Charlotte Stretch

After Hitch, Wedding Crashers and – most recently – Crazy Stupid Love, the wingman/buddy movie is slowly coming into vogue, establishing a canon all of its own. Though How to Stop Being a Loser treads very similar (read: derivative) ground,…

It’s 35 years since The Tenant, the conclusion of Polanski’s feted “apartment trilogy”: a masterpiece-standard trio of unsettling movies set largely in claustrophobic big-city apartments, centred around the inner turmoil of a tormented lead…

2011 was Ryan Gosling’s year, and Drive was his crowning achievement. Or so the polls would have us believe. Nicholas Winding Refn’s movie, about a nameless driver who gets mixed up a dodgy robbery, topped virtually every end-of-year…

Following the huge successes of Catch Me if You Can, The Aviator and now J. Edgar – and with a rumoured Sinatra biopic in the works – Leonardo DiCaprio may be giving Michael Sheen a run for his money as a one-man biopic powerhouse. His turn…

The documentary boom of the last ten years has, without doubt, produced some corkers; but David Weissman's almost unbearably moving look at the AIDS crisis in San Francisco surely ranks as one of the finest. A tough subject matter, yes;…

Proving that the old adage "truth is stranger than fiction" still stands, Jes Benstock's kitsch documentary about the history and staging of the Alternative Miss World contest may be the weirdest, most surreal hour and a half you'll ever…

Having started life as a play, Philip Seymour Hoffman's directorial debut retains much of its stagey flavour. But it also proves that Hoffman's flair for the bittersweet - evident in several of his previous roles - is not confined to his…

Having made her name largely through comedy, it's interesting to see Olivia Colman try serious in this gritty urban drama. Also taking an unfamiliar role in proceedings is Paddy Considine, who makes his debut appearance behind the camera as…

With his 2006 feature debut, Kidulthood, Menhaj Huda established himself as a promising young director whose best work was probably still to come. It's a shame to report that with follow-up Everything & Nothing, he still hasn't quite…

Very often, the romantic comedy survives on formula and inevitability. Not that that necessarily makes it less successful - it's worked well for many a good movie. Nonetheless, it's admirable to see Crazy, Stupid, Love trying something more…