Tom Jolliffe discusses the ins and outs, ups and downs, past, present and future of Ivan Drago… One of the Reagan era children, from the taut, muscular womb of 80’s action cinema, Dolph Lundgren never quite hit the big league. In the shadow of Stallone, Schwarzenegger and Willis were Van Damme, Seagal, and Norris. Then […]

A Single Man, 2009. Directed by Tom Ford. Starring Colin Firth, Julianne Moore, Nicholas Hoult and Matthew Goode. SYNOPSIS: After the death of his long-time companion, a middle-aged college professor decides to kill himself and goes about getting his affairs in order in what would otherwise be a normal day. I’ve seen A Single Man […]

The Evil Dead, 1981. Directed by Sam Raimi. Starring Bruce Campbell, Ellen Sandweiss, Betsy Baker, Hal Delrich and Theresa Tilly. SYNOPSIS: Five students journey to an isolated cabin where they find The Book of the Dead and unwittingly release an evil force from within the woods. The first outing in the deliciously campy Evil Dead […]

Gary Collinson traces the many screen incarnations of The Dark Knight in the third of a three-part feature… read parts one and two. While the Batman franchise was enjoying a prolonged spell of creativity and popularity throughout the 80s and 90s, the release of the much-maligned Batman & Robin (1997) looked to have steered the […]

Gary Collinson traces the many screen incarnations of The Dark Knight in the second of a three-part feature… read part one here. Just as Superman’s comic-book debut had led to the creation of Batman almost forty years earlier, the success of Richard Donner’s Superman: The Movie (1978) helped plant the seed that would ultimately bring […]

Burke and Hare, 2010. Directed by John Landis. Starring Simon Pegg, Andy Serkis, Isla Fisher, Jessica Hynes, Tom Wilkinson, Bill Bailey, Georgia King, Tim Curry and Christopher Lee. SYNOPSIS: A black comedy about two 19th century grave robbers who discover a lucrative business providing cadavers for an Edinburgh medical school. Edinburgh, 1828. Public hangings are […]

The Next Three Days, 2010. Directed by Paul Haggis. Starring Russell Crowe, Elizabeth Banks, Liam Nesson, Brian Dennehy, Olivia Wilde, Lennie James, Aisha Hinds, Daniel Stern, RZA and Jason Beghe. SYNOPSIS: After his wife Lara is arrested for a murder she claims she didn’t commit, John Brennan (Russell Crowe) sets about trying to prove her […]

Surviving Life (Theory and Practice), 2010. Written and Directed by Jan Svankmajer. Starring Václav Helšus and Klára Issová. SYNOPSIS: A married man, bored of his job retreats into his dreams to live a double life with a beautiful woman. He becomes addicted to these dreams, quitting his job and renting a private room so that […]

Kaboom, 2010. Written and Directed by Gregg Araki. Starring Thomas Dekker, Juno Temple, Haley Bennett and James Duval. SYNOPSIS: Kaboom focuses on Smith, a film student studying at college, lusting after his dumb-surfer room-mate, hooking up with British acquaintance London and hanging out with best friend Stella. He keeps getting recurring dreams of walking down […]

Predators, 2010. Directed by Nimród Antal. Starring Adrien Brody, Laurence Fishburne, Topher Grace, Alica Braga, Walton Goggins, Danny Trejo, Mahershalalhashbaz Ali, Oleg Taktarov and Louis Ozawa Changchien. SYNOPSIS: A small group of humans find themselves on a hostile extraterrestrial world which acts as a game preserve for the merciless alien species known as the Predators. […]