Sweet Nothings

It felt like Disney were almost daring me to take against Saving Mr Banks . A film celebrating the making of one of their own beloved classics, with all-round-nice-guy Tom Hanks on board to ensure Uncle Walt comes across as cuddly as possible, plus the highly imaginative casting of Emma Thompson alongside him as a brittle English lady? Self-indulgent don’t even begin to cover it. And yet, the fulsome praise in the aftermath of the initial previews suggested that my cynicism was entirely unfounded. Had Disney pulled off the audacious trick of making a great movie out of such transparently cynical ingredients? The story has Mary Poppins's author (PL) Travers-ing across the Atlantic to do battle with Disney and his minions over her creation’s soul. Too protective of Mary to let her go and too proud to admit she needs the Mouse’s money, she represents a spin on the stock fish-out-of-water character – someone who ought to be completely out of her depth, but who exerts h...

I had reservations about Gravity going in, as it has been compared to (amongst other things) 2001, which for me is a tediously dry art piece rather than an actual film. I needn’t have worried, as Alfonso Cuaron’s film is far more concerned with the fates of actual characters than pretentious esoteric musings on the nature of humanity. No monkey suits, either. It starts off with Ryan Stone (Sandra Bullock), Matt Kowalski (George Clooney) and some other guy – who, if this were Star Trek, would be sporting a really red shirt – on a spacewalk. Sandra is nervy and inexperienced, whilst George is all smooth and Clooneyish. Some technobabble later and sundry space junk is flying at them at alarming speeds. Let the thrills begin. The BBFC now quite often warns viewers, tongue often in cheek, when films contain ‘mild peril’. Gravity boasts sustained sequences of genuine jeopardy, of the type that’s conspicuously absent in, say, Superman and General Zod smashing up an entire city of...

Arcade Fire have been accused in some quarters of lacking levity, which maybe goes some way towards explaining the promotional bumph for their fourth record – the pseudonyms, the masks, the  bonkers long-form video , and so on. Clearly Reflekor is an attempt to push the boat out musically too, the hiring of James Murphy heralding extended track lengths and an emphasis on beats more than riffs. Win Butler has also talked a lot about how visiting Haiti inspired many of the songs, and how the locals respond to music in a more primal way rather than viewing everything through the Western prism of “rock”. Such comments are on a hiding to nothing really, as a multi-award winning, adored band will never be able to escape their pop-cultural baggage. The best they can do is to throw out some new shapes, mix things up a bit and hope not to lose the qualities that got them here in the first place. It must be said that all this makes far more sense live than on MP3, especially sin...