I'm currently under the weather, and due to this bout of man flu, I set out today in search of a film which I could relate to in my present state.

Melancholia is a film about depression and the end of the world. Written and directed by Lars "Heil" Von Trier, it stars Kirsten Dunst as the young melancholic Justine. The film portrays her family life, starting with her wedding, which just happens to turn into the worst wedding ever, and it's all her fault for being a miserable bitch. Then there's the second half of the film which stars Charlotte Gainsbourg as her sister, Claire, who's scared that the world will end when a planet collides with it. Then a planet collides with it. I don't feel bad about ruining the ending of the film because Lars Von Trier does just that with the first 5 minutes.

The film brilliantly portrays depression during the wedding scenes. Kirsten Dunst's every nuance is spot on, and the way that all of her family don't quite understand her condition and just expect her to cheer up is very well observed. It's also a very good depiction of how drama goes down at an event like a wedding, with lots of people going off into different rooms and talking about it.

The plot is very hard to define, meandering, and grandiose. There are an awful lot of dead-ends and superfluous scenes. The film is split into two "chapters", and these feel quite disconnected. Justine seems like a different person in the second chapter, compared to her almost absent-minded demeanour in the first.

The second chapter goes on about a planet called Melancholia that's going to collide with the earth. We don't really hear about this until half way through the film, at which point everything that was set up in the first chapter is forgotten about. We never meet Justine's husband or mother again, despite them playing very big parts in the first half.

The characters have a tendency to do things almost inexplicably, the highlight of which was Justine practically raping a young man who I'm certain played a retarded boy in another film, though he could just have one of those faces.

The first half of the film is good, if a little dull. The second half is just a bit silly. In summary, Lars Von Trier has done it again. And by that I of course mean he's created yet another pretentious fuck-puddle.

Robert Zemeckis brings us this animated re-imagining of the classic Dickens tale of Ebenezer Scrooge and poor crippled Tiny Tim. With an all-star cast including Jim Carrey, Gary Oldman, Colin Firth, and Bob Hoskins, we should all be in for a delightful Christmas treat, right?

Set in 19th century London, Scrooge is a tight-fisted penny-pincher with no interest in Christmas. I know what you're thinking. No, he's not Jewish. One Christmas Eve, he's visited by the ghost of his late business partner, who tells him that he's been bad, and to expect visits from three other ghosts; The Ghost of Christmas Past, The Ghost of Christmas Present, and The Ghost of Christmas Yet to Come. Later that night, he is indeed visited by these ghosts, and they systematically mentally break Scrooge down and convert him into a corporate whore who frivolously spends his money on nonsense and embarks on over-the-top chase sequences just to make it seem like the extra £5 audiences spend on a 3D screening is worth it.

The biggest problem the film suffers is that it moves at a blistering pace. It really flies through the story, and because of this, you never really get to meet any other characters except Scrooge. Even major characters like Bob Cratchet are side-lined thanks to the speed. There's no way you could read the book at the speed this film moves at, though I get the feeling Robert Zemeckis tried his very hardest to do so, because the parts of the script which he hasn't straight adapted from the book are very poorly written. It's like he's heard a few of the words they used back in the oldene dayse, but has no idea about the context and grammar, so just slips them into more modern sentences and phrases. You get me, chap?

There's a huge chase sequence where Scrooge is fleeing the final ghost, and I despise this scene. Not only is it a complete fabrication of the mind of whichever Disney executive forced Mr Zemeckis to write it into the script, but it's completely unnecessary, unexplained, and most importantly, inappropriate. It's like every animated film has a quota to meet of one over-the-top chase scene, and a Charles Dickens adaptation is no exception. More annoyingly, if this scene was removed, the film would be much better for it, because it would free up room to sort out the pacing issues.

The design of The Ghost of Christmas Past is very strange and quite frankly, poop. It has a fireball for a head, and makes unnecessary movements so that we can see his flaming hair flicker. Yes, you have some very nice fire animations there, Disney. Now can we get on with the film?

Also, the film ends very suddenly, and cuts out a lot of the parts of the story which tie things up. Most noticeably, we don't get to see the iconic scenes of Scrooge going round the to Cratchet household with a huge turkey. Instead, we get Bob Cractchet summarising that Scrooge is nice now, even to the disabled one.

The tone of this version is darker than most before it, and I do commend it for this. Some scenes are very well done, particularly the part where Scrooge is presented with his own grave, and the ground underneath him gives way, leaving him dangling 6 feet above his own casket.

Some nice ideas in there, but all things considered, the Muppets did it better.

The Inbetweeners Movie picks up where the ever-so-popular TV series, coincidently also named The Inbetweeners, left off. Our fateful foursome take a lads holiday to Malia, where they hope to get their hands on some boobs, sex, pussay, and clunge.

Let me start off by saying the screen I watched this at was attrocious. There was a weird buzzing sound throughout and it was full of the most disrespectful pieces of shit you could ever hope to come across, so this could have had an adverse effect on my opinion of the film. If I seem a little harsh, blame St Helens.

The film begins in the way I was dreading the entire film would play out; with a disjointed collection of references to the series for cheap laughs. There's Carly jokes, Jay getting caught wanking jokes, Mr Gilbert being a dick jokes, and basically everything that they already did in the series. My palm was firmly planted in my face during all of this.

Thankfully, once it's clumbsily tied up all the loose ends, they finally make their way abroad, and that's where things get good. Once the lads arrive, the jokes come thick and fast, much like the subject matter would in many cases. It brings back the beautiful form of the series; melding gross-out humour with cringe-worthy relatable antics. This is when the film really gets into its stride.

The boys bump into a gang of four girls, who for some reason (comedic, probably) latch onto their male Inbetweener counterpart. Will gets the pretty girl because they seem to like his weirdness, Simon gets a shoulder to cry on about Carly and someone to put up with his insecurity, Neil gets some stupid lass, and Jay gets a fat bird for irony's sake. Thus begin 4 half-arsed love stories.

As the film approaches the latter part, it starts to knock down a lot of these big set-piece comedy sequences it's set up along the way. Unfortunately most of these you can see coming a mile off, unless you've lost your glasses.

The ending is also quite soppy and a bit of a let down. It tries to go all serious and filmy and have a proper ending, and much like how the last episode of the series fell a bit flat, this did too.

Overall, it's a very funny film when it's doing what it knows best: being insanely over-the-top and yet still relatable. When it tries to have a go at the more cinematic conventions, it loses its way a touch. The plot is nothing to shout about, but it doesn't have to be because The Inbetweeners is all about the characters. If you loved the show, you'll love this, and if you didn't watch the show (you're weird) you'll still love this. Everyone should go and watch this right now. Just not in St Helens.

I begrudge calling this list a top 5 because it's really a list of some of the worst films I've ever seen in my life; most of which don't deserve to be top of anything. Alas, some people enjoy watching bad films just to laugh at how bad they are. Those people should stop just before the top 2 though. At that point, the peculiar people with a love for extreme gore will take over and get their sick kicks.

5. Mexican Werewolf In Texas (2005)

Where do I begin. This is like any other werewolf horror film really, except the budget isn't there to make anything convincing; neither the prosthetics nor the fear in the actors. I'll be honest, if you're going to check out any film from this list, skip this one. It's just bad. I only like it for the name.

4. Gutterballs (2008)



A lovely little gorefest which features a woman involuntarily giving anti-birth to a bowling pin. Kind of has a Final Destination vibe to it, but nowhere near as polished. The killer is a guy with a ball bag on his head. Also, some people 69 to death.

3. Troll 2 (1990)



This film is notorious on youtube. Type in "worst acting ever" and you'll see what I mean. Not gory in the slightest as the killers are all vegetarian, this film is just plain funny, although it is apparently tongue-in-cheek, which kind of ruins it a bit. You need to watch this simply as a rite of passage into the world of bad films.

2. The Devil's Experiment (1985)



Now things get serious. Part of the notorious Guinea Pig series, this short Japanese film is supposed to depict an experiment in the human thresholds of pain. It's actually just a couple of men torturing a woman in some of the most disturbing violence on film. The gore is so realistic in fact, that everyone's favourite smack-head Charlie Sheen reported the film makers to the FBI because he was convinced it was real (I think his grasp on reality was a little firmer back then too!).

1. August Underground's Mordum (2003)



This is the only film which has truly inflicted on me physical empathy with the characters. I spent the entire 20 minutes I could actually handle, retching my guts up, in perfect harmony with the woman on screen. This is supposed to be a simulated snuff film. It's actually just a bunch of fucked up people with a video camera, torturing, murdering, raping, and vomiting on some tied up people. It's regarded as one of the most disgusting films ever made, but it's not a film. Not unless the plot only kicks in past the point I turned it off. It's porn for the depraved.

The Tree of Life, starring, most notably, Brad Pitt and Sean Penn, won the Palm d'Or this year, and tells the story of a boy's relationship with his father.

The most succinct way of summing up this film is as follows: A brilliantly realistic, emotional story about a young boy growing up with his father, bookended with pretentious nonsense.

The first half an hour of this film is a convoluted mess that's supposed to represent the start of the world and evolution and everything else that happened before the start of the story. It does eventually settle down and get really quite good. Brad Pitt plays a father who's tough on his kids as he wants the best for them. As the boys get older, it becomes apparent that his attitudes are driving the family apart, and so he tries to correct the error of his ways.

The acting and dialogue is some of the most naturalistic I've ever seen, and really makes for a very touching (no paedo) story.

Definitely worth a watch as it's very different and very good, but not easy viewing by a long way. It's extremely 'art house', but I can't deny that I found it very entertaining. The middle part at least. The beginning and end are like the series Planet Earth edited by a Frenchman.

Machete is a film by Robert Rodriguez, the man who brought us such things as Spy Kids and the trailer for Machete, about a pissed off Mexican going on a vindictive rampage using 3 weapons in particular: a machete, a machine gun, and his penis.

Machete is an ex-federale (That's Mexican for policeman) who gets hired to assassinate a governmental candidate, only to be double-crossed and framed. He then goes and kills everyone.

A bit of background information: This film came about after a spoof trailer for it was included in the Grindhouse double-feature, produced by Rodriguez and Quentin Tarantino. The trailer was so popular that it was put into production as a full feature.

Much like Planet Terror (Rodriguez' half of Grindhouse), it takes great pleasure in over-the-top violence. The trouble is that Machete doesn't stick to it's Grindhouse roots, so most of this seems out of place and just bad. While it is very funny on the most part, it stinks of just taking the most popular aspects of Planet Terror and quadrupling the quantity at the cost of plot.

The trouble is that when you try to make something that's supposed to be "bad", you tread a very fine line between being parodic and actually being bad. Machete seems to have fallen into the latter. The writing is shockingly bad in parts, which leads me to believe that Mr Rodriguez got a touch confused. You're supposed to be making a parody of a grindhouse-style B-movie, not an actual grindhouse-style B-movie.

The all-star cast includes the likes of Steven Seagal, Robert De Niro, Jessica Alba and Lindsay Lohan. The fact that all of these people agreed to take part makes me think that no-one was really taking this film seriously; The first three for actually being in the film, and the last one because Rodriguez decided to cast her.

Ultimately, the film isn't so good. It seems to have been built around the trailer, with Rodriguez just filling in the gaps between each scene like he was connecting up the dots. Except instead of a pen he used excrement. Liberally.

Never has a title been more misleading. Happiness is a black comedy which revels in making light of the most lurid aspects of society. This is the darkest kind of humour. If you're laughing at anything darker than this, there's a reason you have no friends.

The film follows a variety of messed up characters, all of whom are connected in some way, as they face a crisis of sorts in their life. It takes place in a kind of psuedo-world where people don't have the filter that stops you saying things which you know will cut people deep. Add to this the use of clever contrasting cuts and inappropriately up-beat music, and you're left with an experience that's really quite unsettling, but in a more subtle way than a good horror film. It's unsettling because you're enjoying it.

Among the characters we have: a lonely middle-aged man who gets off by making dirty phone calls, a young woman looking for love but keeps finding it in the wrong places, an old married couple who have fallen out of love, and the crème de la crème, a paedophile who likes to rape his son's school friends. 'Crème' may have been a poor choice of words on reflection...

The way the film makes you perceive what's going on is very strange. It does the most shocking things you're likely to see outside of Lars Von Trier's filmography, but drags them out or words them or even just things as subtle as edits them in a way which makes them humourous. Not laugh out loud funny though. You find yourself trying to stifle the giggles because you know you shouldn't be laughing. And then you'll finally crack a chuckle and feel like a complete bastard for it. It's mean like that.

With a run-time of 2 hours and 20 minutes, it's pretty long, but there aren't really any dull points. My only problem with it is that a lot of the story threads never really seem to end; they just dwindle out. Having said that, it's a very good film. Definitely an experience as I've never seen anything else like it.

How can you not want to see a film which ends with a 10 year old boy announcing to his entire family "I came!"

The summer is upon us, and with it comes months and months of boredom. Here's a list of shows which you can "acquire" to try and kill some time until your life starts again.

5. Testees

If you love over-the-top gross-out humour, you'll love this gem of a show. Tragically cancelled after it's first season, the show follows the lives of two friends who make a living from medical testing; often (coincidentally once an episode) with hilarious side-effects.

4. Garth Marenghi's Darkplace


Featuring a cast of very recognisable British comedy stars, Darkplace is a spoof horror series set in a haunted hospital. The show sets out to be intentionally shit, and is brilliantly funny and original because of it.

3. Community


The only programme on the list that's actually still on air (surprising, since everything good usually gets binned), currently awaiting its third series to begin, Community follows a gang of friends as they attend a community college. The series constantly subverts convention, and is very clever, as well as hilarious. Everyone should definitely be following this show.

2. Kenny Vs Spenny


Kenny Vs Spenny is (was) a reality series which follows two best friends as they compete(d) against each other in a variety of ridiculous challenges. You will die laughing at this show. The two stars constantly deny that anything is set up, which makes some of the more unbelievable things even funnier. This show is so good in fact, that Matt Stone and Trey Parker (The creators of South Park) stepped in to produce a series. Some of the more memorable competitions include: Who Can Drink The Most Beer?, Who Can Do The Biggest Fart?, Who Can Smoke The Most Weed?, Who Can Sit On A Cow The Longest?, among many others. Go watch it now.

1. Arrested Development


The best scripted programme ever made. Fuck 'The Wire'. The show follows a rich family, plunged into chaos as their property company is suspected of illegal doings. The show is amazingly cast, starring a very young Michael Cera (This is where he got that awkward teenager act he always insists on doing, except it makes sense because he's actually a teenager), David Cross, Jason Bateman, Will Arnett, among many others, including some star appearances from the likes of Ben Stiller and Zach Braff. It's astonishingly clever, so much so that you can't say you've properly watched it until you've seen it for at least the 3rd time, and every line will have you doubling over with hernia-inducing laughter. This is seriously the greatest TV show of all time.

In light of the tragic loss of Ryan Dunn, I've decided to review this; one of the only proper films he's actually been in. However, like other film reviewers, I won't be going easy due to the circumstances. Roger Ebert. Prick. Oh, I forgot to cough. Would you look at that.

Haggard stars Ryan Dunn aka Random Hero, Bam Margera, and pretty much everyone else involved in CKY, and was directed by Bam. It follows the supposedly true story of Dunn trying to move on with his life after he gets dumped by his girlfriend. And it's not serious at all.

The first big thing you'll notice is that none of them, except maybe Bam, are good actors. Some of them I would go as far as to say were piss-poor (I believe that's hyphenated). It's also not very well written, and rammed full of clichés, and just general flabbiness. Having said that, it's pretty damn funny, featuring the same kind of humour we've grown to love with Jackass. It was quite interesting to see how they integrated the humour of the stunts into a scripted film, but they manage it pretty well on the whole.

The way the film is constructed is very weird. It's identical to a CKY video, with lots of random cut-aways of time-lapse stuff, and skateboarding set to music, except instead of the meat of the film being stunts, it's a scripted story. I kind of enjoyed it, though found it hard to see the relevance of most of it, and some of the musical choices felt very out-of-place at times. I know Bam loves HIM (So much so that he adopts the name of its lead singer for his character in this film), but their music isn't as versatile as he likes to think it is.

Considering it's supposed to be a film about Dunn going through a bad time with his love life, Bam seems to be in the spotlight for most of it; something which, along with all the skateboarding cut-aways, I feel I can confidently put down to ego.

Overall, I really quite enjoyed it; though this is mostly down to me being a fan of the people involved. Shooting a film in the style of a skateboard video is quite unusual and unique, and it goes to show that amateur film-makers can do some good stuff with limited resources. I think the slap-dash approach added charm to the film and let me over-look many of the flaws.

I'm not going to say this is a good film, but it's definitely interesting and entertaining enough. If you're a fan of the CKY gang, you'll find lots more here than if you're not. It's like watching a home video; you recognise people all over the place. Don Vito looked so made up when he had two pretty, half-naked ladies sat next to him. He might have cracked a smile if his face didn't weigh so much.

Before I begin, I'd just like to apologise in advance if this review isn't up to the usual standard. I'm writing this just after watching the film and the will to live hasn't returned yet.


Sucker Punch is the story of a young girl who's framed for the murder of her sister by her step-dad and sent to a mental institution, which she decides she has to escape from, along with the other girls there, by exploring video-game-like fantasies.


Critic: Absolute pile of shit. Seriously, I've seen bad films but this was fucking atrocious. Poor acting; derivative action scenes; confusing, formulaic and quite frankly abhorrent plot; this film has huge steaming piles of them all. This is by far the worst film I've seen this year, and I watched Troll 2 this year. Apparently it's supposed to appeal to gamers, but they'll be severally disappointed since the only control they get is to press play on the DVD menu, and then be treated to a cinematic even Final Fantasy fans would have difficulty sitting through. I've tried so hard to do a proper analytical review of this film but it's impossible. It's like trying to do an autopsy on someone who fell into a wood-chipper.

That review not for you? Try one of these you weirdo.

Cynic: See above.

Moron: It appealed to me on two levels. Things moved and things also made sounds.

Child: I had a dream like this once. When I woke up my bed was sticky.

Old Timer: I'm having a stroke to this film. And not the good kind.

Conservative: I didn't like the way the brown girl was shown to be equal.

Liberal: This was great. It's amazing to see a director cast off the shackles of narrative structure and squirt his undiluted creative juices straight into our eyes.

Stoner: I missed most of it because I was trying to lure the neighbours cat into the washing machine.

Religious: Much like our lord and saviour Jesus Christ, I was crucified by this piece of shit film.

Tween: I totally couldn't make my mind up about this film. Is she Team Edward or Team Jacob?

Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides follows the nation's favourite fancy dress costume, Jack Sparrow, on a convoluted journey to find the fountain of youth.

I would try and summarise the story for you but I don't have a clue what happened around 2/3 of the way through. There's so much cutting between locations and changing allegiances, and especially because the film basically follows 4 different groups at the same time, that I genuinely got lost at some points, but it's basically what you would expect; A quest to get to the fountain of youth before someone else, and being all piratey on the way.

If you asked me for one word that best describes the film, it would be "Unnecessary". Every little incident in the film that can be exploited and turned into some big fight or chase scene, is, and the result is that the film trudges along at such a slow pace that it feels incredibly long. The fights also get extremely predictable because they're so often and so similar. "Oh look, they've jumped on the barrels to have a fight. Now they're on the narrow wooden beams. Now they're swinging from ropes. Now they're climbing the rigging." Who the fuck taught these people how to fight?? Do they think swords work better the higher up you are?

The dialogue in the film is really bad at times, with people spooling off large chunks of story for no other reason than the audience's benefit. This is a point addressed by Jack Sparrow towards the end. He's strolling along, talking to himself and "coincidentally" moving the plot forward as he does so, and then he stops and looks around, "Oh, there's no one there." Yes Jack, we know. And just because you've shown that you know you're taking the piss with this monologue, doesn't mean it's ok. That's like kicking someone in the balls and then going "I bet that hurts."

There's a smaller plot thread in the film which involves a young cleric lad who's never established, falling in love with a mermaid that the pirates have captured. This plot was truly pathetic. It wasn't needed; didn't add anything; and didn't even finish. I'm going to take a stab in the dark and say that the studios demanded a lovey-dovey storyline at the 11th hour. And what they got was rushed bestiality. Maybe the police were coming?

To put things in context, I physically couldn't make it all the way through the second PotC film, so this has the leg up on that straight away. It's not a bad film, but it's not that great either. It's typical of a film that's had a lot of money chucked at it but there wasn't really a good idea to flesh out. You definitely don't miss the two big names that dropped out of the series (Bloom and Knightley). The only problems I found were that it moves too slowly and gets confusing at times. Apart from that, it's a good, old-fashioned, Indiana Jones & The Last Crusade knock-off.

 
In the interests of respecting the diversity of the audience, this review of Jackass 3.5 will work as follows. I'll offer up my thoughts on the film from the perspective of a film critic. This will then be followed by a variety of summations specifically catered to particular groups within society. It is in this way that I hope I can bring the population closer together and heal the problems of the world.

I have extremely high hopes for this method.

Critic: Jackass 3.5 is a half documentary, half out-takes, straight-to-DVD film, featuring unseen footage from the making of Jackass 3D; interspersed with interviews of the cast. There's really not much to say about it as far as a film goes. If you liked Jackass 3D, you'll love this. The stunts obviously aren't quite as polished as the stuff that made it into the actual film, but they're still damn funny, and if you're a fan of the Jackass series, the interviews are pretty interesting and funny too. Ultimately, it's just more Jackass; and that can't be a bad thing.


If you don't agree with the above review, try one of these alternatives. I've endeavoured to be fair and steer as clear from stereotypes as I possibly can.


Old Timer: Bunch of faggots and a midget acting like pratts.

Cynic: It's just a gang of middle-aged men acting like kids. Fucking retarded kids at that. Why is getting hit in the balls so funny? And for fuck sake, put it away lads. You'll see more cock in this film than an evening on chat roulette. Piece. Of. Shit.

Conservative: This filth should be banned! It's going to corrupt our children and make them loosen immigration policies.

Liberal: Freedom of expression at its finest. It's so refreshing to finally see a man electrocute his testicles with a rat trap on film. It translates better than I thought it would. My faith has been restored in humanity.

Moron: It was funny, but I don't think the extra half of a dimension added much. But yeah, very edgy.

Stoner: I missed most of it because I was trying to chew my way into a can of Spam.

Child: I loved it! Loads of ideas to try with my friends.

Religious: Lots of stupid shit that doesn't make sense. It spoke to me on a personal level.

Tween: There's no-one quite as hymen-quiveringly dreamy as Robert Pattinson, but Bam Margera is there, and I think the stunts are an outward display of pent-up angst. It just needs vampires.


Audience = Broadened.

Up is an animated flick from the fine folks at Pixar, about a senile old man who accidentally kidnaps a young boy as he flies his house to South America.

The film does not mess about, and chucks you right in at the deep end, to the point where I would say that it moves too quickly. This continues throughout most of the film, with things seemingly happening far too easily, and lots of happy coincidences. If you imagine a film with nice pacing is like drinking a lovely smooth cup of hot chocolate, Up is like drinking a mug of hot chocolate that hasn't been stirred properly. It's lumpy.

At the start, we're treated to a montage of a little boy and girl who meet and then grow old together. They have the kind of happy life you would expect of a Pixar film: meet as kids, fall in love, get married, get pregnant, lose the baby, have a picnic. Wait, what was that? Oh yeah, there's some really dark and adult themes in this film, which came as quite a surprise. Along with the miscarriage, there's a social commentary on old age, commercialism, and even the little boy's dad doesn't love him. There's also blood, which I found even more shocking than the miscarriage. Spontaneous abortion sounds like something Pixar might do.

While it was refreshing to see, I couldn't help but feel they didn't make the most of their new-found seriousness, though I don't know if this was because they didn't know how to, or they remembered they were supposed to be making a kids' film.

I laughed a lot when I watched this. Like most other animated films, it's very quirky. Also, like most other animated films, there's a lot of over-the-top action sequences. I'm kind of fed up with these now, as they appear in all animated films, and they aren't needed most of the time. Just because you can do something, doesn't mean you have to. It just makes it very predictable.

The film looks really good, both in style and quality, though some of the physics of the whole thing don't make any sense. I personally found it quite irritating that it took so many liberties and contradicted itself on numerous occasions, though I am a big fan of gravity.

On the whole, I found the film brilliant visually, and very funny, but it just felt all too familiar. There's not really anything original here, and what little new territory it does attempt to tread, it gives up on pretty quickly. Add to that the pacing feels clunky, and you're left with an experience that's just not satisfying.

I wish that it really was about a senile old man who kidnaps a young boy and takes him to South America. Someone get Robert Rodriguez on the job. Danny Trejo can play the dog.

Finally got my bum down to the cinema again and decided to check out the latest X-Men offering. This was a decision that I wouldn't say I regret, but only because I got to visit McDonald's while I was out.

X-Men: First Class is a prequel to the series, showing the development of the relationship between Magneto and Professor Xavier, framed around the Cold War. At least that's what it's supposed to be about. It's actually about nothing.

The plot isn't that weak, but it just doesn't seem to take prominence in the film. Now you may be thinking "Well, yes, but that's because it's about the characters because they're all awesome and shit." Nope. They seem to take a back seat too, albeit not as much as the plot. Also, there's only really 3 characters in the film that actually do anything; Magneto, Xavier and Mystique. All of the others are introduced with a montage; developed with another montage; and use their ability to save everybody at some point during the finale to the sound of the standard orchestral chorus that action films love to exploit, and that's it.

The characters' powers are not well defined. They all have one obvious power, but they all seem to borrow and share and just generally break the rules of their own powers at times. Point in case: Magneto can move metal things with his powers, but at the end he just throws people around who have no metal attached to them at all.

Also, a touch of digression, but when Beast actually turns into Beast, he looks ridiculous. He's like something out of Never Ending Story, and suddenly gets a more gruff American voice. Made me laugh, but not in a good way. Like I was laughing at a disabled child.

This should have been a 15 rather than a 12A. There's so much violence in the film that just doesn't feel satisfying because it either cuts away just at the pinnacle moment, or there's no blood or anything showing that damage has been done. They take the fun out of murder.

As I mentioned before, this film is about nothing. Well, that's not strictly true. It's about tying in with the rest of the series. That's it. It does this well on the whole, though towards the end the tie-ins seem a little forced.

This is quite clearly a cash-in film. There was no reason to explore the birth of the X-Men, because, to put it bluntly, it's not that interesting. If you love X-Men, you'll probably enjoy this because you understand what it's referencing, but if you know nothing of the X-Men universe, there's nothing here for you.

One-Eyed Monster is a comedy (I hope) horror about a penis that will literally smash your back doors in, starring none other than the Hedgehog himself, Ron Jeremy.

It follows a film crew who go to a remote mountain cabin to shoot an adult film. Ron Jeremy gets struck by a shooting star and his penis goes rogue and starts killing people. It's basically the male version of Teeth.

It's rammed full of dick jokes, and is generally pretty funny, if only because of how unashamedly crude it can be. One high point was a Vietnam vet regaling the group with a story of how he watched a disembodied cock rape his entire platoon, and how he developed a drinking problem, not from haunting memories of burning villages or shooting children, but from blowing up said penis.

The problem is that it's very poorly written, and all of the actors are stiff (lol (and the women suck (lol))). It seems to completely forget about story aspects until it's convenient to bring them back into focus. The woman who saves the surviving group and takes the cock down spends most of the film unconscious. They're also supposedly trapped on the mountain due to a snow storm, but whenever anyone goes outside, there's little more than a bit of slush on the ground. Add to that it's full of clichés and very pre-dick-table (if you don't find that funny, don't bother with the film), and you're left with something that's kind of funny but pretty hard to watch.

I would say this is one of the better bad films I've had the misfortune to see, but unless someone comes up with a good drinking game for it, don't bother.

Suspiria is a film by the man many call the master of horror; Dario Argento; though I don't quite understand how since this film makes less sense than the Elephant Man's face.

It follows the story of a young American girl who moves to Germany to attend a well renowned dance school. There she finds that people are randomly dying, and it definitely has nothing to do with cucumbers.

The film is very aesthetically pleasing; with a very interesting art style and great use of red, green, and blue lighting. This is combined with brilliant cinematography and equally good sound design. It's just a shame that the story makes less sense than the Elephant Man's face.

The film doesn't shy away from gore; as you would expect with an Argento; featuring scenes that would put Final Destination to shame (though it should already be pretty ashamed of itself); and it builds suspense extremely well. The only problem is that it all goes Elephant Man face-shaped at the end.

The hero of the film randomly meets up with an expert in the occult who tells her that the school she is attending was set up by a witch. Then she goes back and finds the room where all the witches are. Then she gets chased by the witches and stabs an invisible witch which causes the other witches to die and the building to fall apart Indiana Jones style. It's a shame because the first half of the film is very promising, and it just seems to lose focus; much like what people assume has happened to their eyes when they first see the Elephant Man.

This film is definitely only for Argento fans and people who can appreciate the technical side of things. Just like how you would show the Elephant Man to a doctor but not your mum.

The Hangover is basically what would have happened if Judd Apatow made Dude, Where's My Car?, sprinkled with little bits of Harold and Kumar. The similarities between this and Dude, Where's My Car are so great that Danny Leiner probably refers to this film as "Dude, Where's My Royalties?", and the frequency I'm going to mention it during this review merits an acronym.

The Hangover is about a group of friends who go for a stag night in Las Vegas, get completely wasted, and can't remember anything or find their friend in the morning, so have to retrace their crazy antics of the night just passed. All of the characters are very broad; There's the rebel, the geek, the weirdo, and the groom who's just flat and uninteresting but is needed to appear normal and give the whole thing a sense of realism. The "star" of the show is Alan, played by Zach Galifianakis, who is basically just a fat, bearded Will Ferrell. Hate to bring it up again, but Alan is very similar to the two main characters of DWMC, but with an added hint of "Take my strong hand".

The film never establishes the bride and groom very well, and spends the majority of the start setting stuff up for later in a very obvious way, so I personally didn't give a shit about if they found him or got back in time for the wedding, and without being invested in the main drive of the plot, it was just a series of ridiculous scenes.

The gang arrives in Vegas and they all promise to not remember the rest of the night, in what was a cringe-worthy and ultimately pointless nod to the rest of the film. Are we supposed to watch the film and then go "Hey, I just recalled that part where they all promised to not remember the rest of the night and then they didn't remember the rest of the night. HAHAHAHAHA This film just went from great to fucking amazing. Get me a new pair of pants. I came."

There's all sorts of crazy antics, including being hunted by some crazy Chinese people (Zoltan group from DWMC), owing money to the Chinese man (Transsexual from DWMC), getting their car impounded (just like in DWMC, and it even has the same woman playing basically the same role as DWMC), a crappy cameo from a famous person (Mike Tyson) (Neil Patrick Harris in Harold and Kumar) which involves taking a tiger back in a car that then happens to regain consciousness on the way (Identical to the raccoon scene from Harold and Kumar; in fact the whole big cat thing is stolen from Harold and Kumar). It even has a crappy way of tying things up in a boring scene where they win a lot of money from counting cards. At least when they tied things up in a crappy way with the lockers in DWMC it was funny.

Also, why the fuck did their friend stay on the roof for like 2 days?? Use your phone or failing that, smash a sky light. I just had to put up with near 2 hours of unoriginal randomness and racism because you have no common sense. Prick.

At it's very best, it's humourous, however, for the majority of the film it's painfully unfunny. There's nothing original here, and it's not even like they've ripped things off and made them better.

Now they've made The Hangover 2, and I can only wish that they'd have kept the age-old morning-after promise. "We're never drinking again."

I've been terribly busy lately and haven't been able to make many reviews, and as a result of my lack of posts it seems the popularity of the blog has sky-rocketed, and we're now on the brink of quadruple figures. So in an attempt to save the servers from crippling under the traffic caused by my absence, I bring you this post.

I like to think of myself as a cultured yet objective film reviewer, but in actuality I'm probably just a snob, so it's both painful and cathartic to bring you this list of my top 5 guilty pleasures.

5. Harold and Kumar Get The Munchies

Harold and Kumar Get The Munchies is a film about an Indian-American and a Chinese-American who get high, get hungry, and get burgers. It's a ridiculous film but it's good for a cheap laugh, with lots of stoner jokes and Neil Patrick Harris. I think I enjoy it even more now that Kal Penn (Kumar) works for the US government. Maybe he's Obama's jester?


4. Logan's Run


Logan's Run is one of the first science fiction films ever made that I can think of, and they're still clearly working out the kinks of the genre. Everyone lives inside an enclosed world, and once you hit 30, you get to ride the carousel. The carousel murders you. But one "old" man and a pretty young girl escape into the outside world and I forget the rest but they meet a really old man and a robot and they get naked for no reason in an ice cave.

3. Zack and Miri Make A Porno

I'm pretty sure the only reason I like this film is because it's by Kevin Smith and it's an improvement on Jersey Girl. Zack and Miri is a film about two poor friends who decide to make some porn to make some money. It's pretty funny, full of sex, and is really fucking crude (see, it's infectious!(the crudeness, not the sex)).

2. American Pie 2


I actually love this film. It's got a brilliant cast, brilliant story, and some hilariously funny set-pieces. I tend to watch this when I need cheering up. Lesbians cheer me up. And Stifler. He cheers me up too. In a different way. His face cheers me up. It's like when he smiles his cheeks wrap around the back of his head. But I digress. I enjoy this film.

1. Dude, Where's My Car?


During the compiling of this guilty pleasures list, it's become apparent that I quite enjoy Seann William Scott. I'm fine with that.

Dude, Where's My Car is another stupid stoner film, but it makes me laugh to no end. It's like Airplane but justifies the silliness with marijuana. This film has it all: stoner dog, Chinese foooooooood, super hot giant alien, Jeff. You name it.

Little Miss Sunshine is a feel good film that's actually about feeling good, instead of it being a by-product of someone we like getting laid.

It follows a family of assorted insecure people who each deal with it in their own way, taking their daughter/sister/niece/granddaughter on a road trip to take part in a beauty pageant.

The little girl Olive is absolutely adorable, and is a naive young lady who's being guided through life by her family who are all wrong but together are kind of right. Her dad is a man who tries to sell happiness with his patented self-help programme; her mum is not happy with her marriage; her brother wallows in misery and reads Neitzsche, a man made famous for the phrase "God is dead" and linked with Nihilism; her uncle, who attempted suicide, and her Grandfather who snorts heroin. I'm seriously surprised this film didn't end with social services showing up.

The film looks really nice, but the writing is patchy. There's quite a lot of expositional dialogue, such as Olive extensively questioning her Uncle about his attempted suicide at the start while they're tucking into a bargain bucket. Some of the plot points also feel pretty forced, like the emo brother discovering he's colour blind, and the uncle immediately going "That means you can't be a pilot.", essentially slashing the lad's dreams as if it were one of his wrists. Where's the compassion? You wouldn't go "You have cancer. You're going to be bald."

There's lots of symbolism in the film, such as them driving around in a bright yellow hippie camper van, and the little girl doing a sliding tile puzzle of a smiley face, though some of it is not so subtle, like a road sign for "Carefree Highway", or a little girl in the competition called Charisma.

When they arrive at the pageant, it's filled with preened little girls with fake tans and more hair than body mass and encrusted with make-up. Our little Olive can't compete with her gap-toothed smile and simple pony-tail and big glasses, but this is the point of the film; you can't fake happiness and you have to be content with who you are.

Olive gets on stage and performs what can only be described as a strip routine taught to her by her Grandfather, and the heartless pricks in the audience start booing her, so the family all jump on stage and join in with the dance, thus completing the cathartic journey of letting go and finding true happiness.

This is a heart-warming and funny film about being honest and truly content with who you are, and while it's far from perfect, I'm willing to accept it as it is (which I suppose is the point), as it brilliantly spills its happy MESSage onto your chest. You know, where your heart is.

Little Miss Sunshine made me a Mr Happy.

Donnie Darko is a film about abstract things that neither I, nor the people who made the film, could get their head around.

Starring a very young Jake Gyllenhaal as a disturbed lad, it explores themes like time travel and fate and mental illness, and seems to find itself at a dead end in every case. The film begins with Donnie waking up in the middle of a road, and when he gets home he finds that a plane engine came out of nowhere and fell through his bedroom. His parents don't seem that bothered when he shows up in the morning considering they surely must have thought he was dead, but his parents don't seem very deep characters anyway. His mum just looks worried all the time and his dad laughs at inappropriate things. That's literally their only defining traits.

It really goes out of its way to hammer home that Donnie has mental problems during the first 15 minutes of the film to make sure there's some ambiguity, and then we get introduced to Frank; A giant freaky rabbit that tells him to do illegal things and says he's from the future. You can always tell when Frank is around because Donnie puts on his rape face. Anyway, Frank arrives and tells Donnie that the world will end in 28 days, and Donnie decides to do nothing with that information until like the last 2 hours. Must have slipped his mind.

Some freaky stuff happens when Frank is around, like mirrors reacting to touch like water, and weird trails coming off people predicting where they're about to go, and the film does it's best to make it obscure as to if this is actually happening or if Donnie is hallucinating it.

Quite a lot of the story is based around Donnie's school and the people in there, and they all seem really over-the-top and comical. These contrast quite well against the darker bits where Donnie is with Frank. It's like The Breakfast Club with schizophrenia.

Drew Barrymore's character is supposed to be the wacky, alternative teacher who really understands the kids better than anyone, but she just comes across as pretentious and adds nothing to the story. Most of her classes are discussing things that are far beyond what the pupils would actually be talking about at that age, and it's only really there so that it can drop lots of lines and quotes in that reference what's happening in the film in a not-so-subtle way.

Partick Swayze teaches a class about fear which is just stupid, and is again an example of the film littering itself with metaphors that really don't add anything to the story and just make it seem smug.

Donnie goes to talk to a teacher about time travel, and I found this pointless as it was very expositional and removed most of the mysticism of the story. It's like the film-makers thought they were being too clever for the audience, so they'd best just make what's going on blatant. YOU SEE WHAT WE DID THAR??

There's an old lady who, from the confused look on her face and the crazy stood-on-end hair, I'm going to assume was attacked by a balloon. She's supposed to be significant but she's really not. This film has a tendency to build things up and make them seem significant when they aren't.

Donnie falls for a girl called Grechen, but again she doesn't really do anything in the story except give Donnie a reason to want to go back in time at the end, and her death and the scene where Donnie decides to go back are done far too quickly to have any real impact.

The film uses a lot of time lapse and slow motion, obviously because it's a film that deals with the nature of time, and these look good, though I'm still to figure out the significance of the trampoline that keeps showing up. Time is bouncy? No shoes on the time?

For me, the film seems like it set out to be ambiguous and ended up being confusing. You're supposed to not be able to work out if it's fate and time travel or mental illness, but there are bits that contradict each of those options, so you're left with scenes that don't make sense in either case. For example, if it's about time travel, Donnie should have died at the start because time travel would cause a paradoxical loop, but if it's about mental illness, how did Donnie hallucinate a wound exactly where the bullet would hit Frank when he shoots him? There's no way he's that accurate with a gun. Not with the limited vision rape face offers.

I also didn't like how smug the film was. There are far too many lines that are just there because they sound good and reference what's going on. It's in this effort to try and make everything connect to something else, no matter how strenuous those connections are, that made the film feel very pretentious to me. You're trying to be clever. We get it. Now pull your head out of your worm-hole and figure out what's going on.

If Donnie Darko was a dot-to-dot drawing, you'd have to draw a line from the number 1 dot to the number 2 dot. And the number 5 dot. And the number 12 dot in the previous picture. And the staple in the middle of the book.

I honestly can't decide if this is a shit action film or a brilliant satire.

Sylvester Stallone brings us this cacophony of explosions and stabbing, which follows the exploits of an all-star gang of mercenaries as they shoot up the small island of Vilenia, which is suspiciously close to Burma. And this film is pretty much just Rambo with more than one Rambo.

The film starts with some terrorists beheading someone on a boat, just before our heroes turn up and shoot them all to pieces; the whole time arguing about who gets to kill who. Then it cuts to them all meeting up in a garage/tattoo shop with Micky Rourke, who comes rolling in on a motorbike with a sexy lady on the back who he doesn't even know the name of but is crazy about him. In case you haven't already noticed, this film is manly. Very manly. There's so much testosterone in this film that my balls kicked into over-drive and started melting the chair. Everybody in it is a hard man. Even the guy who checks passports looked like he was about to bite someone's nose off. Anyway, Bruce Willis shows up and Arnie shows his face in what must be the most forced cameos I've ever seen, and gives Stallone a job in Vilenia. Then Stallone and the boys go over there and kill everyone.

The dialogue in this film is terrible. It's just macho posturing. "I killed this many guys." "Yeah well I stabbed this many." "Yeah well I skullfucked this many to death with my gargantuan dick." Pretty much every exchange could have been replaced with "My penis is larger than your penis." And of course it's all delivered in deep manly tones. If (when) they ever do an American remake of Harry Potter, Sylvester Stallone should definitely be Snape.

The action scenes are very good, though the visual effects are surprisingly bad. It's also pretty funny on the whole. The trouble is that I didn't have a clue what was going on because there's hardly any plot. It's just action sequence after disconnected action sequence, with a sprinkling of soppyness every now and again to attempt to legitimise the whole affair. There are two romantic plot lines in the film, and the Stallone one is what the film is pretty much based on, and neither of these have any pay off.

The characters are never introduced to us, and we have no idea who they are or why they are together, and really why they're doing what they're doing. The only difference between the good guys and the bad guys are the groups of people that they kill. Their attitudes are almost identical. The problem is that all of these actors only look good when they're the star of the show. When you stick them all together, you dilute their machismo, and their lacklustre acting abilities shine through.

This film has a 12 foot cock; It just doesn't have enough story running through its veins to do something with it other than piss around.

If this film is anything to go off, follow these easy steps to make a girl fall in love with you:

1. Threaten to kill yourself until she agrees to go out with you
2. Play chicken in the road with her
3. Take her to an isolated, derelict house and have your way with her.
4. ???
5. Profit

The Notebook is a typical chick-flick, even down to starring Rachel McAdams, who's in so many of these films now that I feel like I'm supposed to cry when she gets hit by a bus in Mean Girls. It tells the story of two young people who fall in love, then get separated, then find each other again, but from the perspective of a flashback from the elderly versions of themselves.

The film begins with a confused looking old lady being read what's supposed to be a notebook, but is more like a novel, by her husband, who she doesn't remember because she has Alzheimer's. The book tells the story of how they met each other, and he reads it to her in the hopes it will bring her memory back.

The first flashback takes us to when they were teenagers in the 1940s. Noah, the strapping young lad that he is, takes a fancy to Allie from a distance, and consequently jumps on a ferris wheel with her, which he proceeds to dangle from until she agrees to go out with him. Then they go out to a movie and walk home, where Noah tells Allie to lie in the middle of the road with him. Why do women think it's cute to lie down in random places? They do it in Eternal Sunshine of a Spotless Mind too. Anyway, she likes that, and they fall in love apparently.

Allie seems to fall for Noah pretty easily considering she's so controlled by her parents and they don't want her mixing with the poor commoners. This aspect of the story reminded me a lot of Titanic, and they are very, very similar, except instead of hitting an iceberg, they hit their 80s. Surprisingly similar effect.

The acting is decent on the whole, though the accents are absolutely terrible, and half the time they don't even bother trying to do it. The dialogue is very good when it's not being incredibly cheesy. You end up getting a lot of lines that sound good on the surface but don't actually make much sense. Things like when they're dancing while Noah goes "bum bum bum bum" to the tune of a song, and Allie says he's a terrible singer. What the hell did you think he was singing? The Bum song?

There's a scene that was just daft where they're playing around on a beach together. Allie runs into the sea and shouts "I'm a bird!" Probably because if she shouted the more appropriate "I'm a fish!", it doesn't sound as good, and if she jumped off a building and shouted "I'm a bird", the film would have been very different. Then Allie says "Do you think I could have been a bird in another life?" Yeah sure, but you could have also been a slug. Or someone without Alzheimer's.

When Allie and Noah are getting frisky for the first time, Noah takes her to the creepiest looking house I've ever seen. Being the gentleman that he is, Noah goes on ahead, presumably to set up some candles and make sure Leatherface is locked in his meat room.

Allie's parents decide to move her away to the city, and after a few years apart, Allie falls in love again and gets engaged. Allie spots Noah's picture in the paper, so she goes to look for him and shags him over the course of a weekend. I couldn't help but feel it was a bit mean of her to abandon her fiancée who she was, in her own words, in love with, to go and find Noah. She doesn't even seem bothered by it until she's been with Noah for a few days. Allie's mum comes and finds her at Noah's house and takes her for a drive to explain how she used to love a commoner too, and how she misses him or still loves him or something. It's pretty much just there to justify Allie cheating on her fiancée.

There's a silly bit where Noah takes Allie out on the lake in a boat and it starts pissing it down. They both start laughing manically. This is supposed to be significant, but I find it hard to believe that she loves Noah more because it started raining. Just because you play orchestral music over something doesn't mean you can do random shit.

After all these fun and frolics, it cuts back to the present day with the old versions of Allie and Noah. Here we find out that Allie wrote the book for Noah to read to her so she could remember who she is. How she managed to write a novel like that while suffering from Alzheimer's, I will never know. Also, how she knew all the stuff about what Noah was getting up to while they were apart for 7 years is a mystery. He could have told her, but surely she would have forgotten, and it's made to look like the book was written by her as a gift, so I doubt she got him to help make his own present.

It's at this point that they both randomly die. Neither of them seem frail or weak during the film, and then they just get in bed and die. It really is just 2 hours of making us like some people so it can cheaply kill them at the end and we'll give a shit.

It's a good, if unoriginal story, and shows the conflicted character of Allie reasonably well, but there's so much pure cheese in there that it can't good for your heart. I guess that's what the people who enjoy these type of films are looking for though. They love cheese. They're emotional fatties. Wow, that's a harsh double-meaning. Probably true though...

In celebration of the blog hitting 420 views (I make my own milestones), I've decided to do this list of scary films not many people will have heard of. The list begins gently with a film that'll make you ruin a few pairs of pants, and ends with a film that will make life not seem worth the effort it takes to breathe.


5. [REC] 2007

This is a film a lot of you may already be familiar with, and are probably now feeling misled as to the obscure nature the list promised. Oh well. [REC] is a Spanish zombie film, shot in the handycam style made popular by The Blair Witch Project. And it sure does it well. It follows a TV camera crew trapped inside a quarantined block of flats, as each of the residents slowly becomes infected by the rabies-like disease. The film ends with a really creepy scene and a truly creepy monster, that looks kind of like a spitter off Left 4 Dead.

PRO TIP: Avoid the American remake Quarantine. It's awful. It's the same story but it's just not done well. It's like your mum copying a Delia Smith recipe off the telly. She can't be arsed leaving it to rest in the fridge over night, and she doesn't have a herb garden.


4. Funny Games 2007



Now, I've only seen the American remake of Funny Games because the original German version seems to be quite elusive. It's directed by the same guy though and it's bloody good. BLOODY good. See what I did there. Though there isn't much gore in the film so I don't know why I made that pun. Funny Games follows the story of a family who go to their secluded holiday home, and then bump into a pair of lads who are sick in the head and torture them for fun. The film is particularly effective due to the passive-aggressive nature of the boys, and the way it does some really bizarre stuff at times.


3. Possession 1981



Possession is a mindfuck of a film by Ukrainian director Andrzej Zulawski. It stars Isabelle Adjani and Sam Neill, and is about the messed up relationship between the two. I don't want to ruin it for you, but when Sam finds out who she's cheating on him with, it's an insane twist. It also features one of the most disturbing breakdown scenes (Pictured above) that I can think of.


2. Audition 1999



I recently reviewed this film, so go read that for my full thoughts on it here, but in summary, this is one really messed up film. It's so disorienting that you won't know what's going on, and it has a torture scene that will go through you. For my money, Takashi Miike's finest work.


1. Irréversible 2002



This film isn't strictly horror, but it will leave more of a scar in your mind than any other film. It begins at the end of the story and goes backwards, starting with the most realistically brutal violence I've ever seen, through one of the scariest and most drawn-out rape scenes on film, to an ending that will just make you hate life. If you want to be disturbed by a film, give this a go. But seriously, don't watch this if you have stuff to do, because it will leave you staring at the wall, pondering the futility of existence, while stroking the spot where your cat was 20 minutes ago.

Scott Pilgrim vs. the World is a film based on a series of comic books, and this seizure-inducing 2 hours is what happens when Edgar Wright tries to do too much at once.

Scott Pilgrim is a lad in a band and he falls for a girl called Ramona. Apparently she has 7 evil exs; all of whom need to be defeated if he wants to be with her. Don't ask.

Being a film from Edgar Wright, it's a very sleek and stylish affair, with an aesthetic heavily inspired by video games and comics. The film is jam-packed with quirky visual and audible affectations, with more stuff popping up on screen than my mum's laptop. The film also plays around with different aspect ratios such as letterboxing to accentuate certain shots. This is nicely wrapped up with brilliant acting all round, and some very funny dialogue and well placed homages.

Scott's band enters a competition, and this plays a moderate role in the film. Not really to the story, but it gives it a reason to have rock music playing during every fight. Why do films always think rock music is so cool? I can't wait for the day a film features a guy introducing a girl to an orchestra of circuit-bent Furbies that he uses to create dirty breakcore tracks.

The biggest problem for me was that we're never given a reason why Scott has to fight the evil exs. There is talk of a 'league of evil', but no details are ever given. We're also given little to no information about each of the exs. They all just come out of nowhere, and are all defeated in disappointingly unsatisfying fights. It feels like the film over-stretched itself by having 7 people to fight. It would have been better to have maybe 3, so that it could establish each of them and have a more meaningful fight with each. We don't even meet the big bad guy until 25 minutes before the end.

A lot of stuff happens in this film without a good reason; even when giving it slack for the fantasy/comedy nature. Why does the second boyfriend agree to grind down a rail on a skateboard? And why does the vegan guy agree to drink either of the coffees? In fact, how does Scott even have the time and/or resources to make two cups of coffee with different types of milk after being punched through a wall?? Even the ending takes what should have been a straight forward happy ending and makes it all convoluted for no reason.

All the quirks of the film are over-done, and it feels like it's trying too hard at times. Everything in the film seems like it has to have some twist to it and go off on a brief tangent. It's like listening to a story from someone with ADD.

At the end of the day, it just isn't long enough to set up and satisfyingly finish the stories of 7 different characters and their fights with Scott.

I feel like I should love this. It has everything I look for in a film, but the way it does it seems stilted. Quirks only work when they feel natural and spontaneous. Scott Pilgrim is the kind of film that would ask for permission before going to kiss you.

Audition is a film best summed up with the timeless words of Haddaway.

What is love?


Baby don't hurt me.

This film is by Japan's finest Takashi Miike, who also brought us Ichi the Killer, among many others, and is a psychological horror about a TV executive who's looking for a new wife. While doing some auditions for a film, he becomes entangled with a peculiar young lady. This is a decision he will later regret. Definitely.

The film begins with the death of his wife, and then jumps forward seven years, where we find him depressed and lonely, with only his son for company. Not that kind of company.

He sets out on a quest to remarry, and his friend at the TV station decides to help him, so invites him to some auditions to see the girls. I didn't enjoy how unsubtle the film was in making him seem very lonely, by having every single person he talks to mention women or love in some capacity, and then getting a shot of his poor little sad face.

When he's reading the info sheets on the girls, he spills coffee on one of them and decides that it's a sign. The only sign it could have possibly been was that his coffee was trying to destroy the sheet and keep him safe.

At the audition, he takes an interest in this girl. I didn't like how he takes an interest in her when everyone else finds her weird. And she is weird. They could have at least found someone who didn't like look a lunatic.

The film is very slow paced for the first half, and add to this that there isn't much music throughout the entire film, and it can be quite hard going for the first 50 minutes or so. Though the first part of the film is very light hearted and quite funny, so I wouldn't say that it's boring. It just doesn't seem like it's going anywhere. It kind of filters in the creepy stuff slowly at first, so there are scenes that just leave you thinking "The fuck was that about?" until you finish the film, when you will ask yourself that question on a bigger scale.

The film is very artistic, and makes use of exaggerated sounds, weird camera angles (a lot of tilted shots which can be quite unnerving) and in some parts, quite obvious colour tinting.

At one point our hero goes to this weird boarded up house and finds a creepy old man in a wheelchair. I don't know how he finds this place, or more to the point, how the old man in a wheelchair is still alive when it's boarded up and derelict. Unless there's a back door?

The film really starts to move after the sex scene. I guess he's been drugged and tripping his balls off, but it's hard to tell because this film makes so much use of flashbacks and hallucinations and dreams and premonitions, and even stuff that just doesn't make sense in the story but adds meaning. I like the disorientation all of this stuff causes though. It forces you to empathise with the character, and not just in the boring usual way of showing what they're going through and using mood music. This film goes "He doesn't know what the fuck is going on. Neither will you."

It turns out that the girl he's fallen for is a bit crazy and was abused as a child, and is extremely jealous. She makes him promise to love no one else but her, and then catches him out when he loves his son. Not in that way. This results in one of the best torture scenes in film for my money. It's like the Japanese version of Misery, but obviously being Japanese, it's a lot more messed up. Like instead of breaking his ankles, she slices them off with wire. There's also some element of masochism, as she seems to love doing all this stuff to the person she loves.

It's implied that she's done this before (fallen for a man, decided he was untrustworthy, tortured him) through the messed up man in a sack, though I found it quite contradictory that she was saying he can love no-one else and she's got her ex bagged up at home. Credit where credit's due though; At least she wasn't just moaning that all men are bastards.

Overall, I love this film. It's so messed up, looks amazing, and is very technically complex. It's hard going to watch, but well worth it if you want a change from conventional film.

Step Brothers is a silly comedy from Adam McKay, who also brought us The Other Guys, which I really quite liked. Shame about this one.

The film stars Will Ferrell and John C. Reilly as 40 year old children who become step-in-laws when their lone parents marry.

The first thing I wanted to know was why are these two so childish? They act kind of adult for the first 10 minutes, but then they become complete infants. The only very loose reason for their behaviour is given during a bit of pillow talk by the parents. Ferrell's mum says that his father left when he was young, and there was also something about singing in a talent show where people chanted mangina at him, and Reilly's dad says that because his mother died, that he now has some sense of entitlement. Both don't make much sense to me. Neither the death of your mother, nor people chanting mangina at you would make you want bunk beds.

At first, the step brothers hate each other, but this is resolved when Reilly punches Ferrall's older brother. I don't understand how this brings them together though. Sure, it might make Ferrall like Reilly more, but I was to understand that the feeling was mutual, so the resentment should still be there from Reilly.

The mum and dad characters are quite inconsistent. They switch between being pissed off at them for acting so childishly when they're 40, and playing along and threatening to ground them and even spanking them. I'm unsure if we're supposed to feel sorry for them or not.

Some of the set pieces in the film are a bit too ridiculous, such as them being bullied by a gang of kids and forced to lick dog poop. They also have a tree house. Really?? I mean, it is basically a porn archive, but still. It's like someone with OCD has grouped sources of wood.

There's a scene where Reilly is basically being raped in a public toilet, and at one point he says, with his eyes rolled back in his head "Something's going to happen!". This is weird because he clearly knows what an orgasm is since the aforementioned tree house was referred to as "a masturbation time machine". So not only are the characters in the film inexplicably childish, but they've thrown consistency to the wind in the quest for infancy as well.

The childishness reaches its lowest point during the sleepwalking scenes. These were unfunny and embarrassing to watch. They looked like they'd been infected with the holy spirit for a few minutes.

After a big blow-out with the parents, they magically grow up. This happens so quickly and easily that it almost seems like they were just acting childish for shits and giggles. And that would be paradoxical. Probably not the case in a film with a 20 second fart.

They both go and get jobs and Ferrell ends up working for his big brother. He has to organise a big event and it has to run smoothly. I did really enjoy the intentionally ambiguous nature of the event, and the way it was constantly just referred to as "The Catalina Wine Mixer", and built up to be very important for no reason. However, the farcical nature of the event detracted from some of the big and more serious plot twists that happen during it.

The resolution of the film is a bit botched. They get up on stage and sing a song and then their parents tell them they don't like them acting so adult and to be kids again. Didn't make much sense to me. Apparently the dad missed being thrown down the stairs?

Overall, the film did make me laugh. It has some very funny lines, or Ferrellisms as I like to call them, but they are mixed in with some really quite bad attempts at comedy too. Add to this the very loose premise of the film and lack of believability of the characters, and it becomes kind of obvious that this was more of a concept than a story.

It's ok, but Dumb and Dumber did it much better.

Pearl Harbor is a film about a truly pathetic love triangle. And nothing else. If you like soppy, on-the-nose dialogue being given a false sense of significance thanks to a near constant orchestral soundtrack and tight camera angles, go kill yourself. But coincidentally, that's what this film is full of.

The film is about two best friends who are also pilots in the army during World War II, and they both love the same girl. One of them falls in love with the girl, then dies, and then other one jumps into bed with her, but then it turns out the other one isn't dead. And while this story is playing out, the Japanese bomb Pearl Harbor.

The cringe-fest starts when Ben Affleck goes for an eye test and gets friendly with the nurse. And by friendly I mean he stalks her. He meets her outside somewhere with a bottle of champaign and when he opens it the cork hits him in the nose and it starts to bleed. She tilts his head back (good nursing) and he says his nose hurts and that she's beautiful. Then he says that his heart hurts and they have a smooch. I'm going to have to try that one. "Nurse, my heart hurts. Can we kiss?". I'd get defibrillatored into next week.

The film is very American (as you would expect). In the film, England is just a manor house with some planes and grubby looking men on the lawn. One of the British soldiers even says "Good luck to anyone who goes to war with America." I was almost sick.

The film is littered with cheesy lines pre-empting the attack. At one point a nurse is talking about how many men are on board the ships. It's so blatant she might as well have said "Wouldn't it be a shame if they all got blown up in a few minutes."

Josh Hartnett plays the other man in the film. After Affleck dies, he falls in love with the woman. The trouble is that there's no slow progression of them falling for each other. You'd think there'd be a real struggle of morals versus heart, but you'd be wrong. All he does is pop round to her house, then take her flying in a plane, then take her for a shag in the most inappropriately stored parachutes ever. Harnett uses some smooth talking to seal the deal on the relationship, saying that he saw a sunset so that means they should be together. He could use that for anything. "I saw a sunset so you should make me a sandwich." I don't understand why it's so easy for those two to get it on with each other though, considering she supposedly loved Affleck so much, and Hartnett has a major bromance going on with him. They were fucking each other before he was even cold.

The big climax of the film is the attack on Pearl Harbor, and for me it got boring quickly. It's just uninspired shots of explosions for half an hour. It's pretty much just in the film so that the two men have a reason to go away together. And, of course, Americans would lap it up.

I also didn't like how it carried on cutting to the Japanese planning the attack, as it took away the element of surprise. I feel it would have carried a lot more punch if it genuinely did come as a surprise.

There's a silly bit where Affleck and Hartnet are on an airfield. Affleck tells all the men to stay down and not move while the Japanese planes are over head, as though in doing this, the Japanese wouldn't realise it was an airfield.

Roosevelt makes a heartfelt speech about how the US needs to make a counter attack, and to convince everyone he stands up out of his wheelchair. Because no-one is going to tell a disabled person they're wrong. Even if it means lots of people will die. No-one wants to be that guy.

Alec Baldwin plays the general, and he's full of sentimental bullshit. He has a very clichéd delivery. "You're a crazy bastard!! But I like it." "You put everyone in the company at risk!! But it was the right thing to do." "You didn't knock on the door before you came in!! Luckily I had my pants on." It gets old fast.

After the attack on Pearl Harbor (yes, it carries on for a whole hour after that), Baldwin puts together a crack team of pilots for a secret mission to Japan. This involves learning to take off from a short distance, and this is achieved easily by having lots of shots of men standing around looking cool in leather jackets.

Once they've done the Japan shooting bit, Hartnett crashes his plane and somehow survives. Affleck goes over to do one of the soppiest "Don't die!" speeches ever. He mentions that Hartnett is going to be a father, in a pathetic attempt to get our sympathy. The thing is, the whole pregnancy thing is hardly mentioned in the film so it doesn't really hit home. If they aren't going to establish something before they try and use it to work our emotions, he might as well have said "You can't die! Who's going to sing the special song you wrote for the Somalian quadruple amputee you adopted so that she can get a precious few minutes of sleep and escape her horrific existence of constant flash-backs to the 7 years of rape and abuse she was subjected to by her schizophrenic father." Gets me every time.

The girl in the film is just not likeable to the point of bitch. All she does when Affleck comes back into her life is wait for one of them to die so she doesn't have to make a decision.

The trouble with this film is, at its root, that it's shit. The first hour and a half is setting up a soppy, badly written love story; then the attack on Pearl Harbor comes and the romantic story is forgotten about. Then afterwards it picks it back up again to finish it off. It's like they had an interlude for some explosions. You never get back into the love story in the way you're supposed to after the attack either, because firstly, you've kind of forgotten about it, and secondly, you feel like the film should have ended after the attack. The counter attack on Japan only exists so that it could badly wrap up the love story, and so that America didn't come out of the film looking too helpless. The film isn't concerned with Pearl Harbor at all; it's just a framing device for the love triangle.

The whole film is very bad and unoriginal. It's like Titanic meets Saving Private Ryan.
In a dark alley.
And Michael Bay is there with a bat.

127 Hours is the latest offering from Britain's own Danny Boyle, and tells the story of a man stuck down a hole for a few days. It's based on the autobiographical book "Between a Rock and a Hard Place", and offers a solution to anyone finding their self in such a situation. Cut your arm off.

The film looks really nice, and comes flying out of the gates with a nice fast pace, up-beat music, and some stylish split-screens. The film has a very British feel to it, and it's quite refreshing to see this style in this type of film. There are lots of wide shots of the desert which are slightly over saturated and have a lovely juicy look to them.

When Franco's character meets two lost young ladies, the dialogue becomes a bit cheesy. I know he's trying to chat them up, but still. Luckily this is still in the up-beat part of the film so it isn't too jarring. The two girls seem very comfortable with him considering they just met. There is no way I would just jump down a hole with a stranger. Even if he went first. Jim Jones much?

The actual moment where the rock traps Franco's arm was done very well, though his reaction is extremely underwhelming. You'd think he's just snagged his sleeve. Considering most people would tell you getting your finger caught in a door is one of the most painful experiences you can have, you'd think getting your arm caught in a canyon would merit more than a yelp. I'm also baffled about why he's bothered when his hand starts aching from chiselling. Better prioritising of outward expressions of pain is needed.

A large chunk of the film is dedicated to either flash-backs (life flashing before eyes?) or hallucinations due to dehydration. I'm confused about why most of these are taken up with the two girls he met that day. He didn't seem that bothered about them at the time, and now it seems they're all he can think about. On the subject of dehydration, I did enjoy his breakfast show bit into his camera (which magically moves to keep him in frame. Is he paying the ants or something?) He does a spot on Johnny Depp impression, which leads me to think that Mr Depp might start being a good actor again if we gave him a glass of water. Or cut his arm off. He needs to learn.

There's a part where he finds footage of one of the girl's boobs when they were swimming, and decides to crank one out, though this plan is quickly aborted. I can't tell if this was because his good hand is trapped, or he's really stuck between a rock and a flaccid place.

The arm cutting scene is extremely well done. It's very hard to watch and the sound design and camera work make it feel panicked and painful. Once the arm is removed, he goes back to take a photo of it, because he's clearly going to need some sort of reminder. He also seems to function relatively well on his escape considering he's just been tripping balls from dehydration. Unless all that was from something in his piss?

The end of the film shows the actual guy the film is about, and talks about his real life after the events of the film. It even has a little joke, saying "He always leaves his wife a note when he goes out now.". It's a shame she can't read them because he was right handed.

The film tends to focus on all the little details, like ants walking around or the sun coming up, or water moving up a straw, and this is because peoples' suspicions about the film are well founded. It is really hard to make a feature length film about a man stuck down a hole on his own. All of those little bits and bobs are needed, not only to pad out the film, but also to break up what would otherwise be an hour and a half of James Franco not moving much. This works at first, but the film felt like it started to drag around the halfway point for me

The big moments of the film are brilliantly done, but unfortunately it's a great story that's been spread too thin.