BLOCKBUSTER– 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...

(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...

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

(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...

(Sight & Sound, BFI) Disney’s new version of The Jungle Book remakes a 49 year-old cartoon – the 1967 Jungle Book – using post-Avatar technology. Directed by Jon Favreau (Iron Man), the film was largely made in CGI, with the live-act...

(SFX, Future Publishing) In space, no-one should be able to hear other people eating popcorn, or slurping soda, or locking lips with one another. For all these reasons, watching Gravity at home has advantages, removing the multiplex audi...

(Judge Dredd Megazine, Rebellion) Rise of the Planet of the Apes reflects the human/sentient ape condition by being both ingenious and dumb, sometimes at the same time. Directed by Britain’s Rupert Wyatt, it’s a second-try reboot, follow...

(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...

(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...

My review of the film for Neo magazine (Uncooked Media) is below. I also wrote several online pieces related to the film; the links are at the bottom of the review.   In Japan, Your Name is the success story of the year. Makoto Shin...

(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 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) 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...