Reviews, Jack Davis

Hellboy II: The Golden Army

Fresh from the critical and commercial success of his Oscar-feted Spanish horror-fantasy Pan’s Labyrinth, Mexican filmmaker Guillermo del Toro returns to Hollywood with a second blockbuster adaptation of Dark Horse Comics’ cult supernatural title. A…

The Dark Knight

SUPERHERO/THRILLER (12A) 152min British filmmaker Christopher Nolan’s revamp of the superhero franchise reaches its apotheosis with this sequel to Batman Begins, a well-imagined, perfectly executed film that combines blockbuster spectacle with indie…

Standard Operating Procedure

Legendary American documentarian Errol Morris’ films fall into two catagories, political and wacky, and it was with the former that he won an Academy Award in 2003 for his astonishingly candid portrait of Vietnam-era US Secretary of Defense Robert…

WALL-E

ANIMATION (U) 103min Can Pixar do no wrong? On the evidence of the CG animation studio’s ninth feature film, the answer is a resounding no. Once again Pixar pushes the envelope in the field it’s been trailblazing since the early 1980s, delivering…

The Escapist

THRILLER (15) 101min The origins of this smart and tough British prison escape thriller lie in a short film, 2004’s Get The Picture, which writer-director Rupert Wyatt made with actor Brian Cox as a showcase for his evidently considerable talents. Cox…

Wanted

THRILLER/ACTION (18) 111min Scottish comic book writer Mark Millar's ultra-violent graphic novel gets the Hollywood blockbuster treatment in this sfx-heavy actioner that benefits from the skewered perspective of Russian director Timur Bekmambetov, who…

The Incredible Hulk

SUPERHERO (12A) 112min By general consent, Ang Lee’s 2003 film Hulk was considered a flop. Five years on from its failure to win over fans of the Marvel Comic monster/superhero – and to clean up at the box office – comes this relaunch of the franchise…

Iron Man

SUPERHERO (12A) 125min The mighty world of Marvel superheroes continues to receive the big screen treatment with this blockbuster adaptation of just about the last of the comic book publisher’s original creations from the 1960s (Matthew Vaughn’s…

Speed Racer

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…

The Oxford Murders

CRIME/THRILLER (15) 104min Having graduated from the kitsch sci-fi satire of Acción mutante and the heavy metal horror of The Day of the Beast to the Hitchcockian black comedies Common Wealth and Ferpect Crime, Bilbao-born filmmaker Álex de la Iglesia…

Atonement

There’s a visually astounding set-piece at the centre of this adaptation of novelist Ian McEwan’s superb tragic romance set before, during and after World War II. It’s a lengthy tracking shot of the beach at Dunkirk during the Allied troop withdrawal…