The phrase “Money for old rope” has many apparent origins, though the one I like the best is to do with hangings. Apparently the more morbidly curious and macabre people of the 18th century often sought out used hangman’s rope as a souvenir of an execution – the hangman would dutifully oblige, cutting the rope…

KITTENS! BLOODY KITTENS! TWO OF THEM! PLAYING WITH AN AMULET! OH GOSH LOOK AT HOW ADORABLE THEY ARE, THEY’RE LITERALLY PAWING AT THE AMULET WITH UNBRIDLED GLEE! WHAT IS THE AMULET? NO TIME TO EXPLAIN. KITTENS. KITTENS. KITTENS!!! Werner Herzog’s Nosferatu The Vampyre starts in less than fearsome circumstances, as my opening gambit of madcap…

If this was a great review it would end with a nice snappy finish: “something something, enough said.” Bam. What a review! you’d cry, reeling from such a splendid piece of prose. Instead I imagine it’ll just peter away to nothing and we’ll all go and have a nice cup of tea, which is due,…

Theo (Ryan Reynolds), a small garden snail from Venice, California spends his days working at The Plant and his evenings watching races on a television in a nearby garage. His racing ambitions aren’t appreciated by his older brother, Chet (Paul Giamatti), who refuses to address him by his self-appointed nickname, Turbo. Frustrated by his inherent…

As with Steven’s other reviews, this was first published on the brilliant Popcornaddiction.com. Check it out or face the consequences. Richard Phillips (Tom Hanks) bids his wife Andrea (Catherine Keener) farewell as he prepares for another shift at work. Phillips is captain of the MV Maersk Alabama, a cargo ship that is bound for Mombasa…

Stallone and Schwarzenegger together in the same film is never a bad thing, however it doesn’t exactly raise the bar in the action genre. The good thing about Escape Plan is that it never pretends to be anything more than what it is: two action legends beating the snot out of each other and blowing…

It’s the age of the remake. The last few years have seen a slew of beloved 80s cult classics go under the knife, with mixed but broadly awful results – from the lifeless gore of Evil Dead to the forgettable glitz of Total Recall, via Red Dawn, Footloose and Arthur, the remake machine has churned…

Scotland’s most shocking son has finally made it to the big screen. Bruce Robertson, the thieving, snorting, cheating, abusing plain-clothes maniac whose increasingly evil “games” make up Irvine Welsh’s best novel, would surely be a gift to any director looking to make his name – and Jon S. Baird has certainly made sure that his…