Starring: Colin Farrell, Keira Knightly, Ray Winstone, David Thewlis Director: William Monahan Freshly released from Pentonville prison and determined not to return to his criminal past, Mitchell finds work as a minder for reclusive movie star Charlotte, with whom he develops a relationship. However, old friends embroil Mitchell in the plans of East End crime boss Gant and Mitchell is forced to confront him. I have a very low tolerance for British gangster movies. There’s only a handful that have ever really engaged me. The Long Good Friday, Sexy Beast…

By the late Eighties the action movie was beginning to die a slow death. The indestructible, mountainous and mechanical Kings of the genre, such as Arnold Schwarzenegger and Sylvester Stallone, were finding that even they could not defeat the apathy of an audience who had grown weary of monosyllabic monoliths with big guns and bad jokes. The decade of excess was losing its grip and so were its heroes. Enter John McTiernan, fresh from his success with Predator starring, ironically, Arnold Schwarzenegger, and casting for his new movie Die Hard….

Starring: Aaron Eckhart, Bridget Moynahan, Michelle Rodriguez Director: Jonathan Liebesman ‘Maybe I can help. I’m a veterinarian.’ When the world is attacked by an aggressive alien force, arriving in a freak meteor storm, the army are mobilised to protect and evacuate civilians from the target cities. Marine Sgt. Michael Nantz leads a team through a ravaged L.A. where they discover just how overwhelming the invading force is. You have to wonder sometimes if there are aliens out there who have thought about coming to planet Earth to say hello but,…

Every director starts somewhere. There’s always that first picture. For many directors, their first movie is either a trial-by-fire (see David Fincher and Alien3), a promising start (see Neil Marshall and Dog Soldiers) or something that they, and we, would rather forget ever happened (see James Cameron and Piranha II: Flying Killers). There are some debuts, however, that announce a new talent completely. These are not just first movies, but manifestos. They scream out ‘this is what I can do, keep watching this space’. After this, the filmmaker either makes…

Starring: Jeff Bridges, Garrett Hedlund, Olivia Wilde Director: Joseph Kosinski Kevin Flynn returns from the virtual world in 1982, only to disappear again in 1989. Twenty years later his son, Sam, recieves a message from his father and finds himself drawn into the same virtual world, looking for him and finding more than he bargained for. “Your old man’s about to knock on the sky and listen to the sound.” So, now that all the hype has died down, I decide to actually watch the thing. I was never a…