Portland Street Blues (1998)

During the tense period leading up to the handover of Hong Kong from the United Kingdom to China, one of the stand-out film franchises was Andrew Lau's massively successful Young & Dangerous. Based on the popular Teddy Boy comic books by Cowman and Dickey Yau, they chronicled the careers of a group of young Hong Kong men as they progressed through the ranks of the city's triad organisations.

So popular was the series that the first three films were rushed into cinemas in the space of three months. A fourth followed one year later, and to satisfy audience demand a spin-off was released to expand on the background of one of Young & Dangerous 4's new characters - the Mongkok-based gang leader Sister Thirteen, played by Sandra Ng.

Portland Street Blues follows Tsui Sui Sui (Ng), the daughter of a low-level triad member whose youthful scams lead her into serious trouble. They eventually lead her into a leadership role within the Hung Hing triad, and a power struggle between rival gang members.

St Vincent (2014)

Oliver Bronstein (Jaeden Lieberher) is a bookish, under-confident 12 year-old who moves to Brooklyn with his mother Maggie (Melissa McCarthy) after she separates from his father. With Maggie working long shifts at the hospital, Oliver needs minding after school - which is where Vincent (Bill Murray) comes in: a grumpy, unpleasant gambling addict who lives next door.

You will guess many of St Vincent's story beats pretty much as soon as you start watching it; it is that kind of a film. It is as if writer/director Theodore Melfi sat down with a checklist of film clichés and just slowly started working his way through them one by one. The precocious child wise beyond his years? Check. The grumpy old loser with a heart of gold? Check. Scene where the old man takes the kid to inappropriate places for comedic effect? Check. I am reasonably certain that anyone that has seen movies before has probably seen much of St Vincent in something else.

Of course we have never seen Bill Murray do it, and it is his performance - and those of his co-stars - that manage to lift St Vincent from tedious chore to something much more enjoyable.

Doctor Who: "A Land of Fear"

It is 8 August 1964, and time for another episode of Doctor Who.

The Doctor (William Hartnell) lands the TARDIS is what he thinks is 1963 London, to forcibly eject Ian (William Russell) and Barbara (Jacqueline Hill) from his ship. It soon becomes apparent, however, that he is a few hundred miles and a few hundred years off course - and the TARDIS crew soon become unwilling participants in the French Revolution.

Doctor Who's first production block (what we retroactively think of as series one or season one) comes to a close with Dennis Spooner's "The Reign of Terror", a six part historical serial that brings the Doctor and his companions into contact with such historical figures as Maximilien Robespierre and Napoleon Bonaparte. It is the first of four serials written by Spooner, who was a major figure in 1960s British television, and also features the first-ever location shoot Doctor Who received.

Superman IV: The Quest for Peace (1987)

When a boy writes a letter to Superman (Christopher Reeve) pleading for him to intervene in the world's escalating nuclear arms race, Superman decides to take matters into his own hands and rid the planet of all nuclear weapons. Meanwhile Lex Luthor (Gene Hackman) escapes from prison and immediately sets about developing a new scheme to destroy Superman: cloning the Man of Steel and creating the deadly Nuclear Man to kill him.

When Supergirl failed at the box office in 1984, producers Alexander and Ilya Salkind elected to abandon the Superman movie franchise. They held onto the television rights - ultimately making Superboy in 1988 - but the film rights they on-sold to Menahem Golan and Yoram Globus, who were producing a growing number of American action films under the banner of Cannon Films. Golan and Globus successfully pitched a fourth Superman film to star Christopher Reeve, on the promise that he could have a hand in developing its story and by promising to fund any other film project that Reeve chose. With Reeve onboard they managed to sell the distribution rights to a new Superman to Warner Bros for $40 million dollars. From there it was a quick step to re-sign Gene Hackman as Lex Luthor, and appoint a new director: Sidney J. Furie.

From there it pretty much all went horribly wrong.

The Pull List: 2 March 2016, Part I

Pretty much the most consistently brilliant Marvel comic of recent years was Mark Waid and Chris Samnee's stunning run on Daredevil. They told crisp, brilliantly plotted stories with simple, clean artwork and absolutely brilliant panel layouts. They got to the core of Matt Murdock's character and found fresh angles and surprises for him from the beginning of Waid's run - originally with Paolo Rivera - right through to the end about five years later.

Last year they wrapped up their Daredevil run, but thankfully they have kept the band together - including excellent colourist Matthew Wilson. Their new project launched today: an all-new monthly volume of Black Widow. It is a tantalising prospect: Marvel's best creative team taking on one of the company's most in-fashion characters. Natasha Romanov has been a regular fixture of Marvel Comics for decades, but it is only really since her feature film debut in Iron Man 2 (played by Scarlett Johansson) that she has shot into the upper echelons of popularity with many comic book readers.

This first issue is stunning. It is short on dialogue but incredibly high on action. Samnee is now actively co-writing the book with Waid, and his influence shows. This is a much more visual experience than Daredevil was - and Daredevil was already pretty damned sensational. Matthew Wilson uses a deliberately limited colour palette to accentuate each action beat as it occurs.

This is a faultless opening to what I hope is a long and successful run. Trust me: you want to read this comic book. It is going to astonishingly good. (5/5)

Marvel. Written by Mark Waid and Chris Samnee. Art by Chris Samnee. Colours by Matthew Wilson.

Under the cut: reviews of Doctor Who, Another Castle and The Omega Men.

N64:20 #17: Star Wars: Episode I Racer (1999)

In 2016 the Nintendo 64 turns 20 years old. It was Nintendo's third videogame console, produced to succeed the enormously successful SNES. Upon its release in 1996 Time magazine claimed it was "machine of the year". While the N64 failed to best Sony's enormously popular PlayStation - a console in whose early development Nintendo had a key hand - it still sold almost 33 million units worldwide and hosted some of the greatest videogames ever made. To celebrate its anniversary I'm counting down my top 20 N64 videogames; not necessarily the best titles released on the format, but definitely my personal favourites.

It is safe to say that when Star Wars: Episode I opened in cinemas around the world in May 1999, that the audience response was somewhat disappointed. The 16 years since the release of Return of the Jedi had created an anticipation that was effectively unsurpassable. Producer/director George Lucas could have made the best film of his career and it seems likely audiences would have still felt let down. The fact is he made the active hands-down worst film of his career, so it is not like we can blame the viewers for the poor esteem in which The Phantom Menace continues to be held. The story was weak. The acting was wooden. The digital sets and characters are made things look weirdly fake and artificial. A lengthy racing sequence in the middle was singled-out for particularly emphatic scorn. The pod race was described derisively as something out of a videogame.

Rather fittingly, while the film remains a punching bag among movie enthusiasts, the videogame-like pod race sequence actually did make for a pretty stunning videogame. LucasArts produced it themselves, releasing it alongside the film in May 1999 and making it the best aspect of the entire Phantom Menace experience.

Supergirl (1984)

When the powerful omegahedron is lost, the people of Argo City are doomed to extinction within days if it cannot be recovered. Kara Zor-El (Helen Slater), the cousin of Superman, embarks on a quest to Earth to find and retrieve it. Unfortunately it has already been taken by the aspiring witch Selina (Faye Dunaway), who plans to use the omegahedron's immense power to take over the world.

After box office returns for Superman III resulted in disappointment, producers Ilya and Alexander Salkind took the opportunity to freshen up the five year-old Superman franchise with a new protagonist, a new angle and a fresh director. It is arguable that such a re-imagining was unnecessary. Superman remained a popular character generally, and the lower revenue from Superman III (US$60m domestically compared to US $108m for Superman II) was likely less to do with viewer fatigue and more with its 1983 release wedged between Return of the Jedi and the latest James Bond film.

Nonetheless the Salkinds moved ahead with a new chapter in the franchise, introducing Helen Slater as Supergirl and launching on her own big-screen adventure. It was not a success.

Frog Dreaming (1985)

Cody (Henry Thomas) is an orphaned American teenager living with his guardian in country Australia. When he stumbles upon Donkegin Pond in the middle of the bush, and learns about its purported monstrous inhabitant, he cannot help from investigating - even if it means getting himself and his friends into trouble, or even risking his life.

Frog Dreaming is an Australian children's film directed by Brian Trenchard-Smith, who took over the production mid-shoot when its investors demanding the firing of original director Russell Hagg. It featured young American actor Henry Thomas, best known for his lead performance in E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial, in an attempt to gain some international sales. While it did achieve those sales it received something of a haphazard international release, retitled The Quest in the USA and The Go-Kids in the United Kingdom. More recently it has become something of a half-forgotten nostalgia piece for Australian thirty-somethings, and thanks to a DVD release from Umbrella Entertainment its fans finally have a chance to see it again.