The Road Less Travelled: Possessed Vehicle Movies

By Graham Gough

The possessed vehicle sub-genre is a strange beast, a disgruntled and mostly aggressive child of the road movie and horror fest. These films are less about characters trying to escape their mundane or horrible lives and more about characters seeking escape from driverless, demon-fuelled automobiles which will stop at nothing to consume them.

Best of British: Kes (DVD)

By Maryann O’Connor

On the surface, Kes is a touching portrayal of the life of a working class lad in the 1960s but it could just as easily be the story of any working class child, in any decade.

2012: Film Futures That Might Have Been

By Helen Cox

Bad New Year's Eve hangover? It could be worse...

Hungover today? Still got Auld Lang Syne, officially the most depressing song ever written, ringing in your ears? No matter how bleak things seem this morning you have one thing to be grateful for: there is a distinct line between film and reality. At least that’s what I’m told. If this were not the case and we lived in the realm of cinema the outlook for 2012 would be far, far worse…

Why I Hate Film #4: Other People

By Adam Glasspool

It may surprise some of you to read that I’ve never murdered anybody.  I may come across in these articles as frustrated and angry, and I am, but I’ve never actually pulled a Charles Bronson on the people who have wronged me.

Jurassic Park (1993): Then and Now

By Maryann O’Connor

When I sank back into my plush red cinema seat last weekend, I felt just as excited about the film I was about to see as I had been when I first saw it, eighteen years previously.

Slow-Cooked Sequels: Does money never sleep?

By Nicky Branagh

Have you noticed that delayed sequels have been particularly prevalent at the local multiplexes over the last few years? Long-awaited film follow-ups are nothing particularly new; the 8os saw just such a trend:  consider the likes of Psycho II (1983), appearing 23 years after Hitchcock’s classic and Scorcese’s The Color of Money (1986), which followed on from The Hustler (1961) a quarter of a century later.

Hollywood and its world influence: How long will it last?

By Tim Oliver

Photograph originally by John Kobal currently on display at the National Portrait Gallery

The turn of the 20th century saw the development of cinema as a technology. It was a technology that continued to develop and, along with it, a desire surfaced to sell and consume it as a means of entertainment. Enter stage left Hollywood with its classical studio system, its stars and its directors all of whom contributed to the construction of cinema as a product. As with any product there is a need for formula which Hollywood offered in its use of narrative structure.