For certain movie fans, the phrase “Directed by Guillermo del Toro” elicits a certain tingling of expectation and excitement. Del Toro is one of the most forceful auteurs currently working in the speculative fiction film industry and while his early films were relative flops and are popular now only in a cult and fan market, Del Toro’s name now...

Recently, someone encouraged me to write a few science fiction pieces with a positive outlook, maybe because there is a dominance of dystopian science fiction; a preponderance of horror and gloom within the genre. I get told that science fiction is often too gloomy in its outlook, needlessly creating bleak visions of the future as if to deter our...

Django Unchained is the latest entry into the Quentin Tarantino movie hall of fame, and it’s typical Tarantino in every way possible. A 2 hour and 40 minute hour long western, Django Unchained tackles slavery era America in a story about a freed slave, Django (Jaime Foxx), who travels the country in search of his wife accompanied by a German bounty hunter....

Alfred Hitchcock was a legendary figure of epic proportions (read what literal interpretations you want into that).  With any personality of this kind of legendary status, particularly when that legend is shrouded in as much dark mystery and macabre notions as the Hitchcock story, there’s always going to be a fascination with an idea of the real man behind...

Life of Pi (2012) arrived in cinemas at the end of last year amidst a babble of anticipation and speculation – how was this unfilmable book going to be adapted onto screen? The question wasn’t as in, “I wonder how they will do it?” but rather, “how is it possible to translate this book into a movie?”  Life of Pi isn’t the first book to be...

Teenagers and young people in general have long been a potent market for the film industry and coming of age movies have been a staple genre for decades. Coming of age movies aren’t all about easy marketing though, their stories appeal in a timeless sense even if the movies themselves tend to date. Whatever the generation, whatever the fashions, whatever...