Gary Collinson selects his Five Essential Boxing Movies… Screen interpretations of the sweet science can be traced back to the silent era, with movies such as Buster Keaton’s Battling Butler (1926) and Alfred Hitchcock’s The Ring (1927) paving the way for the film noir offerings of the Forties and Fifties. After a dry period the […]

Gary Collinson selects his Five Essential Films of Steven Spielberg… With his twenty-four features amassing a global box office take of around $8.5 billion, two-time Academy Award-winning director Steven Spielberg is one of but a select few who can genuinely lay claim to being the greatest filmmaker of all time. A founding father of the […]

Gary Collinson selects his Five Essential Films of Tony Scott… British director Tony Scott’s introduction to the world of film came at 16 when he starred as the lead in Boy and Bicycle (1965), the debut short from older brother Ridley. Tony soon found that his true calling lay behind the camera and, after joining […]

The One That Got Away, 1957. Directed by Roy Ward Baker. Starring Hardy Krüger, Colin Gordon, Michael Goodliffe and Terence Alexander. SYNOPSIS: During the Battle of Britain a Luftwaffe plane is hit and plunges down into the British countryside. Although the pilot is captured, he is extremely confident and focussed on his plan: to escape […]

Gary Collinson selects his Five Essential Video Nasties… In the early 1980s the rise in popularity of the VHS cassette was met with concerns from some quarters (namely morality crusaders such as Mary Whitehouse, religious groups and media organisations looking to stir a moral panic) about the content of the unregulated home video market in […]

Sin Nombre, 2009. Directed by Cary Joji Fukunaga. Starring Édgar Flores, Paulina Gaitán, Kristyan Ferrer and Tenoch Huerta. SYNOPSIS: A Honduran girl and a Mexican gang-banger undertake a perilous trek towards a new life across the border in the United States. The feature debut of American cinematographer Cary Joji Fukunaga, Sin Nombre presents a bleak […]

My Neighbours the Yamadas, 1999. Written and directed by Isao Takahata. Featuring the voice talents of James Belushi, Molly Shannon, Daryl Sabara and Liliana Mumy. SYNOPSIS: A series of episodes showing the ups and downs of everyday life for a family living in Tokyo. My Neighbours the Yamadas was written and directed by Isao Takahata, […]

Laputa – Castle in the Sky, 1986. Written and directed by Hayao Miyazaki. Featuring the voice talents of Anna Paquin, James Van Der Beek, Mark Hamill, Cloris Leachman and Jim Cummings. SYNOPSIS: A young boy helps a girl with a mysterious crystal hunted by pirates, the army and secret agents in the search for a […]

Cherokee Summer selects her Five Essential Anime Movies… I must confess that once (and I emphasis on the ‘once’) I was an anime nerd. A big one. I’d watch anything and everything to do with anime, read tons of manga, became obsessed with the Japanese culture, and attended yearly conventions to meet like-minded people who […]