When films are delayed or have a bad production history one can’t help but expect the worst when they finally arrive, especially when their release follows a stream of trailers seemingly offering nothing tantalising or original this side of Harry Potter or Lord Of The Rings (Warner’s other recent behemoth franchises). But Jack The Giant...

Following the latest dog-eared Die Hard instalment that severed its hard nosed roots for a more family-friendly affair, Bruce Willis returns (in a supporting role) to a more dirty, downtrodden cop picture that, despite being grounded in the urban crime sub-genre, feels more like a sequel to the latest Die Hard than the latest Die...

Following a run of overlooked work in the 1980s and 90s including the brilliant western vampire flick Near Dark and knucklehead surf movie Point Break, Kathryn Bigelow finally gained critical and box office recognition with 2008′s fascinating bomb disposal picture The Hurt Locker, an exhilarating tour de force that followed an EOD unit during the...

The Sessions is the second film released within the past couple of months about a man with medical/ psychological problems, seeking companionship and having to overcome his afflictions to find it. Following on from David O’ Russell’s exceptional Silver Linings Playbook, The Sessions is a candid, bittersweet and surprisingly humorous, true life tale about 38...

It was clear from his 2007 debut The Orphanage that Juan Antonio Bayona was a director to look out for and one whose skills at evoking high drama and tension could transcend the trappings of the horror genre. For his second feature, and first English language film, The Impossible, Bayona adapts the true life tale...

Baseball movies have always been a hard pitch to British audiences, but over the years there have been a few entries in the sub-sport genre that have struck a chord. The overrated yet well regarded Field Of Dreams and its better but lesser known brother Bull Durham were notable in the late eighties, and more...

Silver Linings Playbook could have been a forgettable piece of syrupy Oscar bait had a hack director or narrow minded studio head got their mitts on in. Hurl Jennifer Anniston and Owen Wilson into the equation and it would have amounted to nothing more than a generic tale of disease and heart-ache with a dance...

Paul Thomas Anderson has come a long way since his directorial debut Hard Eight in 1996, since attracting a wealth of acting talent to his later projects that would rival a film by Robert Altman. Anderson’s second film Boogie Nights gained both critical acclaim and notoriety due to its porn industry setting and after his...