I did a quick tally on my games expenditure, and it's way overboard... Every purchase is a small amount, but it has added up to an uncomfortable figure ( Read more... )

It's far easier and cheaper for cinemas when you book online, and yet they charge you for it. My economics knowledge tells me it's a matter of supply and demand; that is, we're too eager to let them take our money, but it still annoys the hell out of me.

This was a fall from grace for Dan Simmons; I loved Illium, Hyperion and The Fall of Hyperion. We skip 247 years ahead and a massive Catholic religious order controls inhabited space - oh how innovative. It's more powerful than the Hegemony, but I had to take that on faith, as I never got a sense of the scale and sweep that Simmons' other novels ( Read more... )

The sequel to Pitch Black is a Vin Diesel vehicle that keeps the sci-fi but jettisons almost everything else; naturally I was unhappy with the thematic incoherence. The storyline is pretty much what you'd expect, though Karl Urban turns up to cheer for. I wasn't a fan of the very stark setting, overpopulated by violent crazies. Anyway, it's a ( Read more... )

This movie is an affectionate parody of Star Trek and Trekkers, with the has-been cast of a Star Trek-style sci-fi series being mistaken for the real thing and recruited by aliens. I found it pretty funny though many of the jokes went over my head (I know very little about Star Trek); I thought the aliens were hilarious ( Read more... )

Promotional posters make this movie out to be a bad-ass action romp, something in the vein of The Expendables, but it's actually a comedy with some perfunctory thriller twists, more similar to The Long Kiss Goodnight. Perhaps it was just my mood on the day, but I found the movie extremely cloying ( Read more... )

Quarantine was based on a Spanish film REC, and is basically the Blair Witch or Paranormal Activity approach applied to a more realistic zombie movie. Here, it's an outbreak of virulent rabies that turns people super-strong, cannibalistic monsters, and it all happens within a sealed apartment building ( Read more... )

This movie was an adaptation of Oscar Wilde's novel, and I enjoyed it quite a bit. I haven't read the original story, but I think the changes were good - returning Basil's motivations to what Wilde first wanted, grilling Henry's hedonism when Dorian meets the daughter, and offering Dorian redemption in the end. There were some great lines in the ( Read more... )

This is another classic, this time a sci-fi action horror. I was expecting it to be more of a pulp Resident Evil style film where a band of characters are whittled down by a monstrous predator, but there was a surprising amount suspicion and scientific problem-solving, and very little screaming. It was more of a slow-burn movie, so much so that it ( Read more... )

I saw this classic suspense film that was perhaps the first slasher movie ever, and was mildly impressed. Of Hitchcock's oeuvre, I've only seen the so-so Saboteur; here I was able to observe what made him so well-regarded ( Read more... )