ACTION– tag –

(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...

(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...

(Neo Magazine, Uncooked Media) French director Jean-Luc Goddard declared, “All you need for a movie is a girl and a gun.” In the 1980s a gang of Japanese geeks declared, All you need for an anime is a girl and a mecha... Okay, make that ...

(Neo, Uncooked Media) 2196: the Earth is under attack from the mysterious “Jovian Lizards”. A new ship is launched against the enemy, the Nadesico, with the most eccentric crew imaginable. But they’ll learn that everything they think abo...

(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...

(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) 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,...

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) 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...

(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...

(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,...

(Neo, Uncooked Media) Ajin is Tokyo Ghoul meets 24. That’s not a subtle analysis, but then this horror-action-thriller isn’t in it for the subtlety. It’s about grabbing the viewer early and propelling you through chases, story rug-pulls,...

I wrote a review of Alita: Battle Angel for the AllTheAnime website.

The following retrospective on the film was published in SFX Magazine, Future Publishing. I also wrote a piece focusing on the Battle Royale novel for the Manga Entertainment blog. Half asleep, Japanese author Koshun Takimi envisioned a ...

(Sight & Sound, BFI) The new Indiana Jones film starts in a veritable museum to modern myth. It’s a military warehouse in Area 51, hallowed ground for UFOlogists and conspiracy nuts. The set is a reconstruction of one in the closing ...

(Judge Dredd Megazine, Rebellion) “John Carter of Earth? John Carter of Mars sounds much better.” So the titular hero of the planetary-romance screen blockbuster John Carter renounces his birthworld and homo sapiens peers, as Sam Worthin...

(Neo, Uncooked Media - I also add further observations in an article on the AllTheAnime website.) Schoolgirl Hitomi is whisked to Gaea, where there be dragons, princesses, cat-girls and a war waged by an enemy fixated on fate. Protected ...

(SFX, Future Publishing) Ant-Man starts with our hero, played by Paul Rudd, seeming hopelessly outmatched in a prison brawl with a mountain-sized convict. It foreshadows the challenges he’ll face when he’s insect-sized, dodging stamping ...

(This is my review of the first season for Neo magazine, Uncooked Media; my Neo review of the second season is below the first.) Aldnoah.Zero is set in an alternative present, after humans found a “Hyper Gate” on the moon left by aliens ...

(SFX, Future Publishing) At the start of Captain America: The Winter Soldier, the First Avenger has been left behind by the world. (“I’m here to pick up a fossil,” quips Scarlett Johansson’s Black Widow.) By the film’s end, that same wor...

My review of the first two Psycho-Pass: Sinners of the System films is on the AlltheAnime website.

(SFX, Future Publishing) The new Robocop has an impressive brain. We know because we see it on the big screen, being prodded and sutured by Doctor Gary Oldman with an insouciance to impress Peter Cushing. Another scene shows Robocop nake...

(SFX Magazine, Future Publishing) How do you solve a problem like Godzilla? We’re not asking how you kill the King of Monsters. Don’t be silly; he shrugs off bullets, treads on tanks and eats nukes sunny-side up. And as the original 1954...