Jonathan Crocker

War, everyone seems to agree, is hell. War movies on the other hand? Brilliant. Whether you’re leaping a stolen Nazi motorcycle over a fence, machine-gunning your way through the trenches or blowing up a massive bridge you’ve just built for the Japanese, they’re a thrilling emotional battlefield of horror, heartbreak, action and adventure. “God is not on the side of the big battalions,” quipped Voltaire, “but on the side of those who shoot best.” We’re with the Big Man on that one. Here are 20 war movies that really hit the bull’s eye… Read the rest of this entry »

1. Don’t go out there (or in here)

The basement, the attic, the closet, the garage, that alley, those woods… Just. Don’t. Doesn’t matter if you heard a noise. Doesn’t matter if the generator just broke. You go to investigate something that’s ‘not quite right’, you’re dead meat. Wait till morning. If it’s still night-time it’s still dangerous.

As seen in: Evil Dead 2

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Shot like a miraculously preserved old photograph, told like a great novel by its elderly narrator some 40 years later, The White Ribbonis subtitled “A German Children’s Story.” But this dark fable is really Michael Haneke’s A Series Of Unfortunate Events.

An invisible tripwire lashed between two trees sends a doctor crashing off his horse – and that mysterious ‘accident’ is just the start of the strange and increasingly terrible crimes in a quiet German village on the brink of World War One. Pets are killed, cabbages are beheaded, women are humiliated. But again and again, it’s the kids who get it bad. Read the rest of this entry »

How did Brad Pitt help make Kick-Ass happen?

I sent the script to Brad because I wanted him to play Big Daddy. He loved the script but he was just signing on to Inglourious Basterds. And he said, ‘I really like it, anything I can do to help?’ I said, ‘Well, I could really do with an American producer on this one just to help guide me.’ So he came on board. Read the rest of this entry »

As he touched the cold trigger of his handgun, Nicolas Cage paused to contemplate what he was about to do. Stood smiling in the middle of his gun sights was a tiny, blonde, button-cute 12-year-old girl. His daughter, in fact. Suddenly, eating a live cockroach didn’t seem so bad. ‘We really have to make it clear there’s a bullet-proof vest underneath there,’ he thought nervously to himself, as he smiled reassuringly back at her. ‘This is a weird day… A very weird day.’ He squeezed the trigger. Read the rest of this entry »

What’s this talk that you wanted Big Daddy to be a paedophile?

This is bollocks, right. Where did this come from? Did Vaughn say this? He actually just doing this to piss me off! I never said that. What I suggested was I wanted Big Daddy to have a twist to it that wasn’t just as simple as him being a cop. One of the things I suggested was that he maybe kidnapped Cindy. But Vaughn has somehow turned that into making him a paedo. Read the rest of this entry »