You’ve had the list of my favourite films of the last 12 months, and now it’s time for my most anticipated movies of 2013.

Last year, my list featured a handful of things that ended up not being released at all, and a couple of those make a reappearance on this list.

But, we’ll begin with an all-new entry…

Man of Steel

Superman Returns sucked. Let’s make no bones about it. However, since 2006 we’ve had Iron Man, The Avengers, Watchmen and The Dark Knight which all showed how superhero movies can stay true to a beloved character while offering something new. This revamped Superman has a solid team behind it, including Christopher Nolan (Batman) on story and Zack Snyder (Watchmen) directing, and I think it might finally drag Supes into the 21st century.

Sin City: A Dame to Kill For

The original Sin City was my favourite film of 2005, and this sequel promises to recreate the monochromatic violence of its predecessor. Directed again by Frank Miller and Robert Rodriguez, most of the cast are returning for this follow-up, including Clive Owen, Jessica Alba, Rosario Dawson and Mickey Rourke. Fingers crossed A Dame to Kill For can reach the same ultra-violent levels as the first part.

Gravity

Gravity was on the list last year, and amazingly, not much more has emerged about this ultra-secret project over the past 12 months. Children of Men writer/director Alfonso Cuaron’s next film stars George Clooney and Sandra Bullock as astronauts, living in a dilapidated space station, unsure about whether they’ll ever be able to get home. Test screening audiences are throwing out words like “masterpiece”, with one viewer claiming: “This is next level shit… this is like if Avatar had been released in 1927 a week after The Jazz Singer. People won’t know how to comprehend what they are seeing.”

Elysium

More sci-fi on the list, this time from Neill Blomkamp, the South African writer/director behind District 9. Once again starring Blomkamp’s childhood friend, Sharlto Copley, Elysium is another parable about a government’s treatment of immigrants.

Also starring Matt Damon and Jodie Foster, the film looks at what happens when Earth is ruined, leaving most of humanity to struggle while the elite live on a luxury space-station.

Pacific Rim

Huge monsters versus gigantic robots – Pacific Rim sounds like a dumb action film, but the fact that Guillermo Del Toro (Pan’s Labyrinth, Hellboy) is behind the wheel makes it automatically one to look out for. Watch the trailer below to see just how massive and mental this film is going to be.

The Great Gatsby

Another refugee from last year’s list, my excitement for The Great Gatsby has only increased.

One of my favourite books, adapted by one of my favourite directors and starring one of my favourite actors. Moulin Rouge director Baz Luhrman brings his inimitable style to F. Scott Fitzgerald’s classic story, with Leonardo DiCaprio as his lead.

Footage released so far shows how Luhrmann has employed his trademark hyper-kinetic style and it looks wonderful.

The Hunger Games: Catching Fire

Proving that films based on popular teen-novels don’t have to be dreadful, the first Hunger Games film was better than anyone expected and catapulted its star Jennifer Lawrence into the A list. Catching Fire has a different director (Francis Lawrence) so the film will hopefully look different, as we see how Katniss Everdeen moves from player to rebel.

Anchorman: The Legend Continues

Will Ferrel’s greatest comic creation is back in cinemas this year. It is believed the plot of the new movie will see the news team get to grips with increased workplace equality and the advent of rolling news and the 24 hour news cycle. Along with previous costars Vince Vaughn and Paul Rudd there will be new cast members, including Bridesmaids star Kristen Wiig.

After Earth

Although his work in recent years has been terrible, I will always root for M. Night Shyamalan because he was responsible for Unbreakable (one of my all-time favourites), and After Earth may well be his return to form. Starring Will Smith (who is massively bankable and doesn’t appear in duff films), the film is about a crash landing that leaves a teenager (Jaden Smith) and his father stranded on Earth, 1000 years after humanity left the planet. Big themes, big names and a big budget – I have high hopes for this movie.

Oblivion

There’s a lot of sci-fi on this list, huh? Especially stuff about the destruction of Earth. Meh, I have faith that LRH will save us all.

People mock me for liking Tom Cruise, but here’s the thing, he’s an excellent movie star and his films are never anything less than entertaining.

In Oblivion, The Cruiser plays one of the few remaining drone repairmen assigned to Earth which has been ruined after decades of war with an alien race. On one trip, he discovers a crashed spacecraft that brings into question everything he believed about the war, and may even put the fate of mankind in his hands.

At the beginning of the year, I listed my 12 most anticipated films of 2012.

Some of those films were worth the wait (The Avengers), some weren’t (The Dictator), while others haven’t even arrived yet (The Great Gatsby). However, there was enough gold out there to make this list of the top ten films of 2012.

As with any list like this, it’s all entirely subjective, so while there are technically great films out there that should appear (and would, were it a top 100), there are only ten spots. But here goes… my favourite films of 2012:

Haywire

Released by Steven Soderbergh at the beginning of the year, Haywire was more than just a female interpretation of The Bourne Identity – the film represented the birth of a female action star in ex-cage fighter Gina Carano.

With an impressive supporting cast including Antonio Banderas, Michael Douglas and Michael Fassbender, Haywire stood out from other action thrillers due to the lack of gimmicks. No flashy cinematography was needed (the reality-based fight scenes didn’t need embellishment) and the simple screenplay kept things powering along. The ending was a bit weak, but it wasn’t enough to keep this off my list.

Titanic 3D

I’ve made no secret of how much I love Titanic, and how excited I was for James Cameron’s 3D re-release, so it was a huge relief when it turned out to be just as good as the 1997 version, if not better.

No other film has matched the 3D Cameron gave us in Avatar, but Titanic 3D was as near as anyone has come – really making the most of the gorgeous cinematography and superb performances. The time, care and money lavished on Titanic 3D made it feel like a new film. No, I didn’t cry at the end – you shut your dirty mouth.

The Raid

Every so often two films come out at the around the same time, that share a number of striking similarities (think Deep Impact/Armageddon, Volcano/Dante’s Peak, Capote/Infamous) – this year, it was The Raid and Dredd. Both films involved cops, trapped and massively outnumbered in a high-rise building, trying to make their way to the top in order take out a drug kingpin. And while Dredd was awesome, The Raid was better, thanks largely to the outrageous martial arts abilities of Iko Uwais.

Life of Pi

Ang Lee’s adaptation of Yann Martel’s ‘unfilmable’ book is one of the most remarkable examples of cinema ever, let alone this year. The acting from first-timer Suraj Sharma was impeccable, while the direction and cinematography were simply astonishing. For once, the 3D improved the cinematic experience, rather than ruin perfectly good shots. This was a film that begged to be seen on the big screen.

Argo

Ben Affleck: one of the best directors working in Hollywood today. Who the hell would have guessed that? After the success of Gone Baby Gone and The Town, Affleck continued his run of great cinema with Argo – the true life story of a covert operation to rescue six Americans from Tehran by pretending they were making a sci-fi movie.

Tense and much funnier than you’d expect, Argo boasted some wonderful character acting. Yep, including Affleck himself. I hate that guy.

Here Comes The Boom

Every year I do this list, and there’s always something that causes readers to email me and ask me how long I’ve been an alcoholic. Here Comes The Boom is this year’s example.

Kevin James plays a tubby teacher who tries to save the school’s under-threat music department by fighting for money. In a cage. Yes, it’s remarkably similar to Warrior in some respects, but where that was a serious drama, this is very much a comedy.

I’m well aware this film wasn’t for everyone, but in this case, my fondness of MMA made a real difference, and I got a serious kick out of seeing the likes of Chael Sonnen pop up in teeny tiny cameos. Furthermore, Bas Rutten’s comic turn was genuinely one of the funniest of the year. Who’d have thought that a decade ago he made a living punching lumps out of people.

Utterly unbelievable, and completely daft, this feelgood film and its cast were hard to dislike.

The Avengers

I refuse to call this film by the name given for its UK release. It’s The Avengers, and it was awesome. I was uncertain that Marvel would be able tie the various superheroes together in a cohesive way, but then it hired Joss Whedon who produced not only one of the best comic books films of the year, but one of the best anything films of the year, full stop.

Moonrise Kingdom

From frame one, this film screams ‘I am a Wes Anderson picture’. Moonrise Kingdom was the director’s first live-action feature since The Darjeeling Limited in 2007, and contained all his usual touchstones – perfect framing, an idiosyncratic soundtrack, unlikely casting and beautiful acting.

Young Adult

Even though she won an Oscar for Monster, it’s still strange to look at Charlize Theron when she’s all polished and on the red carpet or in ostentatious perfume adverts, and think that she’s a good actress. But she is, and Young Adult proved it once again.

Theron plays a misanthropic teen-fiction writer who returns to her hometown to try to steal her high school sweetheart – now happily married and expecting a kid. From the same writer/director team as Juno, the performances in this brilliantly sour anti-romantic comedy were routinely excellent, particualrly from Theron and Patton Oswalt as her geeky, disabled ex-schoolmate.

Chronicle

Released among a pile of over-marketed tat, Chronicle didn’t get the audience it deserved.

It was a relatively low budget film about three teenage boys who gain superpowers, looked better than a lot of this year’s big releases, and had a surprising air of reality about it.

Chronicle wasn’t just all about the action though, it also boasted some surprising performances, not least from main protagonist Dane DeHaan who has since landed the role of Harry Osborne in the next Spider-Man film.

Due to most of the film looking like it was shot on a home movie camera or mobile, it looks just as good on the small screen as it did on the big – so track it down.

A version of this article first appeared in the Kent Messenger series of newspapers.

A few months ago I wrote a piece called Why George Lucas Isn’t Getting Any More Of My Money. In it, I explained how – even though I still love Star Wars and want to see the new releases – the director’s incessant tinkering and apparent egomania meant I couldn’t in good conscience chuck more money at him and his “improved”, “remastered”, “ultimate version” cuts of the beloved movies.

And then, a couple of days ago, the news dropped that Lucas had sold Star Wars and the rest of Lucasfilm to Disney, who immediately announced parts seven, eight and nine.

It seems you can have your cake and eat it.

Read on »

I have made some changes to my portfolio page and updated the Favourites section.

There are still some more things to be added (mostly pdfs), and they’ll appear in the next few days.

Until then, have a look and a click and a read.

A combination of exam results in the news and an excellent blog by @pme200 has reminded my of my own Oxbridge experiences.

My parents didn’t go to university and until I hit my late teens, I didn’t know anyone who had gone, so the very idea of heading off to get a degree was still quite grand. At this point, going to uni wasn’t simply something people did after sixth form to delay getting a job, it was a serious life decision.

So, I took the whole process very seriously, and what I knew for certain was that if I wanted to stay in the UK, the very best degrees were from Oxford and Cambridge. My head had been filled with all sorts of stories about so and so’s son who is ever so bright and has gone off to study an Ology at Cambridge, and the woman down the road with the fantastic car wouldn’t be half as successful had she not gone to Oxford. And so it followed that, if I was going to be the first in my immediate family to slog my way through to uni, I was going to do it properly and make sure it was Oxbridge.

Never did it occur to me that I – being from a not particularly well-off family with no powerful friends or acquaintances who had been brought up in a succession of rundown army housing estates – would not be looked upon favourably by the educational elite.

But that’s how it was presented to me by my college’s Higher Education advisor when I first talked about

“Jamie and Tessa Fakename will be our Oxbridge applicants this year, trying at all would be a waste of everybody’s time.”

Jamie and Tessa Fakename (I am using a fake name for them – did you spot that?) were two very well-spoken, very well-off twins who everyone in college either knew or knew of. As you can probably tell, I didn’t know them, nor did I know what their parents did in order to end up being so wealthy, but I did know that they were the golden boy and girl of the college and if they were the Oxbridge candidates for the year, there was little point in me even thinking about it.

And yet…

I have always been stubborn to the point of obdurate (in our family, it’s called ‘grit’), so I pushed the advisor on the subject; what did she mean “it would be a waste of everyone’s time?”

“Well,” she said, “if Cambridge is going to accept someone from this college, it will be someone like Jamie or Tessa, not you.”

“But my grades are the same.”

“That’s besides the point. You’re not what they’re looking for.”

Which was the sum of any and all arguments over the following weeks. I could protest all I wanted, but the long and the short of it was, according to this advisor, this woman tasked with helping young people make enormous decisions and push them to be the best, Oxbridge knew what it wanted and what it wanted was not me.

The arguments continued for another week or so, but besides pointed remarks about her not wanting to waste her time coaching someone without “an Oxbridge aura” and references that “UCAS don’t look kindly on people who rock the boat” no new information was forthcoming.

I wasn’t rich, I dropped some of my Ts and my bus pass was free. It didn’t matter how talented I was or what potential I had, as far as she was concerned, I wasn’t worth the effort.

In the end, I made my selections, got my first choice (University of Kent at Canterbury) and did pretty well, but it wasn’t until much later on that the way I had been disregarded offhand simply because of my background really started to rankle. Although I was pissed off, in my youthful foolishness I had simply come to accept that this woman knew what was what, and that the likes of me weren’t suitable for Oxford or Cambridge. But, as time wore on and I met people who had attended those universities I came to realise, half of them were no smarter or richer or posher than me. What gives?!

It’s not Oxbridge that has the attitude, nor is it the students; rather it’s the people in positions of power in our schools and colleges who buy into this outdated notion of what Oxbridge is supposed to be and go out of their way to put off prospective candidates.

Chances are if I did apply I wouldn’t have even made it to the interview process, and even if I had all those fucking bicycles would have put me off, but this advisor – with her prejudices about who I was, what Oxbridge was and the importance of keeping people like me in their place  – should have at least let me damn well try. Now I know (for the most part) it doesn’t matter which university you went to, it’s experience that counts, but back then, to me, Oxbridge was the pinnacle of personal achievement and I got shot down before I was even on the runway.

I bear no ill will towards the Fakenames- I doubt they knew what was going on and even if they did, what could they do about it? Nor do I resent the universities themselves for not doing more to destroy their archaic images. I do, however, resent that woman in her brown glasses and green cardigan telling me I wasn’t right for somewhere because she hadn’t caught up with modern Britain.

So, for what it’s worth, there’s my Oxbridge story. No great revelations, although I still wonder from time-to-time why Jamie and Tessa and all their money attended the same cheap fraud-ridden college in a London overspill town as me.

Ever wonder why most of the interviews you read with celebrities are virtually identical?

Well, it’s because very often they are the same interview, just packaged differently. Despite the “Exclusive interview!’ lies you’re fed, few outlets actually get to have one-on-one time with the stars of new movies, and have to make do with dry, generic interviews done in-house and sent out to thousands of websites, magazines and newspapers across the world. There are only so many ways a put-upon feature writer can make it sound like they actually met the subject of their article, and so what we are left with are piles of interviews with the cast of The Avengers, each one framed slightly differently, but with remarkably similar quotes.

Now there’s another option open to journalists, but as with most things, it costs. Canadian journalists at this year’s Cannes Film Festival were being charged thousands of dollars for interviews with the likes of Brad Pitt, Kristen Stewart and Nicole Kidman.

Alliance, the Canadian distributor for Stewart’s film On the Road and Pitt’s new movie Killing Them Softly Alliance sent out a “menu” of prices to various outlets prior to the event, letting them know how much different people cost if they wanted to talk to them. While Brad Pitt started at £2400 for a 20 minute interview, McConaughey was a bargain at just £1200 with two funny anecdotes and a high five thrown in for free.

Unsurprisingly, journalists rebelled.

However, this isn’t the first time something like this has happened. Harvey Weinstein tried a similar tactic back in 2007 with Tarantino’s Death Proof and it didn’t go down well either as the cash-for-questions style scheme resulted in a huge storm of bad publicity; and wouldn’t you know it, the same has happened here. Not least because in the handful of interviews that were secured with Brad Pitt to promote Killing Them Softly, the dunce happily announced that he was hooked by the script because it was “making a commentary” on our consumerist society. Ho ho ho.

Let’s ignore for a second the fact that journalists shouldn’t be expected to pay for the privilege of helping film companies promote their latest rubbish. The more pressing issue here is, even though the actors and actresses involved are now being paid to speak, they STILL just trot out the same old tired cliches.

Most outlets are running on a shoestring budget and will never be able to afford to pay for interviews (nor should they) but if they are able to, then they should be rewarded with far more than a semi-awake celebrity gurgling on about how ‘challenging’ their latest role is, and how the director is a ‘genius’.

Would you pay £2400 for that? I wouldn’t. Why the hell should I pay to listen to megarich celebrities promote the movies they’re starring in? Films they’ve already been paid more than you or I will EVER earn to promote as part of their multi-million dollar contracts. They should be paying us for making the turgid nonsense that spills out of their mouths sound like it came from someone with a grain of personality, and not just a polished automaton parroting whatever their publicist has told them to say.

For years there has been a symbiotic relationship between the press and publicists. They give us interviews with their ‘talent’ which helps us attract readers and in return we help to raise awareness about their films with little focus on whether the product is actually any good. Think about it – when was the last time you read a lengthy interview with a movie star or saw an actor on a TV show where the product came off badly? Never – that’s when.

And now publicists like Alliance want to rock the boat and make the press pay? This can only end one way, and it won’t be the press being made to look stupid and forced to back down.

An Alliance spokesperson said: “The fee is simply a means for the expenses to be shared… These stars travel by private jet, with their agents, make-up artists and hairdressers; someone’s got to pay.”

Yep, sure they do – but not the people you are relying on to promote your films, idiot.

After months of hype and a very cool viral campaign, Prometheus is upon us.

You may have noticed that, unlike most new releases, the number of reviews out there before the release was quite small. Usually when this happens it’s because the studio knows that their film sucks, and they don’t hold preview screenings for critics so that the public have no clue that what they are paying £15 per ticket for is a steaming dog egg.

However, Prometheus is not a bad film, far from it – it’s an excellent piece of sci-fi, and if taken as a standalone film and not part of the Alien canon, is well worth your money.

In the case of Ridley Scott’s new film, the issue lies with shortsighted and downright rude PR people barring access to press screenings.

Let me explain – journalists are currently in the middle of a war where legitimate film, theatre and art reviewers with real audiences are being pushed aside in favour of people who have the right email address.

Read on »

Scarlett Johansson is fat. Did you know?

Yeah, apparently she’s a big fat fatty and the public shouldn’t be subjected to her big fat fatness in The Avengers (or Avengers Assemble if you insist on being all British about it).

I have to be honest, the thought hadn’t occurred to me, but I have read it in so many Avengers reviews in newspapers, magazines and websites that I must be wrong. And these aren’t just reviews written by 400lb geeks who have never had a real girlfriend so spray piping hot bile all over women in movies who represent everything they will never have; nor has it all stemmed from bitter female writers, furious with actresses who dare to pander to the patriarchy by being pretty. These comments have appeared in reviews written by proper, well-respected, and otherwise sane critics.

It reminds me of a similar phenomenon when The Hunger Games was released earlier this year. The murmurs about Johansson’s figure are nothing when compared to the screams of derision aimed at Jennifer Lawrence, who played lead character Katniss Everdeen.

Read on »

The High Court has ruled that file-sharing site The Pirate Bay must be blocked by UK internet service providers.

For the unaware, The Pirate Bay is perhaps the most popular file-sharing site on the web and allows people to access a huge range of content including movies, games and TV shows.

Sky, Everything Everywhere, TalkTalk, O2 and Virgin Media must all prevent their users from accessing the site. BT have requested “a few more weeks” to consider their position on blocking the site.

A statement from the British Phonographic Industry (BPI) said: “Sites like The Pirate Bay destroy jobs in the UK and undermine investment in new British artists,” while BPI’s chief executive Geoff Taylor said: “Its operators line their pockets by commercially exploiting music and other creative works without paying a penny to the people who created them. This is wrong – musicians, sound engineers and video editors deserve to be paid for their work just like everyone else.”

While this ruling surrounds music, it is going to downloads of every shape and size including TV and, yep, movies.

Which is nonsense. The arguments against online filesharing are as flawed as those that surrounded home recording in the 80s and branded kids that recorded eachothers’ cassette tapes as pirates. Not that I’m condoning piracy, quite the opposite. I just feel we should resist attempts to control the internet, as it’s a pernicious process. With SOPA and now CISPA in the States, we are following suit in the UK and are on a slippery slope towards internet censorship.

Ultimately, these measures are pointless as they can be got around using proxy servers or simply going to other filesharing sites.

Furthermore, entertainment producers and providers just aren’t keeping up with their audiences, and leave people with little choice but to find other ways of accessing content when legitimate means don’t cut it. Putting aside the argument that a new DVD shouldn’t cost £15 (though that is a valid complaint), many people simply cannot get hold of the films and TV shows that are being shoved down their throats. Have you seen The Cabin In The Woods yet? Why not? See it. See it now. Watch it now. Why haven’t you watched it? All your friends have watched it. You’re a loser. Your parents hate you. Watch it now… And so on and so on until the impressionable teenager who the adverts are aimed at and who doesn’t have a multiplex nearby gives in and Googles “free download Cabin In The Woods.”

But that doesn’t explain why adults download illegally. However, this does, and is based on a real situation experienced by a friend in who lives in New York.

Read on »

Last week the Evening Standard got in touch to ask me to write something about The Voice being better than Simon Cowell’s shows. This is what I said:

“I gave up on X Factor last year after not one single likeable or above-average performer went through to the live shows, and I didn’t miss it at all. Britain’s Got Talent has never interested me, though I have managed to sit through a handful of shows – each one singularly awful. Bad singers are one thing; bad mimes, morris dancers, magicians, are quite another. Worse than the acts, however, are the audience.

Ugly, but with the audacity to be quite good at singing? They’ll and point and laugh and roll their eyes until the moment you hit the big note and then rise, as one, in spontaneous applause while mouthing “OMG” at eachother. This is contrasted by their reaction when the sort of person who would happily stab their own sister for a packet of fags but is marginally attractive swaggers onstage and honks out a piss-poor version of some shite by Plan B. The gurning cow people in the audience whoop and holler and declare him the eventual winner before he even opens his smelly mouth.

The Voice, on the other hand, is far more civilised. Yes, we get the backstage segments where people talk about how much it means to them, but gone are the judges agonising over a decision and the cynical scenes with an orange girl wittering on about how “my grandad died on my wedding day but I found this application form in his cold, dead hands so I’m doing this FOR HIM,” while Adele plays in the background.

Factor in a new twist on a tired format (the blind auditions) and judges that are interesting, relevant and seem to take the process seriously (stand up Jessie J and will.i.am) and I’m going to stick with The Voice for the time being.”