Andrew Osmond– Author –

(SFX Magazine, Future Publishing) The sign on the soundstage door warns, “Wolves on set.” Within, the fairy-tale forest is darkened. This is a night scene, in which scared peasants are trying to lure one of the predators into a trap. A h...

(Judge Dredd Megazine, Rebellion) The Running Man, Stephen King’s 1982 novella about a gameshow which kills its contestants, ended with its hero grinning through a mask of blood and giving the TV producer the finger, before spoiler spoil...

(Judge Dredd Megazine, Rebellion) The day it was announced that Steven Spielberg and Peter Jackson would make a motion-captured, computer-animated blockbuster out of Herge’s venerable Tintin, a film journalist of my acquaintance said his...

(Judge Dredd Megazine, Rebellion) Let Me In (out now), as readers of this column must surely know, is the English-language remake of the hugely acclaimed Swedish film, Let the Right One In. It’s a lyrical tale about a tender and bloody l...

My article on the original Japanese Godzilla is on the MangaUK blog. https://youtu.be/KNDH2mX8wf4 [amazon_link asins='B000CFX5M8' template='ProductAd' store='anime04c-21' marketplace='UK' link_id='d0ced917-9c4a-11e8-80d7-4d46f2def6d7']

(Judge Dredd Megazine, Rebellion. Apologies for the embarrassing error in the text - as every Thrones fan knows, Ned Stark is most definitely not the brother of Robert Baratheon, although the script specifies they're close _like_ sibling...

(Neo Magazine, Uncooked Media) We start with two feuding brothers in 1880s England. Then there are cursed masks, mystical fighting styles, vampires, zombies, undead knights, shipwrecks, Nazis, ancient superbeings, chariot races, family s...

(Sight & Sound, BFI) [This article was written in 2009. Both interviewees - Dickie Jones, the voice of Disney's Pinocchio, and puppeteer Bob Baker - died in 2014.] As Disney’s classic Pinocchio is released on DVD and Blu-Ray, Andrew ...

(Judge Dredd Magazine, Rebellion) So let’s play fantasy Harry Potter. Imagine, if you will, that the seven J.K. Rowling books could each be filmed by a different director with a specialism in fantasy and a rep for quirk. Imagine a dream ...

(Sight & Sound, BFI) Texas, the present. At an army base, a secret transaction goes awry and a deadly gas is released. Nearby, go-go dancer Cherry Darling encounters ex-boyfriend El Wray. She accepts a lift from him, but they’re atta...

(Sight & Sound, BFI) In recent decades, Hollywood has turned out a line of effects-led blockbusters, technically groundbreaking and artistically stunted in roughly equal measure. The 1999 film The Matrix, directed by Larry and Andy W...

(SFX Magazine, Future Publishing) You wait years for a serious-minded space blockbuster, then two arrive almost at once. Following Gravity, a tight adventure story where people in space struggle to get back to Earth, here’s Christopher N...

(Judge Dredd Megazine, Rebellion) In Roland Emmerich’s new disaster epic, 2012 is the year when our time’s up. The world’s leaders know it, and even HRH Queen Elizabeth II is packing her handbags and corgis, but for the rest of us it’s f...

(Judge Dredd Megazine, Rebellion) Super 8 is directed by J.J. Abrams, but an Abrams who for this outing is channeling the spirt of producer Papa Spielberg. The story opens with a tragedy, obliquely handled in the language of film. We see...

(Neo, Uncooked Media) As the film Empire of Corpses opens, a steam train chuffs before Saint Paul’s Cathedral. A caption reads, “London, 1878.” Then we’re in a Frankenstein-style laboratory where a young man forces a metal helmet over th...

(Sight & Sound, BFI) The pendulum swings back. Last year’s Batman v Superman was vacantly humourless in its presentation of Batman (played by Ben Affleck) as a stubbled killer. Now The Lego Batman Movie parodies the character as a hi...

(Sight & Sound, BFI) This review reveals important plot points. In Martin Scorsese’s 3D family film, Hugo’s title character is an orphan boy, living in the hidden spaces of a fantastically stylised Paris circa 1930. For the film’s fi...