X-Men had it all. Mutants. Psychics. Personal rivalries. It dealt with themes of identity, racism and relationships. Oh and it had giant robots too!

The X-Men have always been one of the most iconic and popular of the superhero comics, and their transition to the movies was an unlikely success, helped by excellent casting and a serious treatment of the material. The first couple of movie adaptations by director Bryan Singer [...]

Where did you go Mel Gibson? You were so crazy cool in the Lethal Weapon films. You had your hard-boiled characters of vengeful action in Payback and Ransom. You delivered memorable moments of heroic leadership in epics Braveheart and The Patriot. Where are you now? With your hand up a beaver puppet begging for a second chance, that’s where.

Despite everything, is there a chance – even just a [...]

The title of this new movie from Iron Man 2 director Jon Favreau really sums up what Cowboys & Aliens promises to be all about. Take the hard boiled action star of the latest Bond films, Daniel Craig (Quantum of Solace), and the grizzled veteran of the 20^th Century’s most iconic adventure-blockbusters ever, Harrison Ford, and drop them into the middle of the old American wild [...]

Zack Snyder has fast become one of the most visually striking directors of our time, delivering some of the most stunning spectacles of cinematic eye candy in films like 300, Watchmen and most recently Legend of the Guardians. The visual treats he has offered have not been a simple matter of high quality special effects [...]

In 2008, Liam Neeson followed up a powerful stint as the villainous Henri Ducard (aka Ra’s al Ghul) in 2005’s Batman Begins with a role even darker, grittier and downright hardcore in the action-thriller Taken. There as a former CIA operative, he was equipped with “a special set of skills” that would help him track down and rescue his kidnapped daughter, and kill those responsible. It was a [...]

Awards season is drawing close. Trailers are beginning to emerge for some of the biggest name contenders for the coming competitions. Last week we had the Coen Brothers with True Grit. It looks like once again they’ll be squaring off against the legendary Clint Eastwood (Invictus, Gran Torino), as he brings us [...]

Traditional Westerns have been a bit of a mixed bag in recent years, there haven’t been very many in the 2000s, and while some like 3:10 to Yuma, The Assassination of Jesse James and Appaloosa have done fairly respectably both critically and commercially, they have not really captured the kind of excitement and momentum that would put the Western back into big leagues of cinema, despite the involvement [...]

Let me start by saying that one of my biggest cinema cravings is monster movies. Especially GIANT monster movies. Maybe it’s the combination of horror, disaster and spectacle that does it, or it’s just the sheer twisted glee of watching a rampaging twenty-story “Something” stomp a metropolis into oblivion. Sadly, however, too many of them were well before my time and consequently more than a little dated for [...]