Second Chance

MacGruber: making life-saving inventions out of household materials. How many films feature a primary antagonist falling to their death? Die Hard, sure. The Return of the King, check. GoldenEye, there’s...

Over the years, negative assessments of Keira Knightley’s acting abilities have included the phrases ‘woeful’ and ‘so bloody awful it hurts my eyes’, with many critiques specifically focussing on the...

Elysium was the kind of movie that had a lot going against it from the moment it was announced. South African director Neill Blomkamp's debut, District 9, came out of nowhere and stunned critics and...

90 minutes in a box. That is one way to describe Buried, directed by Rodrigo Cortes and starring the much-maligned Ryan Reynolds. As the title implies, the film centres upon Paul (Ryan Reynolds), a US...

Why is X-Men Origins: Wolverine considered the bastard child of the blockbusting X-Men? Although it is far from the best X-Men film available, there is nothing to suggest that Origins needs relegating from...

Plagued by the release date being postponed for a year, and the first film in the successful Jurassic Park franchise to not be helmed by the acclaimed Steven Spielberg, it’s little wonder that the most...

There is an almost mythic timelessness that permeates Andrew Dominik’s 2007 will-be masterpiece The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford. Seven years on it is not hard to see how such a...

For those who recognise the name, Julie Taymor is synonymous with bright, striking and innovative visual spectaculars. A fan of masks, large puppets and creating eye-catching images, Taymor’s work is always...

While far from being critically slammed, 2011’s The Help didn’t quite achieve the kind of hype or awards success that can now be expected from Autumn/Winter releases tackling themes of racism and black...

"I call you 'Snotface' because I love you, and I love you because guys always love the crazy chicks." - Drop Dead Fred Phoebe Cates (Gremlins) is Lizzie Cronin and she’s just lost her husband, her money,...

Roger Ebert was right. In amongst the resounding cacophony of negative noise, one man stood strong against the tide engulfing Stephen Sommers’ 2004 film. He simply states at the end of his review, ‘Van...

There is a regularly cited quotation from Woody Allen that goes like this: “I don’t want to achieve immortality through my work I want to achieve it though not dying.” Granted, NYC’s comic prince...

Here's an opinion: Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull is better than The Temple of Doom. Gasp! Cries of "sacrilege!" ring out. Fights break out on zeppelins. Nazi faces melt off. Alright,...

Unlike other entries in this series, The Day After Tomorrow isn’t particularly reviled; it grossed over $500 million and doesn’t fare terribly on either IMDb (rating: 6.4) or score aggregators like Rotten...

About halfway through Superman Returns, the Man of Steel says to Lois Lane: “You wrote that the world doesn’t need a saviour, but every day I hear people crying for one.” It’s pretty deep, and taps...