Film

In pre-CGI Hollywood, if you wanted fantastical creatures or robots, Phil Tippett was the man you'd go to. He created the AT-AT Walker for Star Wars: The Empire Strikes Back and, my personal favourite, ED-209 in Robocop. And if that…

It's a tale as old as cinema itself: the star beloved in their home country heads to Hollywood to make it in the big time only to find themself playing middling villain roles. So it went and is still going with Mads Mikkelsen's career. Seen…

When toy manufacturing company Mattel first presented the main character of Masters of the Universe to writer Robby London, he thought the name He-Man was ludicrous. It was believed by the entire staff to be nothing more than a working…

The header on the stationary at the Hotel Earle reads: “A Day or a Lifetime.” And with that comes the key to entering the strange world constructed by Joel and Ethan Coen. Later in the film, when Barton (John Turturro) is pressed about how…

Video nasty – a film on video considered to be gratuitously and offensively violent or pornographic. A controversial subject ever since the early 1980s, this was thanks to the unwavering determination of Mary Whitehouse and the National…

It’s a shame we won’t be able to see Beckett on the big screen. While the film is far from perfect, director Ferdinando Cito Filomarino delivers something far more appealing than its dreary trailer would suggest. There are exotic locales,…

Untold: Malice at the Palace asks the viewer to reconsider the legacy of the eponymous brawl. On 19 November 2004, the Indiana Pacers and Detroit Pistons got into a shoving match which escalated into a riot at Detroit’s Palace at Auburn…

Just Philippot has become something of a phenomenon in recent years with his striking efficiency to deliver high quality short films with artistic execution most can only dream of. Both Acid (2018) and Ses Souffles (2015) showcased his…

Technological anxieties concerning relationships with artificial beings really have had something of a stranglehold on the world of grounded, sci-fi dramas recently. Spike Jones’s Her, which concerned a lonely Joaquin Phoenix and his…

 The best (and only) character actor podcast in the world returns! For their first episode back Andrew and Stephen head north to talk the career of Michael Smiley. A Northern Irishman, Smiley got his start as the rave-obsessed bike courier…