Top Ten: 1997 Films

A couple of years ago I listed my Top Ten films from 2001, a post that was inspired by a Facebook discussion. As I’ve not been making it to the cinema as often as I’d life recently, I’ve decided to repeat the exercise for a few different years – it might even come to be a series as I approach my 40th birthday…

Top Ten: Book to Film Adaptations

You know I love films and I love books, so it kind of follows that I love films based on books. Sometimes the adaptations are quite poor and disappointing (Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy), much less often they improve on the source material (anything based on a Tom Clancy book) but just sometimes a great book leads to a great film…

Warm Bodies

After a brief period of unpopularity zombies are back to being the supernatural bad guys of the moment. Vampires are on their way out and I blame (or depending on your point of view, thank) The Walking Dead for the resurgence of the zombie. It could be worse, we could be over-run with sparkly bloody nightcrawlers for all eternity. The latest zombie flick is Warm Bodies…

Con Air

There are some things that films need to be truly great – strong acting, meaningful narrative, subtle direction. Oh and explosions, big explosions. And a toy bunny in peril. Thankfully Con Air has all – or almost all – of these elements in abundance (or at least the elements that really matter anyway) …

Top Ten: Movie Explosions

This entry is part 3 of 4 in the series Guy Fawkes

One of the best things about Guy Fawkes Night is the plethora of firework displays that take place. I love fireworks, I genuinely oooh and aaah when a rocket goes up and explodes in a flash of bright colours. As you can probably guess I’m also a big fan of loud and bright explosions in movies. I know they aren’t subtle or intelligent but they are great fun….

The Top 10 Summer Blockbusters

Summer blockbusters

IIt’s summer and we all know what that means – long sunny days, plenty of fresh air and good clean outdoor pursuits. Oh yes, and hours of fun inside an air-conditioned cinema with popcorn, hot dogs and a rattling good summer blockbuster.

There are two main seasons for film releases. In order to qualify for Oscar consideration films must have a theatrical run in Los Angeles County between 1st January and 31st December. This generally means that studios release their worthy, serious films in November and December to keep them fresh in the minds of the Academy voters. If you take a look at the winter releases you can pretty much tell which movies will be the stars of the awards season in the spring but summer is the time for the big-budget, big-star name, big entertainment blockbusters to be released. Also known as the films that we actually pay to go and see….

I have some rules for what can be regarded as a true summer blockbuster. They’re pretty arbitrary, not everyone is going to agree….

It has to be an action film, no romances in my lists
It has to be a film I could watch over and over again – it can’t be a blockbuster if one viewing is enough
It’s not an animation (no matter how good it is)
The time of year matters – Die Hard is a brilliant, brilliant film but it’s set at Christmas, not summer
There has to be personality in there, no pointless sequels churned out just for filthy lucre.

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