My Top 10 Films of 2013

Okay, this is how it works- they either had to be released this year or I saw them in the cinema in the last twelve months, so if they were released in December 2012 but I only caught them in January they're allowed on the list. Anyway, here we go. Honourable mentions- World War Z, …

Movie Review: The Hunger Games: Catching Fire

Disclaimer: Okay, this is the sequel to an earlier movie, so there will be spoilers of the first movie included in this. I really dug the first movie in this series, and loved the books. One of the film's major strengths was Jennifer Lawrence's great performance as Katniss Everdeen, so I was looking forward to …

Movie Review: Les Miserables

I like musicals, but for some reason I've never seen Les Miserables all the way through before. My sister owned a copy on VHS when we were kids, having seen it live, and I remember watching some of it a few times, but it's a bit of an epic and I don't think I ever …

Movie Review: The World’s End

I love Simon Pegg and Edgar Wright's work together, from their awesome sitcom Spaced through their big screen collaborations Shaun of The Dead and Hot Fuzz. These two movies formed parts 1 and 2 of the Cornetto trilogy, and this movie is the third installment. The reason the movies work is because they have incredibly …

Movie Review: Riddick

Recently I wrote of my love for the first outing of space criminal Richard B Riddick (the B surely standing for "badass"), Pitch Black. It was a fun, low key sci-fi action flick about an anti-hero convict played by Vin Diesel leading a group of survivors against some nasty critters. The movie was a big …

Movie Review: Pain & Gain

There's a moment in Con Air when Nicolas Cage's character sees that the plane is towing a car through the air and drawls "On any other day, that might seem strange" and I found myself thinking about that line after this movie. It's one of those stranger than fiction true crime stories which is played …

Movie Review: Flight

Denzel Washington is a phenomenal actor, capable of playing incredibly flawed character with such powerful charisma and gravitas that whatever they do you still stay on side with them (see American Gangster's ruthless Frank Lucas or the corrupt police chief he portrayed in Out of Time). There are few who can match Washington when it …

Movie Review: RED 2

I have to say I quite enjoyed the first RED movie, where Bruce Willis, Morgan Freeman, Helen Mirren and John Malkovich played a bunch of old spies (classified as RED- Retired, Extremely Dangerous) who found themselves back in the firing line and on the run. It was a over the top action romp with a …

Movie Review: The Last Stand

10 years. That's how long Arnold Schwarzenegger went between films where he played the lead. After 2003's Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines, he left our screens and became the Governator. Sure, there were cameos along the way to keep us Arnie fans going (Welcome to the Jungle aka The Rundown, Around the World in …

Movie Reviews: The Wolverine

Back in 2009 one of my favourite Marvel characters got a solo outing on the big screen, and I was pretty excited to see X-Men Origins: Wolverine, unfortunately the film sucked. Despite some good casting (Liev Schreiber made a pretty good psycopathic Sabretooth and Ryan Reynolds would be perfect as Deadpool given a decent script) …