Arts

Perhaps the most surprising fact to come out of this latest Bond film was that its theme song “Writing’s On The Wall” is written and sung by English singer-songwriter Sam Smith. What’s even more impressive is that the song was written in under half an hour and the demo recorded thereafter is the actual music used in the film itself. The 24th Bond film to feature the suave Agent 007, Spectre sees Oscar-winning filmmaker Sam Mendes return to direct his second Bond film after 2012’s Skyfall and English actor Daniel Craig reprise the famed role for his fourth time. With a budget that hovers between USD$245 – 300 million, Spectre is…

The promise of not one but 2 Tom Hardys in “Legend” is hard to ignore. Tom Hardy is on point playing Reggie and Ronnie Kray, a pair of gangster brothers. Set in the East End of London during the 1960’s, the story revolves around the short rise and fall of the Kray twins. The admittedly familiar recount of the ‘gangsters rising to fame’ with London’s most notorious gangsters is shown in film’s stereotypically romanticised view of organised crime in “Legend”. The characters seem present on screen only as caricature. Playing as Reggie, Hardy takes on a charming façade as a gang…

With all the commercial success the “Step Up” series has received throughout the years, we were hoping that “Breaking Through” could deliver something just as spectacular, or better. We left the theatre with our expectations completely broken. Written and directed by John Swetnam, the film is centred on Casey Wright (Sophia Aguiar), an aspiring dancer who is struggling to balance her mundane day job and passion for dance with her crew. One day, Casey is miraculously discovered by Quinn (Jay Ellis), who hopes to give her the thousands of views and fans that she dreams of. But Casey has to risk not…

Joe Wright’s “Pan” fails to take off! Instead, it takes a plunging freefall. Have you ever seen a cake that looked so tasty you wanted to make love to it? Imagine three tiers of white, luscious, spongy goodness beckoning to you. Lovingly handcrafted marzipan petals pressed onto sweet fondant. Buttercream swirls piped onto the sides, spelling out ‘Eat me, you filthy animal’. You oblige. You sink your fork into the perfect layer of icing, and bring the heaping cake-pile to your mouth. You gag. It’s disgusting. It tastes like everything you hate about life: bills, screaming babies, and Trump running…

We have an instinctive distrust of any film that starts with a jump scare. Partly because it’s a cheap trick – mostly because we don’t enjoy sitting through a whole 94-minute flick with soiled pants. The main weapon of horror still scares this writer, much to his chagrin. The writer confesses he’s an extremely easy person to scare. Horror just isn’t our forte. The fact that the writer’s seat smelt faintly of vomit didn’t help at all to distract from the fear. Luckily, “Pay The Ghost” isn’t all horror. Nor is it much of a movie. Nicholas Cage is Mike…

What? Matt Damon is an astronaut again? This isn’t an “Interstellar” sequel right? Thankfully, Damon isn’t the bad guy this time and he’s thoroughly likeable. He’s also trapped 140 million miles from home. Oops. Mark Watney (Matt Damon) is a botanist and astronaut in an international team on a manned mission to Mars. But the mission is jeopardised when a Martian sandstorm comes a-calling, encroaching towards the team’s base of operations with skin-flaying force. Facing the insurmountable threat, the 6-man team is forced to leave. However, the trek towards the spaceship goes awry and Watney is walloped by a flying satellite dish…