Philmology

Etched on the fringes of popular culture, the work of Alan Moore has long been regarded with critical acclaim, his graphic novels the subject of a devoted fan following. In the past decade, with the less-than-impressive cinematic adaptations of his works From Hell, The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen, and V for Vendetta, Moore’s popularity may […]

Released in close succession, Gran Torino and Changeling seem to offer two vastly disparate visions from director Clint Eastwood. The former, in which Eastwood stars as an irascible war hero turned vigilante offers a contemporary spin on the type of narrative that made Eastwood a screen legend. By contrast, the latter, a tale about one […]

American cinema revels in the comeback story. From Rocky (John G. Avildsen, 1976) and The Natural (Barry Levinson, 1984) through more recent fare such as Cinderella Man (Ron Howard, 2005), the celluloid history of Hollywood is underscored by a belief that anyone can make it big, fail, and then be resurrected again like a modern-day […]

There’s a particular moment in David Fincher’s Fight Club (1999) where the disenfranchised male narrator voices an angry tirade against his female counterpart, insisting that “she ruined everything”. Choke, the second of author Chuck Palahniuk’s novels to be adapted for the screen, contains a near identical lament, however to dismiss either film (as some critics […]

With the release of RocknRolla, his fifth cinematic feature, director Guy Ritchie seems to have acquired the wisdom of a director firmly committed to the mantra, ‘If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it’. After the relative critical and commercial success of Lock, Stock, & Two Smoking Barrels (1998) and Snatch (2000), Ritchie’s career subsequently nose-dived […]

There are few sporting images as iconic as that taken moments after the Men’s 200m athletics final at the 1968 Mexico Olympics. Standing on the medal podium, their national anthem echoing around the stadium, the first and third placed African American athletes bowed their heads and each raised a black-gloved fist to the air. The […]

If industry hype can kill a film by the sheer weight of expectation alone, then it’s fair to say that few films have been as ‘hyped’  as The Dark Knight. Then again, after the critical and box-office success of Batman Begins, and barely six months after the death of one of its stars, Christopher Nolan’s […]

The freak show has long been a source of fascination within American popular culture and folklore, from the early travelling carnivals and sideshows through films such as Tod Browning’s classic, Freaks (1932), to more contemporary incarnations such as the Jim Rose Circus. Nowadays however, in this neo-conservative age of political correctness and scientific/medical advancements, the […]

The opening sequence of JCVD is an exercise in filmmaking smarts. In a single long take, a battle ready Jean-Claude Van Damme kicks, punches, dodges and weaves, stabs and shoots his way through a horde of armed assailants, while Curtis Mayfield’s lyrics for ‘Hard Time’ (‘…I played the part I feel they want of me’) […]

For years the comic-book industry has acted according to an unwritten rule whenever superhero storylines fall foul of fans (and sales plummet): ‘act like it never happened and start again’. It’s a strategy that Hollywood has similarly adopted in recent times in an effort to revive the struggling franchises of Batman and James Bond. Now, […]