Anyone who’s ever seen a movie from this seemingly endless franchise will know the exact recipe: half naked women, muscular testosterone-induced petrolheads, frantic shootouts, and very, very fast cars. Once you get your head round the fact that each film simply regurgitates this formula, albeit tweaked, then there’s little else to do other than...

One of David Cronenberg’s early horrors, Scanners, has finally come to Blu-ray 33 years after its cinema release. What’s obvious here is the lack of budget and quality of acting, yet it also showcases the talents of Cronenberg as a director having made this on the back of The Brood 2 years previously. Not only that, but it offers some excellent...

A few movies over the past couple of years have aspired to define a generation. Notably Joseph Kahn’s ‘Detention‘ did an effective job of editing together the sounds, attitudes and culture of the 90s within a comedy horror that managed to build a sense nostalgia for anyone who grew up during that time.  Check out the rest of my review and...

Donnie Yen (Ip Man) stars in this interesting Hong Kong marital arts movie that uses many of its generic traits in its set up, but packed a helluva punch. And kick. And more. Set in a small, peaceful village circa 1917, things don’t remain that way for long when a couple of bandits attempt to rob a local shop. Liu Jin-xi (Yenn) becomes unwillingly...

Having turned down the chance of a Knighthood, Danny Boyle maintains his status as the quintessential people’s filmmaker. As humble as the man is, there’s no denying his features possess a brutal rawness that by and large translates well and whilst his recent feature, Slumdog Millionaire, nabbed an incredible 8 Oscars in 2008, the bar it seems is...

Stoker opens with the film’s ending: an oddly juxtaposed shot of Mia Wasikowska’s India strutting across a highway in a pair of heels and into an overgrown layby. We’re not sure what’s going on, but are fed subliminally as director Chan-wook Park intends for us to savour and recall this information and contextualise later on. And that is what...

My hopes were moderately high prior to watching Premium Rush – the latest Blu-ray release starring the seemingly reliable Joseph Gordon-Levitt and the excellent, in-danger-of-becoming-typecast Michael Shannon. Unfortunately, as the end credits roll, you’re left with an enormous sense of feeling underwhelmed, because Premium Rush is a very specific, and...

As well as tackling big Hollywood productions, we at Live for Films also like to remember the little people. Okay, that sounded patronising, allow me to rephrase. It’s important to look at the independent filmmakers; the first-timers; those with but a microscopic budget to scout for emerging talent. Writer/director Chip Thompson sent me his first funded...

Sometimes controversy whirls around a film either working to its advantage or detriment. Admittedly anything that generates such attention is largely media hyperbole, and Kathryn Bigelow’s latest is perhaps the perfect example of this. Zero Dark Thirty – a film that documents the CIA’s battle to hunt down and kill bin Laden — is a...

For anyone who’s read his recent autobiography entitled Total Recall, you’ll notice instead of highlighting aspects of adultery or failure, the insightful musings inform readers what a shrewd and intelligent business man Arnold Schwarzenegger was and still is today. Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines was the big man’s last starring role...