Sherlock Holmes: A Game of Shadows [Review]

Bang; boom; KABLAMO - Sherlock Holmes: A Game of Shadows starts as it means to go on. It’s bigger; it’s louder - simply put, it’s the original film turned up to eleven. That’s not to say this is in most respects a replication of 2009’s Sherlock Holmes. Far from it; while the continuity is, for the most part, there - the style, the cinematography, director Guy Ritchie’s trademark slow-motion - this is an entirely new film, though one that neither...

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New trailer for The Dark Knight Rises

"There's a storm coming, Mr Wayne. You and your friends better batten down the hatches, 'cause when it hits, you're all gonna wonder how you ever thought you could live so large, and leave so little for the rest of us..." The words of Selina Kyle, played by Anne Hathaway in Christopher Nolan's third and final Batman film, The Dark Knight Rises, due to hit cinemas in 2012. A film that's so highly anticipated by both this critic and...

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2011 Review Round-Up: Part 1

Looking back over 2011, there's a fair few films I've seen but never got round to reviewing. So, hey presto, here follows a paragraph-review for each, starting with the first ten. Scores are numerical but act as a star rating. Enjoy! 127 Hours ✰✰✰✰✰ Another masterpiece by Danny Boyle, who successfully pulls off 94 minutes of film where the main antagonist is… a boulder. Tells the true story of Aaron Ralston, who gets trapped in a canyon....

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Mission: Impossible - Ghost Protocol [Preview]

Last week I managed to catch a preview screening of Mission: Impossible - Ghost Protocol, where 30 minutes of footage was showcased on the biggest IMAX screen in the country. And it was every bit as bombastic as one would expect from a Mission: Impossible film. The first sequence depicted leading man Tom Cruise, as disavowed agent Ethan Hunt, attempting to scale the Burj Khalifa – the tallest building in the world, located in Dubai. This bit...

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Assassin's Creed III confirmed in all but title

As you can probably tell from past articles, I've taken a bit of a shine to the Assassin's Creed series. In fact, it's probably one of my favourite series of all time. And even though next week's release, Revelations, promises to tie up the story of pretty much every character we've seen so far, developers Ubisoft haven't quite done with the franchise just yet (don't look so surprised). CEO Yves Guillemot announced during a recent financial earnings...

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The Thing [Review]

Far be it from me to presuppose the outcome of this horror prequel to the 1982 classic of the same name, but… I did. Much too easily can the audience predict every single twist and turn The Thing catapults at them, long before it has chance to fire. Such is the problem with psychological horror; of course, the premise is interesting – no one can be trusted, anyone could be an enemy – but in many cases it comes at the expense of the basic horror elements. The...

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We Need to Talk About Kevin [Review]

Lionel Shriver herself has called this adaptation of her 2003 novel We Need to Talk About Kevin ‘terrific’. Fans of the book should need no more justification nor persuasion than that to head out right now and watch the film. Newcomers to the twisted tale of the teenager gone so horribly wrong; to the cereal-and-videogame nuclear family, blasted apart by the devastating effects of the actions of one cynical psychopath, should read on. The...

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Johnny English: Reborn [Review]

The original Rowan Atkinson spoof-spy caper Johnny English (2003) lay under no false pretexts; born simply as slapstick, cringing comedy of the best kind, Atkinson’s bumbling spook was a character I was always particularly fond of. The film was panned by critics, dismissed as ‘cheesy, brainless and puerile’, but I felt it carried a certain charm. In any case, its reception at the box office warranted a sequel, albeit some eight years later, and so...

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Drive [Review]

If you’ve ever played the PlayStation classic Driver, then the opening sequence of Drive should look inherently familiar. It’s a car chase the way car chases should be done; it’s not over the top, it’s exquisitely directed, and carries the cool, collected ambience of John Tanner’s effortless vigilantism. It’s an exceptional introduction to an exceptional film; one that oozes style and charm whilst blending an amalgam of genre conventions into what...

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Assassin's Creed: Revelations [Preview]

The Ubisoft developer’s conference which took place on Saturday, September 25th 2011 at Earl’s Court was, to say the least, an inspiring one. Showcasing the next instalment in the Assassin’s Creed series, subtitled Revelations, Ubi developers Brent Ashe and Raphael Lacoste teased an early gameplay sequence whilst also introducing us to the core themes of the game. This is Ezio Auditore’s pièce de résistance; a closing chapter on the protagonist...

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Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy [Review]

Premiering at the 68th Venice International Film Festival around two weeks prior to general release, Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy was greeted almost instantly with unanimous critical acclaim. Cries of sophistication, intelligence, and an astounding, absorbing experience were bandied around various film institutions; as of this writing, Tinker holds a 97% aggregate on Rotten Tomatoes after thirty five reviews. Just one of those has been negative, which...

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Final Destination 5 [Review]

The Final Destination series has never been a favourite of mine; indeed, I don’t recall ever having seen the first couple of instalments, instead being introduced through the third. While this threequel managed to allay my preconceptions about the series to an extent, the fourth [and, at the time, supposedly last] instalment, The Final Destination (2009), did far less disservice to such a bias. Now we’re back to the numerical film titles, with...

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Star Wars Blu-ray edits confirmed by Lucasfilm

George has gone and done it again. After tinkering around with the original trilogy of Star Wars films for their DVD release in 2004 (where, yes, Greedo shot first), Lucasfilm confirmed today that rumours circling the web about further changes to the upcoming Blu-ray release are indeed true. And, much like the original edits with the first DVD releases, these are unlikely to be welcome. I find myself dismayed at the majority - take the closing...

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Cowboys and Aliens [Review]

If you watch any science-fiction film from the first half of the 20th Century, you’re most likely to find a world populated with small, green aliens, usually labelled ‘Martians’ (for serious want of a better name), maybe sporting an extra eye or ear or something. For the first generation of science-fiction films, this was the typical extra-terrestrial, exemplified perhaps in Looney Tunes’ Marvin the Martian (okay, so maybe he wasn't green, but his...

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Coming Soon: Eurogamer Expo 2011

So, this year I shall, for the second time in my life, be attending the Eurogamer Expo. The last time this happened was in 2009, when for one year, and one year only, the convention was brought to Leeds. Apparently, the North was rendered futile, as it hasn't returned since. Luckily, I'm moving down South in a month, just a week before the expo. Good timing, no? Regardless, with the vast amounts of playable content there - including huge titles...

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Pixar announce 2 new projects

A convention at the weekend saw Pixar announce two new films, in addition to new footage and art from already announced Brave and Monsters University. Neither of the new announcements have titles yet, but the premise of each sounds equally intriguing. First up, there's the untitled project arriving on November 27, 2013. All that's been said so far is that it's about dinosaurs. Or more specifically, what life might be like if "dinosaurs never went extinct." Some brief concept art was shown of a child riding a dinosaur's head, but nothing more...

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The Devil's Double [Review]

Saddam Hussein, President of Iraq from 1979-2003, was widely condemned for the brutality of his dictatorship in an international sense; in particular, the events in Kuwait and the Gulf War in the early 1990s gave considerable wake to such cries. But this is a familiar tale to tell: much less is known of Saddam’s family and personal life. In comes The Devil’s Double, an exposé of the tyrannical ruler’s eldest and, for a time, favourite of his offspring,...

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Some Films I Like

Here's some films I like! Yay me! Star Wars Episode V: The Empire Strikes Back (1983)  Iconic. That’s the only word fit to describe the first Star Wars sequel, directed by the late, great Irvin Kershner. Perhaps telling that Lucas had less involvement with this one that it’s considered the greatest, but regardless of that fact, Empire is without a doubt one of sci-fi’s greatest gamechangers. From the opening Imperial victory on the snowy...

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