Nick Fury, Agent Of S.H.I.E.L.D. (1998)

When international terrorist group HYDRA steal the cryogenically-frozen body of their dead leader, Baron Von Strucker (Campbell Lane) from a S.H.I.E.L.D. facility, it's time to bring grizzled Cold War veteran Nick Fury (David Hasselhoff) out of retirement.

HYDRA wants to use the "Death's Head" virus in Strucker's body to hold Manhattan to ransom, but Fury and his team are determined to shut them down.

Unfortunately, Fury falls foul of a trap set by Strucker's daughter, Andrea (Sandra Hess) aka Viper, and now only has 48 hours to save the world before the deadly toxin in his system claims his life.

Nick Fury, Agent Of S.H.I.E.L.D. was a TV movie from 1998 (the same year that Blade was released, the first comic book superhero film that 'got it right' in my opinion, and still several years ahead of the mainstream acceptance of superheroes as valid movie fodder with Sam Raimi's Spider-Man in 2002) that has finally been released on DVD over here - albeit a cheap-and-cheerful, vanilla, no-frills release.

Written by comic book fanatic David S Goyer, who also wrote the Blade trilogy and TV series, Dark City, the Dark Knight trilogy, Ghost Rider: Spirit Of Vengeance, Man of Steel, Da Vinci's Demons etc, the plot is solid TV fare - and clearly setting itself up as a possible pilot for a series - although the dialogue leaves a lot to be desired, lurching from arch and melodramatic to cheesy and clichéd.

This telemovie has taken a lot of flak over the years, but it needs to be a considered as a artefact of its time.

It stays pretty faithful to the comic book origins of Fury and S.H.I.E.LD., featuring a lot of recognisable character names as well as an impressive rendition of the helicarrier (more industrial than the current incarnation in the big budget movies, more like a flying battleship, but at least it doesn't keep falling out of the sky) as well as Life Model Decoys and smaller bits of spy-fi kit that add nice detail to this 90-minute action-adventure.

Not sure why the HYDRA goons looked like the Observers from Fringe, but it's a striking and memorable look, so why not?

Nick Fury, Agent Of S.H.I.E.L.D. is also clearly a kid-friendly movie, designed for watching over a family meal around the television, so everything is very heightened and larger than life (Andrea Von Strucker is basically a pantomime villain with an outrageous accent and a propensity for over-the-top 'evil laughter').

While it takes itself seriously, it isn't a film to be taken seriously.

The Hoff is great as Nick Fury, a towering presence and wholly convincing, tough, deadpan, one-eyed and cigar-chewing like he was in the comics I read growing up.

Personally I wouldn't have been disappointed if this had spawned a TV show back at the turn of the century - it's a hell of a lot better than the Spider-Man series with  Nicholas Hammond, and even the Incredible Hulk (which usually skates by on rose-tinted nostalgia) from the late '70s.

There wasn't any other real live-action, superhero material on TV when Nick Fury, Agent Of S.H.I.E.L.D. was released originally and, for its time, I still rate this as a success.

The Conjuring: The Devil Made Me Do It (2021)

It's 1981, Brookfield, Connecticut, and the Warrens - Ed (Patrick Wilson) and Lorraine (Vera Farmiga) - are attending the violent exorcism of eight-year-old David Glatzel (Julian Hilliard), who has seemingly been possessed by a demonic waterbed (I kid you not).

In the process, Ed suffers a heart attack as he sees the entity jump into Arne Johnson (Ruairi O'Connor), the boyfriend of David's older sister, Debbie (Sarah Catherine Hook).

A month later, Ed wakes up in hospital, croaking out to Lorraine that he saw Arne get taken over.

Unfortunately, just as this is going on, Arne is in the process of stabbing to death his drunk landlord Bruno Sauls (Ronnie Gene Blevins) then wandering off in a trance.

Arne is arrested and charged with murder, however Ed and Lorraine are determined to prove to the court, in his defence, that Arne was "demonically possessed".

This sets in motion a supernatural procedural, where Ed and Lorraine head round the country, following clues to prove their claims.

Having found a "Satanic totem" under the Glatzel's house, Ed and Lorraine are directed to a retired priest, Kastner (Fringe's ever-wonderful John Noble), who believes the totem was deliberately placed there by the Disciples of The Ram cult (which also has connections to the Annabelle doll, although sadly this wasn't explored) to sow chaos.

The Warrens also note similarities between their "case" and that of a murdered girl and her missing friend in Danvers, Massachusetts. Lorraine manages to crack the case wide open for the sceptical police with her "mystical abilities", earning the trust of Sergeant Clay (Keith Arthur Bolden), who grants them access to the official files on the murder.

This sends them deeper into supernatural territory and the couple's first encounter with the all-too-human, chaotic evil Satanist called The Occultist (Eugenie Bondurant).

I like that scriptwriter David Leslie Johnson-McGoldrick was trying something different with The Conjuring: The Devil Made Me Do It, rather than the expected haunted house horror of the previous two chapters in this franchise.

However, I don't feel it worked as well. While overall the film was a fun horror flick, the trail of mystical clues seemed a bit preposterous and Lorraine's supernatural abilities rather fortuitous and fool proof.

Part of my problem with this movie, unfortunately, comes down to my continued distain for the fact that real-life snake oil salesmen are being sold to a gullible public as genuine paranormal superheroes.

The first act of The Devil Made Me Do It appears to stick closest to the reality of events (with added demons and magic, of course), but the rest is just Hollywood bullshit.

In the real world the judge very promptly threw out the whole "the devil made me do it" defence by Arne's lawyer, as it had no grounding in law and was unprovable.

As acknowledged briefly at the end of the film, Arne was sentenced to 10–20 years in prison for first-degree manslaughter (of which he served about five years).

It's a pity more of the movie didn't focus on the proceedings of the case - but then facts would have got in the way of a good story.

Of course, that didn't stop a certain pair of publicity hounds cashing in on all this nationwide news coverage, eventually writing a book about the case.

I'm sure that's what put me off watching this most recent entry in the Warren strand of The Conjuring Universe for so long.

Just because a film says it's "based on true events" doesn't mean it's true. For instance, just because it depicts an exorcism that really took place doesn't mean demons, ghosts, black magic et al actually exist.

As charismatic as Wilson and Farmiga are as the Warrens, I can't help but feel, personally, that I'd enjoy these particular tales with wholly fictional participants, so the clash of crass reality and glossy fantasy wasn't so distracting.

All that aside, like other entries in the Conjuring Universe, The Devil Made Me Do It is really well-made and, under the steady hand of director Michael Chaves, it rattles through its 112-minute runtime without any bloat.

Emerald Gordon Wulf: Now this is real!

The unsung hero, though, of The Devil Made Me Do It is the incredible contortionist Emerald Gordon Wulf, who doubled for David Glatzel during the exorcism scene and pulled off some unbelievably terrifying physical twists and turns that should have won her an Oscar for those moments alone.

These physical portrayals of the horrors of demonic possession - rather than using elastic CGI - make those scenes so much more impactful and were certainly the stand-out action beats of the movie.

By the look of things, the next - and final - Warren-centric Conjuring film (Last Rites) is reverting to the more traditional haunted house format, as the self-proclaimed "demonologists" take on the Smurl haunting.

So, that's good news.

Dawn Of The Planet Of The Apes (2014)

Director Matt Reeves and Twentieth Century Fox have pulled off a cunning bait-and-switch with Dawn Of The Planet Of The Apes, getting the summer blockbuster crowds flocking to see to a sub-titled foreign film!

Because that's essentially what Dawn Of The Planet Of The Apes is with almost as little English spoken dialogue as an Arnold Schwarzenegger flick, about 75 per cent of the movie is the apes signing - or grunting - to each other, translated as sub-titles.

And the apes are magnificent. There is no denying the brilliance of the special effects and the emotional depth the actors manage to portray through motion-capture.

The script by Mark Bomback, Rick Jaffa and Amanda Silveris also heavily biased towards the simian elements of the story with the humans being two-dimensional at best.

We have followed the key apes - such as Caesar (Andy Serkis) and Koba (Toby Kebbell) - from Rise Of The Planet Of The Apes and they are given solid character arcs. However, in stark contrast, the humans we meet for the first time here we never really get to know anything of any substance about and so they generally come across as broad stereotypes.

Gary Oldman's character, Dreyfus, for instance adds nothing to the story, except his final act of destruction which could have been committed by any of the nameless supporting characters.

It's ten years since the outbreak of simian flu (as seen at the end of Rise) and the apes have made themselves a nice home in the woods outside of San Francisco, across the Golden Gate Bridge, while human civilization has collapsed and been at war with itself for increasingly less resources.

Despite living just across the bridge from each other the apes haven't seen any humans for two years and the humans in San Francisco seem even more oblivious to the colony of apes (I know this is all post-apocalypty, but I did find this a bit hard to believe).

The humans need the energy from an hydroelectric dam up in the forest (to power their iPads mainly) and so send out a small party to scout it out. The group includes Malcolm (Jason Clarke), his son Alexander (Kodi Smit-McPhee), Malcolm's girlfriend Ellie (Keri Russell) and fine Fringe alum Kirk Acevedo as the required troublemaker - and they unexpectedly run into the apes. Naturally hilarity ensues.

Caesar reluctantly comes to trust the humans, while scarred-up Koba hates them with a white-hot fury and does his best to sabotage any moves to establish respect or friendship between the two neighbouring colonies.

Most of the humans - barring Malcolm and his make-shift family - aren't overly fond of the apes either and so inevitably tensions come to a head and conflict breaks out.

The storyline of Dawn Of The Planet Of The Apes isn't particularly clever or original and ultimately it comes off feeling like a bridging film between the fantastic Rise Of The Planet Of The Apes and whatever is coming next in the franchise.

Also, for a summer blockbuster (and especially one with a surprising amount of subtitles), it's a very "talky" film, with some noticeably slow patches between the fast-paced action sequences.

In hindsight, this is an Apes film for lovers of the franchise that, despite its big build-up, seems quite small in its execution, portraying what is presumably a key moment in the development of (this iteration of) The Planet Of The Apes, rather than being the self-contained epic some might have been expecting.

Dawn Of The Planet Of The Apes is enjoyable, but not to the same degree as Rise. It goes part way towards realising the potential set out in the original film, but with the inescapable feeling that there is still a lot more to come.

The main takeaway from Dawn Of The Planet Of The Apes for me was a hunger to see where the franchise goes next.