10 Films Set Beyond Our Solar System first published by BFI, 15 Dec 2022 Includes capsules of: Forbidden Planet, Planet of the Vampires, Solaris, Fantastic Planet, Dark Star, Star Wars, Flash Gordon, Dune (1984), Alien 3, Hard To Be A God In James Cameron’s Avatar (2009), tiny islands float over the jungle moon Pandora, sending…
All films in the ongoing Star Wars saga begin with the words “A long time ago, in a galaxy far, far away…”, followed by a triangular block of prefatory text that slowly drifts away from the viewer’s gaze, as though the story itself, even as we struggle to keep up with it, is disappearing into…
Disney’s decision not to offer advance press screenings of Star Wars: The Force Awakens (except for a hand-picked few) merely confirms what we all know anyway: this film has nothing to gain from film critics. Tickets will sell anyway – in fact, already have done so in record numbers – and Disney has no need for…
Longer version of piece published by Sight & Sound as part of coverage of the Cult programme at the London Film Festival 2015 All cults need their icons (the kitschier the better), and so Jon Spira’s Elstree 1976 – a talking-heads documentary based around that ultimate world-building, life-changing cult movie, 1977’s Star Wars (and, to a…
My review for Film4. Synopsis: Bryan Singer (The Usual Suspects) retells Jack And The Beanstalk as a live-action/CGI/3D extravaganza. Review: “Well that went down better than I expected,” declares farmboy Jack (Nicholas Hoult) to princess Isabelle (Eleanor Tomlinson) after the young lovers, in an uncontrolled descent from a gigantic collapsing beanstalk, narrowly avoid impalement on…