The worst thing about Fantastic Four (or, more idiotically Fant4stic) isn’t the terrible CGI (which ranges between 10 years ago-bad and Sci-Fi channel bad), the nonsensical structure or the stop-start pacing, nor is it the […]
Mission Improbable – Or, The Resurgence of Physical Filmmaking
Buster Keaton clasps to the cattle guard of a speeding locomotive, one small slip away from falling beneath the wheels. The year is 1927, and the actor is no stranger to risking life and limb […]
Psychology Students will have a field day on Pixar’s Inside Out
Inside Out, Pixar’s new release is an intelligent and witty insight into the human mind. Psychology students will have a field day as the creators delve into cognitive thinking, bringing to life the extraordinary workings […]
Southpaw pulls no punches
Southpaw is a hulking brute of a movie. It batters you, relentlessly, until you give in to its melodramatic script; it quite literally pulls no punches. Boxing metaphors aside, it is a powerful, engaging movie, […]
Jurassic Competition: Park VS World
After its gargantuan success at the box office, Jurassic World has proved that now, as ever, children love dinosaurs. Jurassic World is on the brink of making $1.5 billion at the worldwide box-office, a huge […]
Political parties explained through film
Vin Diesel plays it straight against sheer silliness in Furious 7
Vin Diesel is a man with no sense of irony. Whilst the majority of his Fast and Furious co-stars spend the non-car chase scenes in this 7th(!) entry in the long-running street racing/ 80’s action […]
Marvel finally got its hands on Spider-Man – so what will they do with him?
The Spider-Man franchise was never going to lie dormant for long. Arguably cinema’s most profitable superhero (the Marvel franchise took until The Avengers, its seventh film, to top the box office takings of three Spider-Man […]
Chappie gives us a change with a naive, trustful robot
There has been no shortage of films focusing on the advent of A.I. recently, from Ex Machina released in January to the hotly-anticipated Avengers: Age of Ultron which will be released at the end of […]
Is the Bechdel test failing us?
In a world increasingly concerned with equality between the sexes, it seems shocking that, of 5,788 films listed on the website www.bechdeltest.com, only 57% pass. In addition, the Geena Davies Institute on Gender in Media […]
A Brief History of Oscar Upsets
As the dust settled, Neil Patrick Harris put his clothes back on, and Sean Penn made a vaguely racially insensitive remark, the 2015 Academy Award for Best picture went to Birdman over long time favourite […]
A middle-aged Bond Girl: what’s the fuss?
The media applause over Monica Bellucci’s casting as the female lead in the new James Bond film as a huge positive step for the series is somewhat baffling. Praise for this decision, described by director […]