Van Helsing
March 31, 2003
The veritable assault and battery that Universal Pictures marketing department have bestowed in recent weeks is now all abundantly clear. Realising the celluloid travesty they have on their hands the powers that be have invested as much money as possible...
Planet of the Apes: 35th Anniversary Edition
February 23, 2003
One of the greatest science-fiction movies of all time gets a lavish two-disc special edition. It’s hard to be objective nearly four decades on from Planet of the Apes’ initial release. It was such a daring idea for a movie in all respects,...
The Last Samurai
February 19, 2003
The one-two punch of The Last Samurai (2003) and Kill Bill, Vol. 1 (2003) marks a surprising mini-resurgence of the samurai movie genre. When most people think of examples from this type of movie, the first ones that come to mind are Seven Samurai (1954)...
The Missing
February 2, 2003
When Cate Blanchett’s daughter is kidnapped she must team up with estranged father Tommy Lee Jones in this slow-burning Western. Ron Howard is as close to Hollywood royalty as you can get. Both his parents were actors, he starred in iconic 50’s...
Paycheck
January 5, 2003
Phillip K. Dick just doesn’t get any respect from Hollywood. With the exception of Blade Runner (1982), film producers and writers have butchered his fiction, rendering them unrecognizable by the time they hit the big screen. “We Can You Remember...
Blackmail Is My Life
December 24, 2002
In the 1960s, Kinji Fukasaku was the Japanese equivalent of Sam Fuller. He cut a violent swath of gangster films that were garish mini-masterpieces of the B-movie variety. Among them was Blackmail Is My Life (1968), a scathing, two-fisted attack on corruption...
Out for a Kill
December 14, 2002
Now I enjoy bad movies, I’m a veritable connoisseur of them. Which is why I have all of Steven Seagal’s films either on video, DVD or Laserdisc – many of them all three formats! Even I though, have to admit that lately Seagal’s...
Kill Bill volume 1
October 21, 2002
If Jackie Brown (1997) was Quentin Tarantino’s affectionate homage to ’70s Blaxploitation films, then Kill Bill, Volume 1 (2003) is his unabashed love letter to martial arts and Yakuza films from the same decade. The opening credits that feature...
Roswell: Season One
October 11, 2002
Max Evans and his alien pals must evade discovery from government agents and nosy teenagers. After the disappointing experience that was Disturbing Behaviour, veteran X-Files director David Nutter was looking for new projects and happened to meet up with...
To Live and Die in L.A.
September 30, 2002
To Live and Die in L.A. was a film ahead of its time. When it was released in 1985, it failed to connect with a mainstream audience that was put off by its amoral, unlikable characters and downbeat, nihilistic ending. What did people expect from the same...
