A Most Violent Year Written & directed by J.C. Chandor Rating: 15 Running time: 125 mins Starring: Oscar Isaac, Jessica Chastain, David Oyelowo, Albert Brooks and Alessandro Nivola. Set against the back drop of New York City’s historically most violent year (1981), this is director J.C. Chandor’s third feature, after last year’s Oscar-nominated Robert [...]
New York, 1962. A young man walks the evening streets, passing bars, clubs, liquor stores….and a giant neon swastika. Across the country in San Francisco, citizens take morning aikido classes while the image of a rising sun adorns shop fronts, billboards and traffic signs all over the city. This is the head-spinning world of Philip [...]
ALIEN: Out of the Shadows By Tim Lebbon Published by Titan Books, paperback, £7.99, OUT NOW I remember reading about this in the month or so running up to its release and I admit to scoffing at the premise. Set 37 years after the events of the classic Ridley Scott film, ALIEN, the [...]
The Last of the Spirits by Chris Priestley Published by Bloomsbury, hardback, £10.99 The release of a new Chris Priestley book is a joyous occasion. The release of a Chris Priestley book at Christmas is even better. His track record for this wintry season is excellent. 2011’s The Dead of Winter is, was and remains [...]
By now you’ll have read/heard any number of gushing reviews of Alejandro González Iñárritu’s black comedy Birdman, which stars Michael Keaton as a washed-up Hollywood actor best known for his superhero movies, now searching for credibility and relevance in the social media age. The thing is, they’re all right. Birdman is brilliant. So good, in [...]
When I think back over my personal history with games consoles, a few memories stand out with particular vividness. There’s the utter joy I felt at receiving my first console – a NES – for Christmas when I was about 5 years old (that dates me); the atmospheric rush of discovering Doom via Playstation (sorry, [...]