Feature Essays
“Ripples in the water” | Alien³ (1992)
According to the diary of actor Ralph Brown, who played the role of Aaron in the film Alien³, there was a message carved into a ...
REVIEW: Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Men Tell No Tales (2017)
Henry Turner (Brenton Thwaites), the son of William Turner (Orlando Bloom), seeks the mythical Trident of Posiedon in order to remove the curse that keeps William aboard the Flying Dutchman. Joining him on his quest are astronomer Carina Smith (Kaya Scodelario), and Captain Jack Sparrow (Johnny Depp) - who is on the run from the ...
REVIEW: The Reaping (2007)
Katherine Winter (Hilary Swank) is a former Christian who, after suffering a great tragedy on a mission in Africa, has established a career investigating and debunking miracles. Along with her assistant Ben (Idris Elba), she travels to the Louisiana town of Haven when the local river turns blood-red. Instead of discovering a natural phenomenon she ...
REVIEW: The Wolf Man (1941)
Actor Lawrence Talbot (Lon Chaney Jr) returns home to his family estate after almost two decades in America. When a gypsy festival comes to town he sees it as an excuse to woo local woman Gwen Conlyfe (Evelyn Ankers), but a late night encounter with a wolf in the woods sees Talbot injured before he ...
REVIEW: Smilla’s Sense of Snow (1997)
Smilla (Julia Ormond) is a Greenlandic immigrant living in Copenhagen. When a young boy living in her apartment building is found dead, having fallen of the building's roof, Smilla refuses to accept that it was an accident. Her investigations draw her into what appears to be an international conspiracy involving a prominent doctor (Tom Wilkinson) ...
REVIEW: Thirteen Ghosts (2001)
A grieving family inherit an avant-garde glass-walled mansion from an estranged uncle (F. Murray Abraham) only to discover it is actually a demonic machine, created in the 15th century and populated with a grotesque array of violent and mutilated ghosts. With the assistance of a vengeful psychic (Matthew Lillard) and an idealistic spiritualist (Embeth Davidtz) ...
REVIEW: Dragon Blade (2015)
In 48 BCE Huo An (Jackie Chan) leads a special squad of soldiers patrolling the Chinese border. When his team is implicated in a gold smuggling operation they are exiled to the isolated border post of Wild Geese Gate. There the Han Chinese forces are confronted by a Roman legion commanded by the Legionniare Lucius ...
REVIEW: Bride of Frankenstein (1935)
As Henry Frankenstein (Colin Clive) is pulled from the wreckage of the burned-out windmill, so too does his monster (Boris Karloff) survive. As the latter wanders the countryside in search of companionship and peace from persecution, the former finds himself forced by the insidious Doctor Pretorius (Ernest Thesiger) to continue his experiments into creating life from ...
REVIEW: Frankenstein (1931)
Mad scientist Dr Henry Frankenstein (Colin Clive) has holed himself up inside a hilltop windmill with his hunchbacked assistant Fritz (Dwight Frye) to complete his life's ambition: to recreate life from a body stitched together from human corpses. While his fiancee Elizabeth (Mae Clarke) and best friend Victor (John Boles) do their best to dissuade ...
REVIEW: King Arthur: Legend of the Sword (2017)
Orphaned at a young age and raised in a Londinium brothel, Arthur (Charlie Hunnam) grows up to become a low-level criminal kingpin. When the waters around the castle Camelot magically recede, revealing a sword embedded in the rock, the ruthless King Vortigern (Jude Law) orders all men of a certain age to try and pull ...
REVIEW: King of Thorn (2009)
A viral contagion known as the 'medusa virus' sweeps across the globe, causing its victims bodies to spontaneously fossilise and shatter. A select number of the infected are cryogenically frozen inside a special facility on the Scottish coast, to be revived when a cure has been found for the disease. When the infected wake, they ...
