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The Blood Reich: Bloodrayne 3 (Review)
Introduction Uwe Boll. Just the name provokes a reaction from a myriad of film fans all over the world. Boll is a prolific director whose self-proclaimed claim to fame is that he has always delivered his films on time and within budget. Whilst others may not be able to disagree with this, although we're relying on Boll's statement for this, they will point to what they perceive as a lack of...

Civilisation: Is The West History? (Review)
Civilisation: Is The West History? Recently shown on Channel 4, leading historian Niall Ferguson looks at Western civilisation and asks whether the Western civilisation that has been dominant for over five centuries is now in decline. Civilisation's come and go, with examples such as the Roman Empire, the Greeks and the Mayans still showing us how the mighty eventually fall. Western...

Balibo (Review)
Introduction In 1975 the small nation of East Timor declared independence after 400 years of Portugese colonial rule. 9 days later, Indonesia invaded East Timor and most of the events surrounding this invasion have remained secret for for more than 30 years. The Balibo of the title is a small town on the East Timor border with Indonesia and the scene of the execution of the Balibo 5, a group of...

Assault On The Pacific: Kamikaze (Review)
Assault On The Pacific: Kamikaze By 1945 the war in the Pacific was ever turning to victory by the US forces, the carrier battles in 1942 bringing huge losses of ships, sailors, planes and pilots for the Imperial Japanese Navy Air Service. The Japanese war planners, similar to Hitler's own plans, had planned for a quick war and weren't geared up industrially to replace the lost equipment or men....

The Tunnel (Review)
ThumbnailIntroduction The Berlin Wall was arguably the most infamous landmark of the 20th Century, finally being brought down on 9th November 1989. The wall had been erected as first a barbed wire fence in August 1961 and thus closed off East Berlin from the rest of West Germany for the next 28 years. The decision to raise the wall in the first place was primarily an economic one. Although the division...

Forbidden Planet (Review)
ThumbnailForbidden Planet Forbidden Planet is a classic science fiction film starring the then rather serious Leslie Nielsen with its plot based on Shakespeare's The Tempest. Forbidden Planet was slightly different to other sci-fi films of the time for three reasons: the use of respected actors such as Nielsen and Walter Pidgeon, the extraordinary and detailed visual style of Mentor Huebner and finally...

Blooded (Review)
Introduction Hunting foxes on horseback has been an English pursuit for a long time and a regular show in both TV shows and films, mainly in the 'jolly hockeysticks' or 'tally ho' tradition whereby its really seen as a sport for the upper classes whereas in reality it's anything but based on the last campaign by the Countryside Alliance. There have always been animal rights groups against...

Norwegian Ninja (Review)
Introduction Norway. Land of the fjords, A-ha, dead parrots and now...a highly secret Ninja force. Really? Oh yes... Norwegian Ninja is the debut film from author/filmmaker Thomas Cappelen Malling, and his debut film is a slight re-imagining of true events in the Norwegian 80's as witnessed as a 12 year old via TV. The true events referenced here centre around Arne Treholt and Otto Meyer....

Unstoppable (Review)
Introduction I have to admit I don't remember any films where the central antagonist is a runaway train, I'm sure they must have been some, I know there are more than a few films where part of the plot involving stealing trains or taking them over and then crashing them as part of a diabolical plot. But an unmanned train as a silent and menacing central villain? Nah... Unstoppable is the latest...

SWAT: Firefight (Review)
Introduction Back in 2003, Colin Farrell starred with Samuel L.Jackson, Michelle Rodriguez and LL Cool J in a film remake of the old TV series SWAT. SWAT is the rapid response team of the Police with it's initials standing for Special Weapons and Tactics, the SWAT teams supposedly are the equivalent of soldiers trained as policemen, doing all the dangerous stuff like breaching buildings during...

Airline Disaster (Review)
Introduction The Asylum are responsible for many movies, most of them dire. Their goal is to be able to release a new film every two weeks and with ambitions like that, you know that there's going to be more duffers than not. This is the same group who managed to persuade me that Mega Piranha was a great B-movie, so what about their latest, Airline Disaster? Airline Disaster is based around...

All The President's Men (Review)
Introduction In terms of major political scandal, I suspect that in the grand scheme of things there is nothing to touch the Watergate scandal. Never before had any kind of scandal led to the resignation of a serving US President and Watergate is so synonymous with political scandal that just about every political scandal that comes along finds itself suffixed with 'gate'. So what was...

Buried (Review)
Introduction There's not many films that are set in a single location or to be more specific in a box. I can think of the rather dreary Phone Booth fronted by Colin Farrell, and that was set above ground and in a phone box - even then it was only worthy of watching due to a cameo by Keifer Sutherland at the end. On the other hand, one of the best CSI episodes was the one directed by Quentin...

Patrol Men (Review)
Introduction It's not often I get to see films by student filmmakers with virtually zero budget and I certainly didn't expect this when I volunteered to review Patrol Men, the latest film from Crabtree Films and one described as a brand new blood-chilling Brit horror. OK, so the budget was around £10,000 in the end but it was made by Uni students - how good could it be? Peyton Island is an...

The Promise (Review)
Introduction With the liberation of the Nazi concentration camps, the Nazi attempt at a Final Solution for the 'Jewish problem' came to end, although it wasn't an end in itself. Despite the death of approximately 6 million Jews, the survivors found that they weren't welcomed back in their home towns and even found their homes occupied by others. It's little wonder then that a collective desire...

Dawn of Evil: Rise of the Reich (Review)
Introduction Much has been written and thought about Adolf Hitler and his rise and fall as Nazi dictator and fascist during the 1930's and 1940's. But what about his early years? His childhood and his military service that ultimately shaped his character into the man he was to become? Just what happened during those formative years? Dawn of Evil, adapted from a play by Hungarian playwright and...

Review for War (2002) (Review)
Introduction War. What is it good for? Absolutely nothing. Say it again... If there's one thing that the human race has proven to be good at over the time of its existence, it's war. Not necessarilly good at the actual art of war, more at starting wars and then just letting them fester. The Chechen conflict is one such festering war, initiated really by a dying Russia as its Warsaw Pact...

Jackboots On Whitehall (Review)
Jackboots On Whitehall There has been plenty of talk about the proposed Nazi invasion of England, codenamed Operation Sealion, that was supposed to happen once Herman Goering's Luftwaffe defeated the RAF in the Battle of Britain in the summer of 1940. I can even remember a Len Deighton book from my youth called SS-GB, but that was quite serious. From the imaginations of brothers Edward and...

Glorious 39 (Review)
Introduction Whilst some 60+ years on, the British can look back upon the victory of 1945 with some pride, many modern Britons will not be aware of, or know little of, the unofficial British policy of appeasement towards Hitler and his rising Nazi regime from early 1930's up to and beyond the outbreak of war triggered by the invasion of Poland in 1939. One of the iconic moments of the...

Airwolf: The Movie (Review)
Introduction Early 80's television combined with adolescence, a bit of a potent mix. Especially when you add in the big US exports such as Blue Thunder, The A-Team, Street Hawk, Auto-Man, Knight Rider etc. I watched them all as they came and went, some to return much later and in slightly different form. Thing is though, if you discount The A-Team (which was an elusive band of warriors fighting...

Paradox Soldiers (Review)
Introduction War re-enactment is a vastly popular activity these days. Mainly in England it's been the likes of English Civil or medieval war re-enactments that get the headlines but there is a growing popularity to re-staging events from World War II - possibly linked to the fact that this period of history appears to be more popular than any other and is an intrinsic part of History education...

Takers (Review)
Introduction Others may find this a little ludicrous but up until about the age of 35 I followed a rather strict but narrow moral code when watching films. I never minded watching villains in films on on TV, just as long as they got their comeuppance. Therefore I refused point blank to watch anything that effectively glamourised the criminal life and thus I missed out for years on the likes of...

Game of Death (Review)
Introduction I've never really been a huge Wesley Snipes fan, it has to be said. I thought he was a bit too over the top in Demolition Man and only really liked the first of the Blade franchise. Still, he did kill a rather annoying Elizabeth Hurley in Passenger 57, so I can forgive him overall. What I didn't know was that Wesley used the same accountant as Leter Piggott and so is currently...

The Final Sacrifice (Review)
Introduction There have been a few films released recently with a change of name that has caused a little confusion and this film is yet another so before we start I want to make it clear that this is director Ari Taub's 2004 film The Fallen. I think this may well have been edited quite heavily as well as the reviews I've seen for The Fallen also talk about the US forces portrayed in this films...

Black Dynamite (Review)
Introduction The blaxploitation genre hit the cinema circa 1971, arguably started with the Richard Roundtree film Shaft. Although there are a couple of other likely contenders, this is the one most point to as the beginning of this rather decade specific genre. Blaxploitation films were essentially made with black actors for black audiences with the plot ostensibly following rather...

Ghosts of War (Review)
Introduction It's 1972 and the Vietnam War is still in full swing but in the inevitable decline. A South Korean army base starts to receive mysterious radio messages from Donkey 30, a patrol that went missing six months earlier. The top brass decide that they want to investigate and choose the hard-boiled but battle-weary Lieutenant Choi (Kam Woo Sung) to lead a rather rag-tag band of soldiers...

The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo (Review)
The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo Steig Larsson is now recognised as a great Swedish author with a very popular trilogy of books that have sold countless millions and been filmed by his home country and now in the process of being remade by Hollywood. Sadly Larsson died unexpectantly in 2004 after delivering the initial manuscripts for what has been titled The Millenium Trilogy and thus never got...

Aftershock (Review)
Introduction It's every parents worst nightmare, the impossible choice of choosing which of your children to sacifice to save the other. This choice is the central core of Assembly director Xiaogang Feng's latest blockbuster Chinese film, Aftershock. Set in 1976, the town of Tangshan is at the centre of a violent earthquake that kills 240, 000 people - a real event. Living in Tangshan at the...

Review for Resident Evil: Afterlife (Review)
Introduction Despite Paul W.Anderson's rather controversial reputation as a film-maker, second only to Uwe Boll in some circles, the Resident Evil series of films has been rather successful with Afterlife being the fourth installment in the series based on the computer game series. The core to the success of the series is undoubtly Mrs Paul W.Anderson or Milla Jovovich in the lead role of Alice,...

Death Race 2 (Review)
Introduction 2008's Death Race re-make was a surprisingly enjoyable film, not just because it showed Jason Statham in a decent role but also because the re-imagination came from the head of Paul W.Anderson. So two years later comes the inevitable sequel...except it isn't. Death Race 2 is actually a prequel to Death Race and the helm is taken by Roel Reiné. TV News reporter September Jones (La...

The Pacific (Review)
Introduction Back in 2001, HBO in conjunction with Tom Hanks and Steven Spielberg brought us a landmark and hugely popular TV series set in World War II. Band of Brothers, based on a couple of books by deceased military historian Stephen Ambrose, told the adventures of members of the Screaming Eagles or the 101st Airborne Division, taking us from boot camp through D-Day and Bastogne to their...

Deadly Crossing (Review)
Deadly Crossing Steven Seagal is back, sort of... This DVD is a bit of bodge job, supposedly a mini TV series called Southern Justice that is now apparently being released straight to DVD in 6 parts. Therefore Deadly Crossing is two episodes edited together to make a feature length film - and also explains why during the opening credits Seagal is credited with writing part 1 and is a co-write...

Erasing David (Review)
Erasing David Over the last decade the argument over the surveillance state and the technology used in support of it has been big news. Whether it's ID cards, the DNA database or the vast proliferation of CCTV, you cannot escape the feeling that the State knows (or wants to know) a lot about you and is watching you. We know that laws brought in to combat terrorism as quite sensible measures on...

Apocalypse: The Second World War (Review)
Introduction Most documentaries covering the periods of the last two great wars use black and white footage, primarily as that was the stage at which the film industry was at that point. The age of the film and the monochrome colouring, whilst something we are used to, can sometimes lead to a disconnect between what we see on the screen and what we perceive as real. It is therefore sometimes a...

Pray The Devil Back To Hell (Review)
Pray The Devil Back To Hell It's often been said that women would be better at running the world (or the country) than men, often said and more often scorned. The US in a coice between the first woman or first black President opted for the latter, despite the evidence that Hilary Clinton was almost certainly more experienced for the role of Commander In Chief. We have few women politicians, and...

The Lost Symbol (Review)
The Lost Symbol The latest book from the Dan Brown stable sees the return of symbologist Robert Langdon, but in a US domestic setting this time rather than jetting all over Europe. In the past Brown has remarkably managed to upset the Catholic Church with best seller The Da Vinci Code, which essentially rewrote the lineage of Christ, even though it was only a fictional novel. Here he decides to...

Russell Howard's Good News (Review)
Russell Howard's Good News Russell Howard is another comedian of whom I know very little. I've seen him on Mock The Week as one of the resident panelists but initially didn't find him that funny, although he's grown on me a bit since those initial impressions. Whilst still appearing on Mock The Week, Howard branched out with his own show on BBC3 and Russell Howard's Good News has become the...

Frankie Boyle: If I Could Reach Out Through Your TV and Strangle You I Would (Review)
Frankie Boyle: If I could Reach Out Through Your TV And Strangle You, I Would Frankie Boyle is well known for being a controversial comedian, coming to mainstream attention as one of the resident panel on Mock The Week. After having a book bestseller over Christmas 2009 with 'My **** Life So Far', Boyle has since left Mock The Week to try a few things for himself on TV with a brand new sketch...

Jimmy Carr: Making People Laugh (Review)
Jimmy Carr: Making People Laugh For some reason I've never really liked Jimmy Carr and this is despite only ever seeing him in short bursts on various TV 'quiz' shows. I've always kept his 'controversial' tag in mind and so kept away from him, never ever seeing one of his very successful stand-up shows. So, I was a little apprehensive about receiving Making People Laugh through my letterbox the...

Space: 1999 The Complete First Series (Review)
Introduction After the success of the first series of UFO and apparent rising ratings in the US, Gerry Anderson and his production crew received investment from Lew Grade to make a second series. Then rather abruptly, as Anderson was planning what to do next, things changed. US ratings dropped and Lew Grade cancelled the purple wigged defenders of the Earth. Rising from the ashes of UFO came...

In The Land Of The Free... (Review)
In The Land Of The Free The United States of America. The most powerful nation in the world at present, a nation still coming to terms with its legacy of racial tensions and slow adoption of civil rights but still fond of pushing its moral outlook on the rest of the World whenever it feels it like it. The US Constitution is upheld as a beacon of democratic rights that are unassailable but...

Dollhouse: Season 2 (Review)
Introduction Did I fall asleep? Despite writer Joss Whedon's success in the TV genre with long-standing shows like Buffy and Angel, Joss's recent track record is not so great. The most high-profile of cases is the Nathan Fillion-fronted show Firefly, although this was temporarily negated by the follow-up film Serenity, and next to come along is Dollhouse, fronted by Buffy regular Eliza...

Collapse (Review)
Collapse Who is Michael Ruppert? Michael Ruppert is an ex-LAPD detective and an investigative journalist over the last thirty years who has written a couple of books, one of them called Confronting Collapse: The Crisis of Energy & Money in a Post Peak Oil World which explains why Ruppert believes that civilisation will grind to a halt when natural resources run out. The subjects...

Killers (Review)
Introduction Jen Kornfeldt (Katherine Heigl) is a rather nice looking computer tech/nerd who has just broken up with her long-term boyfriend, or dumped really, and not feeling too great about it. Jen does what any self-respecting girl does after such a traumatic event, she goes on holiday to France with her rich parents. Her parents are a potent mix with dad (Tom Selleck) being a rather smooth...

Pop... (Review)
Populator - Pop Despite the music scene being a rather diverse and geographically widespread scene, it always surprises me to discover a band from my hometown. Populator are one such band and a surprising one for me at that in that they are very much a synthpop band, something I never thought I'd see these days despite synth music definately being back in vogue. Populator are a trio made up...

Jim Jefferies: Alcoholocaust (Review)
Jim Jefferies - Alcoholocaust Jim Jefferies is not a comedic name I'm that familiar with, although I recognised the Australian from the Comedy Central show Grumpy Young Men in which he is the stand-out participant - mainly because he is indeed rather funny instead of just a moaning git. Jefferies has pretty much established himself within the hierarchy of British comedy after a critically...

Black Death (Review)
Introduction It's 1348 and the pestilience known as The Black Death is sweeping across Medieval England's green and pleasant lands, leaving swathes of the population dead or infected. Amidst this chaos is a a young monk named Osmund (Eddie Redmayne) who is torn in his holy vows between following God or his forbidden love for childhood friend Averilla (Kimberley Nixon). The plague has reached...

Born To Raise Hell (Review)
Introduction Like Jean Claude Van Damme and Dolph Lundgren, Steven Seagal was a slightly different breed of 80's tough guy. Rather than just looking big and hard, these actors came from a martial arts background and therefore knew all the moves. Each had relative success with their own careers albeit with ever dimishing returns and an eventual drop from mainstream theatrical releases. I've not...

Hunt to Kill (Review)
Introduction Jim Rhodes (Steve Austin) is a Border Patrol agent and skilled survivalist serving on the Mexican border with partner Davis (Eric Roberts), who presents him with a watch to celebrate his upcoming promotion. Niceties out of the way, the duo raid a supposedly abandoned drugs lab that isn't actually abandoned, and in the ensuing chaos Davis is killed and the lab disintegrates in an...

Warrior: The Autobiography of Ariel Sharon (Review)
Warrior I've always had a bit of a soft spot for Israel after studying the major conflicts such as the Yom Kippur War and the 6 Day War in History at school, a small country surrounded on three sides by countries that have tried and failed to destroy it. I also had a slight hero worship of Moshe Dayan after reading about the Raid On Entebbe when even younger. This was clearly before I became...

The Losers (Review)
Introduction There've been plenty of comic book adapations over the last few years, and The Losers is another one. Taken from the DC Comics stable, The Losers is the work of writer Andy Diggle and artist Jock - both of whom met whilst working on UK sci-fi comic 2000AD. The Losers isn't a sci-fi work or even a superhero, rather an elite band of covert special ops. The Losers consist of:...

MacGruber (Review)
Introduction It's a fine line you tread when deciding to take a short but successful skit and extend it into a feature film, and the latest in the long line of those who have attempted this is Will Forte with his Saturday Night Live skit MacGruber. Only a few have succeeded, The Blues Brothers and Wayne's World spring immediately to mind, but many others have failed. So what is this one about?...

The Big Knights (Review)
The Big Knights The height of two men... The weight of four... The strength of sixteen... Sir Boris, the finest swordsman in the World... And his brother Sir Morris, not the finest swordsman in the World...but the most enthusiastic... And their noble pets. Sir Horace the dog...and Sir Doris the hamster... The Big Knights! And so begins the rather dramatically narrated (by...

Three Cases of Murder (Review)
Introduction It's not often I get to see old films and the opportunity to appraise some re-releases of classic British cinema via the current Odeon Entertainment releases was too good an opportunity to pass up. The first one I got to look at was Three Cases Of Murder, a sort of early Twilight Zone, whereby the film is broken into 3 short self-contained episodes detailing 3 very different...

Bill Hicks: The Essential Collection (Review)
Bill Hicks: The Essential Collection Bill Hicks has a reputation as satirist and social critic who just happened to also be a stand-up comic. Hicks career was a relatively short one, his life cut short by pancreatic cancer in 1994. Despite this, he was recently voted the 4th greatest stand-up comedian of all time in 2010 by a Channel 4 programme. Hicks schtick was to rail against society and...

The Real Band of Brothers (Review)
The Real Band Of Brothers The 101st Airborne Division, or the Screaming Eagles as they are alternatively known, first came to prominence in the HBO TV series Band of Brothers and followed the adventures of Lt Dick Winters and his men from boot camp via Bastogne to their final war resting place at the Eagles Nest in Bavaria. The Division was only brought into being in August 1942, a good year or...

The Disappearance of Alice Creed (Review)
Introduction Two men go shopping. In an airport carpark for a suitable van to steal. Then to B&Q for a tolley full of hardware and tools. Finally they buy a double bed. They both then spend several days meitculously soundproofing a room in an old disused flat and covering the windows. Both are ex-cons. Vic (Eddie Marsan) is a hard bastard with a vicious streak when required. Danny (Marti...

Psych 9 (Review)
Introduction Abandoned hospitals or similar big buildings late at night are a staple of the horror genre and as pure coincidence was featured in a ghost-ridden episode of Midsommer Murders just this past week. There's definitely something rather eerie about abandoned hospitals when you can't help but think of all the people who have died there over the years, but becomes much worse if there's...

The Pacific Battleship Yamato (Review)
The Pacific Battleship Yamato July 31st 1945 saw the fall of the symbol of Japanese Imperial Naval power when the battleship Yamato was sunk in battle with US fighter bombers. Lying 325m below the surface at Latitude N 30.43 Longitude E 128.04, the 263m long wreck has been visited twice by marine exploration surveys. The Yamato, head of the Yamato class of battleships, was one of the largest...

Deadly Impact (Review)
Introduction It's Christmas Eve and hot shot Albuquerque cop Thomas Armstrong (Sean Patrick Flanery) is discussing the present he's bought for his wife with his partner Ryan (Greg Serano) and teen daughter when the call comes through to hit the streets. Armstrong has been on the trail of a professional assassin named The Lion (Joe Pantaliano) for a long time and has been getting closer, despite...

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