Andrew Osmond– Author –

(Sight & Sound, BFI) Hong Kong, two days from now. For decades, governments round the world have imprisoned and experimented on people with paranormal powers. The sci-fi/chase thriller Push is intermittently interesting, largely unengagi...

I wrote an article comparing the anime and manga versions of A Silent Voice for the AllTheAnime blog, while the following review was published in the BFI's Sight & Sound. Even more than last year’s blockbuster Your Name, the Japan-an...

(SFX Magazine, Future Publishing) “You haven’t gone forward, Herbert, you’ve gone back… You, with your absurd notions of a perfect and harmonious society. It’s drivel. The world has caught up with me and surpassed me. Ninety years ago, I...

(Sight & Sound, BFI) “Say something,” begs newlywed Florence (Saorise Ronan), her bright blue irises making her doll-like as she lies beneath her husband on their marriage bed. She’s asking for any kind of communication with this man – t...

(Sight & Sound Magazine, BFI) In recent years, the Japanese animated films which have reached British cinemas have tended to be Studio Ghibli products or films like them, such as The Wolf Children (2013) and Giovanni’s Island (2014)....

( Judge Dredd Megazine, Rebellion) Tomorrow, When the War Began is a “Young Adult” film which knows that the target audience is too young to remember the film that’s being recycled. That film is Red Dawn, the 1984 John Milius epic featur...

(Neo, Uncooked Media - I also made further observations in an article on the film on the AllTheAnime website) Have you seen the series The Tatami Galaxy? If you have, then this film is Tatami Galaxy: The Movie, from the same maverick dir...

(Judge Dredd Megazine, Rebellion) Director Adam Green previously made the outrageous slasher film Hatchet, whose style is in stark contrast to his new film Frozen, although both rely on real effects rather than digital fakery. This is an...

(Judge Dredd Megazine, Rebellion) Blooded, out now on DVD, is a genre-bender, a story that could have been a merely melodramatic shock piece. However director Ed Boase, another first timer, presents it as a sober documentary. The story i...

I wrote an article for the AllTheAnime blog reflecting on Perfect Blue as a horror film, while my Neo, Uncooked Media review of the 2013 Blu-ray release follows. Following Cowboy Bebop, the fledgling label Anime Limited’s new release is ...

(Neo, Uncooked Media) You may have heard of Shimoneta’s reputation as a smutfest, and we’re here to tell you that… the reputation is deserved. The title means “dirty joke” and the show tries furiously to find enough jokes about sex, sex ...

(Sight & Sound, BFI) In London, 25-year old Jamie Morgan lives with his mother, Marion. Jamie has birthmarks on his face and body, and feels outcast from society. Hooded gangs commit a spate of murders. Jamie sees the thugs as reptil...

(Sight & Sound, BFI) The future. World society has been transformed by the billionaire pioneer Ken Castle, the creator of a new kind of game. Real people are subjected to brain surgery, then remote-controlled by players on computers....

(Judge Dredd Megazine, Rebellion) There’s plenty of enjoyment, if less true weight, in Shutter Island, the new mystery-melodrama from Martin Scorsese, teamed up once more with star Leonardo DiCaprio. The story is based on the book by Den...

(Judge Dredd Megazine, Rebellion) The film Moon, like Spock in the retconned Star Trek, is a member of an endangered species. Made by first-time writer-director Duncan Jones, Moon is an SF film that’s also an earnest, serious drama, aime...

(Judge Dredd Megazine, Rebellion) Back in 2004, I spent a strange day at Ealing Studios in west London, watching Simon Pegg and Nick Frost playing whack-a-zombie with snooker cues. If you’ve seen the zombie comedy film Shaun of the Dead,...

(Sight & Sound, BFI) In 2153, a space probe discovers Tanis, an Earth-like planet which can support human life. A giant spacecraft, the Elysium, is launched towards it, carrying thousands of humans in artificial hibernation. Some tim...

(SFX Magazine, Future Publishing) Like law-enforcers who go up against Death Note's killer with a notepad, this Netflix remake is brave but futile. Transposing the franchise from Japan to Seattle, the film tries new twists and takes on t...

My review of the Netflix series Love, Death and Robots is on the AlltheAnime website (although the series itself isn't an anime).

(SFX Magazine, Future Publishing) In a future of mud, blood and grot, a degenerate, war-addicted humanity is attacked by zom… Sorry, mutants. Only a ragtag band of soldiers can save Earth, led by sonorous, begorrah-sounding monk Ron Perl...

(SFX Magazine, Future Publishing - there are also further reflections on the series in an article I wrote for the MangaUK blog.) Oh, you’re awake. Lie there on the ground for a moment, and listen to me. Welcome to the Afterlife Battlefro...

(SFX Magazine, Future Publishing) Beginnings are important, especially for superheroes. But endings, arguably, matter more. A lot of viewers took against the end of Man of Steel. Partly it was the perversity of showing one huge battle, t...

(Sight and Sound Magazine, BFI) The recent Toy Story 3 featured an opening fantasy sequence in which various oddly assorted toys starred in a madcap adventure that began as a Western train heist and ended with forcefields and porcine spa...

(Neo, Uncooked Media) (Volume 1 review) Heavy Object rings several changes on the usual mecha show. One of the most obvious is that the fighting machines aren’t giant Gundam humanoids, but come in a variety of shapes. There are giant met...