anniversary

Sports comedies seem to have become a dying breed. Your typical entry in the genre sees a team of underdogs achieve the unlikely by beating the impossibly good and evil team and winning the big game – perhaps saving a rec centre in the…

It’s 2009 and a punter is in the mood for a horror film. They check the cinema timetable: Drag Me To Hell, directed by Sam Raimi. The Spider-Man guy? Odd choice for a horror film, but it has a cool poster and the trailer looks scary so why…

After the passing of time, the lost souls of Midnight Cowboy still present a glimpse of hopelessness, portrayed and executed with an arcane beauty in one of the most fearless movies of the last century. It is a movie that licks the grime…

It’s been stated to death that the Sonic the Hedgehog franchise was in dire straits around 2004 – 2007. It’s that well-known that going into it here would result in me creating my own fan character; Beat the Dead Horse. But after the…

We're conditioned to see the Allies as the heroes in World War 2. In fairness it's pretty clear why. With that said there are no real heroes in war as Spec Ops: The Line will clearly tell you. With Call of Duty: World at War developer…

You always remember the films you cried at. Whether it’s happy tears at the sight of a reunion long in the making, tears of sorrow after a character’s death or even weeping in terror at a horror movie it’s often a testament to the power of…

“Although what you are about to see is a work of fiction, it should nevertheless be played at maximum volume.” So opens Todd Haynes’s Velvet Goldmine (1998), and it sets the tone for two key elements of the glam rock movie: it’s not about…

Is it possible to be a great artist without sacrificing everything to the craft? That is the question at the heart of The Red Shoes, released 70 years ago this month. The film is considered to be not only a classic of cinema but also one of…

Fighting games are ridiculous. No other game allows Yoda from Star Wars to fight an undead pirate captain. Soulcalibur IV does though and that's what made it so special to my 13 year old self back in 2008. I had barely any knowledge of…

The cinema where I grew up closed in the mid 1980’s, as was the case in most Irish towns at the time (it would be almost 30 years before another popped up in its place), but that decline was met by the rise of the “video shop”. Maybe we…