Following an opening featuring a black screen and the sounds of 9/11 calls, which lasts for a deeply uncomfortable period of time despite actually being relatively short, Zero Dark Thirty moves into more scenes which are well-played to upset and discomfort an audience. We are introduced to the lead, Maya...

Based on a play of the same name, The Sapphires is a spirited but misguided Australian musical feature from director Wayne Blair and writers Tony Briggs and Keith Thomspson. Loosely based on the experiences of Briggs mother and aunt - a postscript reveals that it is very loosely based -...

There are two comments that film critics/academics will often hear from non-film critics/academics when discussing a theory they have relating to a specific film. These are, "I think you're probably just reading too much into it" and "I don't think that's what they were actually thinking about when they made...

Everything about Rust and Bone (originally De rouille et d'os), Jacques Audiard's follow up to his arthouse hit A Prophet, should signify a failure not a film that is not only good but actually great. Audiard has managed to pull a magic trick of sorts in weaving a beautiful story...

One thing that becomes crystal clear when watching Inferno, the feature-length John Herzfield documentary on the making of the first Expendables film, is that star, director and co-writer Sylvester Stallone is very, very serious about The Expendables. Regardless of what ultimately appeared on cinema screens in the summer of 2010,...

Cyril is a restless and stern-faced child with dogged determination, played brilliantly by Thomas Doret. The current subject consuming his determined mind is the loss of his bike and the absence of his father. The two are interconnected. Cyril has been abandoned at a care home by his father (Jeremie...

The release of a inmate from prison and their subsequent reintegration into 'regular' society is an area that is filled with potential for interesting drama.

Ulu Grosbard's under-seen and underrated 1978 film Straight Time (based on the equally excellent book No Beast So Fierce by Edward Bunker) uses this premise to explore the way in which the released inmate's, played by Dustin Hoffman,...

Into a quiet diner walks Mallory Kane (Gina Carano). Following shortly behind her is Aaron (Channing Tatum). Mallory is quick to see him arrive and we get the impression instantly that Mallory is a hyper alert character, Carano conveying this through small physical inflections. Aaron and Mallory clearly have history...

With the release of OSS 117: Cairo, Nest of Spies in 2006 Michel Hazanavicius and the seemingly effortlessly charismatic Jean Dujardin looked set for global domination and a real crossover into the mainstream cinema-goer's consciousness. Outside of France OSS 117: Cairo, Nest of Spies, and the equally smart and entertaining...

Director Hong-jin Na made something of a splash with his début film, The Chaser, in 2008 and the film quickly brought him to the attention of Hollywood with Warner Brothers buying up the remake rights to The Chaser for $1 million.

Hong-jin Na's latest, The Yellow Sea, is also the first Korean film to...

With startling special effects and a convincing portrayal of an imagined future it is easy to discuss Silent Running simply within the context of being an accomplished science fiction film, but like the best that science fiction has to offer Silent Running is far deeper than its outward appearance may...

Anyone who has already seen Masaki Kobayashi's 1962 film Harakiri, of which this film is very much a remake, will very quickly realise when watching Miike's 2011 update that little in the story has been changed but whilst the mechanics of the story are unchanged Miike makes significant changes in the way this story...

Joyce McKinney is a woman with a lot of love to give and in 1977 she found a man to devote herself to completely. This man was Kirk Anderson and according to Joyce the two fell madly in love. The only problem was that Kirk Anderson was a Mormon and...

The third in Shion Sono's thematically linked 'Hate Trilogy' (following Love Exposure and Cold Fish), Guilty of Romance centres on on a female protagonist, Izumi (Megumi Kagurazaka), who goes on an intense journey of liberation and destruction through sexual transgression.

Izumi's transformative adventure is set against the backdrop of a...

Set in Austin, Texas Red White & Blue first introduces us to Erica (Amanda Fuller), a seriously emotionally damaged person, who appears to be sleeping her way through every male she meets in Austin bars and her new workplace. She finds the job in said workplace thanks to her new...

Joseph Kahn's debut feature Torque was an odd film that led to some pretty fascinating defences, in particular from online critics who believed that the film had been crucially misunderstood. Whilst the film may be misunderstood in some ways it is far from being a film worthy of high praise...

Martin (Andy Nyman) is a meek and somewhat feeble man who loses his well paid job and instead of telling his wife decides to continue 'going to work'.

Every day he gets dressed, has breakfast, takes a pack lunch from his wife Julie (Neve Campbell), kisses her on the cheek...

At the heart of the Final Destination film series is a pretty dopey high concept, that death doesn't like to be "cheated". They rest on a set up in which a group of people manage to survive an elaborate disaster through the actions of one member, who has a premonition....

The Film

Edo period Japan and the untouchable brother of the Shogun, the villainous Lord Naritsugu (played wonderfully by SMAP member Goro Inagaki), is out of control and a group of samurai (and a wandering bandit) set out to assassinate Naritsugu before he rises too high and things get far worse....

To the discerning film fan the modern multiplex can be a depressing and woefully uninteresting place to quench one's thirst for cinematic pleasures. Filled as it so often is with unrelentingly banal and superficial Hollywood spectacles that fail to even be the simplistic fireworks displays that they appear to promise...