Good old reliable Robin Hood. You can always count on him for a rollicking adventure. Whether it’s Errol Flynn or that Yank from Prince of Thieves or that fat bastard from the recent BBC series, he always tries his best to entertain. Sure he may not always succeed but at least he has a go. Oh wait, who’s this coming round the corner?...

Read More...

It seems like a hell of a long time since Mark Romanek directed his last feature film, One Hour Photo. One of my favourite films of the last ten years, the bar was set high for his follow-up, Never Let Me Go. Based on the novel by Kazuo Ishiguro, the movie has a fine pedigree but it falls short of expectations. The main...

Read More...

Facebook: a presence so pervasive that even I’ve jumped on the bandwagon, dropped my kecks and presented myself to all and sundry. Yeah, look to the right of this page. Look at the purity of my site obliterated by my massive Facebook widget (and my Amazon links and my Twitter feed and my sad, desperate plea for money - give me some money...

Read More...

Albert Pierrepoint was one of the Britain’s last hangmen and was responsible for the executions of hundreds of convicted felons. The end titles of the film say that he killed 608 individuals but other sources say that he killed around 400. Either way it’s a hell of a lot of people to take to the gallows. Pierrepoint begins with its protagonist attending training...

Read More...

Isn’t going to work every day wonderful? Getting up early in the morning, squashing yourself into a train full of flatulent commuters and then spending most of the day answering badly written, poorly thought-out emails. But things were even worse in the 80s. Back then you had to write letters and back then you didn’t have the consolation of an ipod on your...

Read More...

In Withnail and I, Bruce Robinson made one of the funniest films there is. Therefore it was always going to be hard for him to make anything that would equal his debut. However, in How to Get Ahead in Advertising he comes mighty close. The reason why Robinson's second film fails to match Withnail and I is because it’s far too preachy. There...

Read More...

Here’s a weird piece of information. My uncle thought that dolphins were aliens from another planet. He thought that they were smarter than humans. Now bear in mind, this is a man that every Christmas would pass out in our armchair, drooling Carlsberg Special Brew from the corner of his mouth as he respired loudly while wearing a silly paper hat. I’m not...

Read More...

Here’s a question for you. How does a man get transported to an alien planet where he’s hunted for sport and still manage to put on weight? It seems to me that being a human fox in a place that has a total absence of Popeyes and Wendy’s would be a recipe for weight loss, not weight gain. But then I guess I...

Read More...

Some people argue that Jaws ruined cinema. It was the first massive summer blockbuster and it paved the way for the nonsense that followed - high concept, big budget, fast food movies for people with short attention spans and less than discerning taste. It completely changed the landscape of the movie industry. Whether you think this change is a good thing or bad...

Read More...

Christopher Nolan is riding the crest of a wave. Revered in indie circles for Memento and adored by the masses for The Dark Knight, he’s quickly becoming a superstar director. Needless to say, people were literally wetting themselves at the prospect of his latest film, Inception. Complete with flying actors, trains rolling down streets and a booming soundtrack, the trailer was a sight...

Read More...

If you were a child of the 80s, there's a good chance that at school you were lent a copy of The Running Man. And there's also a pretty good chance that you thought it was the dog's bollocks. But now that the decade of excess homoeroticism has been left behind, and now that easily pleased children have grown up, it's clear that...

Read More...

>The Road didn’t seem to make any impact when it was released in theatres. It was given a very small release and then a few weeks later it was gone. I suppose the studio was hoping that it would generate some Oscar buzz and that it would slowly gain wider distribution. Unfortunately, though, it was never really a contender for the Academy Awards...

Read More...

It’s quite amazing that Moon was shot on such a small budget (about $5 million). It has a scale and a scope that would suggest it’s an incredibly expensive production. It just shows what you can do when you have a bit of imagination and when you don’t have massive stars demanding outrageous salaries. One of the interesting things about Moon’s effects work...

Read More...

Quentin Tarantino is trying his hardest to be Sergio Leone. However, he's not always succeeding. Case in point: the scene where the beautiful heroine gets killed by a Nazi war hero/movie star/stud muffin. It has Ennio Morricone on the soundtrack, it has two senseless deaths and it’s exquisitely filmed. But it doesn't pull the heart strings - it doesn't have the power to...

Read More...