First published in 2001, Eoin Colfer’s action-fantasy series of adventures centring around tweenage criminal mastermind Artemis Fowl (Jr) may at first glance appear to be little more than an attempt to cash-in on the then white-hot and unquestioned success of J K Rowling’s “Harry Potter” series but in reality the books hewed much closer to the world of Guillermo del Toro’s “Hellboy”, with a dash…

There seems to be a clear and predictable trajectory now for ‘network original’ productions, pioneered by Netflix, of course, and followed by Amazon Prime and, at some distance, Sky. That trajectory is: scooping up bargain rejects from other production companies, buying slightly better/ more viable productions of modest quality, co-financing ambitious productions and then, finally, self-financing…

Despite its troubled (and very publicly delayed) journey to the big screen, “Sonic The Hedgehog” has lost none of its momentum as it races on to the big screen with a lot of heart, humour and a rolling-back-the-years performance by Jim Carrey.

Forced to flee his home as a child, Sonic arrives on Earth and makes a life for himself, staying hidden (for the most part) and enjoying the wide-open…

Almost universally condemned to be a ‘flop’ before it was released, Robert Downey Jr’s passion project ‘Dolittle’ seems to have fallen foul of an adult critical groupthink who, while quick to remonstrate with critics who differ in gender, ethnicity or sexuality who criticise a work ‘not meant for them’, have singularly failed to take into account that ‘Dolittle’ isn’t meant for them either.…

I have to hope that when Barbara Broccoli (who produced “The Rhythm Section” along with brother and long-time producing partner Michael G Wilson) advised that she didn’t want to make the character of Bond a woman because she believes she ‘should be creating new characters for women – strong female characters’, she had something better in mind than this dreary, gritty-for-gritty’s-sake glacially…

Colourful, captivating and preposterously delightful, Armando Iannucci’s free-spirited adaptation of the Dickens novel brings a vibrant contemporary energy to the classic metronomic rags to riches to rags to riches tale.

Chronicling his turbulent upbringing, the film begins with a quintessentially Dickensian framing device as David Copperfield (Dev Patel) narrates his own life story to a packed…

“Good Omens”, starting on BBC2 tonight after an exclusive first run on Amazon Prime is a nice and accurate translation of a long-thought unfilmable book to the small screen, but that’s about it. Despite note-perfect casting, decent special effects and the presence of Neil Gaiman himself as showrunner, somehow the series ends up less than the sum of its parts, lacking that divine spark that made…

I must confess that although I’ve been aware of “Little Women” for many more years than I care to remember or admit, I’ve never actually read or watched any adaptations of it before – at least none that I can remember. I knew it was a renowned and respected novel of the lives of four sisters who come of age during the years of the American Civil War and I knew, thanks to that episode of…

It’s not until a full hour of this new adaptation of “Dracula” has passed that you start to get a sense of just how different it’s going to be. Up until that point, it seems perfectly sanguine to be a handsomely, if derivatively, staged period piece as English solicitor Jonathan Harker pitches up at Castle Dracula to finalise a property deal and ends up becoming an unwilling guest of the…

Much has been made of the bizarre nature of Tom Hooper’s movie adaptation of Andrew Lloyd Weber’s musical adaptation of T S Elliot’s book of cat poems and sure, there’s no denying that there are a bunch of weird choices in the movie, but none perhaps as weird as the decision to make a movie version of this in the first place.

When a white kitten called Victoria (Francesca Hayward) is abandoned on…

It’s been a dark and terrible night so far for Ebeneezer Scrooge (Guy Pearce) and it’s not been too kind on this particular viewer either. The handsome and haunting production values haven’t quite managed to make up for the needlessly profane and relentlessly grim retelling of Dickens’ immortal classic. I mean, this is a level of darkness even Frank Cross in his heyday would have blanched at.

And…

There may be more of gravy than of grave about the hauntings according to Dickens but this adaptation is more concerned with drinking the grimdark Kool-Aid rather than the meat of this story. Marley and the ghosts continue to conspire to punish and persecute Scrooge in order to drive him to repentance so that Marley may exit his purgatorial prison, reducing the redemptive enlightenment at the…

The BBC’s latest unprovoked assault involving classic literature literally opens by taking the piss, surely a record when it comes to metatextual fourth-wall breaking.

Surely we can all agree that what Charles a dickens’ classic tale of regret and redemption has been missing is a padded-out prequel detailing a Jacob Marley’s journey through purgatory which then fundamentally alters the moral of…

I would dearly love to say that nothing became “The War Of The Worlds” like the ending of it, but that harsh truth is that actually nothing much came of it at all. Never has a global alien invasion been portrayed with less action, incident or coherence than this.

In this week’s stultifying episode, we’re treated to a reveal that smacks of lazy writing and audience betrayal as it’s revealed that…

“Charlie’s Angels: Full Throttle” somehow manages to be simultaneously more empowered and more misogynistic than its predecessor, eloquently underlining the oxymoronic nature of this muddled, near chimeric sequel which occasionally hits higher hights than the 2000 movie but all too often plumbs deeper depths until it winds up in a wildly incoherent and out of control third act where the various…

There’s a general rule to bringing a classic TV show to the big screen and it either involves going bigger – in stunts and special effects – or deeper, digging into the mythology. The millennial sequel to “Charlie’s Angels” does both.

Commissioned to locate Eric Knox (Sam Rockwell) the kidnapped CEO of Knox Industries, Charlie’s Angels – Natalie Cook (Cameron Diaz), Dylan Sanders (Drew…

While it retains many of the faults of the first episode, there are at least signs here and there of some improvement in this still disjointed and sluggish adaptation of H G Well’s celebrated novel. Rafe Spall still seems miscast as George, a character which the show can’t seem to choose between making a hero or a MacGuffin. Instead, the lead character here is very much Amy and in this middle…