Movie Reviews
By a comfortable distance the most ambitious mainstream film offering, The Tree of Life took a family’s grief over the death of their young son and extrapolated it to incorporate all the wonders of the universe from the beginning of time. An occasionally bewildering tale, then, but a bewitching one too, decorated with fine performances from Brad Pitt and Jessica Chastain (and a show-stealing turn from debutant Laramie Eppler) and featuring some of the most jaw-dropping imagery from the natural world this side of a David Attenborough box set.
Tomas Alfredson’s Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy was panned by some critics who deemed it not thrilling enough to qualify as a proper spy thriller, those critics obviously unaware that such is the very point John Le Carré’s novels make. Gary Oldman put in a potential Oscar-winning turn as George Smiley, the retired spymaster who returns to London’s ‘Circus’ — or MI6 — to winkle out a Russian double-agent. Colin Firth, Toby Jones, Tom Hardy and Ciaran Hinds were among the superb cast who contributed to an excellent psychological thriller, set against the marvellously grimy backdrop of 1960s London.
