The risk of making huge budget movies can sometimes be a gamble worthy of beloved Corellian chancer Han Solo himself. However, there were – until recently – not many franchises more set for success than Star Wars, so a prequel movie covering the early years of Han Solo was seen as the closest thing there is in Hollywood to a […]
I’ve long been a fan of the gorgeous animated movies from Studio Ghibli; often tales infused with a sort of magical realism, their tales are most often set in real world environments, with supernatural or fantastical elements that put it the story just one step away from reality. Whisper of the Heart is a little different; though it does feature […]
After the critical and commercial failure of the William Shatner-directed Star Trek V: The Final Frontier, there was concern that the series – at least from the point of view of the movies starring the original cast – had run its course. On TV, the Star Trek series was thriving of course, with The Next Generation approximately halfway through its […]
Following the ‘Spock Trilogy’ of movies (beginning with Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan, continuing with Star Trek III: The Search for Spock and ending with Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home), the status quo of Star Trek had been reset somewhat, story-wise. With Kirk demoted to Captain, back in charge of the Enterprise with his regular crew, it’s […]
The fourth film in the Star Trek movie series concluded a tightly knit trilogy of stories, continuity-wise. Though The Voyage Home does diverge in tone and content to the previous two films, it nonetheless picks up right after the climax of The Search for Spock – with our crew still on Vulcan, manning a Klingon Bird of Prey rather than […]
It was the early 90s when I saw my first animé – thanks to the BBC. Akira was broadcast on BBC2 and absolutely blew my mind. Animation in the West […]
Back in April 2019, the first Sonic the Hedgehog trailer was released. It’s fair to say that it was poorly received; it looked visually flat, had Gangsta’s Paradise as aural […]
Though the Star Trek movies got off to a shaky start with the first film – The Motion Picture, which I reviewed here – the second film was an absolutely spectacular romp, full of high stakes action, superb writing and excellent character development. It ended on a pseudo-cliffhanger too, with the death of Spock. Despite Leonard Nimoy’s apparent desire for […]
I’m a bit weird when it comes to music. I struggle with most songs that have lyrics, mostly because I find them so hard to ‘hear’ unless I know what’s […]
Note: My review of the first film in the Star Trek series (Star Trek: The Motion Picture) can be found here. There’s an absolutely fascinating history behind the second Star Trek movie (it’s far too long to recount at length here, but I’d urge you to check out the film’s Wikipedia page even if you’re not a Trek fan – […]
Since I started writing again last year, I’ve made a few attempts at going back to the beginning of a game or film series and reviewing each entry in turn; for whatever reason – usually issues with having a lack of time and/or interest – these attempts have always stalled. Reviewing an entire series felt a bit unattainable to me; […]
I was a huge fan of sci-fi as a kid, to the point where I’d watch just about anything featuring spaceships, aliens and lasers. Star Wars is to blame; coming out the same year that I was born, it was always just there – I seemed to be around and at my most impressionable when hype was building for the […]
Note: My reviews of the other films in the series can be found at these links: Jurassic Park, The Lost World: Jurassic Park, Jurassic Park III and Jurassic World. It took 22 years for there to be a truly satisfying sequel to the brilliant, groundbreaking Jurassic Park. When Jurassic World arrived in 2015, it had been 14 years since Jurassic […]
Note: My reviews for the first three films in the Jurassic Park series can be found here, here and here. There were four years between Jurassic Park and its first sequel, the awkwardly titled The Lost World: Jurassic Park. Another four years elapsed between that film and Jurassic Park III, which was long believed to be the last we’d […]
Note: My reviews of Jurassic Park and The Lost World: Jurassic Park can be found here and here respectively. The original Jurassic Park was a revelation when it first released. The special effects were nothing short of astonishing and it really did push boundaries, breaking new ground in visual effects technology that unquestionably changed the way that films were made, […]
Until recently, it had been a very long time since I’d last seen Frank Oz’s movie version of stage musical Little Shop of Horrors. The musical, based on a Roger […]
