Film

Let’s face it, nobody has ever gone into a Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson action movie expecting a coherent plot or even a believable storyline, and to be frank this hasn’t stopped the actor from becoming one of the most bankable actions stars of the last decade. In the case of Skyscraper, Johnson’s latest vehicle, the stakes are stacked even higher than usual in this hugely enjoyable, if entirely preposterous heist movie which pits the former wrestling superstar against a group...

Most of us cinephiles have formative films, the ones that turned us from consumers into viewers and began the process of forming a lifelong love of movies. Mine was Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade. I confess I’m surprised by the fact that, for more than a handful of people, Hocus Pocus was the gateway drug, or at least part of it. I’m confused as to why I’m writing about this film now. Well, I know WHY, it’s because this...

Marketed, rather predictably, as the next Full Monty (yes another one), Oliver Parker’s Swimming With Men is a charming, if utterly forgettable comedy that follows the adventures of an all-male synchronised swimming team of varying ages and backgrounds as they navigate their respective difficulties in life, albeit via the medium of swimming in formation. Loosely based on Dylan Williams’s 2010 documentary Men Who Swim, which told the real life story of middle-aged Swedish synchronised team, Swimming With Men stars Rob Brydon...

The First Purge’s marketing campaign caused a stir when it released a teaser trailer in the style of a political advertisement. It riffed on classic Republican adverts and baited Donald Trump’s base, with a narrator asking the question, “What makes America great? The answer's simple, really, Americans make America great. You are the lifeblood of the nation, and your rights as Americans must be safeguarded." As stock footage of a baseball team, farmland and a blonde haired, prepubescent boy waving...

I was too young for Whitney-mania ('I Will Always Love You' finished its streak at No.1 the week I was born), but to my generation also she is always known as a massively talented individual. She is engrained as a purveyor of 'legacy' music, a voice and a performer that rightly became instantaneously legendary. Whitney dives into the star's rise and fall, filmmaker Kevin Macdonald's experience of Touching The Void surprisingly relevant for this painful tale of both Whitney's undeniable talents...

The 1963 assassination of President John F. Kennedy cast a long shadow over the second half of the 20th century and as its 30th anniversary approached there were several films that looked, some more directly than others, at its lasting echoes. In 1991 we had Oliver Stone’s conspiracy fueled JFK, late 1992 brought the still underseen Love Field, and with it an Oscar nomination for Michelle Pfeiffer. In The Line Of Fire isn’t directly about the assassination, but it figures...

Author’s Introduction When I was young, my parents were pretty strict about what I was and wasn’t allowed to watch. My viewing had to remain within appropriate age boundaries. I couldn’t get into higher certificate films at the cinema or rent them on video because at 15 I still looked like I was about 12. Then we got a VCR, and I figured out how to set the timer and started delving with a vengeance into films my parents would...

There is something undeniably beautiful about the lush greenery that surrounds the Pacific Northwestern city of Portland. It is here in a large public park that Will (Ben Foster) and his teenage daughter Tom (Thomasin McKenzie) live. Will is a war veteran who tries to escape the pressures of modern life and his PTSD through living in the wild. He is a very adept camper and they both live a comfortable existence in the woodlands. Perhaps inevitably, they are one...

Part-time sailor and full time wandering bum Tami Oldham (Shailene Woodley) runs across rugged older man Richard Sharp (Sam Claflin) while moving through Tahiti. The pair hit it off, and after some happy years together find themselves alone on a boat crossing the Pacific from Tahiti to San Diego. Hurricane Raymond strikes, and what should've been a pleasant sail becomes a desperate attempt at survival. While Adrift hits the beats in a workmanlike manner there isn't enough separating this true...