The Oscars is often viewed as an easy institution to criticise, seeming out of touch with current movie trends and often favouring cosy mediocrity over true artistry, and yet it still manages to cause the entertainment industry to go into effective meltdown for a couple of months at the start of each year.

The ceremony itself is on Sunday 27th February and is televised in the UK by Sky Movies (or for us students, on Sky Player on our laptops!). Presented by the somewhat unexpected choices of James Franco and Anne Hathaway, it promises to be one of the more interesting Oscar nights in recent years.

This week Dominic Wakeford saw Blue Valentine and found it a moving portrayal of a relationship’s disintegration, that owed a lot to its indie cinema roots but fell short of the blockbuster hype surrounding it.

How does one set about making a film about the elitist world of New York ballet without it becoming a turgidly moralising drama about the price of success? Well, one solution would be to employ Darren Aronofsky, the director of Black Swan who has created a completely unhinged, delightfully deranged masterpiece about one girl’s desire to achieve perfection, no matter the consequences. Employing the same unique cinematic style introduced in π and honed in subsequent works such as The Fountain and The Wrestler, Aronofsky has firmly positioned himself as one of Hollywood’s most innovative directors and achieved a long-overdue Oscar nomination this week for the film. On a personal note, I believe the film to be an even greater work than Requiem for a Dream, something I had long considered one of my favourite movies.

This week Dominic Wakeford watched the twelve time Oscar nominated ‘The King’s Speech’ and found a subtly directed, moving film that deserves its Oscar hype. Films about the British Royal Family always seem to achieve a great deal of unexpected success in America, perhaps due to that country’s ongoing fascination with our sense of tradition and history. Recent examples of this phenomena include Stephen Frears’ The Queen, which though an undoubtedly fine film in itself hardly appears, at first glance, to possess the requisite heft and entertainment value needed these days for a British film to escape the confines of our local Odeon and travel across the pond.

This weekend has seen the release of the most eagerly anticipated movie blockbuster of the year, Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows (Part I), the arrival of which comes not with a bang nor whimper, but rather a muffled shout – certainly the most impressive film of director David Yates’ tenure, but let down by the fact it is effectively a work-in-progress, with Potter film fans having to wait until July to find out how the story ends. Is this merely a cynical moneymaking exercise by Warner Bros, or rather an earnest attempt to give fans of J.K Rowling’s novels a wholly faithful screen adaptation of the final work in the saga? I’ll let you be the judge…

Emma Grimwood is pleasantly surprised by A Single Man, showing currently at the Gala cinema

I wasn’t entirely sure what to expect of ‘A Single Man’. My desire to see it was based wholly on the rather cracking trailer, a few mixed reviews, and the somewhat surprising news that Colin Firth had…

Stevie Martin doesn’t understand why Guy Ritchie was asked to direct Sherlock Holmes but watches it regardless..

Alongside Avatar, Guy Ritchie’s reworking of the literary classic has been the other must-see blockbuster released over the Christmas period. Having grossed over $200 million worldwide so far, it may be lagging behind its gargantuan competitor, but nobody was expecting anyone…

Sam Eagers checks out James Cameron’s latest..

Avatar arrived at the end of this year surrounded by a massive amount of hyperbole. Being the most expensive film of all time and hailed as James Cameron’s most gargantuan effort since Titanic twelve years ago, meant that the film has already taken over a billion dollars..

Sam Eagers really doesn’t get the hype surrounding Christian Bale. At all.

I have found a substitute to the expression ‘watching paint dry’. ‘Watching Christian Bale act’ will become a byword for wasting your life. My disregard for him runs deeper than just being a truly awful actor. You see, Christian Bale…

George Twigg investigates the latest contribution to the musical-on-film genre

George Twigg investigates the latest contribution to the musical-on-film genre…

The D21 film-orientated full scale article assault continues with Sam Eagers getting bored by Public Enemies…

A film with Johnny Depp (Pirates of the Caribbean) and Christian Bale (Batman) about the life of one of the most notorious gangsters, the creation of the FBI and several action scenes involving machine guns, meant that I walked in with high expectations. However…

Sam Eagers wishes the lead character would strap on a pair…

I have never been the greatest subscriber to rom-coms, hiding a secret hatred for Hugh ‘I’m going to do something new – a romantic comedy’ Grant. Hugh Grant is the sole reason why reviews call this film ‘original and refreshing’ – because they’ve all…

George Twigg takes us to the all too real world of ‘District 9′
One of the main tenets of science fiction is that monolithic spaceships hovering ominously over major cities are rarely good news. Usually, the appearance of such a craft is followed by a brief period of acute tension, and then the destruction of a major landmark, à la ‘Independence Day’. The audience knows what to expect in these situations, and sure enough, ‘District 9′, the latest outlandish tale to hit the big screen, begins with a hulking vessel casting …

George Twigg enjoys Tarantino’s latest..

When Christopher Marlowe died, having been stabbed in the eye in a bar fight (a gruesome piece of theatre that Quentin Tarantino would no doubt approve of), he had written no more than a handful of plays, yet these few works now form the bedrock of a significant literary reputation. Similarly, Quentin Tarantino is one of the most well-known modern film directors, despite his unprolific nature. The reasons for his ascent to the summit of cinematic celebrity are two; firstly, Reservoir Dogs, which was an incredibly fresh and dynamic take on the tired heist genre, and secondly Pulp Fiction, which is widely recognised as a bona fide modern classic.