Ben Stiller feels a bit old-hat in Hollywood terms now. Now it’s all Gosling this and Fassbender that, the days of the Frat Pack seem a distant memory, and indeed, you’d be unlikely to see anyone getting excited over a new Stiller movie, particularly a remake of a 1947 film starring Danny Kaye. However, The…

Is Sean Penn the next Liam Neeson?

Gangster Squad is based on the true tale of a group of LAPD officers and detectives in the late 1940s who used, shall we say, extra-judicial methods to smash the operations that allowed gangster Micky Cohen to control the underworld of the US west coast. The film is directed by Ruben Fleischer, who has mainly worked in the worlds of advertising and music-video production, but has two previous films (Zombieland and 30 Minutes or Less) to his credit. An ensemble cast including Josh Brolin, Sean Penn, Ryan Gosling, Nick Nolte and Emma Stone play out a plot we get the feeling we have already seen before.

Josh Brolin and Ryan Gosling are part of a squad. A Gangster Squad.

Grumpy actor to silence his critics. PERMANENTLY.

Gosling, gangsters and Tommy guns. We’re sold.

This week saw the release of emotional drama Now Is Good, a film adaptation of the popular novel Before I Die, starring Dakota Fanning as a terminal cancer sufferer hellbent on enjoying the life she has left. In honour of the release, we delve beneath the alabaster skin and bright blue eyes to bring you everything you ever wanted to know about the child star turned poised young woman.

Ooh, another reason to despise James Holmes.

Hollywood’s self appointed Minister for Foreign Affairs and Telling the World What’s What backs Argentina in the Falklands dispute.

Paolo Sorrentino’s last film, Il Divo, was a tour-de-force, an inventive, intelligent and witty semi-biopic of Italian political titan Giulio Andreotti that took Cannes by storm. The follow up is also intelligent, witty and inventive. It’s also deeply irritating, uneven and unlikeable. Shame.