Smilla’s Sense of Snow (1997)
Oct 31, 2005Scandanavian Murder Mystery/SF Twist
Adapted from an acclaimed book, Julia Ormond stars as an Icelandic heroine in a detective story with an SF twist
Tom Wilkinson
Black Knight (2001)
Nov 25, 2001Modern Man in Mediaeval Times Comedy
An uncredited adaptation of Mark Twain's A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court with Martin Lawrence as a hip modern African-American man thrown back to Mediaeval times
Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind (2004)
Jun 15, 2004Memory Erasure/Reality Bender
Michel Gondry and Charlie Kaufman collaborate on a mind-bending film about erased memories. The film comes with a series of characteristic eccentricities and whiplash twists that are positively ingenious
The Exorcism of Emily Rose (2005)
Nov 13, 2005Demonic Possession/"True Story"
This became a big sensation with its claims to be on the true account of an exorcism even if director Scott Derrickson alters what actually happened to the point of complete fiction. The rest just rehashes cliches from The Exorcist
Batman Begins (2005)
Jun 15, 2005Comic-Book Superhero
After Joel Schumacher killed off the cinematic Batman franchise, Christopher Nolan successfully revives it, bringing back the dark, psychologically brooding superhero and telling a Batman origin story
Burke & Hare (2010)
Jun 1, 201119th Century Grave Robbers/Comedy
Lavishly produced, reasonably historically authentic retelling of the story of the grave robbers from John Landis, which also becomes a wasted opportunity that turns the story into a comedy where the title characters are just two likeable schmucks
Jackboots on Whitehall (2010)
Nov 1, 2012Nazis Invade England/Satiric Alternate History/Puppet Film
A puppet film about a satiric Nazi invasion of England in World War II. Imagine It Happened Here by way of Team America. This has its amusements but is uneven
The Green Hornet (2011)
Jan 14, 2011Masked Superhero
The long-planned big screen adaptation of the popular radio and tv masked hero becomes a disaster by placing the script in the hands of a badly miscast star Seth Rogen who plays everything for comedy
Mission: Impossible – Ghost Protocol (2011)
Jan 19, 2012Spy/Action Film
The best of Tom Cruise's Mission: Impossible films to this point. The live-action directorial debut of Pixar director Brad Bird proves an inspired move and Bird gets all the gadgetry just right along with a series of sensational action sequences
Watership Down (2018)
Apr 19, 2019Animation/Talking Rabbit Quest
BBC tv mini-series remake of the classic Richard Adams novel about talking rabbits on a quest. To get it over with, the animation is not the high-end quality that we have been spoiled with by Pixar et al. On the other hand, what remains is an excellent faithfully told version of the story
The Titan (2018)
Apr 14, 2018Bio-Engineering Humans to Live on Titan
Conceptually highly ambitious SF film about humans being biologically modified in order to be able to live on Saturn's moon Titan. After a highly promising beginning, the film falls apart in a badly cliched unethical scientist and lab experiment amok ending