Comparisons between Trainspotting and Irvine Welsh’s Ecstasy are inevitable, appropriate and a total disservice to the former.

Both films are set in the Scottish narcotics scene. Both are based on novels by Irwine Welsh. Both open with self-reflective narration from a thickly-accented protagonist, and both see him searching for drugs in his own faeces before the first twenty minutes are up. And yet everything that was fresh and exciting about Trainspotting [...]

After a couple of serious Hollywood misfires in the form of Gothika and Babylon A.D., Matthieu Kassovitz’s first French language film in over a decade is a tense, troubling and highly politicized return to form. Set during a guerrilla uprising in the French colony of New Caledonia that took place the late nineteen eighties, Rebellion [L’orde et la morale] stars Kassovitz himself as an experienced hostage negotiator and Special [...]

Every time I think American action films can’t get any more ludicrously jingoistic, Hollywood goes and proves me wrong. Act of Valor, a production over which the US Navy had final cut, made me yearn for the nuanced screenwriting of Battleship, the moderate politics of Transformers 3 and the versatility and range of Sam Worthington and Taylor Kitsch. A twelve million-dollar military recruitment ad tailor-made for the videogame [...]

After years of development and no less than five quasi-prequels later – Iron Man, The Incredible Hulk, Iron Man 2, Thor and Captain America –  Marvel’s superhero slumber party The Avengers arrives with expectations no mere mortal could possibly meet. But writer/director Joss Whedon is no mere mortal; he’s the geek deity responsible for TV’s Buffy and Firefly, and not only does his Avengers satisfy expectations, it [...]

A montage of colour and sound, of wide smiles, street vendors and beach parties that stretch long in to the night, Wish You Were Here’s opening credit sequence captures exactly why it is that Australian tourists go to South East Asia to lose themselves. Sometimes, however, it’s a more literal disappearance than others. Centred around four friends on holiday in Cambodia who return home one man short, the first film [...]

Based very, very loosely on the Hasbro board-game, Battleship (as in, “you sunk my…”) is the latest, loudest and stupidest example of the hyper-jingoistic, military-fetishising, intellect-lowering alien invasion movie of which Hollywood has recently become so fond.  Directed by Peter Berg of Hancock fame, the film boasts a budget and firepower roughly akin to that of the entire US armed forces. But as with an increasing number of blockbuster action [...]