflict, the women they objectify and the baby they show such scant disregard for, the key winning feature of ‘The Hangover’ is the men of the centre of the story and the fact they seem like decent, fun guys you couldn’t but want to have as [...]