DVD Review – Dragon Dynasty

Dragon Dynasty

After a successful trading expedition to China Marco Di Paulo and his men are on their way home.  What they don’t realise is that the evil sorcerer Shang Sei is determined to stop them reaching their destination, and with spirit dragons at his beck and call he might just succeed. Dragon Dynasty is a film… Read more

DVD Review – Osombie

Osombie

I’ll be honest, I didn’t expect to see this so soon.  More to the point, I never expected to see this at all. Osombie tells the story of what happened to Osama Bin Laden following Operation Neptune Spear on May 2nd 2011. A team of NATO Special Forces traverses the Afghanistan dessert picking off Zombies… Read more

Linda Hunt – You May Know Me From Such Films As…

Linda Hunt

“If it’s in focus, it’s pornography, if it’s out of focus it’s art” The majority of performers mentioned in this column aren’t award winners, although in my opinion they all deserve to be, Linda Hunt is the exception that proves the rule.  In 1983 she portrayed a photo-journalist in The Year Of Living Dangerously and won… Read more

Lance Henriksen – You May Know Me From Such Films As…

Lance Henrikson

“I prefer the term ‘Artificial Person’ myself” People die in films, some people more often than others.  However, when it comes to claims to fame there’s only two men who can proudly boast that they’ve died at the hands of  a Terminator, an Alien and a Predator.  One of them went on to a career… Read more

DVD Review – Thor Hammer Of The Gods

Thor Hammer Of The Gods

A group of wandering Vikings find themselves on the shores of a strange island. Wandering inland they discover a group of terrified villagers huddled in the remains of a village, and as night falls the source of the villagers fear descends on the group with deadly force. When friends become foes and the bad outnumber… Read more

James Hong – You May Know Me From Such Films As…

James Hong

“Shut up, Mr. Burton! You were not brought upon this world to get it!” Prolific is a word used a lot in the world of film, It’s used to describe George Romero’s output of zombie films for example or Adam Sandlers Razzie collection. But when it comes down to prolific actors there’s a man who’s… Read more

Brion James – You May Know Me From Such Films As…

Brion James

“My mother? Let me tell you about my mother” Brion James had a face for radio. Despite this, he had a glittering career spanning three decades, even if it was often the same role. Getting his big break in TV, James first appeared on our screens in 70′s stalwarts Mork & Mindy, The Hulk and… Read more

DVD Film Review – Triangle

Triangle

This Review Contains Some Small Spoilers Time travel is a tricky business, one slip and you’ve killed your former self / changed history / slept with your own grandmother (delete as applicable).  It’s a thorny issue and one covered a hundred times over in various comedy and action movies.  However, it’s not often seen in… Read more

DVD Review – The Believer

images

Before he was in The Notebook, Blue Valentine and Drive and people started tweeting #gayforgosling, I encountered Ryan Gosling in a film called The Believer, a violent film where he played a fiercely anti-semitic Jew. The 2001 film, directed by Henry Bean, was based on a true story of a KKK member who a New York Times… Read more

DVD Film Review – The Call of Cthulhu

The Call of Cthulhu

HP Lovecraft stories are un-filmable, at least that’s the general thinking.  That’s not to say many people haven’t tried, Stuart Gordon for example prefers taking the general plot and warping it into a completely over the top gore soaked approach, as evidenced in his versions of Re-Animator and From Beyond.  Others use the bleak and… Read more

DVD Film Review – Phenomena

Phenomena - Movie Poster

Phenomena features a triptych of firsts.  It’s Jennifer Connelly’s first lead role, it’s Dario Argento’s first film to be shot in English and it’s the first film, to my knowledge, where the real heroes are a swarm of flies and a crazed Chimpanzee. Phenomena (or Creepers as it was known in the US after it was… Read more

DVD Film Review – Primer

Primer

Films about time travel don’t have to be complicated, look at Groundhog Day, a masterpiece of a film that succeeds as much through it’s simple premise ( a man repeating the same day over & over) as it does through it’s comedy.  Of course Groundhog Day is a comedy so it isn’t strictly necessary to… Read more

Film Review – Ink

Ink - Poster

Ink is a strange film, and not solely for the mesmerising dream-scapes and strange characters that inhabit them.  No Ink is probably strange for the fact that it owes it’s popularity to that hated enemy of Hollywood and the film industry, piracy and Peer to Peer networks.  Ink is an independent film written and directed by Jamin… Read more

Film Review – Rubber

Rubber

It’s a well known fact that Stephen King didn’t like Stanley Kubricks adaptation of The Shining one bit.  He felt that things went wrong from the casting of Jack Nicholson onwards.  His response to this was to have a go at directing a film himself.  He chose one of his own short stories, the cars-come-alive-and-destroy-mankind… Read more

DVD Film Review – Die Tür (The Door)

Die Tur

Die Tür (The Door) is part of that time travel sub-genre, the go-back-in-time-and-kill-yourself film. It’s the tale of a depressed father who, five years after a horrific accident kills his daughter, finds a door that leads him back to that fateful day.  Given the chance to change events he makes a terrible mistake as he somehow… Read more

DVD Film Review – Pontypool

Pontypool

Despite what you might think Pontypool isn’t Welsh, in fact Pontypool is actually a small town in Ontario, Canada where, for the purposes of this film at least, a grizzled shock jock sits in his radio booth and listens to the end of the world. Directed by Bruce McDonald and starring Stephen McHattie, Lisa Houle… Read more