Ridley Scott's needless prequel to his masterpiece Alien comes off like a big budget Italian rip-off of the original. Surely this must be one of the bleakest blockbusters ever made, and there's little wonder it did so badly and most people didn't like it. For me, however, Alien Covenant is one of the best depictions of Lovecraftian horror ever put to the screen. A thoroughly dark and cynical depiction of cosmic horror. A series of events that leave our cast…

Every viewing of Inferno is a pleasure! There aren't many films that make perfect sense in their own right and no sense whatsoever simultaneously. Argento's story is carried not through logic but by feeling and sound. A curious girl looks for a key; drops her keys, then finds a key in a secret flooded room under a basement. A letter is carried from New York to Rome by notes of classic music. Time forsakes logic, spanning different periods in different…

Political action thriller from New Zealand about a man who, after splitting from his wife, seeks solitude on a little island in Coromandel. His peace is shattered when he somehow ends up getting dragged into a revolution. Well, no man is an island I guess. The film is based on the book Smith's Dream and presumably has something to say about the political climate in New Zealand at the time (I can't comment as I wasn't there). The story is…

Lightweight but fun overblown action nonsense from John Woo. The set up is basic; rogue air force agent steals two nuclear warheads in the Utah desert, and the only people that can stop him are his former partner and a plucky local policewoman. It starts simple and stays simple, but it basically doesn't stop once it gets going. There's a constant stream of action and it's good fun. Everything about this is completely overblown to ridiculous levels - not least…

Paul Verhoeven's intergalactic war movie is structured like Full Metal Jacket, with the first half focusing on training a bunch of new recruits, and the second half being the war movie. The action is very tongue in cheek and the satire biting. There's so many wonderful little details that help to build the wider story. The society presented is some kind of one world governed egalitarian utopia, having to go war only because of a threat from outer space. The…

This film works prinarily because it fully embraces its absolutely ludicrous plotline, and then some! The story focuses on the common crime film staple of a cop and a criminal at odds with each other - except here we also have an absurd plot device which involves the pair swapping faces! The film is bolstered by two absolutely superb over the top performances from John Travolta and Nicholas Cage. Both actors absolutely give it both barrels. The action is brilliantly…