“A king has his reign, then he dies. It’s inevitable.” It is undeniable that Prometheus has problems in the script department, that characters behave in odd ways and are sometimes the writers pawns, moved from point A to B to get to the next set piece. Even when one takes into account first draft scripter [...]
Joseph Kosinki’s second sci-fi film Oblivion, starring Tom Cruise, seems to be cementing his dubious reputation as a soulless director of empty, derivative spectacle. I disagree, and would like to take this opportunity to defend his enjoyable debut feature cyber-calling card, Tron Legacy. Admittedly, Tron: Legacy is a film of two halves. After going all out to entertain [...]
George Orwell was wrong. 1984 wasn’t the year of Big Brother, it was the year of the little brother from Minneapolis, Prince. After the Talented One had been toiling in the trenches he hit the big time with Purple Rain. This ridiculous, pompous semi-biopic of the same name, despite lurching perilously close to bad, is a stunning showcase [...]
Highlander, one of Cannon films more genuinely entertaining films of the 1980′s, takes the Joseph Campbell hero myth and spins it in a dazzling, centuries spanning, rock video styled fantasy. A fantasy that culminates in a fin de siecle clash of Titans in a decadent, decayed, eighties New York. More bang for your buck than [...]
The third in moonlighting 007 producer Harry Saltzman’s “anti-Bond” series of cocky cockney Harry palmer films is actually the most Bond like, a wild, quirky international quest, brilliantly and bizarrely directed by enfant terrible, Ken Russell. Now is the Midwinter of our discontent Russell was being given a lifeline by Saltzman and his [...]
To read critical reaction at the time of its 1979 release, 1941 is “a tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing“. So why is it a Guilty pleasure? The story, a screwball farce based on an actual suspected Japanese attack on L.A and its environs a week after Pearl Harbor, [...]
Saving Private Ryan has a lot to answer for. Suddenly, WW II was hot again, but only in a visceral, reflective, solemn way. “Earn this” indeed. I’ve a lot of time for it, but it took Quentin Tarantino to inject his own wicked sense of fun into the time honoured, “guys on a mission” war [...]
Is Stallone’s take on the Mega-City cop drokking good, or just plain drek? On the matter of Guilty Pleasures, I AM THE LAW! Judge Dredd lingered in development hell from as far back as 1980 before it burst onto screens in 1995. Trying to get the tone of the character and his world right [...]
What do we want? JUSTICE!! Justice for Daredevil, the unfairly maligned runt of the movie superhero litter, and subject of this month’s Guilty Pleasures. Director / Writer Mark Steven Johnson complained of having to cut his dark avenger type movie to achieve a PG-13 rating imposed by the studio (it’s a 15 in the [...]
With this month’s Guilty Pleasures, you get two genres for the price of one. An SF version of John Boorman’s Hell In The Pacific, that then morphs into adventures in space babysitting. Human Davidge (Dennis Quaid), is left holding Drac erstwhile enemy “Jerry’s” (Louis Gossett Jnr) surprise offspring Zammis (Bumper Robinson). Throw in an appearance by “hey, [...]
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