Arguably the greatest American literary work, F. Scott Fitzgerald's jazz-age love tale The Great Gatsby has seen four previous film adaptations all of which failed to capture the essence of the famous novella. These bring us to director Baz Luhrmann and his attempts brings his undoubted eye for...

When JJ Abrams announced that he was going to reboot the Star Trek franchise, few could have imagined just how spectacularly he would have succeeded. Taking the term 'reboot' seriously, he created an alternative timeline in which the established narrative could be bent, modified and in some cases...

Five young people alone in a cabin. One finds an occult looking book and all Hell breaks loose. Literally. Sam Raimi's masterpiece of low-budget horror film-making, The Evil Dead, is one of the most popular and enduring cult films of all time. Raimi and former star

Based on a yet unpublished graphic novel of the same name, Joseph Kosinki's Oblivion is an homage-heavy science fiction film starring Tom Cruise, Morgan Freeman and Olga Kurylenko. Following his success as director with TRON: Legacy Kosinki draws together a host of science fiction...

Director Lee Daniels follows his breakthrough hit Precious with The Paperboy, a trashy Southern exploitation thriller based on the 1995 novel of the same name by Pete Dexter. When idealistic journalist Ward Jansen (Matthew McConaughey) returns to his hometown in Florida with writing partner Yardley Acheman (David Oyelowo),...

Now that the remake bandwagon is in full swing, it's not surprising that films of all sorts of quality and cultural impact are getting the up-to-date treatment. Cue Red Dawn, a vehicle for rising star and Loki-botherer Chris Hemsworth who inherits the role from 80s icon Patrick Swayze....

In 1939 MGM gave us The Wizard of Oz, the iconic tale of Dorothy, Toto, red slippers, yellow bricks road and the Emerald City. Forty-six years later, an unofficial sequel came to us in 1985 in the form of Return to Oz, a much darker twist ion the...

Following the success of his Vengeance Trilogy, director Park Chan-Wook has been busy establishing himself on the global stage. First his vampire-lead thriller Thirst and now his English language debut comes in the form of psychological thriller Stoker.

Based on a 2010 Blacklist screenplay by Wentworth Miller, Stoker follows the...

In general films released today follow a broad structure of three acts, with the setup, the obstacle and the resolution. There are some films however that bend and manipulate this structure and try and create something more fluid. Then there are films that are pure and utter madness. A chaos...

In Guillermo Del Toro, modern horror films have found a true master. When he's not making his own darkly comic, fantasy-laced horror he's producing a host of up-and-coming directors and writers to give them the exposure through use of his name. Some, like Don't Be Afraid of the...

Hyde Park on Hudson is the country home of the mother of Franklin Delano Roosevelt (Bill Murray), the 32nd President of the United States. In 1939 he hosted the first visit to America of a British monarch, King George VI (Samuel West) and his wife the Queen, Elizabeth...

When Quentin Tarantino burst into the mainstream in the early 1990s he redefined what cinema was to be for the next decade. Utilising non-linear narrative, dialogue-heavy scripts he began creating his very own back-catalogue of homage and satires relating to exploitation cinema while single-handedly creating some of the...

One of the most famous musicals of all time, Les Miserables has been adapted to the big screen for the first time since 1998 with the help of The King's Speech supremo Tom Hooper. Based on the 1862 novel by Victor Hugo it was...

Nine years after the release of the Oscar winning conclusion to The Lord of the Rings trilogy, The Return of the King, director Peter Jackson returns to Middle Earth in the first part of a new trilogy that adapts JRR Tolkien's first novel in The Hobbit:...

Based on the best-selling novel of the same name by Yann Martel, Life of Pi was initially courted by M. Night Shyamalan, Alfonso Cuaron and Jean-Pierre Jeunet before Ang Lee took on the task of filming a seemingly unfilmable book. A Canadian...

Perfectly positioned before the Christmas period and after the staggering success of The Avengers, Rise of the Guardians, based on a series of books called The Guardians of Childhood, unites a series of mythical creatures into an an Avengers-like team of children's defenders. Created by Dreamworks Animation it...

The wait for Twilight-fans is over and The Twilight Saga: Breaking Dawn Part 2 finally closes the book on the narrative of Bella Swan (Kristen Stewart) and Edward Cullen (Robert Pattinson). The Twilight film series has enjoyed massive box office success thanks to the legions of...

Writing can sometimes be a thankless task. Some people will love what you write others will hate it and the majority won't care. But those who like to write do so for a variety of reasons; to become famous, to be liked or simply to express themselves in a way...

Director Rian Johnson began his career with the language-muddling high school film noir Brick, before moving on to the con-man film The Brothers Bloom, yet his third film, arguably his best, is a science fiction time-travel action film called Looper. Creating an original, but familiar location of near-future...

Following on from the success of Coraline, Laika Studios have released an original film directed by Chris Butler and Sam Fell entitled ParaNorman. Using the same stop-motion methods of its predecessor, ParaNorman is a pastiche, satire and homage to 1960s horror films and the John Hughes...