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The Hunger Games Review

It has been difficult to escape The Hunger Games over the last couple of months. As buzz for the film has steadily grown, discussion has often turned to whether or not the films could fill the void soon to be left by the conclusion of the Twilight series. With the release of the film on Friday, anyone expecting a cloying romance along the lines of Twilight, is going to be surprised as The Hunger Games is tense, exciting film-making that packs a real emotional punch.

Set during an unspecified future date in what was once North America but now known as Panem, The Hunger Games are an annual event where each of the twelve districts of Panem provide one teenage boy and girl to participate in a nationally televised contest. The contest involves twenty four contestants fighting in a constructed woodland environment until the last one is left standing, ie, twenty three of them will cease to be living. Read more

UK Box Office - 20 March 2012

The Vatican may not have wanted anyone to see it but a large number of people did anyway as The Devil Inside topped the weekend’s box office. The found footage exorcism horror grossed an impressive £2m, which is significantly more than the similarly themed Exorcism of Emily Rose (£1.3m) and The Last Exorcism (£1.1m). In second place was the brilliantly funny 21 Jump Street with £1.6m.

In third place, fractionally behind 21 Jump Street, was The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel with £1.5m. Easing just 14% from last weekend, this is the fourth £1m plus weekend in a row for the India set comedy and it now has a cume total of £13.9m. In fifth and sixth place were two more new entries, We Bought A Zoo and Contraband. Read more

UK Box Office – 14 March 2012

Disney’s sci-fi fantasy epic, John Carter 3D topped the weekend’s box office with £2m. It’s a decent performance from a film that many had been predicting to fail. The obvious point of comparison is Disney’s last fantasy epic, Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time, which kicked off its cinema run with £1.4m in May 2010. That film went on to gross £8.7m in total. John Carter 3D also had a stronger opening than last year’s fantasy epic, Cowboys and Aliens, which opened to £1.8m in August.

In second place with a further £1.8m was The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel. Easing just 24% from last weekend this was another strong performance from a film on its third weekend on release and it now has a cume total of £10.9m. In third place with its fifth £1m+ weekend in succession was The Woman In Black. This time around it took £1.1m and on Friday cantered past War Horse to become the highest grossing film in the UK so far this year with a cume total of £19.5m. Read more

UK Box Office - 06 March 2012

A British film topped the UK box office for the fourth weekend in succession. This time it was the turn of The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel with £2.3m on its second weekend on release, an improvement of 5% from last weekend. 2003’s Calendar Girls only managed to gross £1.9m on its second weekend on wide release, which suggests that The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel may get close to that film’s final total of £20.4m. It has now grossed a very impressive £7m after ten days in cinemas.

Despite failing to top the box office for the first time since release, The Woman In Black still took second place with a further £1.9m. This takes its cume total to £17.6m and it looks set to overtake War Horse (£18.3m) as the biggest grossing film of the year so far. As you may have read in the press last week, The Woman In Black is now the most successful British horror film of all time. A terrific result for distributor Momentum and the recently revived Hammer Films. Read more

The Raid

It’s not out until May but remember the name because if you’re a fan of action films, this is one you’re not going to want to miss. Joining a very short list of Indonesian films directed by Welsh people, The Raid is an unrelenting adrenaline rush of a film, with the greatest fight choreography I’ve ever seen. The action scenes are genuinely astounding and at the screening I viewed the film at, one scene featuring creative use of a strip light, had the audience bursting into spontaneous applause.

There is a plot, which involves a swat team infiltrating a fortified apartment building where a brutal crime lord and his team reside, but this is the mere clothes horse upon which to hang scene after scene of brutal but often balletic carnage. Director Gareth Evans, alongside star Iko Uwais and co-star Yayah Ruhian have choreographed a series of action scenes that take the breath away in their audacity. As the rapidly depleting swat team ascend the building, so the action scenes escalate in intensity, culminating in a final showdown that will leave you gripping the cinema armrests far harder than the cinema would probably like. Read more

Project X

Yet another perk of my DCM job presented itself on Tuesday afternoon with the offer of a free ticket to a screening of the much talked about movie Project X.

Being a massive fan of the work Todd Phillips did on the original Hangover Movie, I had high hopes for a film that from the trailer had me wishing I was 18 again. A few beers in the cinema foyer kindly donated by Warner and I was ready! Read more

21 Jump Street

Seriously funny comedy movies aren’t exactly two a penny, so when one arrives it’s to be welcomed with open arms. 21 Jump Street, out on March 16th, is a seriously funny film and deserves to be ranked alongside Superbad as one of the best high school comedies of recent years. Directors, Phil Lord and Chris Miller have made a riotous comedy that although scattershot in its approach hits the bullseye far more than it misses and delivers a handful of hilarious set pieces.

Jonah Hill and Channing Tatum play the newly graduated cops who due to their youthful appearance, are sent undercover at a high school to prevent the spread of new synthetic drug HFS (try to work out what it stands for, tip – first word is ‘holy’). Much hilarity inevitably ensues but unlike other recent 80s comedy remakes such as The Dukes of Hazzard, this feels remarkably fresh and exciting. Read more

UK Box Office - 28 February 2012

Emulating the performance of War Horse in January, The Woman In Black managed to top the weekend’s box office for the third successive weekend. The period chiller grossed a further £2.4m taking its cume to £14.6m, which far outstrips the total gross of recent hit films involving the supernatural including all Paranormal Activity films (Paranormal Activity 2 being the most successful with £11m) and Insidious (£7.1m). It now lies second behind The King’s Speech (£45.7m) in the list of distributor Momentum’s most successful releases.

The weekend’s highest new entry was The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel, in second place with £2.2m. Very much aimed at the more mature audience this opening comfortably beat the similarly aimed Ladies In Lavender (£423k), Mrs Henderson Presents (£752k) and Last Orders (£101k). It will have to perform spectacularly though to beat Calendar Girls’ total gross of £20.4m. Read more

The 84th Academy Award Winners

A black and white French silent film with no big name stars that had somehow become known as the ‘safe’ choice won five awards at the 84th Academy Awards last night. The Artist won the award for best picture, Michel Hazanavicius picked up the best director prize, while Jean Dujardin won the best actor award. It also won for Ludovic Bource’s score and best costume design. The film tied for most awards with another film in thrall to the silent era of film-making, Martin Scorsese’s Hugo 3D. Predominantly filmed here in the UK at Shepperton Studios, Hugo collected five major technical awards including best cinematography (Robert Richardson).

Although George Clooney missed out on the best actor statuette to Jean Dujardin, The Descendants won the award for best adapted screenplay and Woody Allen won his fourth Oscar for best original screenplay for Midnight In Paris. As is his usual stance he was not in person to collect it. Read more

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