Academy Awards - the announcements in a nutshell!

It was a film fan's most anticipated day today as the Academy Award nominations were announced by a gaggle of famous names including Chris Pine, J.J Abrams and Alfonso Cuarón.

Here's a brief low-down of who and what was nominated, for the awards you've actually heard of, for this year's Oscars. With the added bonus of me stating my personal favourites of the season and those who I think are favourites to win! (You heard it here first, folks).

New Year, New Awards!

Eddie Redmayne in The Theory Of Everything

There's a reason why I love the turn of the new year; the later months of 2014, mixed together with the first couple of 2015. Not just because Christmas has just been and we're still in that overly full, overly spoilt and over-joyed stupor. Nor is it because it's the start of a new chapter, thus presenting a fresh new start. No, it's because the movies that are released around that time are normally of high calibre, and that's because it's a time we movie-nerds like to call "award season". 

Guardians of the Galaxy review: I-I-I-I-I'm hooked on a franchise!

The unusual suspects 

The master moviemakers at Marvel must have been so determined not to let DC show them up with their upcoming Batman V Superman, that before the rival production company even had a chance to release their first superhero ensemble movie, Marvel released it's second. And what a corker of a second it is! 

Having been randomly abducted by galactic thieves and outlaws when he was just a boy, and forced to live a new life in space, now grown-man Peter Quill spends his days stealing and doing odd-jobs for people who want stuff done that isn't quite, let's say, legal within the galaxy.

After taking a job for a niche collector, Quill goes after an orb he knows absolutely nothing about, when he unwittingly runs into a few others who are also desperate to claim the object themselves. He soon realises he'll have to shrug off his lone wolf demeanour and work with his rival criminals in order to save the power of the orb from falling into the (even more wrong than his) hands.

Non-Stop review: Same Neeson... just different action movie

Everything about this movie screams typical cheesy thriller. The short, relatively ambiguous title, an intensely squinting man pointing a gun on the poster and of course, Liam. But whilst it's set up is more than predictable, it's plot certainly isn't, in this "whodunnit" popcorn movie that will keep you guessing until the last 20 minutes (pun completely intended).

"The Good Stuff" season is upon us!

Towards the end of the year, cinemas always see an influx of what I like to call "the good stuff movies". Ready for Oscar nominations in the turn of the new year, directors, actors, screenwriters and special effects teams bring out the big guns to impress, which means us audiences get some film gems towards the Christmas months!

I've already seen a few of these types of films emerging and it's only October! So I thought I'd break down a bunch of films that I already think will get some kind of Oscar tip next year...

Insidious: Chapter 2 review

Family demons

Horror. It's a genre that is probably the most complex in terms of being universally understood. More so than romances or comedies, it's particularly hard to create something that everyone will like because there are so many ways of making someone scared. Some people like gore, some people like jumps and some people just don't know what they want!

It's fair to say, screenwriter Leigh Whannell and director James Wan take horror seriously, which could be seen as an ironic statement as Insidious: Chapter 2 sometimes appears a little on the silly side, but that's exactly the point. They're evidently not afraid to make their horrors "complete-package movies", with hints of comedy, old-school style and most importantly, a story.  Nor do they think that a horror can't be a blockbuster hit. (Despite what the critics say, Chapter 2 smashed it's opening weekend by raking in $41 million) and their ambition shows.

My Top 5 Anticipated Films from Stoker to A Good Day to Die Hard

Stoker

Nothing to do with Bram or Dracula but looks undeniably just as creepy comes new film Stoker. Nicole Kidman and Alice In Wonderland’s Mia Wasikowska star as Evelyn and India, a recently widowed mother and her daughter. When they go to stay with Uncle Charlie, a man India never even knew existed, she starts questioning why he really asked her and her mother to come and stay whilst also falling into a dangerous obsession with him. Looks like a weird one, but a good one.

What we are all excited for in the upcoming months of film!

I don't know if it is just my opinion and some may disagree, but this last part of the summer has consisted of what I like to call 'blah movies'. They're not necessarily bad, but they're certainly not brilliant and it's time filmmakers upped the ante a little!