Live-Action Films– category –

(Judge Dredd Megazine, Rebellion) The slew of zombie films continues with The Horde, a French feature from newcomers Yannick Dehan and Benjamin Rocher. By the directors’ own admission, they stole a trick from From Dusk Till Dawn, beginni...

(Judge Dredd Megazine, Rebellion) Captain America: The First Avenger is theoretically part of an ongoing story, namely the Marvel superhero films linked by the eyepatched Samuel L. Jackson. A year ago, I complained at length about last y...

(Judge Dredd Megazine, Rebellion) Made a decade before Cannibal Holocaust and generations before Blair Witch, Punishment Park is a 1971 mockumentary by the British director Peter Watkins, released as a Blu-ray/DVD by the Eureka label. Wh...

My review of Earth to Echo is on the Empire magazine website. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YJgIv_hrjdg [amazon_link asins='B00PKRQGH4,B00M4A92TO' template='ProductCarousel' store='anime04c-21' marketplace='UK' link_id='dbdb8828-c870-1...

(SFX Magazine, Future Publishing) We’ve seen many superhero series begin on the big screen. Until this year, though, we hadn’t seen one with a proper ending. That we get one in The Dark Knight Rises testifies to the strength of Christoph...

(Judge Dredd Megazine, Rebellion) Stake Land is a zombie apocalypse picture. The undead may burn in the sun, and they may be dispatched by pointy sticks rather than headshots, but the film still belongs on the “Z” side of the library, no...

(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...

(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...

( 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...

(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...

(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) 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) 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...

(Judge Dredd Megazine, Rebellion) Rated 18. Contains images of strong bloody violence, torture, scalping, strangulation, castration (no balls at all!), farce, cartoon German and British soldiers, cartoon war leaders, a cartoon Brad Pitt,...

(Sight & Sound, BFI) Despite receiving many scathing reviews, the sci-fi thriller The Darkest Hour is a capable, sometimes suspenseful, alien-invasion thriller for three-quarters of its length, before its belly-flop ending does its b...

(Judge Dredd Megazine, Rebellion) I saw Ruben Fleischer's comic Zombieland expecting little and enjoyed immensely. True, there's a big problem with the concept; it's a zombie pic where the two key characters are a college-age maybe-coupl...

(Judge Dredd Megazine, Rebellion - I also have an interview with the director Gareth Evans about the film on the MangaUK blog.) Monsters is already the subject of much buzz, although it’s one of these films where the punditry blurs two t...