I live in a relatively small town and have only two local cinemas. One is a Vue where the local parking is expensive, the other is a Cineworld with free parking and the opportunity to use an unlimited card. Guess which one I always use? The only problem is that it’s a small cinema and doesn’t always get every major release…
The Five-Year Engagement
2 May 2013 by 2 Comments
There seems to be a bit of a trend in romantic comedies these days for a slightly harder edged feel. No longer are they entirely soft and fluffy – we see inside the bedrooms rather than coy morning-after images…
The Croods
1 May 2013 by Leave a Comment
Earlier this week I pondered on whether Brave or The Pirates! In An Adventure With Scientists was more deserving of the Oscar for Best Animated Feature…
Brave
29 April 2013 by Leave a Comment
One of the talking points of this year’s Oscars was whether or not the correct film won the Best Animated Feature category. Almost inevitably the Academy Award went to Pixar for their latest film – Brave. Fans of Aardman Animation’s The Pirates! In an Adventure with Scientists were outraged…
Iron Man 3
25 April 2013 by Leave a Comment
The sun is out, the lawn is ready to be mowed and after a couple of films as a warm-up I think it’s safe to say that summer blockbuster season is open for business. Oblivion and Olympus Has Fallen both served as decent appetisers but it’s now time to get serious. We’re now in Avengers Phase Two and it’s kicked off in some style with the return of Tony Stark in Iron Man 3…
Olympus Has Fallen
17 April 2013 by Leave a Comment
It’s a relatively common event for films to come out in pairs – when one studio has an idea for a blockbuster movie you can bet a rival studio is having the same idea at the same time. Asteroid disaster movies Armageddon and Deep Impact were both released in 1998, volcano films Volcano and Dante’s Peak were both 1997…
Argo
15 April 2013 by Leave a Comment
Just before the Oscars I did one of those Facebook quizzes – how many Best Picture Academy Award Winners had I seen. I was confident and as I started clicking from 2011 downwards I was quite happy – The Artist, The King’s Speech, The Hurt Locker – I was on fire…
Oz The Great and Powerful
12 April 2013 by Leave a Comment
The Wizard Of Oz holds a special place in my heart. It isn’t my favourite film or even my favourite musical but it is the film which first showed me the magic of cinema. It was the early 80s…
Oblivion
10 April 2013 by Leave a Comment
There’s a debate that rages in literary criticism over how many stories actually exist. Is it, as Joseph Campbell would have us believe, only one – the hero’s journey? Is it Cristopher Booker’s seven basic plots or are there as many as Ronald B Tobias claims – a whole 20? No matter how many narrative arcs actually exist it’s fairly clear that there are very few original stories out there…
Jack The Giant Slayer
26 March 2013 by Leave a Comment
The current Hollywood craze for reimagining fairytales as big budget films has passed me by. The Tim Burton Alice in Wonderland irritated me, it was too much of same old manic faced Johnny Depp and wild eyed Helena Bonham-Carter for my liking…