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Disc rental and online streaming service LOVEFiLM have made it possible for their subscribers to enjoy online film and television content in high definition. Today a selection of movies and television episodes were unveiled in the HD format, with more to apparently follow soon. Many of the films currently available in HD are from the […]
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This is a Cuban zombie movie. It’s the first of its kind, apparently, and judging on the quality of this piece of work I won’t be devastated if it were the last. Of course, filmmakers more talented than Alejandro Brugués may come along and make Cuban zombie movies that are masterpieces, and if they do I […]
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As much as I try to go into each film I see with as little prejudice as possible, the advertising campaign for Alexander Payne’s new movie The Descendants had convinced me I wasn’t going to like it. The trailer had an incredibly annoying tone to it, as if it was saying ‘Look! This movie is kooky! Slightly […]
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Director Oliver Hermanus’s dreamlike, intoxicating new film Beauty is a character study of a man who is both a monster and a victim. Set in vibrant, colourful modern-day South Africa, the film tells the story of François (Deon Lotz), a carpenter and family man with a wife and daughter. He has a secret, however, that […]
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Safe is one of those lumbering, stupid action movies that should have been shot on sight by a big straight-to-DVD gun as it crashed its way to multiplexes. Occasionally, these unfortunate beasts, ones that would be more at home on the ‘Bargain Chart’ shelves of Tesco, make their way into cinemas, and the experience is […]
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Dark Shadows is the type of film for which that overused and clunkingly clichéd phrase ‘darkly comic’ was first invented. It aspires to be very ‘darkly comic’. In one scene our protagonist (a vampire named Barnabus Collins, played by Johnny Depp) rips apart a group of innocent builders. In another we are laughing at his […]
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As a cinephile and complete HD-whore, I spend most of my free time watching old films from yesteryear that have been remastered in high definition. I am also a horror fan, so Arrow Video’s expertly curated selection of old horror movies – which ranges from genre classics to little-known masterpieces to low-budget trash – is […]
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Aki Kaurismäki’s latest film is a sweet and gentle French comedy drama about a shoeshiner named Marcel Marx (André Wilms) who befriends a child immigrant who is being hunted by the authorities. The plot is meandering and often feels aimless, but this is part of its charm, and Kaurismäki leads us along at a leisurely […]
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I am a fan of Tobe Hooper. Anyone who makes a film as astonishingly effective as The Texas Chainsaw Massacre deserves a level of respect. My love of that film has lead to me exploring his other works, but sadly the new blu-ray release his 1981 film The Funhouse left me cold and disappointed. The […]
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This year marks the 100th anniversary of Universal Pictures, one of Hollywood’s oldest and most successful movie studios. To celebrate this, Universal are remastering a selection of their most iconic and famous films and releasing them on blu-ray and DVD. One of these releases is Robert Mulligan’s 1962 picture To Kill a Mockingbird, an adaptation […]
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Courageous preaches a sadly outdated moral image, supported by acting and characterisation that struggle to tell a meaningful tale.
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Adding 3D to Titanic is like pointlessly renovating a big, popular, famous building. It wasn’t intended for 3D when it was shot. It never needed 3D. It was a phenomenal success without 3D. But to mark the centenary of the ship’s maiden voyage and tragic sinking, Twentieth Century Fox and director James Cameron have released […]
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The Avengers? Avengers Assemble? Marvel Avengers Assemble? Marvel’s Avengers Assemble? Marvel’s The Avengers? God knows what this movie is called. Different publications give it different titles depending who they listen to and where they are geographically. Disney reportedly changed the name to Avengers Assemble to avoid confusion with the television series The Avengers, although that […]
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Silent Witness is the latest piece of BBC content to receive complaints from the more sensitive members of the British public. According to comments submitted to the broadcaster’s website, they felt the two-part story Redhill veered too close to ‘torture-porn’ for their liking. Of course, the Daily Mail has published a piece describing the situation as a […]