DVD Prizes to be won

This competition is now closed


Spartacus: War of the Damned is available to order now from Amazon:

http://www.amazon.co.uk/s/ref=sr_nr_n_1?rh=n%3A283926%2Ck%3Aspartacus+war+of+the+damned%2Cn%3A%21573406%2Cn%3A342350011%2Cp_n_binding_browse-bin%3A383380011%7C383381011%2Cp_n_feature_two_browse-bin%3A549962011%2Cp_n_intended_use_browse-bin%3A542157011%2Cp_36%3A2000-3400%2Cn%3A546262031&bbn=342350011&keywords=spartacus+war+of+the+damned&ie=UTF8&qid=1366890454&rnid=342350011


Terms and Conditions

Only one entry will be accepted per person.
Entrants must be UK residents and aged 18 or over.
The judge's decision is final and no correspondence will be entered into.

Iron Man Three review

Iron Man Three (12A/PG-13, 130mins)
Director: Shane Black
★ ★ ★ ★ ☆

Iron Man Three finds itself in a unique position in the annals of comic book movies. In following on directly from the most successful superhero movie of all time, Avengers Assemble, this first of the so-called Phase Two of Marvel adaptations has a lot to live up to.

But by also following up a lacklustre and poorly received second part in the Iron Man story, there’s certainly room for improvement. And improve on what has come Iron Man Three undoubtedly does. It’s a superhero movie as concerned with the man as the Iron Man, and that’s where it finds its angle, its freshness, its reason to exist.

That’s because Robert Downey Jr.’s Tony Stark is struggling in the aftermath of what the Avengers went through, unable to sleep and prone to panic attacks. He’s obsessed with working on new upgrades to his Iron Man technology, to the detriment of his relationship with Pepper (Gwyneth Paltrow) and to the extent that he can’t separate himself from his suits.

Boldly, there’s almost no action at all during this long opening period of setup. It’s the investible characters and their wisecracking that keep it going here, because it can occasionally be a slog, especially when Pepper and Stark are separated for a lengthy spell.

The arrival of new terrorist super-villain, The Mandarin (Ben Kingsley), triggers this. He’s on a crazed mission to target the US president, destroying Stark’s home in the process and leaving him for dead. There’s also Guy Pearce’s dodgy businessman to contend with and the matter of bombs made from a powerful heat source that are being used in the Mandarin’s attacks.

Thankfully there’s Downey’s impeccable performance to guide us through the slower passages, and he’s the major contributing factor in what makes these films tick. Stark’s sharp, expertly delivered lines and no-nonsense dealings with everyone he encounters are enormous fun, but Downey can also find depth and darkness when required. And Kingsley is a revelation, with a turn that’s a million miles away from what on the surface looked like a re-run of his villain from the daft Thunderbirds film.

But this is also a movie capable of being sober, able to take a step back and smart enough to be more than men in suits hitting each other. Tapping into a seam of self-reference that never becomes smug, it touches on how people react to superheroes and celebrities, while the Avengers are referenced frequently but not beholden to.

And there should be no cause for concern that it fails to deliver on its promise as a fantasy blockbuster, because the second half is a triumph, providing surprises and sensational set pieces on top of the existing fun and games, and relying on the skills and ingenuity of Stark rather than just whatever powers the Iron Man suits have.

New-to-the-series director Shane Black, who must be due a good percentage of the credit for the resurrection of Downey’s career with Kiss Kiss Bang Bang, integrates himself smoothly, handling explosive action and characters stuff with equal ease.

Once it gets up to speed, Iron Man Three is as good as anything the series has yet offered and this is a fine finale to a trilogy. Make it through the protracted setup and it delivers just the payoff required.

Evil Dead II Blu-ray review

Evil Dead II (15, 84 mins)
Director: Sam Raimi
★ ★ ★ ★ ★

Part sequel and part remake, this delirious horror comedy sees Bruce Campbell return as Ash, as he and his girlfriend head to a secluded cabin in the mountains. The Book of the Dead features highly again, this time with added backstory as Ash listens to the tape recordings of the professor who found the book, through which evil spirits can possess the living. It doesn't mess about for a moment, with Ash’s girl possessed within the first five minutes and he forced to decapitate her. But that's only the start of his problems, and he's soon possessed himself while the daughter of the professor and her companions make their way to the cabin to add to the fun.

Director Sam Raimi creates a demented funhouse and manages the extremely rare feat of being terrifying and hilarious at the same time. Through quite astonishing camerawork, this is a movie that’s endlessly inventive and witty, with wonderful makeup effects making for sequence after sequence of breathtaking fun. In the pre-digital days in which it was made, this meant puppetry, stop-motion and sheer ingenuity, along with some lovely matte work.

It’s all driven by the human punching bag that is Campbell, as he gamely and masochistically bashes and smashes, chainsaws and chops his way through Three Stooges routines, and it’s a remarkable performance. This is horror by Looney Tunes, and it's a masterpiece.

Blu-ray: Evil Dead II has never looked or sounded this good on home video, and with over two hours of in-depth documentary and behind the scenes material plus a fun commentary with Raimi and Campbell, this is a package not to be missed.

Oblivion review

Oblivion (12A/PG-13, 125 mins)
Director: Joseph Kosinski
★ ★ ★ ☆ ☆

In 2077, Jack Harper (Tom Cruise) has memories of earth before the alien war that wiped out most of humanity, the remnants of which now live in a space station in orbit. Along with Victoria (Andrea Riseborough), Jack remains on the surface as maintenance crew, cleaning up Wall-E style, in preparation for a move to Saturn’s moon. The arrival of a crashed spaceship containing a survivor Jack recognises from his dreams (Olga Kurylenko) coincides with the entry of Morgan Freeman’s possible baddie, and it’s clear from the start that there’s a deeper mystery at play in this derivative but well put together sci-fi adventure. How this develops is generally watchable enough, even if at first it seems to lack a clear objective and narrative drive, though familiarity and predictability are its main problems. Inspiration is evident from The Matrix to Moon via Total Recall and many more, and you can see the finale coming from outer space. It also lacks the ideas that inform the best sci-fi, driven more by plot machinations than having anything particularly groundbreaking to say. But visually it’s breathtaking, the crisp and clear CGI making it otherworldly without ever seeming cartoonish, and the infrequent bursts of action are solid, if hardly revolutionary.

All Things to All Men review

All Things to All Men (15, 84 mins)
Director: George Isaac
★ ★ ☆ ☆ ☆

So similar is this overegged cops and robbers thriller to the recent Welcome to the Punch that it wouldn’t have come as a huge shock to see that film’s crew setting up in the corner of the frame. Rufus Sewell is the detective on the trail of Toby Stephens’ jewel thief who enlists the help of Gabriel Byrne’s kingpin, who sees Stephens as a rival for his turf. It’s reasonably admirable in the way we’re chucked straight in to the middle of this situation without any fuss or preamble, and for a little while it looks like something interesting could be developing. It also does that thing Punch did so well of making London look sensational, but it comes unstuck when trying to live up to its title in a second half that becomes increasingly desperate for attention. A sprawling cast gets sucked in to a labyrinthine narrative driven by an overbearing score, and alarm bells go off when a plot point seems to reference LA Confidential. When it actually has the gall to follow through on it, it becomes glaringly obvious that this is a movie with nothing more to offer.

G.I. Joe: Retaliation review

G.I. Joe: Retaliation (12A/PG-13, 110 mins)
Director: Jon M. Chu
★ ★ ★ ☆ ☆

With more coherent action, a lot less dullness and the addition of a couple of star names to the cast, this dumb but passably entertaining sequel to 2009’s G.I. Joe: The Rise of Cobra is certainly miles better than a woeful first instalment that was largely gibberish. That’s not to say the plot here isn’t nonsensical, because it is, some foolishness about Cobra, the baddies, having created a doppelganger of the president (Jonathan Pryce), then threatening the world with a new super-weapon while a betrayal leads the Joes, the goodies, on a revenge mission. The arrival of Bruce Willis and Dwayne Johnson to the elite military team that is the Joes is a welcome one, and they punch and blow stuff up real good. There’s also more Channing Tatum to be had than was originally planned, with reshoots delaying this sequel’s release by nine months to cash in on him being one of the most popular stars of the past year, and he and Johnson share a nice dynamic. Some nifty gizmos and action sequences that are cool in ways that the core target audience of 12 year old boys will find pleasing are the movie’s bread and butter, but it’s whenever anyone has to open their mouths that it all starts to go wrong, with some truly honking dialogue. But the central sequence, a sensational ninja-tastic chase and swordfight on the side of a mountain, is good enough almost to make this a recommended watch.

Stolen review

Stolen (12A, 96 mins)
Director: Simon West
★ ★ ☆ ☆ ☆

Nicolas Cage’s latest cash-in is a howlingly silly crime thriller that sees the once bankable star playing a master thief who ends up in jail after a job gone wrong. Eight years later he’s out and looking to reconnect with his teenage daughter, when his wronged former partner (Josh Lucas) kidnaps her, demanding a share of the missing $10m from their botched heist. Cue multiple scenes of Cage bumbling around New Orleans on Mardi Gras, while a feeble script chucks in body parts from all sorts of sources, from his and director Simon West’s own Con Air to The Fugitive. It’s pretty tired stuff, even though Cage is reasonably watchable and Danny Huston has fun as the Fed on his trail, but Stolen is the kind of film where the audience is always two steps ahead of the writer, and where a man who has been in prison for eight years can work an FBI computer but doesn’t know what sat-nav is.

Blu-ray prizes to be won

This competition is now closed.



Terms and Conditions

Only one entry will be accepted per person.
Entrants must be UK residents and aged 18 or over.
The judge's decision is final and no correspondence will be entered into.

Red Dawn review

Red Dawn (12A, 93 mins)
Director: Dan Bradley
★ ★ ☆ ☆ ☆

by Steven Neish

Arriving home to Spokane, Washington on leave, U.S. Marine Jed Eckert (Chris Hemsworth) meets his father, Police Sergeant Tom Eckert (Brett Cullen), at a football game being played by younger brother Matt (Josh Peck). Following a blackout at the after-party, Jed and Matt wake to find the sky full of invading soldiers paratrooping from overhead transport aircraft. Forced to flee without their father, the brothers pick up a number of Matt’s peers on the way out of town, moving into the family retreat as they try to decide what to do next. Opting to fight rather than flee, the young rebels name themselves after their school football team and wage guerrilla warfare on the enemy forces.

A remake of John Milius’ 1984 film of the same name, Red Dawn finally arrives in cinemas after years spent on a shelf at MGM due to the studio’s financial troubles. Due to the emergence of a lucrative Chinese market in the interim, director Dan Bradley used this prolonged post-production to manipulate the film’s antagonists, changing their ethnicity from Chinese to North Korean. As a result of this delay, any momentum that the project might have built has long since dissipated.

Luckily, this has done the finished result something of a favour, as Red Dawn is best viewed on a whim with little in the way of preconceptions or expectation. Just as the original Red Dawn was far from a revelation, so too is this Red Dawn a nuts and bolts actioner that will entertain you across its running time only to unceremoniously vanish from memory shortly after the credits have rolled. Good thing really, as any further thought would only serve to reveal how ridiculous the film actually is. And my word is it ridiculous.

Opening with a football game so loud it may well register on the Richter Scale, Bradley does his best to bludgeon audiences into a sort of drooling submission to presumably stop them from questioning the plot as it unfolds. Why is the music louder outside of the car than inside, he doesn’t want you to ask. What sort of Mickey Mouse military would ever attempt to colonise America? How do The Wolverines enter and exit the captured zone with such ease, and why does nobody else exploit this obvious enemy oversight? Also, wasn’t this remade already as Tomorrow, When The War Began?

If all war movies were summarily dismissed for being silly, however, there wouldn’t be much of a genre left. You’re not meant to take it seriously, and it is hard to imagine how anyone could possibly be offended by a film so readily ridiculous, yet a number of reviews have accused the film of being jingoistic and hateful, citing the same rhetorical speeches and racial stereotypes that litter most of these films. Strange, really, as you don’t exactly have to read between the lines to hear Chris Hemsworth compare his Wolverines to the freedom fighters battling against U.S. forces in Iraq or calling out a local girl for her geographical ignorance. And then there’s the absolute gem of a one-liner: “Marines don’t die, they go to hell and regroup”.

Red Dawn is not a good movie, but neither is it anything to get worked up about. A capable cast (bolstered in the third act by a late appearance from Jeffrey Dean Morgan) and a laughable script will likely keep its target audience entertained, but even the most undemanding viewers will be as hard-pressed to distinguish 2012′s Red Dawn from the original, or any other action film from the 1980s. Or, for that matter, their subsequent remakes.

The Croods review

The Croods (PG, 99 mins)
Directors: Kirk DeMicco,Chris Sanders
★ ★ ☆ ☆ ☆

Far from skulking in Pixar’s shadow like they did for most of the Noughties, Dreamworks Animation has upped their game considerably in recent years thanks to the likes of Kung Fu Panda and How to Train Your Dragon.

But while Pixar have had to face one or two recent blips, Dreamworks have also taken a backwards step with their latest, The Croods, as flat and unengaging an animated comedy as a major production company has made in years.

The Croods of the title are a cave-dwelling prehistoric family in a harsh and unforgiving world, where every day is a struggle to eat and not be eaten. Dad Grug (Nicolas Cage) hammers home the message of danger and how no good can come of anything new, and is obsessed with keeping them all safe in their cave.

Daughter Eep (Emma Stone) is going through a teen rebel stage and longs for some fun, which happens along when she meets Guy (Ryan Reynolds), who claims the world is ending and that they need to get to high ground.

Outwith the setup of a story that’s both strained and lacking in any real hook, many elements seem added at random. When their cave is destroyed the Croods end up in a strange and colourful new world that owes a lot to Avatar, but makes little sense in most other regards.

The voices are lively, which is something, but most decent animations should have the voices as icing rather than the best thing about it. And the animation is stunning, no two ways about it. But there’s never any sense of wonder, despite all the colour and scale and pyrotechnics.

And the largely charmless story is a road to nowhere. Thematically it’s thin, its main concern about parents letting go and kids growing up anything but new. Chaotic, and lacking any immediate appeal from either characters or plot, The Croods is little more than an awful lot of running and bouncing and falling for no real reward.