What do the pink-footed goose, the snowy owl, Owen Wilson, the magpie, the greater spotted woodpecker, Jack Black, the skua, the great grey owl, Steve Martin and more than seven hundred other birds have in common? They’re all in The Big Year, a truly inexplicable film about more twitching than you’d get if you electrocuted a person who was already very twitchy. Somehow or other, it’s not that bad.
Say what you like about the Big Society, we’re undoubtedly a nation built on Rowan Atkinson’s eyebrows. A paper-thin, utterly ridiculous and guiltily enjoyable romp through MI7’s most unlikely adventures – Johnny English Reborn would be nonsense if it weren’t in such safe hands.
Why do you hate those who love you, Rowan?
Don’t do it, Rosie, there are people who love you!
Reader! Would you like to be able to write convincing clichés about films which are genuinely able to inspire laughter and tears in successive heartbeats? If you would, please keep your sordid phrases well away from Barney’s Version, a work of art which will stay with you long after the lights go up. An uncommonly captivating tale with memorable performances all round, it is superb.
Sally Hawkins can’t help but melt hearts in Made In Dagenham, a forgivably fluffy account of the women’s Ford strikes in 1968. Mixing fact and fiction with a dollop British good humour, its an uplifting yarn that restores your faith in the human capacity for justice. Well, the women-human capacity, anyway.
With their debut feature Jackboots on Whitehall about to open the Raindance Film Festival, the McHenry Brothers are men to watch. We caught up with them in London to talk puppets, Nazis and Terminator 2…
Two parts Team America and one part Battle of Britain, with a healthy dose of Robot Chicken and some Braveheart thrown in for good measure, Jackboots on Whitehall sounds like a thoroughly unsavoury mix – think sage gravy and Minstrels. But don’t be fooled! With the addition of some superb voice talent and snazzy FX, first-time directors the McHenry brothers have created an unorthodox but thrilling cinematic taste sensation. Think chicken hearts and fried banana (trust us on that one).
Snipe London
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