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In the last 10 years, teen fiction has become one of the most profitable areas for writers to make a killing (sorry). Now unless you have been living in a cardboard box you can't have missed the hype surrounding this much anticipated film. (more...)
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R is for rip off Britain, which is still very much in evidence in the DVD and Blu-ray markets it seems. This excellent film from Orson Welles is fully restored for a Criterion USA DVD and Blu-ray release but is put into cinemas over here before someone again charges you to buy it for yourself! (more...)
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God and the Devil walked into a bar one day and decided that old Jonah needed testing. The Devil said that as Jonah professed to being a pure and good soul that whatever he did to him he could survive. God reluctantly agreed and Jonah was sorely tested by many means including something about a giant Whale! This new British horror thriller has taken that Old Testament story and given it a modern twisted update. Fresh out of seminary school and appointed his first Parish a Reverend (Brennan) tries to settle in to life in a quiet and idyllic English village. But things are not exactly as they seem...
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True stories always strike a chord. This really happened and is therefore the complete antithesis of the dream and fantasy genre. Personally, watching something based on real life has a draw that many movies don’t. ‘The Assault’ depicts the sequence of events surrounding the hijacking of a French plane in 1994. Heavily armed Algerian terrorists overpower an Air France flight with the apparent intention of a suicide mission. The Eiffel Tower is the target. We have all seen this methodology before. It is by no means a groundbreaking movie. Yet there is so much that makes this absorbing and perplexing....
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Every now and again surprises come in the strangest of packages. In this case it was a DVD package containing a French romantic comedy. (more...)
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The Butch Cassidy and Sundance Kid story has been flogged to within an inch of it’s life on both the big and little screen so the thought of yet another ‘take’ on the legend is not particularly inspiring. Numerous unsubstantiated stories have been banded about for nigh on a century as to the actual demise of the notorious duo and ‘Blackthorn’ is another throwing its cowboy hat into the ring. (more...)
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With great power comes, famously, great responsibility. With a super power though comes, surely, a temptation to just dick around? It’s the latter that forms the start, if not the heart, of this impressive low-budget twist on the superhero / superpower conventions. Three teenagers discover a strange hole in the ground and an artefact that leaves them with copious nosebleeds and, it transpires, telekinetic abilities. The film – told faux documentary style through, at first, one of the teens’ cameras and subsequently other witness footage, security cameras etc – charts the development of their...
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Not watched Seasons 1, 2 and 3? Where have you been? True Blood is one of those saucy, bloody, edge of the seat series that actually works - and has done for several years now. (more...)
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Celebrating the bicentenary of the birth of Charles Dickens, two movies have been released reflecting the genius of one of the most revered classical authors of all time. The Old Curiosity Shop (1934) charts the flight of debt ridden shopkeeper Trent (Ben Webster) and his grand daughter Little Nell (Elaine Benson) from their fantastically sinister landlord Mr. Quilp (Hay Petrie). Their attempts to evade their pursuer were originally written in weekly instalments by Dickens for publication in the magazine of which he was Editor. His portrayal of a male dominated London and England is brilliantly...
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Director Gerald Thomas and a host of the stars of this gentle comedy are renowned for the ‘Carry On’ films but Thomas would occasionally depart from the hit series and take many of his usual cast members with him. Based on the play ‘Ring for Catty’ this is not the usual innuendo riddled ‘fnarr’ fest as we would expect of the people involved, but has a depth certainly not evident in ‘Carry on Nurse’ and the other capers. Like some latter day ‘Only When I Laugh’, the plot revolves around a hospital ward and its inhabitants. The patients all suffer from tuberculosis, rife at the time...
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