A semi-sequel to Rachid’s Bouchareb’s earlier Indigenes (translated as the less inflammatory ‘Days of Glory’) ‘Outside the Law’ is an intelligent and skilfully made film about the politics of rebellion and colonialism and the morality of war.

Daniele Luchetti’s first feature since ‘My Brother Is An Only Child’ is a low key affair, covering a year in the life of a working class Italian family.

Michael Lewis intended ‘Liar’s Poker’, his seminal 1989 book on his career as a bond trader, to be an exposé.

‘Route Irish’ is the road from Baghdad airport to the city’s ostensibly safe ‘Green Zone’.

Wang Xiaoshuai’s ‘Shanghai Dreams’ was a highlight of 2005’s London Film Festival, arriving on a wave of polite, well-considered hype.

‘Womb’ is the worst film about clones featuring a scene in an abandoned ship on a windswept beach that I’ve seen this week.

‘Suck’ combines vampires with a rock’n’roll movie, and wears its cheapness on its leather sleeve.

Errol Morris’ droll, hugely enjoyable and often baffling documentary is a feature length profile of Joyce McKinney. Who she?

It’s difficult to imagine how a film screening could go more wrong.

A sensitively played and beautifully shot adaptation of Kazuo Ishiguro’s Booker nominated 2005 novel, ‘Never Let Me Go’ is a harrowing and deeply affecting film.

I had high hopes for ‘The Disappearance of Alice Creed’, about which I’d heard good things. I’m afraid, however, that viewing this film was a pretty disappointing and also slightly depressing experience.

‘Good Hair’ is nominally a study of the multimillion dollar black hair industry, but has some deeply resonant things to say about the wider question of race in American society.

To call something “charming” is often to patronise it; but ‘Bella’ is charming. It charms you, with its warmth & its performances.

It might not be a superhero film, but ‘Tamara Drewe’ is a great example of how to adapt a comic book to the screen.

Dawn of the dead meets La Haine as the living dead attack those with a killer instinct in a rough district of Paris.

I don’t know about you, but I never expect good things from a film with Clive Owen in it.

Oh, thank you Maverick Films for ‘Army of the Dead’. I have to say, having watched it once, I went straight back to the start and watched it all over again, as much from a sense of disbelief at what I’d witnessed as to enjoy the story.

Suitably for a film about faith, I can only recommend this movie based on my own convictions. I believe it’s an entertaining, unnerving and in some respects, challenging film. However the aspects I admired about the film may also be qualities that put other people off from watching it…

The speed and severity of the decline in the popularity of the films of Charles Chaplin is one of the more interesting wrinkles in the history of popular perception of films

You know that a film’s viral marketing is working when worries about its content making you feel sick make you avoid watching it!

Hey kids, you liked ‘Shaun of the Dead’ right? A bunch of British comic actors play goofy slackers adrift in the middle of a zombie outbreak and resident in the suburbs and the local pub in a narrative awash with cultural references and geeky self-awareness – great stuff! The makers of ‘FAQ…’ certainly thought so [...]

A risible B movie that is the nadir of this year’s 80s themed cinema…

As with ‘The Hurt Locker’ it is far from trendy to knock ‘Moon’.

The Beatles’ first movie is 46 years old this month and very cheap on DVD. It’s time for an arbitrary celebration.

‘Inception’ is not a film without flaws. It is a spiritual successor to ‘The Matrix’, with all the positives and negatives that implies.

‘Toy Story 3′ is, at its core, a somewhat solemn tale wrapped up in Pixar’s usual computer animation finesse and an above-average script.

‘The Crazies’ is a good example of a modern Hollywood remake of a cult independent movie, in that it’s slicker and more focused than the original, but a lot less interesting.

Sherlock Holmes’ fame and appeal began because of, and fundamentally remains sustained by, the popularity and readability of the stories written by his creator, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle.

Michael Winterbottom’s ‘The Killer Inside Me’ is too well made to be dismissed as a ‘bad film’, but it is morally repugnant.

…if you have a problem, if no-one else can help and if you can find them…

In case you hadn’t noticed, the 80s are back again, specifically 80s style action adventures.

It’s certainly not a brave or controversial critical move to say that ‘The Hurt Locker’ is a great film. Indeed, to come out with such a statement after this year’s Oscar ceremony is conventional thinking at its most pointlessly facile.

It seems to be an unwritten rule in Hollywood that the second film in a major motion picture franchise has to be the darker, more introspective entry.

You know what you’re going to get with Asylum. Their business model is simple: produce the kind of B-movie fun that kept Amicus, Hammer, Roger Corman and others going.

I’ve written before of the importance of timing to political comedies. ‘The Ghost’ goes to show that the same can hold true of political thrillers.
When published in 2007, Robert Harris’ ‘The Ghost’ still had topical punch. Tony Blair had just stood down after 6 years of Iraq, Afghanistan and post-September 11 intelligence and torture controversies.
Harris’ [...]

With a title like ‘Ninja Assassin’ and a dynamite creative team behind the movie, surely it would be a great action flick?

Surely?

…an excellent day for an exorcism.
With all the other 1970s and 80s horror tropes and films being remade endlessly in the cinema at the moment, the one film/series that has been surprising left alone is the Exorcist saga. With the exception of The Exorcism of Emily Rose in 2005, this is the first collision of [...]

Jackie Brown-shirt or G-rhine-dhouse?

Orson Welles’ decline amid flashes of brilliance is an integral part of what makes his life story so compelling, albeit frustrating…

Crazy, like.

I have mixed feelings about Terry Gilliam. While I like a lot of his films, and love a couple of them, I can’t help feeling that he’s not quite the artistic martyr his fans make him out to be…

Play is the thing.

‘Taken’ is perhaps the most insidious, reactionary, vile action film of the last 20 years…

The middle of the end?

With ‘Transformers:Revenge of the Fallen’, Bay has thrown realism out of the window in exchange for a fantasy adventure closer to ‘Men In Black’ than ‘Pearl Harbour’, and all for the better…

The ‘Terminator’ series has two prevailing themes. One of them is inevitability, how it is impossible to escape from destiny. Terminator: Salvation dramatises this in quite an unusual way, as a form of concept art…

You’ll have someone’s eye out with that…

Our hero is a farmboy, raised in a desert by his Uncle. He meets an old comrade of his Father’s who tells him his Dad died a hero and that he should follow in his footsteps… sound familiar, at all?

The danger with satire is that it can swiftly become out of date…

‘Star Trek’ is a franchise that, instinctively, ought to be strong and vibrant but which had ground to a halt.