THE PIRATES! AN ADVENTURE WITH SCIENTISTS (aka A BAND OF MISFITS) (3D)

2012 Ardman Animation returned to the big screen in 2012 with this adaptation of the Children novel series, The Pirates!. After building model sets in order to plan out a CGI animation similar to their 2011 Arthur Christmas, they quickly decided to return to their roots and this 3-D adventure was filmed as a stop-motion…

JUDGMENT AT NUREMBERG

1961 DIRECTOR: Stanley Kramer “He that is without sin among you, let him cast the first stone at her.” It has been over 20 years since I first saw this as teenager, but watching it again with little memory of the specifics, I was both a little disappointed but also very impressed. With a title like "Judgement at Nuremberg," you can be forgiven for expecting a film about the…

DOWNFALL (DER UNTERGANG) (2004) – REVIEW

2004 10/10 DIRECTOR: Oliver Hirschbiegel The true story of the last days of NAZI Germany, focusing on Hitler and his cohorts as they sought refuge on his Berlin Bunker and is chronicled here with such honesty. Told in a straight forward manner, we are given a portrait of not only Adolf Hitler himself, played perfectly…

MGM’s “TARZAN” SERIES (Johnny Weissmuller & Maureen O’Sullivan)

1932 - 1942 OVERALL RATING TARZAN THE APE MAN 1932 With this classic, Johnny Weissmuller is introduced to the world as Tarzan. Already well known as an Olympic swimming star by 1932, whilst Johnny was not the first on screen Tarzan, his has become the most famous. Playing the role as a naive childlike action…

NIGHT OF THE LIVING DEAD (1968)

1968 DIRECTOR: George A. Romero Iconic, influential and groundbreaking. All words to describe George A. Romero's inaugural zombie horror, but what sets this apart from its contemporaries and the endless variations in the genre in which this Indie movie helped spawn? Well to begin with, this is far from a simple zombie thriller. The real…

THE WIZARD OF OZ (IMAX 3D)

1939 (Orginal) 2013 (IMAX 3D) DIRECTOR: Victor Fleming, George Cukor, Mervyn LeRoy, Norman Taurog, King Vidor  The Wizard Of Oz, like It's A Wonderful Life, did not ignite the film world on their initial releases, but these were films that found their treasured places in movie-goers hearts. Both are examples of movies where cinemas rival medium of…

NETWORK

1976 DIRECTOR: Sidney Lumet "I'm mad as hell and I'm not gonna take it anymore!" ...the lasting legacy of Peter Finch's rants, which began with a breakdown and became the ratings winner in the 1970's Network driven news media. This is of course, fiction but the commentary on the changing and more corporate driven American…

HELL’S ANGELS

1930 DIRECTORS: Howard Hughes,  James Whale & Edmund Goulding Big budget, elaborate air combat scenes which resulted in several deaths and Gimmick after gimmick... This has to be the Howard Hughes' World War 1 epic, Hell's Angels. Where to begin? Well, we follow the Routledge two brothers as they join the war effort and the…

WALL STREET

1987 DIRECTOR: Oliver Stone When looking to review a film like this, there are two distinct points of view to take in to a account: The first being the contemporary context. That being that this was made in 1987, at the height of the Wall Street boom and that, at the time, this must have…

SING (3D)

2016 DIRECTOR: Christophe Lourdelet & Garth Jennings I admit, I went into this with low expectations. It looked like a karaoke kids movie from an animation studio that I do not rate that highly. But what do I know? Illumination studios have managed to rack up a "Stinker" on this blog with The Lorax (3D) (2012),…