The Citizen Kane of Awful: Godzilla (1998)
Cast: Matthew Broderick, Jean Reno, Maria Pitillo, Hank Azaria, Kevin Dunn Director: Roland Emmerich Writers: Dean Devlin, Roland Emmerich Estimated Budget: $130 million US Gross: $136...
How Jupiter Ascending Set a New High Bar for Trashy Sci-Fi
While the Wachowskis have previously found success with films like The Matrix and V for Vendetta (and an arguable, if baffling, masterpiece in Cloud Atlas), Jupiter Ascending garnered lukewarm reviews at best...
Jumper: A Mediocre Film With A Great Premise
Doug Liman doesn’t release that many films, so you would hope that each new release would be a beautifully polished diamond of the highest quality. Unfortunately, this doesn’t always appear to be the case....
The Simpsons Movie – The Last Link to the Show’s Golden Age
Randomly select any episode from Seasons 3 through 8 of The Simpsons and you’ll most likely be greeted with one of the best episodes of TV comedy you could ever hope to see. Randomly select any episode from...
MiB at 20: What Made it So Good?
Have a quick think about your memories of the first Men in Black film. What immediately comes to mind is likely to include sharp suits, sunglasses, big-ass silver guns (and a certain tiny one), odd-couple...
Hercules: The Original Disney Superhero
It’s no exaggeration to say that the superhero movie is one of the most popular (and profitable) forms of entertainment today. Leading the charge – both in quantity and quality – is Marvel Studios....
Where Are They Now?: The Mummy (1999)
These days there is seemingly no movie that can't be shoehorned into a cinematic universe. Following the mammoth success of Marvel Studios, Universal has decided to reboot their old monster movie classics into...
Second Chance: Man of Steel
It’s fair to say that Superman’s outings on the big screen over the years have been to varying degrees of success. Superman (1978) and Superman II (1980) were both, generally speaking, excellent works –...
Fire Walk With Me: A Lynchian Masterpiece
Needless to say, this article contains spoilers for the Twin Peaks TV series as well as the film. When Twin Peaks ended in 1991, it went out on 50 of the strangest, most wonderfully obtuse minutes of...
Where Are They Now?: Alien
In the space of three short years, Ridley Scott redefined sci-fi cinema twice with Alien and Blade Runner. In the nearly 40 years since, countless films from a range of genres have owed enormous debts to these...
Where Are They Now?: Austin Powers
It’s exactly 20 years since the hugely quotable spoof superspy Austin Danger Powers first burst onto the big screen with the US release of his debut film International Man Of Mystery (it was released in the...
More Than a Laugh: Hot Fuzz Turns 10
Pure comedies don’t take much home come awards season. This makes sense if you're talking about the factory line of studio comedies, but in the case of Edgar Wright’s Hot Fuzz, it's an outrage. No comedy...
Annie Hall – The Realistic Romantic Comedy
When awards season rolls round, romantic comedies generally don’t get to see much of the action. Since Annie Hall won the Oscar for Best Picture in 1978, only a select few have come close: Shakespeare in...
Second Chance: Sharlto Copley in Chappie
When Neill Blomkamp burst onto the scene in 2009 with his blisteringly brilliant debut film District 9, he brought someone else with him: actor Sharlto Copley, whose entirely improvised performance as nebbish...
Where Are They Now? The Millennium’s One-Hit Wonders
One quirk of every awards season are the filmmakers who enjoy a shining moment of glory, full of the promise of cinematic brilliance to come, only to fade away into obscurity. Out of sheer curiosity, we’ve...