‘71 Into the Fire’ takes a little known incident of the Korean War and gives it well-deserved epic treatment.
There’s a broad trajectory war films take, as the war they depict recedes into history. During the war they are obviously propagandist. Immediately afterwards they are patriotic and heroic. Then comes lighter fare, then films that question [...]

To my surprise, ‘Being Human’ creator Toby Whithouse managed to not only provide a satisfying conclusion to a season I’ve had mixed feelings about with this episode, but also retroactively fix a lot of my issues with the season as a whole.
By the end of ‘The Wolf-Shaped Bullet’ I was left feeling optimistic about the [...]

A curious, amiable but in some ways nihilistic comedy by Carlo Mazzacurati, there’s something of the work of the Boulting Brothers about ‘La Passione’. You can easily imagine Peter Sellers in the lead role (played splendidly here by Silvio Orlando) of hapless, ageing film director Giani Dubois, railroaded into directing a provincial Easter Passion Play because a leak [...]

Former leftist firebrand Marco Bellocchio writes and directs this episodic family saga, which was put together over a decade by crews of film students under his tutelage and which features members of Bellochio’s family in almost every significant role.
Stay away actress mother Sara (Donatella Finocchiaro) has a life that does not lend itself to child rearing. [...]

‘Vallanzasca, gli angeli del male’ (‘Angel of Evil’) is a slick portrayal of a smooth criminal. It purports to be the true story of a criminal whose gang ran riot in Milan in the 1970s.
‘True crime’ films are, of course, nothing of the sort. The messy reality of events is neatened up and causality is [...]

There’s a Darwinian process with art. To generalise wildly, a lot of the more ordinary examples of novels, plays, movies and so on fall away, leaving only the particularly notable. The stuff that isn’t to our taste shuffles aside.

Asterisk introduces Obelisk to his girlfriend.

Currently showing at one of the most prestigious cinemas in the UK is the slightly unlikely choice of a low budget film about care in the community, made in New Zealand.

If I say that ‘True Grit’ is pretty much a perfect movie, it’s not so much that I’m placing it in some imaginary canon of great films, or saying that it’s impossible to improve upon, merely that it has all the elements you might want in a visit to the cinema, and that all those [...]

Starting on 1 March, we’re planning to say ciao to a range of contemporary Italian cinema at London’s Italian Film Festival.
We love a film festival here. There’s something very satisfying about a week immersed in cinema, looking at themes that emerge from a well-curated programme.
The Italian Film Festival’s programme includes ten new Italian films across [...]

A triumvirate of Scots comedy shows have broken through to critical acclaim in the last couple of years, gaining support from the likes of Grace Dent despite their availability on the other side of Hadrian’s Wall being limited to iPlayer.

…as dumb, violent, action, drink smuggling films go, it’s the best I’ve seen in a while.

A few thoughts on the passing of one of Doctor Who’s major players.

Six months ago, I reviewed ‘Superman’ #700, which had the prologue for Grounded, the new story in which Superman decided he needed to connect with ordinary people and so began to walk from the East Coast of America to the West. I quite liked it.

He’s cute! He’s controversial! We look at the furore surrounding the lovable reggae rodent.

‘Dark Metropolis’ is a slickly shot indie sci-fi movie that aims high with its concept. Humanity has lost a 300-year old war to their genetically engineered offshoot called the Ghen.

Obelisk ponders Asterisk’s inevitable obsoletion.

Simon Pegg and Nick Frost reprise another version of their amiable bromance that’s been featured in all their collaborations and is an entertaining Sci-Fi romp aimed at fans of the genre.

The most memorable character of Durarara!! is silent and wears a motorbike helmet, and is spoken of in whispers.  ’Some say she doesn’t even have a head under that helmet, just some weird black fog. Some say her motorbike is really a horse in disguise. We only know her as … ‘. To a British [...]

Another instalment in the lives of our dynamic duo.

There’s no particular mystery about the ancestry of this ‘Family’: it’s the ‘Fantastic Four’, via Disney/Pixar’s ‘FF’-a-like ‘The Incredibles’, filtered through the ‘no capes’ superhero show genre popularised by early ‘Smallville’ and, more recently, ‘Heroes’.
The introduction of superpowers is virtually a find and replace of the Fantastic Four’s origin story: our four characters go on [...]

The debut of a thrilling, all-action comic strip.

Watching ‘Missing’ I was unsure of whether it was a coldly scathing portrayal of male violence against women or a tasteless, and for the most part extremely slow, horror film.

This collection falls into that well ploughed furrow of English language comics on both sides of the pond that can be classified as auto-bio.

This collected volume of Eddie Campbell books from Top Shelf features comic strips from the eighties, nineties and the noughties (Is that what that latter decade is called?) And it is a wonderful, wonderful thing.

It’s beautifully shot, has a great soundtrack and a gripping performance by the lead. However not a film I feel I’ll ever want to watch again…

The return of 165 Eaton Place is compact and lively, with only the odd wandering accent to let it down.

ITV’s ‘Marple’ is, and always has been, a strange hybrid beast and this is perhaps down to what seem to be a large number of contradictory pressures on it.