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It's interesting but not altogether surprising that, whenever people discuss Disney's animation renaissance, the impression is often given that BEAUTY AND THE BEAST immediately followed THE LITTLE MERMAID, credited with having launched the studio's "second golden age". THE RESCUERS DOWN...

Posted at 4:49 PM in BD Impressions

Two men soundproof a room, head out, grab a young woman off the street, strip her and tie her to a bed. Oh, and they want a cool two million for her release. That's about all I'm prepared to say...

Posted at 3:32 PM in BD Impressions

Not as good as I remembered it - which oddly enough is a sentiment I've seen echoed in a number of more recent reviews of the film. It now feels a touch too arch and smug for my tastes, and...

Posted at 11:08 PM in BD Impressions

I don't think it would be unreasonable to suggest that THE SECRET OF KELLS would have been a lot less interesting if not for its visuals. This is in no way meant as a damning criticism - I've always said...

Posted at 9:54 PM in BD Impressions

I had reasonably high expectations for this "missing child" horror/thriller, advertised as being from the producers of PAN'S LABYRINTH and THE ORPHANAGE. I wouldn't say I was disappointed as such by the end result, but it's definitely in the shadow...

Posted at 1:01 PM in BD Impressions

The release of Dario Argento's INFERNO on BD is a double cause for celebration. Not only is it the first high definition release of the film anywhere in the world, it's also the first time it has been released uncut...

Posted at 9:26 PM in BD Impressions / Blu-ray

Hmm... something tells me this movie didn't get offered the chance to take advantage of the City of New York's tax break programme for movies. ;) This film doesn't really need any introduction, given that it's one of the most...

Posted at 8:59 PM in BD Impressions

KICK-ASS really didn't grab me in the way that it did some people. It's quite funny. It's quite exciting. It's quite observant. It's a lot of "quite", but it never really comes together to form a single cohesive whole. Tonally...

Posted at 11:46 AM in BD Impressions

There's not a whole lot of point in me writing paragraph after paragraph about PSYCHO, since I doubt I can say anything about it that hasn't already been said more eloquently by someone else. A landmark in horror cinema, it's...

Posted at 12:48 PM in BD Impressions

I was pleasantly surprised by CENTURION. After the disappointment of Neil Marshall's previous film, DOOMSDAY - a sloppy and ill-disciplined hodge-podge of homages to various genres which started off amusingly stupid but quickly succumbed to being just plain stupid -...

Posted at 8:51 PM in BD Impressions

I'm not going to recount the entirety of GLADIATOR's less than rosy history on BD. Suffice it to say that the previous version, released less than a year ago, was a massive disappointment in the image quality department, with many...

Posted at 8:14 PM in BD Impressions

Roman Polanski's latest offering, THE GHOST WRITER (THE GHOST in the UK), has been somewhat overshadowed by its director's temporary stint under house arrest (which prevented him from being present in the editing room during the final stages of post-production)......

Posted at 10:44 PM in BD Impressions

No, I don't know why there's a full stop in the title either. AFTER.LIFE attracted me with its interesting premise: a young woman, supposedly killed in a car accident, wakes up on mortuary slab and is informed by the funeral...

Posted at 11:49 PM in BD Impressions

...a.k.a. LUFTSLOTTET SOM SPRÄNGDES, a.k.a THE GIRL WHO KICKED THE HORNETS' NEST. See here for my review of the film. To summarise: I came away from THE GIRL WHO KICKED THE HORNETS' NEST thinking it the weakest of the three...

Posted at 8:14 PM in BD Impressions

Olivier Marchal's cop thriller 36 is downbeat, grim and melancholic in a rather browbeating way. The characters rarely crack a smile, the sky is always bleak and overcast, and barring the odd woman or child there are no good people,...

Posted at 5:26 PM in BD Impressions

As the James Bond series limps into the 1980s, it's beginning to look as crusty and worn-out as its incumbent star, Roger Moore. The clichés are now so firmly established that all those involved seem simply to be going through...

Posted at 3:56 PM in BD Impressions

There was a point when everyone in this country seemed to love Richard Kelly's debut film, DONNIE DARKO, but the craze seemed to die out pretty quickly and I honestly can't remember the last time I heard anyone mention it....

Posted at 5:17 PM in BD Impressions

Can I have those two hours of my life back, please? I really don't feel like writing paragraph after paragraph about WANTED. It started off well, but rapidly disintegrated into a sludge of cod-philosophical mumbo-jumbo, incomprehensible action and a narrative...

Posted at 9:28 PM in BD Impressions

I've said before that I find Wes Craven very inconsistent as a filmmaker, and while A NIGHTMARE ON ELM STREET is regarded by a considerable number of people to be his finest achievement, I must admit I'm less sold on...

Posted at 8:59 PM in BD Impressions

In THE TRANSPORTER, Jason Statham (I'm not going to call the character by his name - he's just Jason Statham being Jason Statham) drove bank robbers to safety and indulged in people trafficking with nary the blink of an eye....

Posted at 5:03 PM in BD Impressions

Ah, the 90s! Haven't they aged well? No, not really, at least in the case of SCREAM. Wes Craven's 1996 slasher was more or less the first modern horror movie I ever saw - prior to that, I had only...

Posted at 8:28 PM in BD Impressions

TRANSPORTER 2 is basically summed up by a scene in which Jason Statham's Frank Martin, having realised that there is a ticking bomb strapped to the underside of his car, accelerates towards a giant magnet hanging from a crane. As...

Posted at 2:29 PM in BD Impressions

There's a good film buried somewhere in MINORITY REPORT, but it gets lost amid a cacophony of muddled action and information, tasting suspiciously like the cooking of a few too many chefs. It also ends about half an hour after...

Posted at 3:57 PM in BD Impressions

Thought for the day: mobile phones ruined horror movies. Discuss. Even if you don't like THE HOUSE OF THE DEVIL, you've got to give writer/director Ti West one thing: he pulled off the 80s look more or less perfectly, getting...

Posted at 4:44 PM in BD Impressions

Within about five minutes of starting to watch FEMALE AGENTS, I found myself experiencing pronounced feelings of déjà vu. I recently read a novel by Ken Follett called JACKDAWS - an espionage thriller about an all-woman team of agents who...

Posted at 2:03 PM in BD Impressions