January Overview

Attack of the weather? Hope you made the most of it!

So, for my fellow Brits and many of you around the world, January was a time for weather to strike, may it be on a large scale in some events, or even as small as snowing you in and freezing your car beyond repair! Whatever the situation, January was a month of hibernation and I hope you used this chance to catch up on your film watching.

So, award season has already started, with more underway, The big Christmas films have come and gone and there's been more news on the new Star Wars piccies than any thing else in the cinematic realm. But filmbore goes on...here's a catch up on January.

Pick of the week - Recap

Juan José Campanella's incredible thriller The Secret In Their Eyes was the surprise taker of the 82nd Academy Award for Foreign Film (which was a tough category that year) and it's clear to see why. A courageous picture, covering some dark themes that may be a little tough to stomach but are tied up in an intense and brilliantly thought out tale. With the added mix of a brooding love story beneath, this concoction will stain your brain for some time.

A favourite of many cinephiles, Jean-Pierre Jeunet's second collaboration with Marc Caro is one of the most unique pieces you will ever experience. The City Of Lost Children is amusing, mysterious and charmingly skewed, and the foundations of Jeunet's evolving talent is on show throughout. However, it's the charisma and genius of Dominique Pinon that truly wins over.

A smooth balance between humour and drama is on offer in the deliciously enjoyable Goodbye Lenin!, thanks to a sterling screenplay from Bernd Lichtenberg and the film's director, Wolfgang Becker. Alex has to do everything to hide the changes to Germany from his mother, as her communist social standing will be shaken from discovering her country's evolution during her brief coma.


The acting force that is Tom Hardy meets the eclectic directing hand of  Nicolas Winding Refn in the gritty art-house biopic, Bronson. This is an all together original take on the life-story genre, placing well built humour, creative vignettes and factual impact into a concise, and brutally approachable tale of the most violent and misunderstood criminal the United Kingdom has ever seen. 


...and a new Top 10 arrives!

Thanks to the domination of Django Unchained at the multiplexes, and the furore in the media, both positive and negative, I felt the next Top 10 should follow in the movie's footsteps.

Django Unchained is loosely inspired on the 1966 Italian Western Django, and it's subsequent unofficial sequels. So, I thought it best to compile a comprehensive list of what I believe are the Top 10 "Re-imaginings"; movies in made in the same inspirational vein as Tarantino's latest epic.

However, that is not all...bring your opinions to the pot in the comments section at the bottom of the post, or start a thread on the filmbore facebook page airing your views. Let's get a debate going!  

And don't forget to leave comments below, tweet me @filmbore or post on my Facebook page here. 

Or, you can email me directly at overview@filmbore.co.uk.