However rote and derivative the genre may seem, the underdog sports movie still has the capacity to overwhelm even the most cynical critical urges with the pure power of triumphant emotion. Rocky did it. Hoosiers did it. And believe it or not, the Ultimate Fighting Championship movie Warrior does it as well. Thanks to an excellent cast, increasingly fantastic fight scenes and a script where the sincerity far outshines the [...]

You know, I’ve never really understood why it’s called The Three Musketeers when it’s always about the fourth one — surely there’s an origin story (or three) we’re missing out on here – but to be perfectly honest, this features quite low on the list of things that baffle me about Paul W.S. Anderson’s adaptation. Far more pressing is the question of how Anderson, the man responsible for [...]

There is a moment in the middle of Midnight in Paris where Gil Penders, the films’ leading man and a hopeless romantic, muses that no work of art can equal the beauty of a great city. Just as Isaac felt about New York in Manhattan, or Vicki and Cristina felt about the Spanish capital in Vicki, Cristina, Barcelona, Gil is enamoured with the great French city from whence this film [...]

Anna Faris has a truly enviable quality about her. It’s one that makes her nigh-on impossible to dislike whilst onscreen, one that manages to ooze an easy charm, no matter the level of mediocrity surrounding her. It’s the very same quality that makes her the quintessential air-head blonde, the quality that made her far and beyond the best thing about the Scary Movie franchise. I’d go as far as to declare Anna Faris as [...]

Paranormal Activity 3 is shocking alright, but that has less to do with what’s in the movie, and more to do with what’s been left out. See that publicity picture located above this review? Sadly, you won’t see that scene play out in the movie. Oh, and have you seen this trailer promoting the film? Well guess what, you won’t be seeing those scenes in Paranormal Activity 3 [...]

Chronicling the outbreak of a global pandemic, Contagion is a lot like the virus it depicts, surging through your bloodstream and into your brain, wracking you with fear, paranoia and moral indecision. Bolstered by a practically inconceivable cast, director Steven Soderbergh weaves multiple storylines — not dissimilar to his 2000 Oscar-winning drug drama Traffic — in order to show the effects of the disease on various levels of society. Succeeding [...]

A fantastic sci-fi horror film brimming with suspense and packed with elaborate special effects, The Thing is an example of genre filmmaking at its finest, while also standing out as one of the few examples of a remake that actually improves upon the earlier film. Unfortunately, I am referring to John Carpenter’s 1982 film – itself a remake of 1951’s The Thing from Another World – and not the 2011 [...]

If you squint really hard during Matthijs van Heijningen Jr.’s The Thing, you might notice that it’s actually prequel to John Carpenter’s 1982 horror classic and not a remake. But just barely. The two films are plotted so similarly that if van Heijningen Jr.’s The Thing played out a few days later and a few clicks south, it’d be Carpenter’s The Thing. Only, you know, not nearly as good.

I realise [...]