Adventure

John Carter

Visually impressive epic adventure suffers by prepping for sequels

8 Mar 2012

Edgar Rice Burroughs’ 1912 creation finally hits the screen after 79 years of development hell, with pre-production on an animated feature originally scheduled for 1931. Andrew Stanton, director of Pixar’s A Bug’s Life, Finding Nemo and WALL-E, has…

The Extraordinary Adventures of Adele Blanc-Sec

Luc Besson brings Jacques Tardi's adventure comics to the screen

24 Mar 2011

(12A) 107min The ‘cinéma du look’ pioneer Luc Besson returns with this old-fashioned adventure-cum-fantasy yarn, adapted from Jacques Tardi’s long-running comic book series. Although set on the eve of World War One, its intrepid titular heroine…

Scott Pilgrim Vs The World

15 Aug 2010

(12A) 112min Writer-director Edgar Wright has made a career out of subverting genres, as demonstrated by his collaborations with actor Simon Pegg: TV’s Spaced and the films Shaun of the Dead and Hot Fuzz. For Scott Pilgrim vs The World, Wright left…

The most amazing thing I did last week

23 Apr 2010

Thousands of people a day donate blood. And thousands of people don't. Yet it's easy, quick, completely different. Plus you get to do something that could save another person's life. And how good does that feel?

Percy Jackson & The Lightning Thief

25 Feb 2010

Having passed on the Harry Potter directing reigns after the second instalment, Chris Columbus attempts to kick-start another fantasy franchise with this adaptation of the first book in Rick Riordan’s Percy Jackson and The Olympians series.

Will Ferrell interview

Land of the Lost star talk us through time

6 Nov 2009

With the DVD release of Land of the Lost imminent, Will Ferrell explains his role in this fast-paced, action adventure comedy.

Fantastic Mr. Fox

Inspired take on the Dahl classic

16 Oct 2009

Wes Anderson’s animated adaptation of Roald Dahl’s much loved book is no straightforward children’s film. Wee ones might enjoy it to a degree, but they won’t get much of the typically arch humour and wanton eccentricities the filmmaker once again…

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Two-dimensional dystopian animation

16 Oct 2009

With visionary heavyweights Tim Burton and Nightwatch / Wanted director Timur Bekmambetov amongst the producers, Shane Acker’s feature-length animation, based on his own Oscar-nominated short, promises revolutionary animation, but never delivers the…

Harry Potter and The Half-Blood Prince

23 Jul 2009

The sixth instalment in the Harry Potter franchise suffers from as many growing pains as its young wizards. While Harry Potter and The Half-Blood Prince does venture into darker, more adult areas than its predecessors it also injects more humour and…

Star Trek

30 Apr 2009

ACTION/ADVENTURE Star Trek is something that didn’t appear to need rebooting. The show debuted in 1966 and over the next 40 odd years, we’ve had 79 episodes of William Shatner, several TV spin-off series (The Next Generation and Voyager etc) and ten…

Watchmen: Tales of the Black Freighter

30 Apr 2009

ANIMATION/ADVENTURE Tales of the Black Freighter, or ‘the pirate story’ as it’s also known, is the comic-within-the-comic that threads through the narrative of the Watchmen graphic novel. Excised from the film adaptation, it appears here as a…

Female Prisoner Scorpion Trilogy

2 Apr 2009

CRIME/ADVENTURE/BOXSET No one makes films like the Japanese filmmaker Shunya Ito, and his early 1970s exploitation film trilogy about the travails of a sexy young female prisoner Matsu (Meiko Kaji) are very likely to be his abiding legacy, in the…

Race to Witch Mountain

2 Apr 2009

FANTASY/ADVENTURE Director Andy Fickman (She’s the Man, The Game Plan) revives one of Disney’s most venerable properties by pimping out 1975 ‘alien kid’ adventure Escape to Witch Mountain as a high-concept vehicle for the studio’s current star Dwayne…

Bolt

5 Feb 2009

ANIMATION/ADVENTURE Classic pet road movies The Incredible Journey (1963) and Homeward Bound (1993) meet The Truman Show in heart-tugging Disney animation. Child actress Penny (voiced by Miley Cyrus) and dog Bolt (John Travolta) star in a hit TV…

Beverly Hills Chihuahua

8 Jan 2009

COMEDY/ADVENTURE The gritty, seedy world of Mexican dog fighting evoked in Amores Perros is (unsurprisingly) entirely missing from this brightly-lit family comedy from Raja Gosnell, the auteur behind Scooby Doo 2: Monsters Unleashed. Beverly…

Brave Story

30 Oct 2008

Based on a novel by prolific Japanese authoress Miyuki Miyabe, Brave Story is a tale of love, friendship, and the sacrifices people must make in order to do what is right. Eleven-year-old protagonist Wataru meets Mitsuru, a lone figure who tells our…

Garth Ennis & Gary Erskine - Dan Dare

2 Oct 2008

SCI-FI ADVENTURE Following cold on the heels of Grant Morrison and Rian Hughes’ controversial, and some might say ugly, early 90s update of Britain’s noblest comics hero, this seven-part revival from Richard Branson’s comics line, now repackaged in…

The Fox and the Child

7 Aug 2008

FAMILY/ADVENTURE (U) 92min Luc Jacquet’s follow-up to March of the Penguins has a title which sums up the film’s content precisely. The Fox and the Child is the simple story of a giggly eight-year-old French child (Bertille Noël-Bruneau) who strikes…

Flash Gordon

31 Jul 2008

SCI-FI/ADVENTURE (PG) 106min (Optimum DVD retail) Given director Mike Hodges once admitted to an Edinburgh International Film Festival audience that his 1980 blockbuster version of Alex Raymond’s comic strip was made up as he went along, it’s all the…

Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull

22 May 2008

ADVENTURE (12A) 122min Seventeen years after his Last Crusade, Harrison Ford picks up his fedora hat and returns for his most ambitious and outlandish adventure yet. It’s 1957 and the Soviets have replaced the Nazis as the biggest set of thugs on the…

Speed Racer

8 May 2008

FANTASY/ADVENTURE (PG) 134min Having taken a break from directing since completing The Matrix trilogy five years ago, the Wachowski brothers (who wrote and produced but didn’t direct their last film, the abysmal V for Vendetta) are back in the driving…

Doomsday

8 May 2008

HORROR/ADVENTURE (18) 108min In Neil Marshall’s derivative, dystopian fantasy, Scotland 50 years on is a no-man’s land ravaged by disease, cut off from England by a rebuilt Hadrian’s Wall, and presided over by streetwise gangs of cannibals driving…

Nim’s Island

24 Apr 2008

FAMILY/ADVENTURE (U) 95min Jodie Foster tries vainly to kick-start a career as a children’s entertainer in, a post-modern adventure aimed squarely at undemanding family audiences. Co-directed by Jennifer Flackett and Mark Levin, who made the similarly…

Fool's Gold

10 Apr 2008

ADVENTURE/ROMANCE (12A) 112min All that glitters is not gold is indeed the case with this witless, plodding rom-com romp that reunites How to Lose A Guy in 10 Days pretty pair Matthew McConaughey and Kate Hudson as estranged husband and…

10,000 BC

13 Mar 2008

ADVENTURE (12A) 108min Long ago, in a land far away, there lived a young buff hunter D’Leh (Steven Strait). He had a simple life killing mammoths, listening to the latest prophesy from the village shaman and falling in love with the beautiful Evolet…

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…