LIGHT Blue determination posed a tough challenge for Oxford’s polo players, but the Blues’ excellent  teamwork and superior tactics enabled them to eventually dominate the scoreboard.
The university polo team faced off against Cambridge on 9th of June 2007, for the annual varsity match at Guards Polo Club. This year Oxford was led by their veteran captain and talisman Alexander Gleeson, who superbly marshalled the team to a deserved win over the light blues.
Cambridge, for their part, could not make their three goal handicap advantage count for much, despite the game being played ‘off the stick’, as has been the varsity match tradition.
The first of four chukkas (periods) saw Oxford’s confident play cancel out Cambridge’s opening goal and catapult them into an early lead, with the dark blues ending the period with a comforting 3-1 lead. Jamie Dundas, who would eventually contribute two of Oxford’s goals, had an especially strong showing in the opening chukka, helping Oxford nudge ahead. Cambridge though would not be dismissed so easily, and they got back into the match in the second period, drawing level 4-4.
Oxford, however, would not be deterred in their quest to avenge the previous year’s bitter Varsity defeat. Carlos and Memo Cressida, Oxford’s two professional Varsity match coaches, provided valuable tactical advice which helped the squad regain the initiative. The final two chukkas witnessed an inspiring Oxford revival, with solid teamwork – combined with individual skill – giving the Dark blues the edge.
Henrietta Seligman and Fredrik Vannberg, despite playing their first Varsity match, showed impressive defensive prowess, riding off their opposite numbers and denying Cambridge’s most dangerous player, Ollie Clarke, the space to really show his skills. Quick movements of the ball up the pitch allowed Dundas and Gleeson to catch Cambridge unawares and run in a succession of goals, furthering the gap between the two sides.
Seligman in particular displayed a fearless attitude, brushing off a fall, impressively saving a penalty in the third chukka, and then creating an Oxford goal.
The highlight of the afternoon, however, was a rapid-fire Oxford goal, with Vannberg dispossessing his opposite number, quickly dispatching the ball up the field for Gleeson, the official match ‘Most Valuable Player’, to tear through the Cambridge ranks for another Oxford tap-in, all in the space of a few seconds.
The writing was on the wall: Gleeson would tally seven times in the course of Oxford’s 9-5 triumph, a fitting end for both the afternoon and the season.

OXFORD’S rugby players began the season in fine form with an undefeated tour of the USA in September.
The Blues defeated a New York Athletic Club side twice in two days before walloping the All-American Collegiate XV 44-0 at West Point Military Academy.
The comprehensive nature of the victories in America bode well for Oxford as they look to win a Varsity match for the first time since 2004. After an initial 24-7 victory over NYAC on 16th September, the Blues really hit their straps the following day running out 43-7 winners against the US side.
Jon Chance, Peter Clarke and Chris Haw all landed two tries each, with Tim Catling also grabbing a score.
Captain Joe Roff’s side’s fine form continued five days later with a further seven tries scored in difficult conditions, ending the tour on a resounding high note.
Upon returning home, Oxford’s fine early-season form continued with a resounding 48-14 victory over Japanese side Kanto Gaukin University. Left wing Euan Sadden produced a performance to remember, scoring a hat-trick of tries to help the Blues recover from going 7-0 down early on.
With further tries from Tom Tombleson, Anthony Jackson and Chance, fly-half Craig McMahon slotted four conversions to ease Oxford home in their first game at Iffley Road this season.
They next face Trinity College, Dublin, on Saturday at Iffley Road, kick-off 12.00 noon.

It’s very easy to think of sport and art as two very different, and even opposed, parts of life. There are a good number of ‘artsy’ types who pride themselves on their incompetence and indifference towards sport, and who would rather hear their mother’s chastity raucously questioned than be accused of knowing just how well Arsenal have started this season. And there are all those sports fans (though perhaps fewer in Oxford than I remember from that distant outside world) who seem to think that their hard-won physique will instantly melt away if they even think about doing something as ridiculous as stepping into a theatre or reading some poetry. Personally, I can’t claim to be a great sportsman. And my artistic achievements are never going to amount to anything spectacular. I am, though, a fan of both the arts and the sports. There is no need to chose between them. Sport and art have a long and happy history together, and, (like any good marriage or tutorial pairing) that’s a lot to do with the fact that deep down they’re not so different from each other.
The Greeks were the great sportsmen and women of the ancient world. They also gave us the first great examples of sport in art. Our modern Olympic games are named after those held in Greece for over a thousand years, but that was just one of several international sporting festivals that were held alongside numerous local events. And the Greeks loved depicting these sports in various works of art almost as much as they loved watching and taking part in them. Winners would commission paintings, (now lost to us), and statues to record their achievements, and sporting scenes were popular as designs for ceramic pots – especially vessels for drinking wine. The Ashmolean has a fantastic collection where, more than two thousand years later, we can still watch, in all their naked and rampant glory, ancient athletes competing in the middle of other triumphs than ours.
Other popular designs included scenes of religious life, and it seems right that sport, religion, art and wine should all be mixed up like that. Athletes would ask the gods to favour them, and then celebrate at a party afterwards where short poems written to mark their victory would be recited. It was all part of a celebration of the exceptional in life, and what was special included both sporting and artistic achievement. Music was a very important part of several festivals, and the awarding of prizes for artistic merit, such as those awarded to playwrights in Athens, was done in the same way as the awarding of prizes to athletes.
Sporting victory also had social implications, pointing out that you had the leisure and wealth to dedicate yourself to sport. Making this clear without arousing too much jealousy may have been one of the functions of the poems athletes paid to have written about their victories. Short versions would be recited soon after the contest, whilst more elaborate poems were worked up ready for the athlete’s arrival home when they would probably be performed in public. They often make a big deal of dedicating much of the glory of the victory to the community in general, presumably to encourage them to listen to more of their champion’s self-congratulation without getting too envious. Drunken rugby teams take note.
These poems were only really popular for a short period about five hundred years before the birth of Christ, but many of them have long been regarded as amongst the finest literary productions of the ancient world. The odes of Pindar are particularly admired. These were all written to record sporting victories and are largely responsible for the use of the ode as a form by English poets of the last few hundred years. Without the athletes, who were Pindar’s customers, Wordsworth would not have written his Ode on Intimations and we would never have had the odes of Shelley or Keats. Theses poets weren’t writing about sport, but the art form they were using only exists because of athletic competitions. The great writers of the classical world were often inspired more directly by sport. Homer has a long passage on ceremonial funeral games which led Virgil to include a similar section on sports in the Aeneid. Maybe it’s for the same reason that there’s a short discussion of Gaelic sports in Ulysses.
Sport has often found a place in the art of the modern world as well. One of my favourite books is The Compleat Angler by Izaak Walton. First published in 1653, it’s a practical guide to fishing that also manages to touch on just about everything else important in life. It’s a meditation on a much loved sport and all the problems of living a good and happy life that’s gone through more editions than any book other than the Bible. And it has pictures.
More recent works of literature about sport include The Loneliness of the Long Distance Runner. It’s a short story by Alan Silletoe, later made into a film, about a teenage boy in a borstal in the 1950s who finds a measure of escape from his rather grim life by dedicating himself to the sport of, surprisingly, long distance running. Just like a Greek athlete, he uses sport to transcend himself. More importantly, he’s eventually able to use his achievements to spread a little bit of subversion and strike a small blow at a society that’s always been trying to put him down. Just like Pindar knew, sport can be dangerous when you’re not careful.
The sport best represented in British art is probably cricket. There are pictures of games that look something like cricket in fourteenth century manuscripts in the Bodleian, and depictions in the painted windows of the same age in the cathedrals of Gloucester and Canterbury. Cricket as we know it today emerged during the Eighteenth Century, and the first paintings were made around the 1740s. These paintings and engravings are invaluable to historians who can use them when trying to reconstruct early forms of the game. Many, for example, show just how far apart the two stumps used at the time were placed. More than big enough to allow the ball to pass between them without dislodging the bales by even a hair’s breadth!
Cricket was universally acknowledged to be a fine ‘manly’ game, and it very soon became the done thing for a boy or young man to be painted holding a cricket bat, legs casually crossed. Just as the odes of the ancient Greeks could play an important social purpose, artists were soon able to use cricket to make a point. An engraving of 1778 shows ‘Miss Wicket’ adopting the clichéd but very unladylike pose of the bat-wielding, cricket-playing young gentleman. If that wasn’t warning enough to the men-folk of the world, her friend ‘Miss Trigger’ carries a rifle and a brace of pheasants. The art of cricket was being parodied for a very socially engaged purpose.
Cricket remains a popular subject for artists today, but it’s certainly not the only sport to do so. Even ignoring the kitsch on sale in any sport team’s magastore, (as the are invariably dubbed), sport continues to enjoy a healthy and evolving relationship with art. This time next year, the V&A will be hosting an exhibition on ‘Fashion and Sport’ exploring the relationship between the two. Sporting memorabilia continues to blur the line between sport and art. Think, for example, of all those football shirts framed just like paintings and hung on the walls of pubs. I’m sure the Greeks, with their illustrated amphorae, would salute such a familiar confluence of art, alcohol and athleticism.
Even the last century’s most celebrated artist had a fascination with sport. Pablo Picasso might not have been much of a cricketer – few Spaniards are – but he maintained a life-long interest in bull-fighting. Not only were fights staged in his honour, but he also produced posters for local events. A bull appears in his famous painting Guernica, and bull-fighting featured as a theme in his work throughout his career, just as it did in Goya’s a hundred and fifty years before. Like many other artists of the Twentieth Century, he was attracted by the mythic connotations of bull-fighting and never shied away from its violent nature. In fact, that violence was an integral part of what made the sport such a compelling subject to Picasso and other artists.
Cinema too has had a long love affair with sport. Some of the oldest films from the turn of the last century are records of football matches. Because early cameras could only hold a few minutes of film, there was no way to film a whole match. As a result, there’s not much footage of actual play. It’s hard to predict before a match when exactly the most exciting twenty seconds are going to be. Instead, the cameras would capture the shots of the crowd and the teams emerging from the tunnel onto the pitch. Not quite Match of the Day, but it was a start.
Today, some of the most popular films in history are about sport. Boxing films have a particularly rich tradition producing such classics as Rocky, (winner of the Oscar for Best Picture) and Raging Bull, for which Robert De Niro won the Best Actor award. Whilst Rocky gives us a rather schmaltzy underdog story, Raging Bull doesn’t flinch from the raw savagery of boxing. Like many great sports films, Raging Bull uses sport partly to explore the psychology of its protagonist. De Niro plays Jake LaMotta, a talented boxer from the Bronx who climbs towards the top of his sport before losing it all. He ends up destroying himself with jealousy over his second wife, Vicki. LaMotta’s destructive passions are reflected in the film’s uncompromisingly violent boxing scenes, and the similarity of the story to Othello has often been remarked upon by critics.
I’m pretty sure the Greeks would have recognised this type of art, a complicated exploration of combat and contest. Somewhat ironically, I think they’d have preferred it to the 1981 film Chariots of Fire, which is about the 1924 Olympics. Like Rocky, it won the Oscar for Best Picture, and like Raging Bull it uses sport to explore the psychologies and relationships of its characters. No Greek, though, would share the Scottish runner Liddell’s worries that his religion and his sporting commitments were in conflict.
Fever Pitch by Nick Hornby became another popular sporting film in 1997. Fever Pitch is different to other sports films though. It’s not told from the perspective of a sportsman, but that of a fan following Arsenal in their 1988-9 season. It’s also a romantic comedy as well as a sports film. It’s not so much a film about excelling or beating the odds, but about sport as a part of someone’s life alongside things like love which is, in its own little way, almost as important. The structure of the football season, familiar to any fan, shapes the film and jollies it along; hope and rebirth in late August, confusion and uncertainty through the winter, climaxes of triumph and despair in May. Cricket in the summer if they’re broad-minded. It’s the modern man’s equivalent of the agricultural cycle.
One of the reasons that sport and art go together so well is that they’re so very similar. The experience of going to a sporting event like a big football match isn’t so different to, say, going to the opera. Bear with me on this one. You make a special journey to a venue which is specially put aside from day to day life for one particular activity to see the best people in the world doing something which, a lot of the time, is being done completely for its own sake. We even dress up in a special way for both. Alright, footballers play football because they earn a lot of money, but they’re only paid that much because millions of people care a lot about, and will spend a lot of money on, an activity that has no direct effect on the outside world. Which is where sport differs from religion, which claims to affect the whole world and more. Sport’s a bit closer to how we think about art sometimes, as something that’s worth doing for its own sake. After all, we could keep fit by simply running on a tread mill all on our own, and we’re all a bit suspicious of ideas that sport ‘builds character’ or teaches ‘leadership’, but we still carry on playing sport despite the apparent lack of purpose. In the same way, we can still care a lot about literature and music even if we’re not sure they can do anything to transform our lives or society. We like art just because we like it. It makes us happy.
It’s no coincidence that football is called ‘the beautiful game’. A game of football can be very pretty to watch. Most fans have a few favourites. The Brazil team of 1982, Arsenal 2002-3, Leicester City 1996-7. Maybe that last one’s just me. Its beauty is one of the reasons football’s so popular. When it’s played well, it’s a free flowing game with plenty of opportunity for invention and displays of individual virtuosity. It’s almost unique amongst sports for the degree to which it rewards improvisation, and the best teams always surprise you with the way they can rethink traditional forms of play and movement and do something unexpected with the familiar. Doesn’t that sound like some types of art? Isn’t it a bit like an elaborate, improvised dance form? Some narrow minded people might say that’s going a bit far but as the recent goings on at Chelsea show, (Mourinho was sacked partly, the rumour goes, for not getting his team to play attractive enough football), football fans do care about aesthetics. A team’s never considered truly great until it’s won consistently by playing football that’s beautiful to watch.
People often talk about the aesthetic aspect of cricket. A well timed shot can be graceful, but it’s the ebb and flow of a cricket match that’s really satisfying. Like one of those big Romantic symphonies, a long sonnet cycle or a TV series, a five day test match grows organically with almost infinitely complex shapes and rhythms. If you listen to Test Match Special on the radio, you’ll know how obsessed cricket fans can be by statistics. They’ll count anything, and tell you everything down to when the last time was that three no-balls were bowled in an over from the Nursery End during the second innings of a match where less than three hundred runs were being chased and the umpire had egg sandwiches for tea. This obsession with statistics is one way of making sense of such a fantastically complexly structured phenomenon. It helps pick out all the different shapes and stories which overlap each other in any one match. It’s just like trying to remember all the schemes and patterns and stories going on at once in Paradise Lost or Ulysses. Every single ball is a contest between bowler and batsman that can only be understood as part of that over which you need to think of as part of the way that session’s gone which is just one part of a match which fits into that particular test series which is part of a history of matches going back one hundred years. And then there’s the story of how that batsman’s been playing that summer, (perhaps he’s nervous having done really badly the week before), and maybe there’s a big rivalry between him and the bowler, and then you need to think of the way this particular pitch behaved in similar conditions three years ago… It’s just the same way a work of literature like The Faerie Queene works, piling story on top of story to create an intensely meaningful whole.
Which is why people care. We’re always hearing snotty remarks about how silly it is to be so worked up about whether an artificial bladder crosses a line or not, but quit
honestly that’s very short-sighted. As I see it, it’s a great miracle that people can find meaning in such a silly activity. It’s fantastic that they care. People sometimes talk about fans as if they suffer from some pitiful mental disability, some infantile delusion. But really, it takes anything but stupidity to concentrate intensely on something for ninety minutes. We all know that from lectures. And why should it be pitiable to care about what happens on a sports field? Is it really any different to going to a theatre and being moved by what you rationally know are just people pretending to do things they’re not? When you take the time to learn some of the intricate details of any sport, it almost always proves to be just as rewarding in its own way as any art form. Sports fans recognise this. Manchester United brand their stadium at Old Trafford as ‘The Theatre of Dreams’. They know that what they’re offering to people has a lot of the same qualities as what’s offered up at Covent Garden.
What I like about art is that it offers the spectacle of form and narrative and beauty, all combined in the same action. Well, sport’s exactly the same. A game of tennis, as Robert Frost recognised when he famously said he’d rather play tennis with the net down than write free verse, has form in the same way a sonnet does. And when a master of the sport like Roger Federer plays, he uses that form to do things that are really beautiful and add to what’s known as ‘Tennis History’, which is really just another story. Like King Lear is just another story. The Greeks loved stories, and they loved sport too. I’m sure they’d have loved modern Britain where, today, we’re lucky enough to have some of the best sport and some of the best art in the world right on our doorsteps. So go and join the college hockey team and then write a poem about it.

2007 has already seen the release of albums by the two front-figures of Animal Collective. Panda Bear’s acclaimed Person Pitch sounds like an acid-tripping Brian Wilson singing the Lion King soundtrack from the bottom of a well. Meanwhile, Avey Tare’s collaboration with his Icelandic wife Kría Brekkan, Pullhair Rubeye, made for rather more difficult listening: the pair recorded the album and then decided it sounded better running backwards, so released it in reverse.
Strawberry Jam, Animal Collective’s eighth album proper, has elements of both these offerings. ‘Chores’, with its looped Beach Boys melody, could have been pulled straight off Panda’s solo effort, while various electronic glitches in ‘#1’ and ‘Cuckoo Cuckoo’ recall the unsettling pulses of the Pullhair experience.
Overall, though, Strawberry Jam is dominated by Tare’s distinctive vocals and upbeat if often disconcerting melodies. At times it is almost poppy – album opener and highlight, the brilliant ‘Peacebone’, is punctuated by a catchy refrain and a cheery beat – but this masks occasionally disturbing lyrics. “And an obsession with the past is like a kid flying/…when we did believe in magic and we didn’t die”, Tare yelps, “it was the mountains that made the kids scream”.
This is perhaps Animal Collective’s finest album: it finds them at their most expansive and accommodating, and is certainly more accessible then its predecessor Feels. It is hard to see how the band could possibly still be lumped in with the ‘psych-folk’ scene. Pigeonholing the band as such is to do them a disservice.
This album makes for a luscious and exciting musical experience, bubbling and buoyant. The contribution of the whole ‘collective’ is always evident, be it the creative guitar-work, the electronic bleeps and scratches or the rainforest percussion. All in all, this Strawberry Jam is a decidedly tasty treat.

Returning for a third album of thrillingly expansive prog, perennially underachieving Mancunians Oceansize have succeeded yet again in producing brilliant music destined to go largely unheard. Too heavy for the indie kids, too pretty for the metal-heads, too weird for anyone with a shred of sense, they have always fallen between all possible stools. Even singer Mike Vennart has admitted that, after a half-tilt at commercial success on sophomore effort Everyone into Position, this is a return to their previous expansiveness. Clocking in at 65 minutes over its 8 tracks, the band certainly haven’t held back, and the album seems all the better for it. Songs build organically, often imperceptibly, to dazzling choruses and dizzying climaxes. ‘Unfamiliar’ and ‘Trail of Fire’ see the band effortlessly scaling familiar heights; while album centrepiece ‘Only Twin’ steers its bombast just the right side of pomposity. ‘Savant’ and closer ‘The Frame’, meanwhile, see a gentler side coming through. The latter in particular eschews the easy fix of cathartic noise for a sweetly melodic coda.
There are missteps, but that’s hardly surprising for a band of this kind. 10-minute mood piece ‘An Old Friend of the Christies’ aims for the sort of tense atmospherics at which Mogwai so excel, but instead breaks up the band’s momentum. The real surprise, though, on an album which sees the band often expertly ploughing familiar furrows, is that the highlight is their most outlandish song to date. ‘Sleeping Dogs and Dead Lions’ is the most baffling piece of math-rock you will hear all year; it also contains more ideas than most bands have in their entire careers, with complex polyrhythms, scat singing, violent screaming and a plethora of choruses. On one such refrain, Vennart croons, “You put the fun in dysfunction”. A fitting epithet for a band of unrivalled creativity and growing conviction.

González found unlikely fame thanks to a Sony Bravia advert which featured his charming cover of moody fellow Swedish synth-pop geniuses The Knife’s ‘Heartbeats’. Nothing on his first record matched that track and nothing on this, the long-awaited follow up, does either. But that is not to say that González is a one-trick-pony. His minimal vocal and guitar style, combined with achingly sparse melodies and fleeting lyrical images distinguish him from the crowd of angsty singer-songwriters clogging the airwaves. González is most reminiscent of the influential folk/blues maestro Bert Jansch. Strident, insistent guitar parts combined with a slightly detached vocal style are characteristic both of Jansch’s work and of In Our Nature.  
The melodies on the album at first appear more upbeat than those of its predecessor, but the profoundly Nordic existential-angst that premeated the lyrics of Veneer is still very much in evidence. Soaring closer ‘Cycling Trivialities’ concludes at the last that “it all comes down to… trivialities”, and the record is haunted by González’ fear of being ‘let down’.
A reinterpretation of Massive Attack’s ‘Teardrop’ perhaps attempts to replicate the success of ‘Heartbeats’, and although it does not have the power of that track it is still a creative take on the original. González seems to have a talent for taking a track from any genre and making it very much a José González song (Joy Division and Kylie have also been the on the receiving end of his makeover treatment).
In Our Nature is an unspectacular album, and does little to move away from the simple setup of González’s debut: multitracked vocals on the title track and occasional intrusions of basic percussion represent the only broadening of the musical range. Yet in his quiet way González is able to craft beautiful and glowingly sincere songs which are well worth a listen.

Slowcore as a genre first appeared in the American music press in the late eighties and early nineties, with the advent of indie rock as the Americans understood it. Since then, however, it has been used to cover a multitude of sins. At first, bands such as Galaxie 500, Low and Codeine were classified as slowcore upon their entrance into the American ‘indie’ music scene: journalistic shorthand for intense, moody, and most importantly, depressing.
Described as such, slowcore bands seem like little more than the American counterpart of late eighties post-punk outfits, albeit without the bad hair and eyeliner. Indeed, upon first listen, there is little to distinguish the lush, ambient instrumentation and swirling guitars of Mark Kozelek’s Red House Painters on his 1993 album Rollercoaster from the drowsier moments on the The Cure’s classic Disintegration.
The healthy use (or abuse) of static by Codeine on their debut album Frigid Stars in 1990 calls to mind better known shoegaze bands such as My Bloody Valentine. Elliott Smith shares his whispery vocals and lo-fi sensibilities – most evident in early albums such as Either/Or or Roman Candle – with other American indie-rock contemporaries such as Sebadoh and Eric’s Trip. At the same time, acoustic moments such as ‘Miss Misery’ of Good Will Hunting fame are reminiscent of nothing so much as a slightly matured Conor Oberst, or a watered down Iron and Wine.  
Perhaps what the sub-genre is best encapsulated by is a mood – melancholy. Slowcore is The Smiths without the irony, and The Cure without the kitsch. It’s not just about the lyrics – even Mark Kozelek can’t match Robert Smith’s throes of despair on Pornography. What Low achieves in albums such as Secret Name is instrumentation that is simultaneously lush and sparse, haunting vocals, united with lyrics disquietingly evocative of loneliness and loss. It is easy to imagine Elliott Smith’s ‘Between The Bars’ playing over a scene in Sofia Coppola’s Lost In Translation, as a lone car winds through the sleepless streets of Tokyo – the perfect ode to modern-day alienation.
Certainly slowcore bands sometimes fall short – ‘Crabwalk’ off American Music Club’s Everclear is closer to country than Shania Twain has been in almost a decade, while Elliott Smith seemed to have outgrown his days of meager instrumentation by his later work. For the most part, however, this is music for funerals – and with the lyrics to match.

For many, 2007 was to be the year in which the cinema was the place to see and be seen. With about 80 films released, it seemed a fairly safe bet that there would be something to cater to everyone’s tastes. However, it was also a summer of ‘threequels’- five of the ten highest-grossing films have been third installments of previous box office winners. So, we should ask whether the so-called summer of cinema represented a return to a golden age of film or just the film industry’s increased ability to churn out the kind of cinematic experience that inexplicably gets bums on seats. The many eyes of the Cherwell have been busy and here we present a breakdown of this summer’s most memorable films…

HITS
Death Proof

Heavily influenced by the low-budget high-carnage exploitation films of the ‘60s and ‘70s, Death Proof follows the exploits of maniacal stuntman Mike, expertly portrayed by Kurt Russell, and who uses his specially-reinforced car to stalk and brutally murder groups of unsuspecting girls. The plot may seem pedestrian but there is much more than meets the eye here; the dialogue is razor sharp, the stunts are jaw-dropping and the performances flawless. It’s unlikely that Tarantino’s latest offering will meet all tastes but, let’s face it, that’s not really the purpose of any Tarantino film. Ultimately, those appreciative of Tarantino’s slick, daring and borderline offensive style will find much to love about Death Proof. Despite receiving a lukewarm reception from some quarters, it seems clear that in time Death Proof will be recognised as one of Tarantino’s masterpieces.
Mary Clare Waireri

Tell No One

Based on the bestselling novel by Harlen Coben, Tell No One opens with the brutal murder of Margot Beck. Several years after the tragedy, her husband Alex (Francois Cluzet) receives an e-mail containing a link to a live video feed of a woman he believes to be Margot. Haunted by the images he sees, and the accompanying message that he must “Tell no one”, Alex is convinced that his wife is still alive. As Alex embarks on a struggle to uncover the truth behind the e-mail, he becomes entangled in a web of deceipt and crime.  One of the best things about Tell No One is Cluzet; not only is he convincing as the grief-tormented widower, but also the sense of impotence he feels as he finds himself increasingly embroiled in a situation beyond his control is perfectly expressed. In short, Tell No One has all the ingredients of a tense, unpredictable and stimulating thriller.
Genevieve Grey
Knocked Up

This film follows career-girl Alison’s drunken one-night stand with the sweet but useless Ben. Considering the title, the end result is fairly predictable, but the real subject of the film is the journey through Alison’s nine months of pregnancy and her attempt to transform pot-smoking, unemployed Ben into a suitable father. The film includes the inevitable dose of crude humour, but raises important questions about what it takes to be a good parent, partner, and to make a relationship work. The graphic birth scene suggests that men should definitely remain at the head of the hospital bed while their partner gives birth, but strong performances from the leading actors and a genuinely funny and honest script make this amusing and enjoyable viewing.
Emily Damesick

Molière

The premise is simple: take a period of Molière’s life about which next to nothing is known, and fill it with events strikingly similar to those in his masterpiece, Tartuffe. So far, so Shakespeare in Love. Director Laurent Tirard’s creation, however, is  refreshingly different. This surreal farce casually tackles such weighty issues as infidelity, unrequited love, and the pointlessness of attempting to be what you are not – aptly illustrated by comedic genius Molière’s doomed desire to be a great tragedian. The illustrious cast are laugh-out-loud funny, and the script is sharp and witty. If you can stand the subtitles, this is definitely worth a watch.
Emma Whipday

MISSES
Transformers

Unfortunately, the idea of taking a range of plastic toys and turning it into a summer blockbuster is not as unheard of as it should be. Shia LeBoeuf brings an adequately gawky presence to the role of the young man who happens upon a car that turns out to be a super-advanced alien robot, (cue jokes about the Japanese), but despite his efforts the film can’t deny what it is; a two-hour advert for the disturbing Optimus Prime and his companions. Michael Bay’s hamfisted portrayal of the heroic armed forces does nothing to help. In short, supremely missable. Unless you really, really, really like explosions.
Monique Davis

Private Fears in Public Places

Directed by Alain Resnais and based on Alan Ayckbourne’s play, Private Fears in Public Places is an attempt to cash in on the tried and tested model of interwoven love stories – see Love Actually. Unfortunately, it fails miserably. There are three principle problems with this film: firstly the pile-up of short scenes (there are almost fifty in total) means that the film doesn’t unfold comfortably and development comes only in brief bursts. Secondly, and rather unconvincingly, the characters seem oblivious to their own interconnections – despite the fact that there are only six of them. Worse still, even with this restricted social spectrum, they do little more that tap one another on the shoulder, never really engaging and failing to convince us that there’s even anything interesting going on. Finally, the failure to make a complete departure from the stage makes this interpretation unsuccessful and clumsy: ‘invisible walls separating people’ are portrayed as an opaque office partition between two of the characters while snow marking the distinction between each scene symbolises the ‘coldness of their isolation’. It tries to tick all the boxes but sadly it’s a far cry from Renais’ acclaimed Last Year at Marienbad or Smoking/No Smoking.
Katherine Eve

1408

Starring Samuel L. Jackson and John Cusack, one can be forgiven for expecting 1408 to be at least partially worthwhile. Cusack stars as Mike Enslin, a writer who tours hotels in the hope of finding paranormal activity. Mike eventually stumbles across a haunted hotel room (number 1408, as it happens) that apparently kills anyone who sleeps there. Despite many ominous warnings he stubbornly insists on staying in this room and terrifying experiences naturally ensue. Unfortunately, after the first 20 minutes, the film disintergrates faster than you could say ‘Snakes on a Plane’. It’s hard to pin down exactly where the film became so utterly unwatchable; maybe it was when an assortment of Mike’s dead relatives emerged from various corners of his suite for cheesy reunions. In any case, the death knell for 1408’s chances of success came with the final ‘twist’; predictable and downright lame. Definitely one to miss.
Mary Clare Waireri

The Simpsons Movie

At the beginning of The Simpsons Movie, Homer complains about paying for something he can usually watch for free. The irony is deliberate, of course, but the disappointment is that he’s right. Our television screens are often graced with classic Simpsons  episodes, mostly from the first few seasons. They’re a consistently and brilliantly funny concoction of wit, satire and endlessly quotable one-liners. So what do we get with the film? Well, there’s Spiderpig… In fact, like said pig, the film is silly, repetitive and full of pop-culture. It’s perfectly watchable and intermittently funny, but it’s also hugely inconsistent and sadly lacking in memorable scenes or dialogue, which means the experience is really just like paying to watch four newer episodes of The Simpsons back to back. And that’s pointless, because my college still has Sky.
Jonathan Tan