There are as many opinions about a movie as there are viewers of that movie and within that range there is a huge diversity. "Everybody" as they say "is a movie critic" but I find that reading the opinions of other people helps me to sharpen my own view and often provides me with information or a point of view that always opens up something fresh and new. I hope you enjoy reading my observations.

CAPTAIN PHILLIPS It’s worth knowing that this movie is not just another American action movie built around a major star, Tom Hanks. It’s a true story based on the book “A Captain's Duty: Somali Pirates, Navy SEALS, and Dangerous Days at Sea” by Richard Phillips. The film’s events took place very recently, in 2009, and the Hollywood producers have rushed it into theatres, hoping that it might be an Oscar contender. Read full review... FROZEN The Disney Company have been making animation movies based on classic tales of magic and romance. It began in 1937 with “Snow White and the Seven Dwarves”, and Disney has made 14 films, including “Cinderella” (1950) and “The Little Mermaid” (1989), through to “The Lion King” and no to “Frozen” a musical, magical winter’s tale based on “The Snow Queen” by Hans Christian Andersen. Read full review... BLUE JASMINE Woody Allen turned 78 year old in 2013, and his amazing career started with edgy, highbrow ideas that fell into farce, creating a unique comedy style. Then in later years Allen starting more complex films that best of which was “Annie Hall”, and when he left American to make European films like “Vicky Kristina Barcelona” he opened a new chapter in his career. That led to the amazing “Midnight in Paris” to “Blue Jasmine”. Read full review... THE COUNSELLOR At the age of 77, Ridley Scott is a major player in Hollywood. He has made great sci-fi films, like “Alien” and “Blade Runner” and he has also made two timeless thriller “Gladiator” and “Hannibal”; and crime movies like “American Gangster” and “Body of Lies”. In this film he has put together a stellar cast to tell a story of crime and punishment, with his usual sense of startling violence. Read full review... THE HOBBIT: DESOLATION OF SMAUG The book “The Hobbit” was written by 1937 author J. R. R. Tolkien and it became to be a fantasy classic. In 1954, Tolkien returned to the magical setting of Middle Earth and created his great trilogy “The Lord of the Rings”. Director Peter Jackson filmed “The Lord of the Rings” starting in 2001 and it became a vastly profitable movie trilogy. Now Jackson has chosen to make “The Hobbit” into a trilogy, and the second film “The Hobbit: Desolation of Smaug” doing big box-office business. Read full review... THE HUNGER GAMES: CATCHING FIRE The 2012 blockbuster was based on “The Hunger Games”, a novel written by Suzanne Collins, and directed by Gary Ross. This second film in the series retains the core cast but there is a new director, Francis Lawrence who expects his audience to know the story and characters. If you did not see the first film, you may have some difficulty keeping up with all the various characters and events. Read full review... THOR: THE DARK WORLD The fictional character, Thor, first appeared on August 1962 in “Marvel Comics”. The character was created by the great Stan Lee and The Disney Corporation took the character of Thor onto the big screen in 2011, in which actor Chris Hemsworth played role, directed by Kenneth Branagh. Hemsworth also acted as Thor in “The Avengers” in 2012 and this is his third portrayal of Thor. Read full review... MUD The film “Mud” is the work of a young American director, Jeff Nichols. He studied filmmaking at the University of North Carolina School of the Arts. He has made only three films, his first student film “Shotgun Stories” (2007), then a mainstream movie “Take Shelter” (2011) and his latest is “Mud” (2012). Actor Michael Shannon has acted in all his films but in this film, he has two Hollywood actors - Matthew McConaughey and Reese Witherspoon – which adds stature to his film. Read full review... ENDER'S GAME2 Author Orson Scott Card is a prolific writer, most of them with an occult or sci-fi context. One of his most popular works is the “Ender’s Game”-series, for which he wrote 20 books based around Ender, the central character in first book, when he was very young, just 12 years old. Could this film be the start of a movie-series that will stretch over 19 books?Or will Ender’s journey be the first and last of this series? Read full review... ENOUGH SAID. The death of James Gandolfini in June, 2031 is a great loss to both film and TV. “The Sopranos” was a TV blockbuster and he starred in 47 feature movies. In 2012 alone, he played a disillusioned dad in David Chase's “Not Fade Away”, a defeated hit man in Andrew Dominik's “Killing Them Softly”, and Leon Panetta in “Zero Dark Thirty”. His last film also gave us a richly, witty adult romance and that, for all his fans, was “enough said”. Read full review...