At the start of the year, you could have been forgiven for thinking that Brad Pitt was staring down the barrel of the flop of the year. Plagued by internet negativity, World War Z was going to be a disaster, foretold lots of people. It was going to be a flop. It was going to make us pine for Uwe Boll movies.

And then the movie was released. Reviews were solid to good, and the box office was better. With over $500m in the bank worldwide, World War Z outgrossed Paramount's other major blockbuster, Star Trek Into Darkness.

The rumoured plan was that World War Z would be the start of a trilogy, and Brad Pitt has now confirmed to Variety that talks are happening regarding a World War Z 2. "We have so many ideas on the table from the time we spent developing this thing and figuring out how the zombie worlds work", he said. "We gotta get the script right first to determine if we go further".

Pitt, and Paramount, will be keen to avoid another situation where the last act of the movie has to be expensively reshot relatively late in the day. Not least because Peter Capaldi may be busy this time.

When we hear more about World War Z 2, we'll let you know...

Variety.

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Paul Giamatti was the actor seemingly wisely chosen to play The Rhino in The Amazing Spider-Man 2. He will of course be sharing villain duties with Jamie Foxx's Electro, so fingers crossed he'll have sufficient time to shine.

He's been chatting about the portrayal of the character recently to the Toronto Sun, saying that "in the comic books of old, he had this suit on that made him look like a rhinoceros, and it made him super strong. If there was a bank vault he would just run right through it. Butt through it with his head. And he was not very smart".

He also went on to discuss the look of the character. "I have a particular kind of suit, but I don't think I'm supposed to talk about it. He's a Russian mobster. Russian's are always good villains. I have an ability to just destroy things. My accent is pretty hammy. I loved doing it. It seemed like an opportunity to be as over-the-top- hammy as possible. It was really fun".

He also went on to say that he was "one of several bad guys in the movie".

Will Giamatti's Russian accent be able to top John Malkovich's from Rounders in the hammy stakes? Only time will tell...

The Amazing Spider-Man 2 is released next April in the UK.

The Toronto Sun

Among the many behind-the-scenes stills from the 1987 RoboCop production, there's a picture of director Paul Verhoeven standing in front of the full-scale prop of ED-209. He's attempting to get across to his cast the menace of this static object - an object that, in the finished movie, will be a machine-gunning, growling robot on the rampage. To do this, Verhoeven's flailing his arms and baring his teeth. His long hair's almost standing on end, like a cat in a temper.

This image, more than any other, sums up the febrile, manic energy this maverick filmmaker brought to RoboCop. It's a true masterpiece of 80s movie theater, and every scene comes loaded with an almost palpable intensity. So when it was announced that a remake was on the way, it's understandable that a certain amount of scepticism surrounded the news. How could it possibly match the black humor, pathos and wit of the original?

We've still a fair while to wait until we can properly answer that question, because the finished movie's not out until February 2014. But in the meantime, along came the first trailer, which gives us the first few clues as to the tone and direction the reboot will take. So let's delve in and take a closer look...

Robo-Grit

The trailer's opening scenes establish a similar scenario to the original RoboCop: a future city beset by crime, where ordinary flesh-and-blood cops are losing the battle against heavily-armed gangs. If the directing presence of Jose Padilha can be felt anywhere - with its grit coming at least vaguely close to his terrific Elite Squad movies - it's here. The streets are in disarray, and patrolled by a range of familiar-looking law-enforcing robots.

Two RoboCops

If we're interpreting this shot and a few others in the trailer correctly, the scientists at Omni have been working on a few iterations of law enforcing robot. One of them's the ED-209 series, while another appears to be a range of flying, heavily-armed drones - which we'll get to later. Then there are the pair of specimens pictured above - one the kind of half man, half machine prototype Alex Murphy's about to become at any moment, the other a skinnier, all machine droid like the Cylon Centurions in the rebooted Battlestar Galactica.

In other parts of the trailer, we see lots of these skinny RoboCops wandering around streets and empty buildings, and the Alex Murphy RoboCop is shown firing away at them at one point - so like the 1987 movie, this Murphy will also end up in a fight against the corporation that made him.

Boardroom Bacon

"We need to give Americans something they can rally behind. We're going to put a man inside a machine."

Here's the first shot of Michael Keaton, playing Omni Corp CEO Raymond Sellars. The pal who has the idea of making a man into a robot law enforcer, he casts a sinister air over the trailer, even if we don't actually seem him doing anything overtly evil. It's worth noting the Francis Bacon paintings hanging in his office, though - a pointed reference, perhaps, to the movie's themes of what it means to be a human. Certainly, Bacon's work was full of human-like figures twisted in agony - something Murphy's about to experience within the next few seconds...

Murphy's law

One of the major ways the remake departs from the original is in the fate of Joel Kinnaman's protagonist. In this movie, Murphy's blown to smithereens by a car bomb outside his house rather than brutally shot to death by a gang. Given that RoboCop 2014 will almost certainly be a PG-13, this accounts for Murphy's limb loss and subsequent transformation into a machine, while at the same time side-stepping the horrifying violence of the first movie.

Murphy doesn't die this time, either, which removes the original's death and resurrection imagery, and also leaves us in the odd position where Murphy's wife Clara (Abbie Cornish) knows all about her husband's transformation. This, and a later shot where a robo-suited Kinnaman is seen chatting in a living room with his son, leaves us wondering whether we'll see RoboCop clanking around his house on his days off, doing the washing up and telling his son to get out of bed because his breakfast's ready.

In all seriousness, though, we do wonder whether having Murphy's family be a more frequent presence in the movie is a bit of a mistake. The original movie wisely sidestepped the potentially daft scenes of drama between a guy in a clanking robot suit and his wife who’d thought him dead, and instead, played up Murphy's sense of loss as he realised the life he once had was gone for good.

Becoming RoboCop

However the family drama side of things plays out - and it could be brilliant, in fairness, if it's written and staged carefully - the net result is the same: Murphy's shattered body is encased in metal, and he wakes up as the latest, shiniest product in OCP's robot portfolio. It's here that the trailer hints at a new and potentially interesting usage of RoboCop's old 'Prime Directives' programming.

"When the machine fights," says Gary Oldman's scientist, "the system releases signals into Alex's brain making him think he's in control, but he's not. It's the illusion of free will."

It goes without saying that RoboCop soon figures out a way of circumventing the computer-controlled part of himself - the question is, how does he do it, and what causes him to turn against his creators in the first place?

The robo suit

You probably already noticed the scene captured above, where we see a brief cameo from a suit design that's much closer to the one Rob Bottin designed back in the 80s. The one Joel Kinnaman ends up wearing, however, is much sleeker and less bulky - closer, you might say, to Tony Stark's armoured suit - and by the time Raymond Sellars says, "Make him more tactical; let's go black", he looks even further removed from his hulking, imposing roots.

Also, didn't the new RoboCop's designers miss a trick by not making able to change colour? He could have been silver in standby mode, black in combat mode, and maybe camo for jungle encounters, and perhaps even paisley for 60s-themed discos.

To be fair, we'd expected this new iteration to be a more fleet-footed kind of robot, since modern audiences probably wouldn't have been convinced by the plodding, John Wayne-like RoboCop of the first movie. The designers haven't thrown everything out, either, with Robo still keeping a gun stored in his thigh - and in an added nod to fans, he even finds time to utter the familiar line, "Dead or alive, you're coming with me."

We'll have to wait for the finished movie before we can be sure how well the new suit design works in context, but Joel Kinnaman certainly seems to pull off the physical aspect of the role well - some parts of the trailer look a lot like last year's Dredd, which is by no means a bad thing.

Two Eds are better than one

Here's another reference back to the 80s: a freshly redesigned ED-209. And thanks to the wonders of computer technology, this movie can afford to have an entire army of the things stalking the city. Do they talk? Do they give someone "20 seconds to comply?" There's no clue in this first trailer, but for now, we're quite pleased with the sympathetic updating of the classic robot once brought to life by animator Phil Tippett.

Who's Thomas King?

In the shot above, we get a glimpse of RoboCop's new-fangled facial recognition technology - so no more trudging around police archives with his data spike out - but we also spot a pal named Thomas King. This reminded us of something: we don't see very many villains in this trailer. Sure, we have Michael Keaton's character handling the evil corporation side of things, but what about the thugs, once embodied so well by Kurtwood Smith and his friends in the first movie? Is Thomas King one of them? 

We're guessing that the character played by Jackie Earle Haley - pictured above - is another. Haley's cast in the role of someone called Maddox according to IMDb. Is he next year's equivalent of Clarence Boddicker?

RoboBikes

Picking through the reactions to the trailer on Twitter and Facebook, one of the most common complaints is that it all looks a bit too much like a toy commercial - a trap that RoboCop 3 sadly fell into 20 years ago. When RoboCop turns up on his matching motorbike, it's certainly easy to see what the detractors mean - the design does look like something that will be lining shelves in Toys R Us before 2014's over.

On the other hand, even the 18-rated RoboCop appealed to kids back in the 80s. Many viewers were too young to see the original movie when it came out in 1987 (in the UK, it was one of those illicit pleasures you discovered on VHS around a mate’s house), and we promptly went out and bought the videogame tie-ins for computers and consoles, put a few coins in the Data East arcade machine, and maybe bought the line of RoboCop toys that came out a few years later.

The new RoboCop maybe more openly courting a broad audience, but this doesn't necessarily mean it can't also be full of its own complex themes and thought-provoking ideas. Which brings us onto...

Where's the dark humor?

If there's one thing apparently missing in the trailer, it's any hint of the dark satire of the original. But then again, take another look at the trailer for the 1987 movie: there's no Bixby Snyder, no bloodshed in the boardroom, no sardonic TV ads or preening news anchors. But take a look again at the trailer for the first movie. It avoids all the deeper ideas and humor of the finished movie, and concentrates instead on lots of explosions and violence - all cut to the theme tune to The Terminator, something Orion Pictures obviously had lying around at the time.

Similarly, the trailer for RoboCop 2014 has been cut together in the now standard blockbuster style, replete with whooshes and parps and meaningful sound bites - it's a corporate product, something that would have been approved by outgoing Omni CEO Dick Jones.

But there are odd hints, here and there, of dark humor and even a suggestion of Verhoeven's harshness. That shot of a terribly wounded Murphy lying stricken on a bed isn't pulling any punches, and there are clues towards the end of the trailer that RoboCop gets almost as battered as the one played by Peter Weller a quarter of a century ago. As for humor, there's Michael Keaton's quirky corporate weasel, who should be good value, and what about Samuel L Jackson in his curious wig? We're intrigued to see how he fits into the story.

There's still a chance, then, that the spikier edges of Paul Verhoeven's movie will also be present in Jose Padilha's finished movie.

Director Edgar Wright will finally be bringing Marvel's Ant-Man to the screen in 2015, as he's hard at work on the project, which had been mooted for some time. Wright has co-written the script with Joe Cornish, and production on the movie is set to begin next year.

The timescale of the movie has had a little bit of a juggle though, as it was revealed overnight that the release date has been brought forward just over three months.

Ant-Man had originally been scheduled for November 6th 2015, a release date that left it perilously close - in the US at least - to that of the next James Bond movie. Marvel has opted instead to release the movie on July 31st 2015. That's two weeks after the valet/Superman movie.

Ant-Man is a big risk for Marvel, arguably in the same way Iron Man once was, but it's not our most out-on-a-limb prediction to suggest that there may be a solid lead-in to it in Avengers: Age Of Ultron, which arrives early the same summer. By upping the proximity to the Avengers sequel, Marvel achieves two things. Firstly, it means it's a bit easier to build on the momentum of Joss Whedon's Avengers: Age Of Ultron. And secondly, it increases Edgar Wright's stress levels just a little.

More on Ant-Man as we hear it.

With The Wolverine being another entry in the X-Men franchise to receive a mixed response, attentions have moved to mext year's X-Men: Days Of Future Past to recapture heights witnessed when Bryan Singer was at the helm previously. Days Of Future Past director Bryan Singer made arguably the best X-Men movie to date, with X2, and he's following the strong X-Men: First Class too. 

Hugh Jackman has been chatting about the movie and he’s certainly very positive about how it’s shaping up. "I know, having sat at Comic-Con on that panel with that extraordinary cast, I keep saying it's like two movies in one, but with the size of it it's really three in one. It really is going to blow people away because of the story. Bryan Singer, I think, is going to become the first director to make increasingly better movies in a franchise, I'm not sure if there's anyone else that's done it", Jackman told Access Hollywood.

It’s an incredibly ambitious project juggling a number of major characters and themes which admittedly is certainly nothing new for the series, but when you factor in that it will span multiple time periods as well it will be interesting to see how it plays out when it hits cinemas on the 23rd of May 2014.

More News on X-Men: Days of Future Past when it’s available.

Access Hollywood

When talking about a forthcoming Christopher Nolan movie – well, your guess is as good as ours. He tends to be tight-lipped about future projects, and this is especially true of Interstellar.

Slated for release in 2014, it's reportedly based on the work of Kip Thorne, a noted astrophysicist who is known for, among other things, helping to introduce the theory behind wormholes into sci-fi, and winning a bet against Stephen Hawking that led to him gaining a year's subscription to Penthouse. Clearly, a jet-setting scientist if there was ever one.

I should, before this venture begins, tell you that this is a piece of speculation regarding the yet-to-be-released hard sci-fi epic – be warned, there be dragons and potential spoilers ahead. (Mind you, if they do turn out to be spoilers, we totally called it). We’ll be taking a brief, layperson’s view of Thorne’s work – which, even if you aren’t an accredited astrophysicist, is relatively easy due to his numerous interviews and books written for the non-scientifically minded among us.

Kip Thorne also has the unique pleasure of working with Christopher Nolan’s brother, Jonathan, on working the Interstellar script and consulting for the movie, which recently went into production. Like any other Nolan movie, it is dripping with talent, both behind the camera and in front of it. But what do we know of the story so far and how much can we speculate from that?

Since this is a sci-fi movie based on theoretical physics, it is important to understand where this work comes from and what it means...

The story so far

The official synopsis for the movie reads as follows. "The new script chronicles the adventures of a group of explorers who make use of a newly discovered wormhole to surpass the limitations on human space travel and conquer the vast distances involved in an interstellar voyage.”

There’s also the little matter of corn – which, as reported by Ford Macleod Gazette, may play a central role in the movie. According to that story, corn is the last remaining crop on Earth, and in the search for somewhere new to grow it, scientists decide to start looking for land on other planets - which is where those wormholes come in. Or you know, it could just be Nolan being Nolan.

But how does the noted scientist Thorne play into all this?

The inter-galactic explorer

There are a few, simple primers that we need to approach Thorne’s work – which I could not do as much justice to as he could, but will help in explaining the next step.

First is the concept of spacetime – it’s a concept that we’re all mostly familiar with (especially those who read comics, sci-fi or almost any fiction nowadays). Spacetime is the simple, grand but ingenious idea that most of us have accepted as fact already – the space time continuum is four dimensions: space taking up three, with time being the fourth.

This is very useful in helping to mathematically model, as well as generally help understand, the laws of physics as they apply across the universe. It’s also a concept that Einstein worked on with regards to general relativity – it was thought that, in a very general and understated manner, when modelling the spacetime continuum in a physical representation, it had a curvature in it.  Quantum theorists have since argued that spacetime may not be as continuous as previously thought as well – but lacking the proper qualification to argue either way, I will refrain from talking about it.

Thorne believed that within areas where the spacetime was ‘warped’ – there could exist wormholes, which would be propped up by this warped spacetime. Very simply, wormholes (or Einstein-Rosen bridges) fit into the theory of general relativity; different masses could place varying amounts of pressure on this ‘folding’ of spacetime, resulting in a ‘shortcut’ or direct link between different areas, making travel across galaxies possible without the need for advanced technology or ships that would take millennia to invent and construct. Think of a piece of paper folded in two and a something thread through both sides – this would be the bridge. This is a simplified example to attempt to give an analogy to something that is potentially un-visualisable as we’re looking at four dimensions here – not just two.

Esteemed scientist Hawking is reportedly said to believe that these wormholes currently exist in quantum foam hypothesis – the smallest environment in the universe, theoretically speaking. Hawking and Thorne speculate that these tiny wormholes are occurring all over the universe, but that they’re both unstable and miniscule. For humanity to use them as a form of travel, we would have to extend them and enlarge them – which is where both scientists place caveats before us. We may encounter some trouble.

How’s that? Well, to take a very general example, think of a microphone next to a speaker. That screeching feedback loop that occurs? That’s a pretty close estimation to what would happen if we tried, in any way, to amplify these theoretical wormholes. One current solution to this problem is naturally ‘exotic matter’ – matter which contains negative energy density and a large negative pressure.

What is a wormhole’s likely structure? We suspect - thanks to the work of Einstein and Rosen – two mouths and a throat.  Every physicist since has warned of their potentially high instability and high potential radiation.

Thorne has himself stated that if one mouth of a wormhole was moved to a place where the flow of time is different, say the center of the universe, then time travel might be theoretically possible. Thorne also wrote a paper in 1988 with a graduate student regarding how ‘traversable’ wormholes may work with regards to a shell of exotic matter holding them open.

But okay, how does this all relate to Interstellar?

The speculative story

The title of the movie gives us a slight clue – it’s about travel ‘between’ the stars.

Christopher Nolan, and by extension his brother, are known for focusing on characters (specifically male ones) that have a deep and troubled psyche thanks to their past. They struggle with their own identities, but focus on very simple goals.

The characters they create are always cloaked in a shadow and a dagger of a narrative, but at heart, they are truly succinct beings with goals to realise that push them forever onwards. Each of Nolan's films grapples with questions of reality – both of the universe at large and of the internal self. His work is littered with overarching themes such as self-doubt, a dreadful and all-consuming fear, and questions of morality. 

For a filmmaker who apparently takes delight in a forever changing landscape of reality, a wormhole-based story would appear to be a goldmine. Nolan uses personal dramas to ground wider commentaries and grander mythologies.

So, let’s take a swing at the possible story.

With all its big-name casting, Interstellar is almost certainly going to be an ensemble piece like Inception. Expect one central protagonist, with many intertwining stories featuring other supporting characters. The Iceland location – which has doubled up for other hostile environments, such as the setting behind large chunks of Prometheus - also lends itself to a potential Earth-related disaster, as well as a dangerous alien environment.

Taking into account Thorne’s research interests and Nolan’s background, previous work, recent gossip and rumours – the following is my best guess at what the story is going to look like:

Earth, in the relatively near future, is plagued by an environmental catastrophe that necessitates devising a new way to support life on Earth – or a possible relocation. A team, made up of a variety of characters from different walks of life, are forced together by circumstance to explore a potential wormhole – a very dangerous and potentially unstable gateway to another place. The wormhole itself represents humanity’s desperation – it could have potentially devastating consequences if travel was attempted and may be a one-way ticket.

The team will undoubtedly, similarly to the team in Alien Vs Predator, be made up of a collection of people of different expertise – a sci-fi staple.

Due to the instability of such a phenomena, look for either artificial amplification (which will almost undoubtedly fail) or a natural failure as the wormhole collapses or re-arranges itself.

The team will be led by one or two obsessive characters who are plagued by a dark past, which will dictate every choice that they make. They'll venture through this portal, finding themselves in a potentially hazardous environment. As humanity attempts to become a master of this spacetime phenomena and look to exploit it quickly by taking ‘calculated’ risks, they realise just how out of their depth they are – expect drastic consequences for those travelling through it and for Earth.

As humans look into the ‘grass is greener on the other side of the wormhole’ metaphor in detail, expect the wormhole to either relocate, or collapse, leaving some (if not all) of the team stranded. Potentially, look for time travel either way – they may be able to ‘see’ into the past to try and help stop the oncoming catastrophe or to travel into the future to see the consequences. The latter appears more likely.

Time travel will help raise central questions of perception and understanding that help shape the protagonists – expect a possible apex to the narrative when the story travels in time (either by wormhole or by general jumping around) to that significant and life-defining moment for the protagonist that helps define his central goal. The best guess is a responsibility for a decision that ended up costing the life of a loved one, which will cause him to take certain risks during his wormhole travels.

Climate change appears to be a central theme, so we can take a guess at the planet becoming similar to a giant desert after the catastrophe. Humanity will start travelling through the wormhole by gaining a shallow understanding of how they work, vindicating some scientists' theories about them. One of these scientists, as either an expert or a previously considered ‘quack’ will be among this exploratory party.

Those stranded by the collapse of the wormhole will either try to find the mouth of the wormhole (if it has relocated) or will attempt to artificially create or enlarge another one to allow their return home.

This return becomes endangered by a rogue event, at which point a character – probably the main dramatic lead - will redeem themselves by sacrificing some part of their mission (or potentially their lives) to help save humanity. The sacrifice may even ensure the continued survival of the human race.

And that’s about the size of it – well, as far as I can figure...

In truth, there are several obvious reasons why Roland Emmerich's best movie in ages, White House Down, underperformed at the US box office. Costing around $150m to make and taking just $72m at the American box office, the movie arrives in the UK this week with many perceiving it to be some kind of flop. It's not, but it's certainly done less than Sony would have been hoping and expecting.

Reason one? Olympus Has Fallen. A surprise hit earlier in the year, it basically started with the same premise as White House Down - the White House has been taken over! - and basically got to movie theater screens first. Nearly $100m of bounty in the US later (and the earlier movie was much cheaper to make), and Olympus Has Fallen is one of the sleeper hits of the year.

Second? The US release date was June 28th. That was opposite Paul Feig's hit buddy comedy The Heat (US take: $157m off a $43m budget), and the week after Monsters University and World War Z, both of which went on to be big hits. White House Down had two solid movie stars (Channing Tatum and Jamie Foxx), but no franchise, no book, no sequel, and not much chance, in hindsight.

Then there's the Roland Emmerich factor. Once the purveyor of fun sci-fi films such as Stargate, Independence Day and - I'll say it - The Day After Tomorrow, his more recent track record has been patchy. Shakespeare drama Anonymous flopped, whilst 2012 may have taken lots of money, but it was a dour, very long disaster movie.

On top of that there was the generally negative critical response. Loud, violent, formulaic, preposterous? In truth, all of those hit. 

But here's why I think White House Down is one of the most fun action movies to arrive in cinemas in some time: there's no way that Roland Emmerich and his team aren't in on the joke. In fact, large parts reminded me of Con Air, the ultimate tongue-rammed-firmly-in-its-cheek action movie. White House Down isn't the same vintage, but it's bloody good fun.

It's also - I'll get this out the way now - a lot better than Olympus Has Fallen. I didn't mind Olympus, but it was, at heart, a nasty, old-school action movie with some good moments, and Gerard Butler beating the shit out of things that moved, and some that didn't.

White House Down doesn't want to play that game. It's got the same idea, of having the White House taken over by people waving guns and threats around, but it has so much more fun with the premise. Because this is Roland Emmerich gathering up every cliche he can find, every staple of the genre, and having as much fun with them as he can find. He has lots. 

Take the opening half hour. Here's where we meet Channing Tatum's wannabe secret service agent, estranged from his 11-year old daughter but keen to win her over. The answer? Take her to his job interview at the White House! And what's that? Tatum's old flame, played by Maggie Gyllenhaal is interviewing him? That's a Brucie bonus right there!

What's impressive about that opening - and Emmerich has arguably always been better about building up to big disasters than dealing with the middle and end of them - is that it's really, really efficient. Not just in the way it lays out the path of the movie, but that it barely wastes anything. It's like playing an old school adventure game on a computer. Every item that you pick up in the first quarter comes into play at some point by the time things are resolved. Even trivial references have their place in this movie, and it's as if they've set themselves a challenge to use absolutely everything.

James Vanderbilt's screenplay jigsaws all this together well, and it can never resist a laugh. To its credit, the movie gets lots of them, from a less-than-subtle dig at Emmerich's Independence Day, to the sheer gall with which it plugs in its tour of conventional genre touchpoints. Or, when it just goes plain daft, with one particular car chase a magnet of guffaws.

Furthermore, there's a crackling, witty chemistry between Tatum and Jamie Foxx's President. The rest of the supporting cast are impressive, but not given too much to do (Gyllenhaal suffers particularly in a promising but ultimately quite weak role), yet the breadth of the cast does allow Emmerich to open up the focus of things just a little. It also means he's got room for one or two added plot switch that stretch the movie a good ten minutes past its natural endpoint. 

And to be clear: this is no blind appreciation of a movie. White House Down has its problems. humor is preferred to suspense, which is a trade off not everyone is going to like. For all the sense that he's in on the joke, Emmerich does over-egg things from time to time. And if you're allergic to US patriotism, perhaps White House under threat movies aren't your ideal ticket.

But in a summer where darkness, sequels, incomprehensible action, noise and wholesale destruction were available in varying degrees, I'd argue that White House Down has a fun and tongue in cheek factor that few could rival. It's Emmerich remembering that this stuff is supposed to be entertaining, and showing some signs of being a half-decent comedy director, as well as an established wrangler of visual effects.

Even the screening of critics that I saw the movie with were merrily chortling away, and I don't blame them a jot. Because White House Down, above all else, is just damn good fun. It cuts off one or two of the nasty edges of Olympus Has Fallen, and just about gets over the finish line whilst the idea of watching it all again still rests in your mind. Mr Emmerich? More like this please. It's more fun when you blow up something small than something big...