Why Don't We Do It in the Road? (A Shame review)

Sometimes things go better in pairs. It helped Noah organise the passengers for his Ark, it's mostly prevented us from wearing odd shoes, and it's often the basis of fruitful collaborations: Bert & Ernie, Abbott & Costello, Alcohol & Regret. This extends to art as well; Dalí couldn't have functioned without the aid of his muse Gala. John Lennon and Paul McCartney wrote some of the most renowned pop songs of all time, and neither produced as good work separately.

And, of course, there's the world of film. Given how prevalent the auteur theory is in film criticism, and the importance we place on directors, we can't help but pay special attention to the interplay between them and certain collaborators. Would Werner Herzog be cinema's lovable crazy uncle without Klaus Kinski driving him on? Probably not. Martin Scorsese would never have made Raging Bull were it not for De Niro visiting him in hospital with a copy of Jake La Motta's autobiography. Sometimes a creative partner just brings out the best in a director, and we're seeing something similar in the relationship between Michael Fassbender and Steve McQueen.

No, not that one.

That one.

(Normally I'd put an alternative poster up, but the one I've chosen is pretty NSFW, you'll see why after the jump.)

Not Every Flowering Dream May Bloom (A Prometheus review)

I imagine by now that all of you interested in Prometheus probably know how it's going to go down, who will die and what the big mystery is because the promotional campaign for this pretty much tells you everything. Say what you will about The Dark Knight Rises' lacklustre marketing; at least the trailers preserved some degree of intrigue.

So don't go into Prometheus expecting to have your lid blown off by some big epoch-shattering reveal that will change how you perceive life as you know it. Also don't go into Prometheus expecting a straight-up prequel to Alien, because while it slides into the overall continuity well enough and shares some similar themes, it's a different beast and makes its own territory, for better or worse. It's in the Alien universe, in the same way that The Avengers is in the same universe as Thor and the Iron Man films, but it shouldn't be compared to Alien. It should be judged on its own terms. How does it hold up?

Well...

Poster by Ibraheem Youssef.