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The Hunger Games (2012)
Director/Coscreenwriter: Gary Ross By Roderick Heath Suzanne Collins’ hugely successful novel and its follow-ups about Katniss Everdeen, teenage huntress at war with a futuristic dystopia, were...
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The Avengers (2012)
Director/Screenwriter: Joss Whedon By Roderick Heath Here there be spoilers The Avengers could well be the most hyped movie ever made, surpassing the likes of Gone with the Wind (1939), Ben-Hur (1959),...
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Die Nibelungen: Siegfried / Kriemhild’s Revenge (1924)
The Days of High Adventure: A Journey Through Adventure Film Director: Fritz Lang By Roderick Heath The ancient Germanic and Scandinavian tales of Siegfried or Sigurd were vital building blocks for...
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Judex (1963)
The Days of High Adventure: A Journey through Adventure Film Director: Georges Franju By Roderick Heath Amongst early pioneers in film, Louis Feuillade, who made his famous serials between the lead-up...
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The 7th Voyage of Sinbad (1958) / The Golden Voyage of Sinbad (1973)
The Days of High Adventure: A Journey through Adventure Film Directors: Nathan Juran, Gordon Hessler By Roderick Heath Ray Harryhausen’s death this past May genuinely pained me, like so many fellow...
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Blancanieves (2012)
Director/Screenwriter: Pablo Berger By Roderick Heath Silent cinema seems to be making a comeback, not to the extent that it’s likely to take over the multiplexes, of course, but as a niche of playful...
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Guardians of the Galaxy (2014)
Director/Coscreenwriter: James Gunn By Roderick Heath Here there be spoilers. The U.S. summer blockbuster season has just passed, and what a dismal time it was for critics, audiences, and studios...
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Birdman or (The Unexpected Virtue of Ignorance) (2014)
Director/Coscreenwriter: Alejandro Gonzalez Iñárritu By Roderick Heath Here there be spoilers. Most filmmakers portion out what talent they have in small, polite courses, but Alejandro Gonzalez...
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The Hobbit: The Battle of the Five Armies (2014)
Director/Coscreenwriter: Peter Jackson By Roderick Heath Here there be spoilers. When Peter Jackson left off his first round of J.R.R. Tolkien adaptations with 2003’s The Lord of the Rings: The Return...
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Avengers: Age of Ultron (2015)
Director/Screenwriter: Joss Whedon By Roderick Heath Here there be spoilers. They’re back – Marvel’s all-star line-up, marshalled by nerd overlord Joss Whedon. It’s been a long three years since the...
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Mad Max: Fury Road (2015)
Director: George Miller By Roderick Heath Mad Max (1979) was a weird and unexpectedly popular film made by George Miller, a young doctor who turned to filmmaking in his spare time during his residency...
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The Mummy (1932)
Director: Karl Freund By Roderick Heath The series of horror films produced by Universal Studios in the 1930s and ’40s has long carried a specific mystique. The epoch of Expressionist horror that...
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Yellow Submarine (1968)
Director: George Dunning By Roderick Heath Amidst the relics of the high psychedelic era, Yellow Submarine is one of the most instantly recognisable, a jokey and absurdist adventure tale built around...
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Push (2009)
Director: Paul McGuigan By Roderick Heath More or less ignored when not reviled upon release in 2009, Paul McGuigan’s Push has become one of the very few movies of recent years I can watch any time, in...
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Metropolis (1926)
Director: Fritz Lang By Roderick Heath The title resolves amidst intersecting geometries that coalesce and create a cityscape, ranged with neo-Babylonian techno-ziggurats: Metropolis, instantly a...
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Waxworks (Das Wachsfigurenkabinett, 1924) / The Man Who Laughs (1928)
Director: Paul Leni By Roderick Heath Paul Leni’s name might not be as instantly recognisable to movie lovers as his fellows in the legendary days of German “Expressionist” cinema, Fritz Lang and F.W....
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Fellini ∙ Satyricon (1969)
Director/Coscreenwriter: Federico Fellini By Roderick Heath Thanks to the enormous impact of La Dolce Vita (1960) and 8½ (1963), Federico Fellini’s name had been vaulted into the tiny canon of...
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The Immortal Story (Histoire Immortelle; TV, 1968)
Director/Screenwriter/Actor: Orson Welles By Roderick Heath An adaptation of a story by Karen Blixen published under her pseudonym Isak Dinesen, The Immortal Story is also a story of two immortals,...
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The Mummy’s Hand (1940) / The Mummy’s Tomb (1942) / The Mummy’s Ghost (1944)...
Directors: Christy Cabanne, Harold Young, Reginald LeBorg, Leslie Goodwins By Roderick Heath Karl Freund’s legendary film The Mummy (1932) presented its title entity, Boris Karloff’s Imhotep, as a...
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The Shape of Water (2017)
Director/Coscreenwriter: Guillermo del Toro By Roderick Heath Here there be spoilers… Guillermo del Toro’s oeuvre has long come in two strands: the wistfully poetic splendour and infernal evocations of...
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