1980s

When you think of the words "John Rambo" you are likely immediately overcome by images of a long-haired, headband-wearing, probably wounded in some way, muscular man holding a massive machine gun in one hand and an endless chain of high-calibre bullets in the other. He is gurning and yelling while mowing down bad guys at a staggering rate. He also has that knife, which by today's street youth standard isn't much to write home about, but back in 1982 looked more like a sword w

It seems hard to recall here in 2026, but there once was a time when Robert DeNiro was the man in the business of show. With a career forged in towering, serious, dramatic performances of range and seemingly unlimited skill - he was, at a certain time, the absolute best actor in the business and every new DeNiro film released was an event in and of itself.  However by 1988 he wanted a change of pace. Coming off the back of a memorable turn as Al Capone in Brian DePalma's 'Th

The unearthing of cinematic gems from days past is easier than ever. Where it used to take hours scouring video shops or bargin buckets or car boot sales, now one can cruise the internet for all manner of films. You don't even have to leave the comfort of your own backside. The process can be organic - maybe you read a book that makes reference to a film, which you then look up and watch - or it can be more studied, i.e. you find an actor or director (or sound engineer, or ke

Before we review this film, the elephant in the room needs to be addressed: This plot is absolutely preposterous. I mean, absolutely "let's all drop acid and think of the maddest thing imaginable and let John Milius direct it" level bonkers.  Now that is out of the way, we can begin.  World War 3. Will it ever happen? Has it already happened? Who's to say? Famed Hollywood lunatic John Milius certainly had an opinion on how it might happen and this film was his testament to

It seems that someone like Kevin Costner has, by this point, became a name so ubiquitous with movie stardom that you really don't ever feel the need to trace his career journey. He's one of those people you get the impression came out of the womb fully formed as Kevin Costner and someone happened to start filming him at some point in his mesmerisingly handsome life. However, like everyone else on planet earth, Kev also had to toil his way up the proverbial ladder until reachi

When you really take a moment to think it through, the movie career of Arnold Schwarzenegger is amazing. From a small mining town in the mountains of deepest Austria, he rose to become the biggest movie star in the world. This being despite the fact that he can't really act, if we're being honest. Indeed such is the power and charisma of the man that his, shall we say, limited range became it's own sub-genre in the 1980s, and an extremely successful one at that. You didn't tu

In 1988, not that much was widely known about the escalating gang situation in Los Angeles. This was the time of the Showtime Lakers, Planet Hollywood, and Box Office Hits. No one wanted to hear that there was a war going on south of the 10 freeway that had, at that point, claimed thousands of lives. Perhaps it was because the victims in this war were almost exclusively young black and latino males. That is a wider topic that, fortunately,  as we sit in 2025, there have been

This isn't a popular opinion but here it is anyway. I'm not a huge fan of Brian De Palma. To film buffs, this idea is largely considered sacrilege as he is often viewed as the heir to Alfred Hitchcock's throne. The new master of suspense. Quentin Tarantino went as far as to call him 'the greatest director of his generation', which is high praise indeed considering his classmates include Spielberg, Coppola and Scorsese. My beef is similar to my beef with, you guessed it, Hitch