This article contains spoilers for each of the films mentioned. Not necessarily big ones, but you might want to steer clear of The World's End entry if you've not seen that.

2013 has been a great year for action. We’ve had multiple comic book heroes fighting it out on the big screen, with Thor and Iron Man continuing Marvel’s run of great movies, the return of the R-rated antics of Kick-Ass and at long last an F-bomb loaded, bloody incarnation of The Wolverine (though it’s worth pointing out that the unrated edition in the UK only comes with the 3D version of the home release, a trend I hope doesn’t continue).

From a sci-fi angle, we’ve had robots fighting monsters in Pacific Rim and Matt Damon fighting the system in the melancholy triumph that was Elysium. There was also the long awaited return of Riddick, though it would seem not an entirely successful one, which is a shame.

Speaking of Vin Diesel, there’s also been the sixth entry from the Fast & Furious franchise with his co-star Dwayne Johnson apparently set on beating our own Jason Statham to the title of most productive action star, with G.I. Joe: Retaliation and Pain & Gain hitting big, while Snitch and Empire State were less successful. There were also a few surprise successes, such as Now You See Me (which features a fight scene that would make Gambit blush with jealousy) and even Hansel & Gretel: Witch Hunters pulling in decent worldwide takes.

Worldwide take is key too, which Aaron Eckhart summed up nicely when we spoke to him earlier in the year for another great slice of action, Olympus Has Fallen:

“Hollywood is no longer an American event. I mean as an actor you’re talking now about what international numbers are, you’re not talking about domestic numbers. This movie’s going to make what it makes in America, but really this movie’s going to make its money around the world. So it’s a real deal, we say, 'Will China allow this movie to be shown in its country, or how does it look if the bad guy’s this, that, or the other?' As the world gets smaller and there are more participants in the movie business… I mean these movies are funded by India, China, Russia so one of their stipulations is 'Uh-uh, we’re good guys.'"

He’s absolutely right, and many of the movies mentioned above and below have barely, if at all, covered their budgets from their domestic take in America. This would be less of a problem if the films' releases in other countries weren’t then affected by ‘bad’ US box office, which has led to a great summer blockbuster like White House Down being delayed and then slipped out when no one was looking.

In putting this list together, I’ve tried to draw attention to those movies that deserved to do far better than they did, weighing up negative backlash against the actual box office takings, then pitching those factors against the actual quality of the movie, especially in terms of its action content. There’s never anything to be gained from instantly dismissing films, so if you have overlooked any of the below maybe you might be tempted to give them a look.

I’d also like to add that, knowing the love that Dredd gets from our readers, I had an overwhelming desire to place it in the top ten, just because no such list existed last year. Just know that we’ll always mention the beloved Dredd any chance we get.

10. 2 Guns

Production budget of $61m, worldwide gross of $132m

Hooray for 2 Guns. It’s quite possibly the most financially successful movie on this list, but still wasn’t as wildly successful as it deserved to be, only just covering its budget from the US take and then not making a great deal elsewhere, which is a great shame.

Any fan of buddy cop or team-up action movies should revel in the sheer comedy delight of watching Denzel Washington and Mark Wahlberg spitting one-liners out at a rate of knots, while shooting the hell out of all and sundry, including chickens. The sheer speed at which quotable lines fly off the screen gives Tarantino a run for his money, and every single one hits with superb comic timing.

Wahlberg plays his role as loveably idiotic, which is a shtick he now has down to a fine art and even stretched to the limit this year in Michael Bay’s divisive Pain & Gain, which caused some polar opinions here at Geek towers, though I would have included it on this list if its small budget hadn’t returned a sizeable profit. It’s been a mixed year for Wahlberg, though, as Broken City, which he also produced, really didn’t do well.

To take from the review of 2 Guns I wrote a few months ago, director Baltasar Kormákur deserves credit for putting together a movie that manages to both stick to some classic genre conventions, while feeling utterly fresh and original. Kormákur takes influences from old gangster movies, to westerns and combines them into a beautifully shot and crafted movie.

Action highlight:  

With a kidnapped gangster (Edward James Olmos) bouncing around in the trunk, Wahlberg is pursued across a dusty desert landscape by Washington, leading to a game of truck driving chicken. It’s exciting to watch, particularly the use of a wing mirror in a fist fight, but the reason I love the scene so much is that it sets up one of the movie's funniest scenes.

Wahlberg's excitable reaction, once they’ve finished scuffling, leads to his ‘together’ moment – it made me laugh in the trailer, made me laugh in the movie theater and has just made me laugh again thinking about it. Comedy and action in perfect harmony.

9. Parker

Production budget of $35m, worldwide gross of $46m

By the time you read this, Statham’s Homefront will have had its opening weekend in the US, and if there’s any justice in the world, won’t be deserving of a place on this list as it manages to tick all the right boxes for anyone in the mood for a tight, tense and action-filled fix.

Of course, as we’ve coming to expect from the mighty Stath, it’s his third cinematic venture this year, with Parker providing the first and Hummingbird the second. It was a close call as to which of the those films to choose for this list, but arguably Hummingbird falls more into a dramatic thriller category.

Parker chooses to follow the action thriller route, with a fine opening scene leading to a bloody betrayal, but then falters like a few films on this list due to a tonal shift in the middle, where Statham’s titular character finds himself shown around houses by Jennifer Lopez for no apparent reason - or certainly not one that warrants so much screen time. Even though I reviewed Parker back at the start of the year, I’m still baffled by the casting of Lopez, and if it was done, as I suspected, to try and broaden the appeal of Stath’s movies to a larger audience, it didn’t work. And though I have nothing against her Lopez as an actress, there’s no point to her character.

Still, there’s fun to be had, as there’s enough left from the core plot to keep things fluid, and it’s great to see our man put in a charismatic turn in the lead role, as he really does keep things entertaining, and proves yet again why he’s consistently able to carry a big screen adventure.

With Homefront about to be unleashed, Statham’s managed to take his charming turn in Parker, combine some of the dramatics from Hummingbird and the head smashing antics from his best action movies, so here’s hoping it’s a success.

Action highlight: Statham proving that he's knife proof

I think deep down we all knew that Statham could take a knife and not blink, but in Parker’s rather fine one-on-one scrap, he takes the rather novel approach of letting himself get stabbed in the hand to avoid any serious injury. He’s just that tough.

In fact, the brutality of the fight really does help to support my theory that the original intention was to make Parker a much more gritty and dark movie. There’s blood everywhere, and it induces the usual wince from seeing someone get hit by toilet porcelain, while the punches are shown to full effect before things take a topple over a balcony. It’s a standout moment in the movie, and it's a pity there wasn’t more scenes like this instead of all that house hunting.

8. R.I.P.D.

Production budget of $130m, worldwide gross of $64.6m

Poor Ryan Reynolds. I’ve loved and supported his career since he first charmed his way through Van Wilder: Party Liaison, yet it seems the big break has yet to happen. Certainly Reynolds has been in several high profile movies, but none have managed to reach the financial and critical heights that he so deserves, and each year I keep hoping his luck will change.

Ironically, for a man with such a handsome face, it’s the voice work he’s done for a couple of animated movies this year that have yielded the best box office rewards, with Turbo lifted by its non-domestic gross and the rather fantastic The Croods scoring big the world over, with nearly $600 million in the bank and a sequel confirmed.

When R.I.P.D was announced a while back, I immediately took an interest (and by interest I mean hassling Mr Brew for any and all coverage when it was released like a needy child), with the prospect of Reynolds joining an undead-hunting, supernatural police force ticking a lot of boxes for me. To add to that, the actors involved just made me even more excited, as Jeff Bridges, Kevin Bacon and even the legendary James ‘Lopan’ Hong (playing the alternate version of Reynolds’ character) made for one hell of an enticing prospect. Sadly, after the movie tanked in the US, just like White House Down, it got buried and barely made cinemas in the UK.

The strange thing about R.I.P.D is that it’s really not that bad, and certainly not the total disaster that people seemed to brand it as. It certainly has its flaws, which mostly stem from the uneven tone that shifts events from the tragic (beautifully realised by Reynolds I might add), to the surreally inventive, to outdated flatulence jokes, all  by way of a Men In Black-style set up, but there’s still plenty to enjoy.

It's also a pity that even the great Jeff Bridges felt the need to have a pop at R.I.P.D recently, merely adding to the already rotten (no pun intended) reputation it had gained, when it was his character’s direction that seemed the most jarring. Ah well, it can sit alongside Green Lantern on my bookcase and I’ll be happy.

Action highlight: Watching James Hong shooting a banana in a city pursuit.

One of the more inspired visual gags in R.I.P.D is having real world avatars for the main protagonists, so that the living can’t recognise them. Jeff Bridges’ character therefore becomes Victoria’s secret model Marisa Miller and Reynolds’ becomes James Hong.

The two avatars are used to their full extent when chasing down a ‘deado’ in broad daylight, which entails some might fine car flipping and the rather fine sight of the blonde Miller bouncing off walls distracting any men in her path, while we get the comedy spectacle of seeing James Hong in pursuit of a bloated undead monster, while wielding a banana. Inspired.

7. Jack The Giant Slayer

Production budget of $195m, worldwide gross of $197.5m

Everything was in place to make Jack The Giant Slayer a success. Certainly, Warner Bros would agree, as they spent so much money bringing it to the screen, perhaps convinced that the tale of an everyday boy whisked off on a magical adventure would help to set them up with a future franchise in a mail-Potter world. But as The Chronicles Of Narnia proved, even if you continue to make increasingly strong movies based on a well-known work of children’s fiction, there’s never any guarantee of success.

The success of TV shows like Once Upon A Time suggested an audience hunger for fairy tales, while Bryan Singer is an established and talented director who has proved on multiple occasions that he’s great at handling giant, visionary movies. Jack The Giant Slayer even boasted a fine cast, including such British stalwarts as Ian McShane and Ralph Brown, charming young leads Nicholas Hoult and Eleanor Tomlinson, and even Ewan McGregor channelling Obi Wan Kenobi, playing a classical knight instead of the Jedi kind.

To be fair, the movie itself never quite sparks as it should, managing to sustain a level of fun without ever excelling at any of the areas it explores. The giants are disgusting, but only slightly disturbing when they could have been genuinely creepy, and at times it seems as though  their human chomping antics were cut at the last minute rather than shot in an intentionally child-friendly manner. The apparently expensive effects also shift from magnificent to slightly shonky, which might be less noticeable from lower budget fare, but tends to stick out in such a big movie, though the production design, as is always the case with Singer’s films, is first class.

There are chuckles to be had throughout, and events whip quickly from one to the next, making for a good Sunday afternoon’s entertainment. The retelling of such a classic tale is sure to find an audience in the long run, especially amongst families looking for such an honest and back-to-basics movie, free from the cynicism that runs rampant in contemporary movies.

Action highlight: Attack of the giants!

Jack The Giant Slayer gets stronger and better the longer it progresses, especially as the start is taken up with quite a lot of exposition, so when the second act closes with a mock end to the tale (children may be surprised, but adults less so) it leads to the thrilling finale in which all the best elements of the movie finally spring to life.

There are some great shades of Lord Of The Rings during the end battle, with horseback riders being swatted insignificantly from their mounts and occasionally beheaded by way of a giant's mouth, all leading back to the castle where the majority of the action takes place.

McGregor’s knight stands shoulder to shoulder with king McShane during the castle siege, all beautifully lit and immersed in smoke and fire from the flaming moat they’ve torched to keep the giants at bay. Flaming trees are hurled effortlessly by giants as impromptu weapons, walls are smashed and the two young heroes face their own challenge from Fallon, the disturbing (and disturbed) leader of the aggressors.

6. Machete Kills

Production budget of $20m, worldwide gross of $15m

Now here was something I didn’t expect – a grindhouse sequel that manages to surpass its predecessor in every way. Admittedly, some action sequels are perfectly entertaining, even if they can’t all match the originals - most Die Hards (except this years’), Lethal Weapon 2, Predator 2, Expendables 2 and recently, the Fast And Furious sequels (especially Fast 5) all spring to mind.

The main difference with Machete Kills is that the first movie wasn’t actually that great. It certainly ticked a lot of boxes for me, with the heady mix of seeing Seagal and Lohan in a movie filled with blood and gore, even going one step further by throwing in a bonus Don Johnson, yet somehow it never felt as exciting as the sum of its parts. When Machete Kills starts, there’s the distinct feeling of déjà vu, yet little by little, it builds into a very funny, inventive and entertaining adventure.

pal Den Of Geek writer, beard adorner, friend and Statham stealer, Matt Edwards, said in his fine review that it seemed a shame that Machete himself was slightly sidelined by the wealth of other crazy characters in the movie, but for me that’s why it was such a joy. I love Danny Trejo, but what I love about his career is the vast number of memorable supporting characters he’s played, rather than the lead roles, so I felt vindicated that there was more screen time given to the likes of Amber Heard.

The longer Machete Kills runs for the better it gets, with each step proving more insanely over the top than the last, and there are enough hysterical moments to keep the momentum going. The Chameleon was a real standout for me (Walton Goggins should be in everything) and the sight of Mel Gibson in a landspeeder is an image I thought could have only sprung from my head. It’s great to see Gibson playing such a comically unhinged character again, and it’s fair to say that he really elevates the movie as a whole with the delight at which he executes his lines.

Action highlight: Any use of the inside out gun.

It’s difficult to choose one standout scene in a movie that consists or a near constant stream of action, as scenes zoom past so quickly there’s barely time to think before someone else has been beheaded. The body count is so high that there’s a cornucopia of carnage to choose from… Machete’s several novel uses of helicopter blades, Gibson with a blaster, the fight between Luz and Miss San Antonio, Lady Gaga in a car chase – the list goes on.

I think where Machete Kills takes things to the next level, quite literally, is when the more fantastical elements come in to play. After all, there’s only so many times death by a machete can delight before it borders on the repetitive, but of all the new weaponry showcased in the armoury, it’s the inside out gun that makes the biggest impact. It’s fairly self-explanatory, but I’ll leave it down to you to witness the splattery joy it brings to the screen.

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5. Kick-Ass 2

Production budget of $28m, worldwide gross of $59.5m

It seemed apt to follow Machete Kills with another brutal sequel, and while Kick-Ass 2 doesn’t quite better the first movie, I don’t think anyone ever expected it to. Kick-Ass' power came from its originality and no-holds-barred attitude towards violence and language, all thanks to its independent funding. Put all that together, and you have a near perfect comic book movie.

I have to admit, I was ever so slightly terrified that Kick-Ass 2 would be a let-down in some way, especially after some decidedly middling reviews, but I loved every single second of it. Having invested in the first movie so heavily, I avoided the comics for fear of spoiling its events, and it really paid off, as there are so many shocking events that the movie still managed to knock me sideways a few times. The twist on the traditional Mean Girls high school tale was especially great, and I could have watched an entire movie based just on that.

There’s a real sense of believability to the escalating events, and it’s fair to say that the majority of the movie is carried on the diminutive shoulders of Chloë Grace Moretz, who already proved to be an actress ahead of her years in the original, and here, she's quite simply excellent. Her character of Mindy/Hit-Girl has the most interesting journey, which would never have worked in the hands of a lesser actress, with too many highlights to name here (I wouldn’t want to spoil anything) but her ninja try-outs might be one of the greatest things I’ve ever seen.

Elsewhere, there are plenty of great performances, and it was especially fun watching John Leguizamo playing such a straight role in an otherwise flamboyant flick. In fact, it’s the charisma and likeability of the stars that give real heft to the emotional core at the heart of Kick-Ass 2. There will always be plenty of easy chances to focus on the violence in such a movie (hello Daily Mail), of which there’s enough to sate anyone’s bloodlust, but the violence itself wouldn’t have any impact without an investment in the characters, and that’s what really stands out in Kick-Ass 2 – character.

If you haven’t seen it yet for whatever reason, it’s out next week on DVD. 

Action highlight: The first team outing of Justice Forever.

There’s a palpable sense of excitement when Dave Lizewski finds a place amongst the Justice Forever team, as it’s formed directly because of his actions for the very best of reasons. The eclectic mix of heroes have all been brought together by (mostly) tragic circumstances, so they’re immediately people you can root for, and as with Dave in part one, they’re so ordinary that it’s easy to relate to them.

Again, I’ll avoid specifics, but when they finally interrupt a poker game on a first mission of justice, you can’t help but flinch at the possibility that events are about to go terribly, terribly wrong, especially with no proof of how their revered leader, Colonel Stars and Stripes (an excellent Jim Carrey) will actually handle himself. The resultant fight, though, is thrilling on every level, and a glorious set up for what follows. “Watch the birdy!”

4. The Last Stand

Production budget of $45m, worldwide gross of $45m

Sadly, it’s been a disappointing year for the beloved action icons of the 80s. We won’t speak of Bruce Willis here, as it’s just plain upsetting that he’s decided to give up on making an effort with anything to do with his career. Sylvester Stallone’s Bullet To The Head barely made a dent at the box office, but hopefully the money it did make covered the cost of the axe fight, as that really was a highlight in an otherwise formulaic and dry movie.

The joyous teaming of Sly and Arnie in Escape Plan (full review here) has at least proved more successful in terms of its take outside of the US, having crossed the $100 million mark, though it makes me a little sad when I think back to how easily both stars could accrue that number domestically and in their own standalone movies.

On the upside though, we got a total return to form from the great Austrian Oak, with Schwarzenegger recently giving a superbly comic turn in Escape Plan, after he started the year with The Last Stand, a movie I chose for this list as, out of all the movies mentioned above, it’s the most solidly entertaining of the bunch and stands up incredibly well to repeat viewings.

The real triumph of The Last Stand comes from its knowing humor that punctuates the R-rated violence and action, while cleverly leaving the emotional and dramatic content to Arnie’s pal cast members, most notably Jaimie Alexander. There’s a lot of great character actors in the cast (Luis Guzman, Peter Stormare and Forest Whitaker to name a few) but Alexander, an actress who’d already made a noticeable impact in Thor, proved as adept at carrying pathos as she was a big sniper rifle.

Action highlight: Watching Arnie behind a gatling gun for the first time in decades.

Schwarzenegger and heavy weapons have an illustrious and joyous history. James Cameron’s Terminator 2 still stands out (alongside Commando) as the most ingenious and downright cool use of weaponry; there was the one-handed spin of the shotgun, the smoke grenade launcher to the rear and of course the gatling gun that decimated the police force's squad cars.

Like many aspects of The Last Stand, from the swearing to the punching, there was a lot of enjoyment to be taken from watching Arnie back on the big screen and doing what he does best, so when we finally got to see him wielding some heavy arms again, it was a moment of sheer action junkie delight. As if the spectacle alone wasn’t enough, the set piece was further enhanced by the over-the-top decimation of the bad guys, sending a superb comedy spike through the splattery bloodshed. Bravo.

3. The World’s End

Production budget of $20m, worldwide gross of $46m

Yes it might have made just over double its budget, so perhaps it shouldn’t feature so highly on this list, but I did mention that quality would play a factor in the ranking, and a movie like The World’s End deserves to reap as much financial reward and success as possible because, to put it bluntly, it’s brilliant.

Like many pal geeks, I’ve followed the exploits of Edgar Wright, Simon Pegg and Nick Frost since their Spaced days, and the beauty of their work has always been the ability to tap into popular culture and spread references throughout their own work in such a way that it feels as if you’re the only one in on the joke, that the level of referential asides couldn’t possibly be understood on the same level by anyone else, and that alone really makes each project they’ve done feel special and unique in its own way.

There’s also the believability they manage to bring to such insane scenarios that really makes the films work, whether it was the hungover walk through the first stage of a zombie apocalypse, dealing with graphically destructive deaths in a small town, or the prospect of global invasion while drunk, the characters always deal with things in a way that seem so natural, you can’t help but get drawn in. Like the previous two chapters in the Cornetto Trilogy, The World’s End is that superb blend of comedy, tragedy and action, which it deftly switches between in a heartbeat, making for a wholly satisfying and original movie.

It also gains an extra gold star for casting the two best parts of Die Another Day, as the Bond appreciation is as much of a delight in TWE as it was watching the mighty Timothy Dalton in Hot Fuzz.

Action highlight: The revelatory scuffle in the men's room.

It’s quite hard to describe exactly how amazing the first fight scene is without giving anything away, but the shock revelation that sets it in motion really is a true WTF moment. The action that follows is some of the most superb and cleverly choreographed I’ve ever seen, and I’ve seen a lot. If it was just a normal fist fight, it would deserve high praise for the absolute clarity with which it unfolds, but with the added effects element (which must have proved to be more than a little time consuming) the skill involved is mind blowing.

It’s one of the most thrilling and visceral punch ups in recent movie theater, leaving your jaw utterly dropped until the last moment. And even more impressive is that it’s all filmed as one almost continuous shot - easily one of the best fight scenes of all time, and quite possibly my favorite movie of the year. You’ll never look at bar fights in the same light again.

2. White House Down

Production budget of $150m, worldwide gross of $205m

I was torn whether to put White House Down at the top of this list, as it’s just a slightly tighter and more slickly put together action flick, but decided against it as it didn’t have quite so much negative pre-conception to deal with before its release. If anything, it seemed as though people were ready for a prime cut of Channing Tatum saving the day, especially after he’d proved to be such a rising success at the box office with 21 Jump Street and Magic Mike.

White House Down even had a director, Roland Emmerich, known for making billions of dollars worldwide with blockbusters such as Independence Day and The Day After Tomorrow, yet somehow the stars refused to align, and WHD just didn’t hit a home run domestically, leading to a late cinematic release for the rest of the world and a reduced advertising budget that seemed to give up even acknowledging there was a decent movie to be promoted.

What’s most frustrating about the whole situation is that WHD is a great action movie, and one that absolutely deserved to be a runaway success. The teaming of Tatum and Jamie Foxx provided all the buddy chemistry, with Foxx providing some fine deadpan moments in his straight role as the leader of the free world and Tatum proving as charismatic as usual and a fine John McClane in waiting, especially in a year when the real McClane’s outing was just plain awful.

It does often seem to be the case that when two similar movies collide in the same year (Armageddon vs  Deep Impact, Dante’s Peak vs Volcano, The Thomas Crown Affair vs Entrapment, umm, Drop Zone vs Terminal Velocity?) that one will triumph above the other. It’s always been a strange phenomenon, as if audiences simply don’t have enough room in their hearts for two films with the same plot within a 12 month time frame.

In the case of White House Down, it was pipped to the mail by Olympus Has Fallen, a much more violent and gritty depiction of a White House invasion, so despite sharing a pitch, there didn’t seem much reason why they had to do the same with an audience. I loved them both, and I'm rubbing my hands at the prospect of watching a double bill at home. It’s just a terrible shame that WHD didn’t make enough money to spring into a franchise. At least there’ll be more from Mr Butler in London Has Fallen, and next year we’ll get another fix of action comedy from Tatum in 21 Jump Street 2.

Action highlight: The car chase across the White House lawn.

Quips, explosions and a white undershirt are synonymous with top of the line action, and WHD carried on the tradition in a grand style. Just over half way through, both Foxx and Tatum find themselves trying to flee the White House in the Presidential limo, while being assaulted by escort vehicles mounted with, you’ve guessed it, gatling guns once more. The scene represents everything that’s great about the movie, with the overblown spectacle all taking place with tongue firmly in cheek, and it never manages to be anything less than exciting.

And as if the car flipping joy wasn’t enough, there’s also RPGs vs tanks, zombies, the line “Can you not hit me in the head with a rocket while I’m trying to drive!” and James Woods. Immense stuff.

1. The Lone Ranger

Production budget of $215m, worldwide gross of $260m

Just before The Lone Ranger’s cinematic release, I was overcome by the need to write an article politely asking the world at large to leave the poor movie alone. I couldn’t recall such an overwhelming desire for a movie to fail this side of the water-based antics of Titanic and Waterworld (though I’m sure there have been some), with everyone queuing up to destroy a movie that set out to merely put a slightly left-of-center spin on a classic pop icon, while championing practical stunts and effects over CGI.

There’s always a certain hostility towards blockbusters once reports of escalating budgets get smeared all over the press, with people gathering to throw stones at an entirely unknown product, in this case sometimes based on nothing more than Johnny Depp wearing a dead bird on his head, which as it turned out was a vital part of his character’s story arc.

Don’t get me wrong, there are always going to be films that trigger an impulsive need to comment, especially when the property involves a remake (I’m looking at you RoboCop) but The Lone Ranger wasn’t sacrosanct in any way, and if the directorial teaming of Gore Verbinski and Johnny Depp had proved anything, it was that people were still flocking in droves to see their continued adventures of Captain Jack Sparrow in The Pirates Of The Caribbean franchise.

As it turned out, The Lone Ranger was a cracking, funny, slightly gruesome and surreal movie that I thoroughly enjoyed. It chose to take the blockbuster template and sidestep the conventions at every possible moment, so that slapstick comedy could lead to brutal killing, where Tonto isn’t just a sidekick but a genuinely traumatised figure of tragedy, and the eponymous hero spends most of the movie being useless. As is the case with all the films above, there’s a second life to be had on home release, where the comfort of a sofa will help to ease the rather excessive runtime, but it’s a great shame that the financial loss won’t lead to further adventures on the big screen, as I’d have been first in line.

Action highlight: The William Tell Overture train chase.

There’s nothing like a steam train chase finale, just ask Back To The Future Part III. By the time the fanfare kicks the action into gear, you’ve completely forgotten its association with The Lone Ranger, which makes the moment even more exciting. What follows is a beautifully executed work of thrilling choreography and comical pratfalls in the true spirit of the West, which Verbinski had already shown such a deft hand at in the near-perfect Rango. You can even re-enact it using Lego.

The scene represents everything that’s great about The Lone Ranger, and will hopefully delight a whole new audience now it's on disc. Go on, you know you want to....

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Since he was cast as Batman in Zack Snyder's upcoming Batman Vs Superman movie, Ben Affleck hasn't been on the receiving end of a great deal of online positivity. He's talked before about how he was warned that his casting wouldn't create, er, 'a reaction', but in a new Playboy magazine interview (yep, porn mags still get great interview access), he's expanded on it a little, saying "I expected that reaction".

Furthermore, he also said that when he was asked about playing Batman in the first place "I told them I don't see myself in the role and I was going to have to beg off". But that's when Warner Bros asked Affleck to take a look at what Zack Snyder had been working on, and "the stuff was incredible".

What was so special? Well, according to Affleck, "it was a unique take on Batman that was still consistent with the mythology. It made me excited. All of a sudden I had a reading of the character. When people see it, it will make more sense than it does now, or even that it did to me initially ... the idea for the new Batman is to redefine him in a way that doesn't compete with the Bale and Chris Nolan Barman but still exists within the Batman canon".

He added that "it will be an older and wiser version, particularly as he relates to Henry Cavill's Superman character", and that "if I thought the result would be another Daredevil, I'd be out there picketing myself!".

And he saved an extra comment for Daredevil too. "The only movie I actually regret is Daredevil. It just kills me. I love that story, that character, and the fact that it got fucked up the way it did stays with me. Maybe that's part of the motivation to do Batman".

Interesting stuff. Affleck is nobody's fool, and we'll find out in July 2015 just how true his words on the different take on Batman prove to be...

Latino Review.

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Stanley Kubrick and Arthur C Clarke may have seen 2001 as the year we'd head off to meet alien intelligences in the depths of space, but in reality, its cinematic landscape was dominated by fantasy rather than extra-terrestrials. Rowling and Tolkien dominated the box office, with Harry Potter And The Philosopher's Stone and The Fellowship Of The Ring earning almost $1bn each, while Monsters, Inc and Shrek thrilled old and young audiences alike.

At the other end of the spectrum of success, 2001 was such a vintage year for movies that we had to whittle our usual selection of 25 films down from an initial selection of more than 40. This is why the decision was made - with heavy heart - to exclude some of our favorite films, including Richard Kelly's stunning debut, Donnie Darko. Although it wasn't a hit in 2001, it has earned such a devoted following since that we decided to replace this movie, and others like it, with entries that deserve a bit more love.

So with apologies to the likes of Dogtown, Y Tu Ma Tambien, Blow, Enigma and many others that didn't quite make the final cut, here's our pick of the 2001's most underappreciated films.

25. The Last Castle

One of the lightest of the films that Rod Lurie has directed to date (but then it's up against The Contender and Straw Dogs), The Last Castle is an action thriller that sees Robert Redford in the leading role. That's a good start. The supporting cast adds in the late James Gandolfini and Marl Ruffalo, and the story sees Redford's General being court martialled and sent to a maximum security prison.

If that's set off your 'there's no such thing as a bad action movie set in a prison' light, then settle in, because The Last Castle does not disprove the rule. Here, the main attraction is Redford butting heads with Gandolfini, and some decent action sequences too. It's straight entertainment with not much bubbling under, and it could arguably use ten or 15 minutes trimming off it. But The Last Castle's a fine, solid prison flick, lifted by the gravitas that an actor of Redford's quality inevitably brings it.

24. The One

Critics were rather grumpy about this Jet Li vehicle, but it has some decent action moments, an original premise, and a supporting role for Jason Statham in its favor. Li plays Gabriel Yulaw, a sociopath who's rampaging through parallel dimensions, killing the alternate versions of himself and absorbing their energy. Li also plays Law, who in our version of reality is a mild-mannered LA cop. The good Yulaw then teams up with 'Multiverse Authority Agents' Delroy Lindo and Jason Statham to put a stop to his evil counterpart's antics, and much high-kicking action ensues.

A movie best enjoyed with an alcoholic beverage and some friends rather than interrogating with beard-stroking analysis, The One provides a great evening's entertainment, with even its drawbacks - Jet Li struggling with its English-language script, and some variable computer graphics - merely adding to the fun. It's also pleasing to see Statham team up with one of Hong Kong movie theater's finest martial arts stars, years before the 2007 movie War or the action team-up of The Expendables.

23. Evolution

Commonly described as director Ivan Reitman's attempt to channel the energy of his 1984 hit Ghostbusters into sci-fi territory, Evolution was largely dismissed by critics at the time of its release. Admittedly, there's nothing in Evolution to approach the classic status of Ghostbusters, but it is infused with a similarly infectious sense of fun, which keeps the movie entertaining even when some scenes of broad comedy fall a little flat.

A crashed meteorite deposits a rapidly-evolving alien organism in the middle of California, and a group of bumbling scientists - headed up by David Duchovny and Julianne Moore - move in to investigate. A sterling supporting cast, including Orlando Jones, Seann William Scott, Ted Levine and Dan Ackroyd adds value, but the real stars are the aliens, which are imaginatively designed and quite intimidating.

A movie very much in the spirit of classic 1950s science fiction movies (as Kim Newman once wrote, this could have been a belated Quatermass movie were it not for the slapstick elements), Evolution is a lot of fun when enjoyed as a knowingly goofy monster movie.

22. The Majestic

It's safe to say that The Majestic is the forgotten Frank Darabont movie. It's also a pretty forgotten Jim Carrey movie too, and in both cases, that's something of a shame. The Majestic isn't the finest work of either, but it's an affectionate drama, with a sense of Frank Capra about it.

The movie tells of a screenwriter in the 1950s, who finds himself called before the House Un-American Activities Committee. You don't have to look far to see the political subtexts at work here, but there's a warmer heart to The Majestic that bubbles to the fore. It's a long movie, overly so, but it's got a bit more ambition than it's given credit for. It's 80% perfect for a Sunday afternoon. 

21. The Safety Of Objects

An ensemble drama from director Rose Troche, The Safety Of Objects has a large cast and a central theme of trouble in everyday life. It's best manifested through Glenn Close's excellent performance as Esther, a mother looking after her comatose son (Joshua Jackson). But there are four families and their stories brought together here, and even though critics were sniffy about the movie at the time, each of those stories is never less than engaging.

According to the oracle that is IMDB, The Safety Of Objects, when it finally got a US movie theater showing, took less than $500,000. In many countries in the world, it thus has struggled to get a DVD release, yet alone a movie theater outing. But the movie is worth it for Close, and for Troche's effective handling of a good, talented cast.

20. Josie And The Pussycats

The first of two musicals we're going to talk about on this list, Josie And The Pussycats stars Rachael Leigh Cook, Tara Reid and Rosario Dawson as a girl band who find themselves pitted against Alan Cumming's brilliantly evil producer. With bonus Parker Posey, the movie is a lively satire, far different from the movie that's portrayed on the box.

It's got things to say about the state of modern music, and lots of little jokes and touches that reward going back and seeing the movie more than once. You won't find a movie that takes the piss so royally out of product placement either. Boasting cracking music of its own, Josie And The Pussycats is intelligent, very funny and very happy. 

19. Kissing Jessica Stein

Sold, and not necessarily to its advantage, as a romantic comedy about a woman falling for another woman, there's an intelligence and tenderness in Charllie Herman-Wurmfield's movie that transcends the sexuality angle. Jennifer Westfeldt, who went on to direct 2011's Friends With Kids, stars in the title role, as a woman looking for the man of her dreams. As it turns out, she finds herself drawn to a woman instead, and the brief, brilliant Kissing Jessica Stein tells this story with a real sense of charm and humor.

If you like your romantic comedies with some brains to them, then this is the kind of gem that made early 2000s indie movie theater in America so exciting. 

18. 61*

We've cheated a little here, as Billy Crystal's third - and to date last - movie as director was made for HBO rather than cinemas. It thus didn't get a movie theater release, but it's such a strong piece of work, we wanted to draw attention to it here.

Crystal writes about it affectionately in his excellent book Still Foolin''Em, and it's very much a baseball movie made by an avid baseball fan. It's the true life story of the summer of 1961, where the record for the most home runs in a season is up for grabs. Two players are going head to head for it, and Crystal looks for the story going on behind the scenes, as well as the race in front of them.

It's a rounded, involving piece of work, that's arguably at its most interesting when it's off the baseball park. The story of Crystal showing the movie to George W Bush is worth seeking out in his book, too...

17. Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within

Fledgling movie studio Square Pictures spent a then-extraordinary $137m on this animated sci-fi movie set in the Final Fantasy videogame universe, and it was one of the year's infamous financial misfires. About the efforts of a scientist attempting to reverse an invasion of extraterrestrial ghosts in the 21st century, it's a lavish, steadfastly serious effort, and the first attempt to make a photorealistic feature movie with computers.

The characters have a slightly eerie, floaty feel to them, but there's no denying that Spirits Within is a groundbreaking, even quite brave movie; director Hironobu Sakaguchi was really pushing the boundaries of what was possible at the time, and the level of detail here is often breathtaking. Widely dismissed by most critics at the time of release, the support for Spirits Within from some writers, such as the late Roger Ebert, has led to a widening acknowledgment of its importance.

Recently cited as an influence by the Mass Effect series' art director Derek Watts, it's only more than a decade later that Sakaguchi's movie is finally starting to be remembered for its achievements as well as its faults.

16. K-Pax

It could be argued that just about all of director Ian Softley's films are underrated, including his 1994 debut Backbeat (which appeared in our 1994 list of overlooked films), the hip cyber thriller Hackers, and Henry James-adapted drama The Wings Of The Dove. K-Pax is surely another, a movie released in the autumn of 2001 to only modest box-office fortunes. Based on the first of a series of books by Gene Brewer, K-Pax is about a psychiatrist (Jeff Bridges) and his attempts to help an apparently delusional man (Kevin Spacey) who believes he's an alien from a distant planet.

Bridges and Spacey are as excellent as you'd expect, with Spacey perfectly cast as an everyman with cosmic notions, and Bridges is quietly restrained as the sceptical academic who pad into his patient's obscure history. That the movie could so easily have been cast the other way around, with Spacey as the psychiatrist and Bridges as the alien (he played a not dissimilar part brilliantly in John Carpenter's Starman) is testament to both actors' flexibility and talent.

Criticisms that K-Pax is a bit too sentimental and soft around the edges aren't entirely unfounded, but the movie's beautifully shot by John Mathieson (he later photographed Matchstick Men and Kingdom Of Heaven for Ridley Scott) and, most of all, there's a chemistry between the lead actors that is difficult to resist.

15. Osmosis Jones

There are very few of the later Farrelly Brothers films that we'd get into a proverbial fight for, but Osmosis Jones deserves far, far more love than it ever got. A mix of some live action and lots of animation, the movie is set inside the human body, with a virus running rampant. The job of one of the white blood cells, and a special tablet, is to stop it. How's that for a single, containable goal?

Bill Murray heads up the live action side, with the voice talent including Chris Rock, Laurence Fishburne and William Shatner. The movie itself is fast, funny and different too. It thus absolutely bombed at the box office. 

14. The Devil's Backbone

This horror drama from Guillermo del Toro may be critically acclaimed, but it's important to remember how little-seen it was back in 2001 - it made just $6.5m at the US box-office, which is a far cry from the $84m reaped by del Toro's 2006 dark fantasy, Pan's Labyrinth.

Set in civil war-era Spain, The Devil's Backbone is seen through the eyes of a young boy (Fernando Tielve) who shows up at a remote orphanage - a lonely place with a dark secret and an unexploded bomb jutting out of the front yard. Beautifully made and perfectly paced, del Toro's movie is full of flesh-crawling moments, and its drama is all the more effective because its central character is so vulnerable.

By turns terrifying, poetic and profoundly moving, The Devil's Backbone was a real triumph for del Toro after his difficult experience in making the entertaining, deceptively clever creature feature, Mimic. Pan's Labyrinth may be the better-known of the director's Spanish language films from the 2000s, but The Devil's Backbone is arguably its equal in many ways.

Our suggestion? Watch both in one sitting for an emotional rollercoaster of a double-bill.

13. The Man Who Wasn't There

After writing and directing a string of films that were either cult favourites or box-office successes (and sometimes both), The Man Who Wasn't There could be regarded as the Coen brothers' first truly underrated movie. Maybe audiences weren't ready for such a somber and austere drama after relatively successful, quirkily funny films like The Big Lebowski and O Brother, Where Art Thou?

Billy Bob Thornton is outstanding as Ed, a sullen barber who lives in small town California, attempts to blackmail $10,000 from a local businessman called Big Dave (James Gandolfini), only for it all to go horribly wrong. Then he discovers that his alcoholic wife (Frances McDormand) was having an affair with him. And then his wife is arrested for Big Dave's murder. From there, things just keep getting worse for Ed.

The Coen brothers are particularly good at directing these prowling, noir-ish dramas, like their debut, Blood Simple, or 2007's No Country For Old Men, where foolish decisions have far-reaching and deadly consequences. Roger Deakins, who later shot No Country For Old Men, captures the 40s setting perfectly and, in tandem with Thornton's performance, creates an atmosphere of palpable sadness and regret.

This bleak tone makes The Man Who Wasn't There one of the Coens' less accessible films, but it's arguably one of their most mature and powerful.

12. Das Experiment

A German thriller based on the Stanford Prison Experiment, Das Experiment sees a prison being constructed in the middle of a research laboratory. Said prison is a convincing one, right down to bars on the windows and cameras watching every move. And then 20 people are recruited to play the prisoners and guards.

The setup sees the guards being told to keep everyone in line without resorting to violence, while the prisoners are given a set of rules they need to follow. If you quit, you don't get paid, but all the participants can leave whenever they want to.

We wouldn't ordinarily look to tell you so much about the setup in one of these descriptions, but it feels important here. Because it was that setup that convinced us to rent the DVD many moons ago, and Olivier Hirschbiegel's movie very much makes the most of it. We'll tell you nothing else about it if it's all the same, other than Hirschbiegel would also make 2004's Downfall, and thus is a key contributor to 5% of all the videos on YouTube.

11. Joy Ride

The tragic death of Paul Walker has led some to seek out some of his earlier work they may have missed. We've been talking about the work of director John Dahl a lot during this series of lookbacks, and Joy Ride (released under the title Roadkill in the UK) is perhaps the last of his run of excellent, underappreciated thrillers (if you're looking for our now-almost-weekly Red Rock West plug, consider that box ticked).

With a nod to Duel (in much the same way that Jeepers Creepers nodded to it as well), Joy Ride sees a trio on a road trip, talking to a truck driver on their CB radio. Turns out he's the wrong truck driver to talk to, and when he gets on the wrong side of them, an at-times brilliant chase is set up.

Walker is one of the leads of the young cast here, along with Steve Zahn, and John Dahl proves adept at tightening the screw, bringing a level of tension to what could have been just another pedestrian, throwaway thriller. The first half is a lot better than the second, but the overall movie is still far better than the tame box cover and anonymous title would leave you to believe. It's a gem in Paul Walker's back catalogue.

10. Buffalo Soldiers

Buffalo Soldiers originally premiered at the Toronto movie Festival on September 9th 2001. The horrific events that took place in America two days later nixed any chance of it ever getting a wide release. Even when it got a limited rollout in America in early 2003, it generated some hostility.

Gregor Jordan's movie was always something of a risky project. A very funny satire centered on American military personnel in West Germany during the 1980s, the regiment in question are the focus of a lot of comedy, some of it quite dark. Even now, we're choosing our words carefully: so worried was Miramax about the movie's US release, that the roll-out date was put back five times before it finally got a run.

But the movie is both important and very, very good. Ed Harris is excellent here, leading a cast that also includes Joaquin Phoenix and Anna Paquin. It's a very black comedy at times, and is about as far removed from an army recruitment movie as you can find. It's far more interesting for that though, and deserves to be seen.

9. Lantana

In its native Australia, Lantana was richly rewarded. It won a host of AFI awards, and did good box office as well. It earned a small release in the US, but most of us elsewhere on the planet were left to import the DVD from our Australian retailer of choice.

It was worth it, though. Appreciating that any description of a movie as a collection of disparate characters being interlinked by a central event immediately invokes the best work of Robert Altman, Lantana is nonetheless a rich, deep, yet accessible drama. You'll find Geoffrey Rush and Kerry Armstrong in the movie, yet director Ray Lawrence is careful to give each of his characters enough screentime to get across their part of the proverbial jigsaw.

It's absorbing movie theater, tightened to just under a two hour running time. And by the time it's done, it's explored a multitude of themes, fleshed out a lot of interesting characters, and if you're anything like us, left you hoping that Ray Lawrence would make more films.

8. Hedwig And The Angry Inch

Fed up of anodyne musicals, and wish someone would fire a rocket into the midst of them all? Long before The Book Of Mormon found its way to the stage, Hedwig And The Angry Inch landed in a few cinemas, and it's been building a small but entirely correct following of fans ever since.

It's based on a stage musical, adapted and directed by John Cameron Mitchell, who also takes the lead role. That lead role sees him as a transgendered East German rock singer, whose sex change operation goes wrong, leaving Hedwig with the 'angry inch' of the title.

The movie has a very human heart to it, but also a collection of off-the-wall songs and narrative turns that mark it out as a feature with no shortage of identity. It's also, arguably, the kind of movie you watch once, and immediately want to watch a dozen times again afterwards. Not to all tastes? Most certainly. But the most interesting, subversive, and moving screen musical of the decade? It's certainly worthy of a shout.

7. No Man's Land

We're always in two minds whether to include films that won an Oscar in these lists, and No Man's Land did just that. It took home the prize for Best Foreign Language movie, and with good reason. But not for the first time, we're left wondering: who still talks about it? We concluded that the answer to that was not enough people, hence it makes its way here.

No Man's Land is a Bosnian war drama, that spends its time with a trio of wounded soldiers in the trenches during the Bosnian war. They're not in the safest place anyway, but then we discover that one of them is lying on a buried land mine. If he moves, the mine goes off.

We then follow the effort to save the trio and diffuse the bomb, but the tensions and horrors are never far away. With a large cast and a running time under 100 minutes, No Man's Land explores the human beings and the situation they're in, and emerges as one of the decade's very best war films. It doesn't just deserve the Oscar it won. It deserves more people seeking it out. Hence, it's here.

6. A.I.: Artificial Intelligence

Although the overseas take eventually pushed A.I. into profit, the movie's $78m take in the US was something of a disappointment - particularly given the movie's pedigree and $100m budget. Adapted from a short story by British author Brian Aldiss, A.I. was famously a project first undertaken by Stanley Kubrick, before Spielberg took over following Kubrick's death in 1999.

A.I.'s critics sometimes used its history as a stick to beat it with, describing it as an awkward collision of Kubrick's cold intellect and Spielberg's popcorn sentimentality. Yet it's this collision which makes the movie so interesting; Haley Joel Osment is a typically starry-eyed, beatific young protagonist from a Spielberg movie, yet the odyssey he goes on is almost unrelentingly dark. A robot on a Pinocchio (or Roy Batty)-like mission to become a real boy, Osment's David is abandoned by his parents and gradually learns how cruel and harsh the wider world really is.

Even A.I.'s conclusion, dismissed by some as a syrupy coda too far, could also be subjected to a far more somber interpretation, as Roger Ebert pointed out when he rewatched the movie and wrote a new, more sympathetic review shortly after its release. Full of beautiful designs and haunting moments, A.I. is rich with ideas and disquieting notions.

Not only does it ask familiar science fiction questions about the nature of consciousness and our responsibility to our creations, but it also dares to suggest that, if we were to make artificially-intelligent machines, they'd probably end up being considerably more gentle and humane than us.

5. Ghost World

Barely distributed in American cinemas, Terry Zwigoff's Ghost World had to make do with a growing cult audience instead. Starring Thora Birch and Scarlett Johansson, it's a wryly observed and extremely funny account of how painful it is to grow up - especially if you don't happen to be one of the cool kids at school.

Thora Birch and Scarlett Johansson are both perfect as the movie's two leads, Enid and Becky, while Steve Buscemi's on typically quirky form as Seymour, a lonely single man who befriends the former following a prank phone call.

Director Terry Zwigoff, who co-wrote this adaptation of Daniel Clowes' own comic book, is a master of capturing off-beat, outsider characters, from his documentaries, Louie Bluie and Crumb, to the comic anarchy of Bad Santa, his biggest hit. Ghost World is no exception, and thanks to its charm and wit, it's easily the best teen movie of the era.

4. The Piano Teacher

Although it's a drama rather than a horror movie, there's an honesty and brutality to Michael Haneke's The Piano Teacher that makes it almost painful to watch. Isabelle Huppert plays Erika, a middle-aged professional pianist who becomes infatuated with one of her teenage students.

Adapted from Elfriede Jelinek's novel of the same name, Haneke's movie hums with tension and unease, and it has certain elements in common with Darren Aronofsky's more operatic, fantastical Black Swan - both are about lonely women domineered by their mothers, and whose buttoned-down facades hide a dark reservoir of violent desire.

3. Shaolin Soccer

It could be argued that a Hong Kong movie that made $42m in the US is too successful to be underrated, but that figure's a drop in the ocean compared with the $213m made by Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon a year earlier. Besides, director, writer and star Stephen Chow soon eclipsed his own international success with the even bigger Kung Fu Hustle in 2004 - though for us, Shaolin Soccer's the funnier of the two.

Chow stars as a kung fu master who marries his martial arts skills with football, and sets up a team to enter a tournament in Hong Kong. Like a comic book sprung dementedly to life, Shaolin Soccer is stuffed with larger-than-life characters and improbable feats of physicality, and it has to be said that the sheer pace and charm of Chow's movie is infectious. Suspect tactics, brutal tackles and footballs kicked hard enough to knock opponents down like skittles are just a few of the highlights in what is surely one of the funniest sports comedies ever made.

2. The Pledge

Sean Penn's third movie as director features a stunning cast, with Jack Nicholson in the lead and Aaron Eckhart, Helen Mirren, Vanessa Redgrave and Mickey Rourke among the supporting players. Nicholson plays a retired, weary detective who's drawn into a fresh mystery when a young girl is discovered in the snowy countryside nearby. Despite his better judgment, the former detective gives into the teary demands of the dead girls' mother, and pledges to track down the killer.

As the detective pad into the clues surrounding the case, he becomes increasingly obsessed by the murderer's identity, and stoops to some extremely amoral, disturbing methods in an attempt to catch him. Nicholson's performance is remarkable here, full of doubt and desperation - ultimately, the movie isn't so much a conventional serial killer thriller, as much as a character study about an ageing man willing to go to any length to find what he's searching for.

1. My Sassy Girl

This. This is just the kind of movie that you hopefully read lists like this for: to find an undiscovered gem that enters the running as one of your favorite ever movies.

Let's deal with the remake first: avoid it as though it were poisoned with the elixir of Ratner. It's not that it's awful, in fairness, but it's much, much less interesting than the movie it's based on.

For My Sassy Girl, the 2001 South Korean vintage, is superb. The genesis of the movie lay in a series of tales that Ho-sik Kim posted on the internet, which he subsequently turned into a novel, and were subsequently adapted for movie. It talks about his meeting of a mysterious and not particularly friendly girl, and the complicated relationship between the pair.

There's a good deal of ambiguity lying underneath, and the character of the girl herself (we never learn her name, but that's as much as we're really going to tell you about her) is layered, interesting, three dimensional, and utterly, utterly one to root for. And that in itself is complicated: few could take such an unsympathetic character as Jun Ji-hyun does here and turn her into someone quite the opposite. The writing is a major contributor too of course, but the pairing of Cha Tae-hyun and Ji-hyun is exemplary.

If you had to categorise the movie in a genre, then perhaps romantic comedy is closest. But those two words may well deter a whole bunch of people hunting for a moving, unpredictable movie about two rounded characters.

Were this site Den Of Geek Korea, then we wouldn't need to put My Sassy Girl at the top of this list. It's one of the highest grossing films of all time in its home nation, and a massive hit across much of East Asia. In the UK? It has a few advocates, but not enough.

Ignore the title, and ignore the genre. Just watch it. My Sassy Girl might just become one of your favorite films too.

See also: 

The top 25 underappreciated films of 2000

The 250 underappreciated films of the 1990s

Universal Pictures and Legendary Pictures have confirmed the casting line-up for Duncan Jones' upcoming movie take on the Warcraft videogame. And as it turns out, some of the rumours that were doing the rounds had just a little substance to them.

The movie is now set to star Ben Foster, Travis Fimmel (from the Vikings TV show), Paula Patton (Mission: Impossible - Ghost Protocol), Rob Kazinskey (Pacific Rim) and Toby Kebbell (The Counsellor). Furthermore, discussions are nearly done with Dominic Cooper - soon to be seen again in Captain America: The Winter Soldier - as well.

The movie has recently been pushed back to a March 11th 2016 release date - you can blame Star Wars: Episode VII for that - but Jones (who has re-written the script) starts filming in January.

We're looking forward to this one, and as we hear more, we'll keep you posted...

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We might be going out on a limb here, but we suspect that 2014 is the year that Ghostbusters 3, in one form or another, finally gets going. You don't need us to tell you that the movie has been in gestation for a very, very long time.

The latest we'd heard on it was the rumour that both Jonah Hill and Emma Stone had been offered key roles in the new Ghostbusters movie. They were being offered the roles of Jeremy and Anna in the movie, and SchmoesKnow is now reporting that Emma Stone for one has turned down the role.

Furthermore, the site reports that Jonah Hill is still to decide whether he wants in or not, with its source saying that "Sony wants two big stars signed on or they will not green light the picture".

We await further developments with interest, The one certainty thus far about Ghostbusters 3 is that Bill Murray is seemingly going nowhere near it...

SchmoesKnow.

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