It has taken Dustin Hoffman 75-years to step behind the camera - so why now? It is hard to know what has finally driven him to bring this beige (or should that be grey?) story to the screen. Perhaps he wanted a safe project to test his directorial mettle or maybe he just wanted to spend a few weeks with friends and get paid for the privilege, either way the results are bland and soporific.

Aimed at undemanding mums and…

Rob Cohen directing a film starring Tyler Perry and based on a James Patterson novel - this isn’t going to end well. Alex Cross is a prequel and potential franchise starter about the early years of the titular detective and forensic psychologist. The previous Cross films - Along Came a Spider and Kiss the Girls - were forgettable but competent genre fare yet this latest offering is brash, dumb and slapdash.

This time around Cross (Perry) is on the trail…

A thousand words to describe A Thousand Words:

Abhorrent, appalling, atrocious, awe-inspiring, awesomely bad, awful, bad, beastly, bollocks, contemptible, dangerous, desperate, dire, disastrous, disturbing, dread, dreaded, dreadful, extreme, fearful, feckless, frightful, fucked, fucked-up, frightening, ghastly, gruesome, harrowing, hateful, hideous, horrendous, horrible, horrid, horrifying, inconvenient, loathsome, monstrous, naff, nondescript, nonentity, obnoxious, odious, offensive, petrifying, poor, repulsive, revolting, rotten, serious, severe, shocking, shit, shitty, shitfest, shitstain, smelly, toss, unfortunate, unnerving, unpleasant, unwelcome, vile, wank, abject, abominable, bad, base, beggarly, cheap, crass, currish,…

Although highly regarded by many I'm still not convinced it is appreciated as much as it should be. For me this is one of the finest science fiction films of all time, perhaps not as influential as Metropolis, Blade Runner et al but every bit as brilliant.

It manages to achieve what many sci-fi films do not, it manages to not only deliver a unique dystopic concept but also deliver a rich and moving emotional journey too. Too often genre…