Jamie Neish

★★☆☆☆ Earth to Echo (2014), director Dave Green’s feature debut, admirably attempts to recreate the classic family adventure films of the eighties, but instead delivers an uneven mishap that comes up short on heart, soul and – in particular – originality. Forced to leave their neighbourhood because of a new highway construction project, best friends…

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★★★★☆ Few could have predicted the gargantuan success of DreamWorks’ 2010 franchise opener How to Train Your Dragon – an animated adaptation of Cressida Cowell’s children’s book series. It came out of nowhere to dazzle audiences to a tune of $500m worldwide with its soaring visuals and underlying poignancy. It’s little wonder then that Dean…

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★★☆☆☆ Based on the previously well-documented true story of the West Memphis Three, Canadian director Atom Egoyan’s Devil’s Knot (2013) attempts to dramatise Mara Leveritt’s novelisation of the same name. The result is a melodramatic, calculable and subsequently dull procedural that makes you baffled by its inertness. When three boys are found brutally murdered in…

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★☆☆☆☆ After more than three decades entertaining children on TV, Postman Pat makes the transition to the big-screen in Postman Pat: The Movie (2014). The result is a lacklustre offering that comes as a far cry to the charming stop-motion TV series fostered by original creators John Cunliffe and Ivor Wood. Desperate to treat his…

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★★☆☆☆ The latest in a long line of trashy action thrillers spearheaded by French producer extraordinaire Luc Besson, Camille Delamarre’s Brick Mansions (2014) – an American remake of 2004 parkour-driven French adrenaline-pumper District B13 – is just about as mindless as they come. It’s essentially a collection of shoddily edited action sequences, underpinned by a…

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★★☆☆☆ Branded after the hugely successful six-part BBC documentary series which aired back in the late 1990s, Walking with Dinosaurs – The Movie (2013) is a live action/CGI hybrid from co-directors Neil Nightingale and Barry Cook, and is released this week on DVD and Blu-ray. It’s without doubt technically impressive, featuring some of the most…

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★★★☆☆ Carrie, Stephen King’s first published novel, has been adapted several times for the big screen, Brian De Palma’s 1976 version being the most well-known and successful. The latest incarnation hails from Boys Don’t Cry (1999) director Kimberly Peirce, who delivers an efficient, yet prosaic supernatural thriller that does its best to rework the story…

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★★☆☆☆ Based on David Mamet’s play Sexual Perversity in Chicago, Steve Pink’s About Last Night (2014) – also a remake of the 1986 rom-com starring Rob Lowe and Demi Moore – attempts to provide a modern spin on the trials and tribulations of romantic relationships for 21st century audiences. Yet instead of saying anything new or…

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★★☆☆☆ John McKay’s Not Another Happy Ending (2013) is a breezy and harmless if ultimately forgettable romantic comedy set in and around the city of Glasgow. Jane (former Doctor Who star Karen Gillan), a struggling novelist, finds herself thrust into the limelight when her first novel, a memoir about the trails of her own family,…

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★★★☆☆ The fourth Irvine Welsh novel to be adapted for the big screen, Jon S. Baird’s Filth (2013) thankfully bears far more in common with the drug-fuelled classic Trainspotting (1996) than the other less successful translations. On the cusp of promotion, intensely misanthropic Detective Sergeant Bruce Robertson (James McAvoy) is given the task of solving…

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