Twenty years ago, Rupert Everett, fresh off his star making turn in My Best Friend’s Wedding, lobbied to become the star of a gay superspy franchise. It never happened despite Everett seemingly being born to play such a role. Neither Hollywood financiers nor the action film ticket-buyers were quite ready for such a character, or…
Bryan Singer directed the first two movies based on Marvel Comics’ mutant superhero team the X-Men. Brett Ratner directed the third film, The Last Stand, which is loathed by fans and critics alike. The franchise was then rebooted with Matthew Vaughn’s First Class, and Bryan Singer returned for the second film in this cycle, Days…
The X-Men storyline called Days of Future Past appeared in issues 141 and 142 of The Uncanny X-Men in January and February, 1980. I first read it in mid-1980s when I was 12 or so and had just discovered the comic about outcast mutant superheroes. The story has haunted me ever since. It is set…
In Danny Boyle’s latest thriller, James McAvoy plays Simon, an art auctioneer who helps a group of thugs steal a $25 million Goya painting in a daring heist. Unfortunately, the crew’s leader Frank (Vincent Cassel) knocks Simon unconscious during the robbery and when Simon wakes up, he has forgotten that he stole the painting from…
In the late ‘90s, Danny Boyle directed two of John Hodge’s screenplays in a row that made them and their star Ewan McGregor famous. Trainspotting – the brilliant, disgusting, kaleidoscopic examination of a crew of Scottish heroin addicts – is better known, but Shallow Grave, a post-modern Hitchcock thriller about morally troubled Londoners, is just…
