Movie reviews by Adrian Mackinder

Good Night, and Good Luck
Set in the smoke-filled, coffee fuelled early days of US broadcast journalism (no change there then), Good Night, And Good Luck is the true story of how CBS news anchor Edward Murrow locked horns…

Star Wars Episode 3 Revenge of the Sith
One of the most arresting scenes in Empire Strikes Back, as any fanboy will tell you, comes during Luke’s Jedi training session with Yoda in the swamps of Dagobah. Having spend a bit of time running…

Constantine
Comic book adaptations have had a bit of a mixed run of late. In the late 90s Joel Schumacher’s Batman and Robin had buried any respect for superhero flicks and its memory had been hanging around the…

Hide and Seek
Ok, so the argument that Robert De Niro doesn’t really try and act anymore is a bit tired. In this reviewer’s opinion, the last good film he made was arguably 1998’s Ronin - and even then I attribute…

Stewie Griffin: The Untold Story
Ever since Seth MacFarlane’s creation first burst onto our screens featuring the inspired animated exploits of the Griffin family, their neighbours and the New England town of Quahog in which they…

The Simpsons Season Six
I don’t really know what I can tell you about this. You know the drill. You know the characters. Hell, even Saddam Hussein is probably familiar with Comic Book Guy or shoddy lawyer Lionel Hutz. In…

Duck, You Sucker / A Fistful of Dynamite
It’s worth mentioning that this film has been messed around with considerably since its release. Leone’s originally wanted it to be called "Duck, You Sucker", based upon a misguided notion that it…

For a Few Dollars More
Eastwood had proven so successful in his first foray into European Westerns with Fistful... that a follow up sequel was inevitable. Superbly scripted by Luciano Vincenzoni, this film features an…

A Fistful of Dollars
This is Leone’s second major film – his first being The Colossus Of Rhodes in 1961 – and was the first to introduce Clint Eastwood as the iconic ‘Man With No Name’, a character that would return in…

Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix Blu Ray
Well here we are, the fifth year at Hogwarts for Potter and his bunch of Italia Conti cronies and by Jove it appears that everything is getting better for just about everyone involved. Not in terms…

Hellboy
Time for a quick lesson. There is one simple rule when it comes to adapting comic book for film. If you treat the original source material with respect it will work. Seems obvious, right? Of course…

Troy
There’s nothing like seeing tens of thousands of advancing Greeks on the sandy shores of Troy to remind you that summer is here and that it’s time for a beach holiday somewhere hot. And there’s…

Shaun of the Dead
Well it’s arrived. A British comedy that is actually funny. Not only that, but it’s clever, funny, anarchic, funny and refreshing. And it’s funny…

The Passion of The Christ
Before I write about this film I want to explain a little about the dilemma I faced when doing so. I was raised a Christian until I was about 11 when I decided that I didn’t want to write a poem…

Starsky & Hutch
Now that Hollywood has officially decided that for every original idea there needs to be a rehashed, revamped and reworked cinematic version of a hit television…

Lost in Translation
Now that the battle for Middle Earth is over, and most of the Hobbits have returned to the Shire, it’s great to appreciate that Hollywood can create just as much magic and wonder without the use of…

American Splendor
So, you’re creating a comic book hero, a cult legend, an iconic slice of Americana. How do you go about it? Well, how about this: by day, Harvey Pekar is a disgruntled file clerk, working a dead end…

Metallica: Some Kind of Monster
What started out initially as a simple behind the scenes documentary following the largest metal band in the world ever as they record their first original studio album in six years accidentally…

Classic Westerns by MGM
April sees the Special Edition DVD release of the remaining major films by Italian director Sergio Leone, beautifully restored, each loaded with a fistful of extras. Having beautifully re-mastered…

Alien (1979)
“You still don’t know what you’re dealing with do you? The perfect organism. It’s structural perfection is matched only by it’s hostility.”…