Tom Jolliffe shows his appreciation for Tom Cruise on the actor’s 57th birthday… Approaching 40 years in the industry. Tom Cruise has spent over 30 of those as a superstar. He’s been a box office behemoth. A star turn, a headliner and a poster boy for blockbuster pulling power. He’s also been maligned and dismissed. […]
Why Cinema Needs Nicolas Cage Cranked Up to 11
Tom Jolliffe on why Nicolas Cage at his wildest is a gift to cinema… To say Nic Cage is a divisive character would be quite the understatement. Likewise, as an actor. You could say, with great understatement, that he’s an oddball. As an actor, you could also say he tends to be most known for […]
90s Video Action Stars Part IV – Gary Daniels, Joe Lara, C. Thomas Howell and Thomas Ian Griffith
Tom Jolliffe with the latest delve back to the video shelf with 90’s video action stars [read part one, part two and part three]… With so many 90’s action icons worked through already, you’d imagine I was beginning to struggle for subjects to cover. You’d be mistaken. It feels like I’ve barely scratched the surface […]
Enter The Muscles from Brussels: The Jean-Claude Van Damme Tournament Fight Film
Tom Jolliffe looks at Jean-Claude Van Damme’s history of tournament fight films… If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it. For a while in the earlier career of Jean-Claude Van Damme, that seemed to be more or less the case. When Enter the Dragon ended up as a cultural and cinematic phenomenon, a host of imitators […]
Three Films and Six Van Dammes: The JCVD Dual Role Routine
Tom Jolliffe looks back at Jean-Claude Van Damme’s dual role films… Who doesn’t love an action star? Oi, put your hands down now! Still, for us that do, we all have our favourites. Occasionally there were rivalries and camps. You could be an Arnold Schwarzenegger kid or a Sylvester Stallone kid. Maybe you were secretly […]
30 Years On: Steven Seagal in Marked For Death
Tom Jolliffe looks back at one of Steven Seagal’s early works, as Marked For Death turns 30… After breaking out with Above The Law, a lot was expected among action fans for what would follow from Steven Seagal. It would take a couple of years waiting until the next one, but 1990 saw two Seagal […]
A Double Hit of Luc Besson Assassin Films: Nikita and Leon
Tom Jolliffe double bills Luc Besson’s Nikita and Leon… Think back to the 90’s. A transitional time for action films. It was also an era that saw a French director hit it big in Hollywood. Then think about the best assassin films of the decade. Chances are when piling up candidates, you’re likely to have […]
Has Showgirls actually become kind of good?
Tom Jolliffe takes a look back at Showgirls, once universally derided and considered one of the worst films ever… but is it actually misunderstood? Upon its release in 1995, Paul Verhoeven’s trashy spectacular, Showgirls was obliterated by critics. It was a lavish, Vegas set tale with plenty of excess dismissed as vacuous, grimy and seedy. […]
The Battle for Vampire Superiority: The Lost Boys vs. Near Dark
Tom Jolliffe presides over a showdown between the cult 1987 vampire flicks The Lost Boys and Near Dark… The vampire has sucked his merry way through cinema history, from the silent era, to the R-Patz era. We’ve seen many incarnations, many genres, from Christopher Lee to angsty teens, from horror to camp comedy. Perhaps the […]
Nikita vs Anna: When Luc Besson Retraced His Steps
Tom Jolliffe looks back at the film which broke Luc Besson out to the world, and his more recent and pale imitator, Anna… Cinema is almost bereft of an original idea these days. There are very few that arrive which feel like something unique, and even then, the smart-arses among us might start pinpointing similarities […]
- « Previous Page
- 1
- …
- 16
- 17
- 18
- 19
- 20
- …
- 89
- Next Page »
