2013 Top 10 Horror, Fantasy and Science Fiction

Starburst Magazine have asked all their contributors to come up with their top 10 of 2013. Starburst are a magazine dedicated to horror, fantasy and science fiction so all the movies picked have to fall into those genres. Also because the issue that looks back on 2013 has to be printed and ready to be published before the year comes to an end, only films released from November 2012 to November 2013 can be included.

That means yes to The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey and no to The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug. As it happens, I'm haven't even included An Unexpected Journey into my top 10 of the year anyway. However it did just miss making this list along with Safety Not Guaranteed, This is the End and Elysium.

So here are my top 10 horror, fantasy and science fiction films of the past year. Click the titles to read my full reviews:

10. Grabbers (Reviewed at Static Mass Emporium)

"Like a happy drunk, it appears effortlessly entertaining. More importantly it sobers up nicely when something more than lairy laughs are required of it. As the characters get increasingly inebriated, Grabbers manages to up the terror while also upping the comedy. No film that’s this funny is ever going to scare the pants off the audience but it does manage making exciting look easy. Go see it inebriated and have a laugh along with the tanked up characters. You might not wet yourself with fear but if you get pissed enough before hand, you’ll probably piss yourself laughing."

9. Star Trek Into Darkness

"The action and special effects are spectacular but never overwhelm in the same way as some of the more CG assisted scenes in other summer blockbusters (namely Man of Steel). All in all Abrams has nailed the reinvention and whether he chooses to return for a third Star Trek film or not, he has set the franchise up beautifully for further adventures. Let's all cross our fingers and hope that he can he can do the same for the galaxy far far away... "

8. You're Next

"Aussie stunner Sharni Vinson is the biggest reason to watch You're Next and her character Erin is quick to fight back when the masked men come a-knocking. She is endlessly resourceful, smart, strong and sexy and you will root for her right to the vicious end. As the body count surges and spikes, Vinson's Erin is forced into action; not just action but brilliantly brutal violence. The other victims might be infrequently sympathetic but screaming and shouting at each other does provide some darkly comic moments."

7. Iron Man 3 (Reviewed at Filmoria)

"Tony Stark might be battling demons, making Iron Man 3 slightly darker, but the trademark wit is still present and Robert Downey Jr. gives another performance that effortlessly demonstrates why Iron Man has become the leader of not only the Avengers but also Marvel's Phase 2 and also a bold and brilliant start to summer blockbuster season."

6. Gravity

Technically astounding, utterly gripping, but a little lazy in the story department.

5. Cloud Atlas

"Cloud Atlas is incredibly ambitious, an impossible adaptation that manages to capture the essence of the book and improve it with a streamlined and smart narrative structure. The directors have created breathtaking, visually astounding different worlds, taken a potentially pretentious idea and visualised it on a grand scale, both entertaining and intellectually stimulating."

4. The World's End (Reviewed at Filmoria)

"Instantly quotable and with some of the best profanity ever written, The World’s End is a great way to spend your last night on Earth."

3. Evil Dead (Reviewed at Filmoria)

"Relentlessly gory, with some of the most inventive and disgusting scenes of self-mutilation ever seen on screen; this is Evil Dead for the torture porn generation but far more fun than that sounds. Never quite as scary as the original, it makes up for this with shocking amounts of splatter-tastic violence."

2. Life of Pi (Reviewed at Static Mass Emporium)

"Life Of Pi has taken eleven years to get from page to screen but is absolutely worth the wait. Ang Lee has created an unbelievably cinematic treatment of the novel. Though the film itself takes its time getting to the heart of the story, the cinematography is spellbinding, the score is stirring and newcomer Suraj Sharma gives a heartfelt and compelling performance as hero Pi. Just don’t expect it to turn atheists into believers."

1. The Hunger Games: Catching Fire (Reviewed at Starburst Magazine)

"The romance is starved of oxygen by the grim mood of the first half but finally sparks begin to fly until it positively crackles by the end. Building to an electrifying climax, this is one of the best science fiction sequels since The Empire Strikes Back."

What were your favourites of the past year? 

By the way, the worst of the year booby prize goes to Rob Zombie's Lords of Salem which I was overly generous to when I gave it 2 and half stars at Filmoria.

2013 Top 10 So Far

It seems like lots of folks have been taking stock of the year that is 2013 so far seeing as we are over half way through it. As I'm about to take my mid-year holiday and probably won't be doing a lot of film watching for the next few weeks, I thought it would be a perfect opportunity to make a note of all the (UK cinema) new releases I have seen in 2013 and what my favourites of the year have been so far.

So firstly here are all of the 2013 releases I have watched so far in the order that I watched them:

1. The Impossible
2. Flight
3. The Bay
4. Les Miserables
5. Rebellion
6. No
7. Wreck-It Ralph
8. I Give it a Year
9. The Fall of the Essex Boys
10. Warm Bodies
11. Hitchcock
12. Cloud Atlas
13. Song For Marion
14. A Good Day to Die Hard
15. Stoker
16. The Paperboy
17. Django Unchained
18. Zero Dark Thirty
19. Broken
20. Robot and Frank
21. The Incredible Burt Wonderstone
22. Sleep Tight
23. The Lords of Salem
24. Trance
25. The Liability
26. Side Effects
27. Evil Dead
28. Spring Breakers
29. Olympus Has Fallen
30. The Gatekeepers
31. Iron Man 3
32. Bait
33. The Look of Love
34. Bernie
35. Everybody Has a Plan
36. 21 & Over
37. Side by Side
38. Sound City
39. A Hijacking
40. Sweet Vengeance
41. This is the End
42. Come as You Are
43. Summer in February
44. Man of Steel
45. Star Trek into Darkness
46. Desert Runners
47. Monsters University
48. The Internship
49. To the Wonder
50.  The Deep
51. The World's End
52. Frances Ha
53. Dark Skies

So 53 of the 95 films I have watched this year have been brand new releases which must be some kind of record for me and I have Filmoria to thank for special advance screenings of many of these. Without further ado, here is my top 10 of 2013 so far:

10. I Give it a Year 
9. This is the End
8. Evil Dead
7. Desert Runners
6. Cloud Atlas
5. Django Unchained
4. The World's End
3. Side by Side
2. Spring Breakers

1. The Impossible

Please click any title for my reviews of the films. It's a pretty crazy list for me. A rom-com??? A remake??? Two documentaries, what looked like (and probably is to some extent) sexist crap, two comedies about the end of the world and a true life tale of massive loss of life. Cheery isn't it?

So that's my top 10 of the year so far (I think). What have been your favourite 2013 films so far? Perhaps The Impossible has stuck with me the most because I'm off to Thaliand. Though it may have focussed on only one family, it is still the true story of the deaths of 200,000 people and was therefore bound to have a strong impact. It is certainly the film that had the biggest emotional effect on me this year. 

I'll be back in a few weeks so until then... take care now and bye bye then!

February Movie News and Reviews

This month has not been quite so hectic as January was fortunately but that also means there haven't been as many highlights. I've been busy writing the second chapter of my Blair Witch book and working on the second chapter of my thesis. In between that, there has been some time for writing movie news and reviews and even some stuff for Yahoo.

I've written a bunch of strange stories completely out of my movie comfort zone for Yahoo. You can check them all out by clicking on my profile. These stories are on education, fox culling, the NHS and even the flipping Girl Guides which I obviously know absolutely nothing about. However these things get read by a wide audience and so I like writing them!

Enough about that. On to the film stuff. This month I have watched all of the following and if I wrote a review then you can click the title and be magically transported to the destination of that review:

Hitchcock
Holy Motors
Shadow Dancer
Lovely Molly
Evidence
The Raid
Take This Waltz
Seeking a Friend for the End of the World
Cloud Atlas
Song For Marion
A Good Day to Die Hard (at Filmoria)
Stoker (at Filmoria)
V/H/S
The Paperboy
Our Children (review will be up on Filmoria nearer the release in May)
Django Unchained
Zero Dark Thirty
Broken
Rust and Bone

My reviews of Warm Bodies and Dangerous Minds also went up at Static Mass Emporium. My reviews of The Bay, No, Black Sunday, The Fall of the Essex Boys and Lisa and the Devil were also published at Filmoria this month.

I also watched and reviewed some great bits of TV: the first series of The Killing and two episodes of the second season of Black Mirror; White Bear and The Waldo Moment.

The news stories I covered for Filmoria are as follows:
Die Hard 6 Likely
How to Catch a Monster Casting
New Spring Breakers posters

I also did a top 5 funniest sex scenes for Valentine's Day.

It was a great month for winning stuff too. I won a copy of American Mary on Blu-ray from a competition on Flickering Myth and a trip to Paris on the Eurostar from StudioCanal by tweeting about I Give it a Year! I also placed £15 of bets on the Oscars and thanks to Argo, Django Unchained and Christoph Waltz I came out £3.30 up! Nice!

To conclude, the worst things I watched this month were The Fall of the Essex Boys (though I watched it last month, the review only went up this month) and Seeking a Friend for the End of the World or as I called it on Twitter seeking an acting class for the end of the world. Seriously how does Keira Knightley get work?

Best things I watched were Holy Motors, Cloud Atlas and Django Unchained. LOVED them! And of course Black Mirror: White Bear which was one of the best bits of TV I'd ever seen.

What were your best and worst of the month or thoughts on any of these?

CLOUD ATLAS will blow your mind

Cloud Atlas is finally out in the UK today after a long delay since it was released in the US last October. Here is my review of the epic film adaptation of David Mitchell’s best selling novel starring Tom Hanks and Halle Berry.

Six stories over six very different time periods. All put together these stories suggest the interconnectedness of human life both throughout history and across races, genders and boundaries of power and exploitation. Sounds pretentious? Well it should be but Cloud Atlas smashes through boundaries to become one of the biggest and best epics of the century so far.

From the 19th century to the distant post-apocalyptic future, humans appear bound to both each other and to making recurring mistakes, but also to form bonds of kindness and cruelty that can create ripples of consequences through history.

In 1849, a doctor helps an African slave escape aboard a ship; in 1936, a young composer is exploited by his older mentor; in 1973, a journalist comes under threat while trying to expose the dangers of a San Francisco nuclear power plant; in 2012, an editor tries to escape from a nursing home. Then in the future of 2144, a clone-slave in Neo Seoul escapes captivity to reveal the disturbing truth of her society; and finally in a post-apocalyptic future, the survival of civilization on a distant planet is threatened. Somehow these are all connected.

Slavery is present in numerous forms, love blooms in unlikely places and the human capacity for good and evil is explored across time and space. From the slave girls of Neo Seoul to the African slaves of days gone by, exploitation is everywhere, the ability of power to corrupt and for the oppressed to rise up is ever present.

Directors the Wachowski siblings (The Matrix) and Tom Tykwer (Perfume: The Story of a Murderer) pull off the impossible, transforming a book incredibly difficult to adapt into a visually stunning and brilliantly crafted piece of cinema. Some of the parallels and similiarities between the stories are made more obvious here than in the book and it makes for a more streamlined and coherent retelling, easier to follow and promoting themes to the forefront of viewers’ minds.

The choice to have actors taking on a multiplicity of roles is bold and brilliant. Though there are missteps (Tom Hanks' Irish gangster is a notable misfire), the idea that any actor can play any role, whether it be Black, White, Asian, male or female is central to the films thesis and despite the make up failing to hide the true ethnicities of the characters, the point is loud and clearly recieved. We are all the same underneath these labels we have given each other. Some have called it tasteless, but it is a brave and noble idea that on the whole succeeds.

Tom Hanks excels in some roles but dissapoints in others. Ben Whishaw emerges as a stand out, mainly as the young composer, but the entire cast admirably tackle their many roles, sometimes even completely disappearing under the layers of make up. Hugh Grant and Hugo Weaving also make the most of sinister characters, making memorable villains out of minor roles in a number of the stories.

Cloud Atlas is incredibly ambitious, an impossible adaptation that manages to capture the essence of the book and improve it with a streamlined and smart narrative structure. The directors have created breathtaking, visually astounding different worlds, taken a potentially pretentious idea and visualised it on a grand scale, both entertaining and intellectually stimulating.

There may be flaws and it may test some viewers’ patience but Cloud Atlas is an emotional and unforgettable piece of epic cinema.

Rating 4/5

Cloud Atlas is released in the UK on Friday 22nd February 2013. Watch the extended trailer below but be warned, it's nearly as long as the film!