Christopher Symonds

If ever there was an example of true worth over box office receipts (which is understandably important to the studios, but a financial one only) it is Frank Darabont ’s The Shawshank Redemption . Crue...
When you hear the name Stephen King , like most, you can be forgiven for instantly thinking of evil clowns and all manner of horrific imagery. He is, after all, the master of horror. But both in his w...
The name John Hughes is synonymous for Gen-Xers with classic comedy and the 1980s. The man wrote and/or directed hit after hit during that time that, although usually focused on the youth of the time,...
It’s been five years since Robert Mccall ( Denzel Washington ) slayed the Mandalorian ( Pedro Pascal ) and went back to his marital home. For this originally never guaranteed third entry, you better b...
The 1980s is now decades behind us and I consider myself fortunate to have been a Gen X-er, having my formative years during that decade. It produced, in my view, the most creativity and risk taking o...
Back when dinosaurs walked the earth, sci-fi auteur James Cameron was riding high on the wave of a box office incinerating little movie called Titanic . The man had already proven his metal in varying...
It’s hard to believe that the cinematic adaptation of a 60s TV hit is almost thirty years-old! But here we are! Dead Reckoning PT1 makes the seventh entry into Tom Cruise ’s action magnum opus. The ma...
The 80s produced a massive amount of now legendary comedies. There were franchises galore covering teens, colleges, nerds, cops, farces and surreal comedy galore. Name a classic franchise or just a cl...
There are few actors out there that I would watch performing paint dry. Denzel Washington is one of those actors. No stranger to being lauded, he would pick up his second Oscar playing a memorable bad...
Well, here we are again! Can it be fifteen years since the last Indiana Jones flick hit cinemas? Holy shit did I receive some hate for my joyful review of that particular entry! Was it a film set apar...
It is no understatement that the superhero genre has reached a level of output that has long since past saturation. It seems barely a few weeks go by without another costumed character gracing our scr...
Remakes! They are now a studio staple, with every studio head and producer uttering that terrible commercially driven mantra: existing IP! It rarely produces anything but a watered-down retelling of a...
Every now and then competing studios find themselves making and releasing the same sort of product around the same time. In 1998, Touchstone Pictures ( Disney ) and Paramount went head-to-head with as...
The anti-hero, the McGuffin, the duplicitous femme fatale, film noir, German expressionism seeping its way into western film—these things have influenced our movies for longer than this reviewer’s fat...
A few years back, I got to write a long form article about the Superman films, so if you’re looking for a deep dive then please check out: ‘ Superman On the Big Screen: Parts 1-4 ’ . For this new UHD...