The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey

The Hobbit is a book by J R R Tolkien, that was written as a bedtime story for his son and is a more light hearted prequel to his opus magnum The Lord of the Rings.  It tells the story of how a Hobbi...

Man on a Ledge

The caper film is a well established genre with some notable and entertaining entries released in the recent past. The success of the Oceans trilogy (well eleven and thirteen at least) is a good exam...

The Sweeney

In this age of recycling the film industry is often held up as the major player in re using ideas for financial gain instead of promoting new and fresh ideas that may not have a major monetary recomp...

Highlander (1986)

Time has a way of changing the perspective for films. What may look staid and rather dull at the time of release can actually benefit a film if and when it is re-assessed. Of course the opposite can ...

Skyfall (2012)

You know times are tough when a studio has trouble financing a James Bond film. Despite the financial successes of Casino Royale and The Quantum of Solace, MGM filed for bankruptcy in 2010 putting th...

The Raid

In today’s overcrowded movie market a new film has to have a unique hook to get the journalists writing about it. On average there are twelve new films released in cinemas every week. Without a...

Chocolate

With so many martial arts films released these days it takes something special to stand out from the crowd. The most popular films all have something in common. All have interesting stories. The basi...

Rough-House

In my impressionable teenage years I was exposed to the first round of the modern day action heroes. Starting with Arnie, Bruce and Sly more followed in the bulky shapes of Dolph, Jean-Claude, Chuck ...

Revolution

The title ‘From Producer JJ Abrams’ seems to crop up more and more on our screens these days. His production company Bad Robot has a stake in numerous recent and current film and TV proje...

Headhunters

The Nordic crime drama has been gaining popularity in the last few years. It can be traced back to the Martin Beck series of novels from the 1960’s through the Wallander books and to the recent...