Adventure

The Bucket List

14 Feb 2008

COMEDY/ADVENTURE (12A) 96min After four decades as one of cinema’s most personable superstars, Jack Nicholson deserves the extended curtain call he gets in The Bucket List, even if it is sentimental, mawkish and manipulative. Ideally cast as filthy…

National Treasure: Book of Secrets

(PG) 124min

31 Jan 2008

Replace the religious sub-plot from The Da Vinci Code with some spurious blather about the history of the US Constitution and you have the successful formula for the National Treasure franchise. The second instalment finds adventurer Ben Gates (Nicolas…

Beowulf

15 Nov 2007

(12A) 114min Beowulf is being released on four formats: 35mm, digital, digital 3D and IMAX. This review is based on the IMAX version, Beowulf being the first mainstream film to successfully employ this technology. Much of the initial wow factor is…

The Last Legion

18 Oct 2007

ACTION/ADVENTURE (12A) 101min Director Doug Lefler honed his questionable skills directing episodes of Xena: Warrior Princess before legendary producer Dino de Laurentiis let him loose on this risible slice of sword and sorcery buffoonery.

Transformers

16 Jul 2007

ACTION/ADVENTURE/SCI-FI TRANSFORMERS (12A) 144min In 1984 toy manufacturer Hasbro released the Transformers, and as part of its marketing strategy, commissioned a Marvel comic strip and an animated TV series that became an instant…

Lost Oasis

16 Jul 2007

TRAVEL ADVENTURE ROBERT TWIGGER Lost Oasis (Weidenfeld & Nicolson) Following in the footsteps of explorers such as Theodore Almasy, the inspiration for The English Patient, author and macho adventurer Robert Twigger decides to search for…

Pathfinder

(15) 100min

11 Apr 2007

A remake of the excellent 1987 Norwegian outdoors adventure about a lone boy’s efforts to save his tribe from a band of marauding killers in frozen Lapland 1000 years ago, Pathfinder relocates the action to America centuries before Columbus discovered…

Rhona Cameron

The Naked Drinking Club (Ebury)

13 Mar 2007

AUSTRALIAN ADVENTURE In 1979, the chronicle of a year in Cameron’s teenage life, she’s an adopted Lothians lassie who fixates on girls, lets the boys take advantage of her, and watches her father die. In her first novel, The Naked Drinking Club, the…

Steven Hall

The Raw Shark Texts (Canongate)

12 Feb 2007

ADVENTURE TALE There are not many authors who can say their first novel had such an effect on Nicole Kidman she begged to be allowed to star in a movie adaptation. That’s the impact Steven Hall’s debut is having. Already hailed as an ‘instant…

Arthur and the Invisibles

(U) 93min

29 Jan 2007

If Luc Besson (The Big Blue, Leon) is to be believed, this, his tenth film, will also be his last as director. In adapting his own children’s book, Besson mixes live-action and CGI animation with decidedly patchy results. It’s heavy on style but light…

Apocalypto

(18) 138min

3 Jan 2007

Welcome to the jungle. A place where pierced savages josh and jest as they rip the flesh of a freshly speared boar. Life is simple, life is good, but trouble is hiding in the undergrowth and young family man Jaguar Paw (Rudy Youngblood) is about to go…

Deja Vu

(12A) 126min

11 Dec 2006

SCI FI/ADVENTURE/THRILLER A massive explosion, a slow-mo on our hero arriving on the scene of a terrorist attack, and within the first ten minutes it’s clear that we’ve entered the destructive cinematic world of Tony Scott. But, unlike with the…

Charlie Higson - Young Bond 3

Charlie Higson

6 Dec 2006

ADVENTURE TALE Although his previous two Young Bond adventures have been successes in their own right, the franchise’s revival thanks to Casino Royale should ensure that this third adventure by Charlie Fast Show Higson eclipses those predecessors.

Thief of Baghdad, The

Thief of Baghdad,

4 Sep 2006

ADVENTURE Two decades before Ray Harryhausen’s The 7th Voyage of Sinbad indelibly imprinted the Arabian Nights fantasies upon the minds of film lovers, the sword and sorcery adventures were being realised on the silver screen under the all seeing eye…