It’s Christmas time and, as Bob Geldof and his Band Aid cronies would have you believe, there’s no need to be afraid. When it comes to going to the cinema this festive season at least, they may be right. Holiday movies straight out of Hollywood, desperately trying to prove themselves the next National Lampoon’s Christmas Vacation are nowhere to be seen. Instead, we’re being treated to modern spins on far more traditional tales.
Brit comedy Nativity! is out this week, but Robert Zemeckis’ A Christmas Carol has been out for almost …

It’s as traditional as buckets full of sweets, hastily-put-together costumes and badly carved pumpkins: another Halloween, another entry into the Saw franchise.
Though it took the title of the most successful horror franchise with its fifth entry last year, there’s no denying that fans were left disappointed by a generally sloppy production. The ingenuity of the traps had disappeared, John Kramer had died two movies back and taken most of the answers to the franchise’s questions with him and the normally brilliant Julie Benz was handed a script which had been …

When Michael Jackson died, as with all pop stars of his kind, musical experts and personalities who had been starved of attention for a while (yes, Uri, I mean you) were rolling out the hyperbolic tributes to the King of Pop. He was a born entertainer. He touched millions. He left a legacy that would last generations.
I had a problem with all of these tributes. It’s not that they weren’t true. The problem I had was that I’d been using the past tense to describe Michael Jackson, the artist, for …

A couple of weeks back, I saw Cloudy With A Chance of Meatballs, a computer animated adventure which had slipped under a lot of people’s radars. This week, I saw Up, a computer animated adventure which has been on every movie-lover’s radar for months – in Britain this is mostly down to a four month delay since the picture’s American release.
At the time of my Cloudy review, I said that Up would have a lot to live up to. Going on all of the hype and acclaim which the film …

Last week’s featured movie, Julie & Julia, had my stomach gently rumbling over for the majority of its runtime, with tastebud-teasing recipe after recipe appearing on the big screen.
This week, Cloudy With A Chance Of Meatballs gave my stomach a much more audible growl as the screen was filled with every delicious morsel you could possibly think of. The film is more than just eye-candy though. It’s an action-packed, fun-filled 3-D extravaganza – and possibly the best animation of the year (though Up is still to come later this month).
Flint …

With all the will in the world it seems impossible to open a review for double culinary biopic Julie & Julia without cooking up some half-baked intro, seasoned with recipe-based puns and a dash of ox tongue-in-cheek. That’s five there alone, so let’s just get down to business.
Julie & Julia weaves its way through the (true) stories of two women, 50 years apart but united in various ways.  Both are happily married, but neither are satisfied with the rest of their daily lot. Meryl Streep is Julia Child, who wooed …

Every Wednesday (when I can) I head over to my local cinema to check out the latest offerings. Every Thursday I intend to return with a review. This week, slightly later than I hoped, I went to see the latest offering from a personal favourite of mine, Quentin Tarantino. Here’s my view on Inglourious Basterds.
Inglourious Basterds
Dir: Quentin Tarantino
Cast: Brad Pitt, Christoph Waltz, Mélanie Laurent, Diane Kruger, Eli Roth
Run Time: 2hr 33m
Quentin Tarantino has established himself over the years as a master of many genres with 90s  heist adventure Reservoir Dogs …