Die Hard 5 Star Collection
May 1, 2003
The greatest action movie of all time. To give Die Hard to the general action movie watching public is something of a waste. You might as well give them cheap wine instead of Don Perignon, a shops own brand cheese instead of French Brie and Lazenby instead...
S.W.A.T.
April 3, 2003
S.W.A.T., Special Weapons and Tactics, or Script Weak, Action Terrible as it could also be known. Quite why Samuel L. Jackson persists in choosing these roles is beyond me, but here he is once again playing a wafer thin character, which seems based only...
Charade
February 21, 2003
It’s a cliché to say but they really don’t make movies like Charade (1963) anymore. Jonathan Demme’s remake, The Truth About Charlie (2002) only reinforces this notion with its miscasting of the two leads, Mark Wahlberg and Thandie...
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...
Shade
February 1, 2003
Shade (2003) is the latest in a long tradition of grifter movies, from the likes of The Hustler (1961) and House of Games (1987). They often feature elaborate confidence games most commonly involving card games like poker or other games of chance like...
Bad Education
January 18, 2003
The film within a film scenario is given the colourful Almodovar treatment in this stylish, autobiographical noir masterwork. Moving and laced with delicious black humor this has given the great Spanish director his biggest every domestic box office opening...
Stray Dog
January 6, 2003
Akira Kurosawa made Stay Dog (1949) only a few years after World War II while Japan was still occupied by Allied forces. He used the genre trappings of a crime thriller to comment on the post-war conditions of his country. The Criterion Collection has...
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...
Demonlover
December 5, 2002
Film critic turned filmmaker, Olivier Assayas’ latest effort is Demonlover (2002), a sleek, near-future corporate espionage thriller. At times, with its labyrinthine plotting and abstract imagery, it resembles something from the mind of David Lynch...
The Order
December 1, 2002
The resurgence of religious horror films in the late ‘90s produced a lackluster crop. From End of Days (1999) to Stigmata (1999) this sub-genre has been unpopular with both audiences and critics. End of Days took the Hollywood action film sensibility...
