9 Songs is a film by Michael Winterbottom, and is called 9 Songs because there are 9 songs pointlessly breaking up an hour of completely disconnected graphic sex scenes. It should have been called "I Slipped in the Art Gallery" because it has pretension rammed up its arse.

The film is about a couple who have lots of sex and go to music concerts, and it gained notoriety because the actors actually have sex in the film, however, as far as I'm concerned, there was no artistic merit to it. It's basically porno for the man who wonders how the couple met. And to be honest, even that man would be disappointed because we never find out.

What happened here was that Michael Winterbottom wanted to make a film where the actors actually had sex to be all cool and edgy. Not a porno. A proper film. So he stuck some random clips of gigs in there to make sure no one thought it was a porno. It is a porno. A very disjointed, badly made porno. The film starts as it means to go on; by showing us a graphic sex scene, followed by what I hope is amateur footage of a gig. There are some very bad shots in the film, where he tries and fails to be artistic. At times it felt like a sex tape, and to be honest, One Night in Paris did more for the world of film than 9 Songs. It led the way for things like Paranormal Activity, by having something banging away behind you while a night vision camera films.

The film seems to want to draw parallels between the music and the sex, but fails quite pathetically. It sets itself up as the classic "sex, drugs and rock 'n' roll" story, but instead of combining the three into a delicious story stew, it's more like a bag of Revels, where you'll randomly get a little bit of sex, then a little bit of drugs, and then a little bit of rock 'n' roll. I can't understand how it failed to combine those elements, considering they go hand-in-hand, but it's something to do with the way the film tries to force parallels that aren't there that makes them seem so separate.

The sex scenes are graphic and have no purpose. They even dabble with bondage, but this has no relevance at all. There's a part where the girl is tied up and saying a fantasy out loud while the man has his face in her nether-regions, but the way she speaks, by putting a little noise and moan after each word, made it sound to me like she was stifling a stammer. The next time I watch The King's Speech, I'm just going to think someone's eating Colin Firth's pussy.

Literally nothing happens in the film right until the end. The girl gets caught using a vibrator and that upsets the man, but then it all blows over when she sucks his willy. Then out of the blue she announces she's moving to America. For no reason. And then the film ends after one more sex scene, with a female orgasm that was obviously put in during the edit. While she's supposedly having the orgasm, we get a nice shot of her arse, so either she farted that, or Michael Winterbottom faked an orgasm for us.

If I take off my asexual reviewer's hat for a second and put on my gentleman's helmet, this is just really bad porn.

My verdict: Wank.

500 Days of Summer is a film about how evil women are. Or at least that's what I got from it. Could be wrong.

The film stars Zooey Deschanel as Summer and Joseph Gordon-Levitt as Tom, and is about the rise and fall of the "friendship" between the two. It uses a non-linear narrative and has nice snappy and witty dialogue, though there are a few cheap gags in there. Summer says her nickname in high-school was "Anal Girl" and Tom laughs. Then Summer gets offended because she got the name for being tidy. Now I can guarantee that if she got that name in high-school, "Anal" did NOT mean she was a clean girl. Quite the opposite really.

The film features a lot of music. At the start and end, it's kind of orchestral which gives the film a fairy-tale feel, despite being very realistic in other aspects, and this is helped by the narration and how the back story is told and the film is wrapped up. The fairy-tale fantasy feel is very good for the film, as it allows the quirks and cut-aways to fit in more naturally. The middle of the film features more contemporary music, and for me the narration didn't work too well in these parts, but thankfully there isn't too much narration in those parts of the film, and the change in music helps it feel more modern and not as soppy and feel-goody as it could have been.

I love the quirks of this film. Not only do they tie in well thanks to the fantasy feel, but they are so creative. The random dance scene and the French film with Tom in it stood out to me, but the one which really wowed me was the split screen between Tom's reality and Tom's expectations. This is one of my favourite sequences of film ever. It's brilliantly executed and so emotive.

Around the middle of the film, it does a lot of jumping back and forth in time to contrast between how things are when the relationship is going well, and how things are going when it isn't. This is good at first, and using the day counter to keep track is very clever, but it's done to a point that it kind of gets boring, because it does little to move the story forward, and it's very formulaic. The middle of the film is essentially "Awwww look how cute they are in this situation." Cut to: "LOOK HOW SHIT THIS SITUATION IS NOW SHE'S GONE!!!"

The portrayal of a relationship in this film is so realistic, and really is what carries the film. It captures all the little things that couples do. At one point they play the penis game, which in case you haven't see the film, isn't as interesting as it sounds, though Tom is reluctant to play at first because children are around. We never really get to see what causes the relationship to fall apart which was kind of annoying though. The portrayal of women is very accurate as well. They don't make any bloody sense. Tom's character felt a little naive, but this could be because the film is from his point of view, and he's not really going to try and find out about himself. It could also be because I'm a man and don't want to see how awesome we are be undersold.

Both of the characters in the film felt really quite shallow. They are essentially "This is a man" and "This is a woman", and while the representations of their respective genders is generally very accurate, they feel very generic and impersonal. They don't feel like people as much as they do representations of their genders on the whole. The thing is, you can tell from how realistic the story is that this has actually happened to the writer, and the story is clearly what came first. This was a definite story that they wanted to tell, and they just made some generic characters to carry that story off exactly how they wanted to. However, I feel that because the film has an overall fantasy, fairy-tale feel to it, that it gives a reprieve to the generic characters, as they are carriers of a bigger message, and not really that important. This is particularly reflected in the names of the female characters; being Summer and Autumn.

On the whole, I loved this film. It tells a down to earth and contemporary story with a very traditional feel, but mixes it up with some creative and funny quirks. It's like if Quentin Tarantino made nice films.

Tangled is the latest effort from Disney and tells the classic story of Rapunzel. It all begins when a drop of sunlight falls to earth and grows into a magical golden flower that makes you younger when you sing a special song to it. The 4th problem I noticed about this is how the hell did they know what the song was? Did a piece of moon fall to earth and turn into an instruction manual?

The film starts with a rather extensive back story which glazes over some quite important events I thought, in particular Rapunzel being kidnapped and how she got her magic hair.

The film is also pretty much based around the idea that Rapunzel wants to go and see some lanterns which are released by the king and queen to pray for their daughter's safe return. Personally, I would have opted for a big search party, but that's probably just me being logical.

Rapunzel is supposed to be 18, but she looks like a 13 year old Bratz doll. The hair was the biggest problem for me. Firstly, how the hell do you get that much hair? Was the old woman feeding her testosterone supplements or something? The hair doesn't burden her in the way you would think about 100 meters of the stuff would either. It would be so heavy that it would drag her out of the window, and when she got it all tied up it would snap her weak little neck. I'm surprised she didn't face-butt herself in the tits when her hair got cut off with all the strain it must take to counterbalance.

The handsome man character must have a fractured skull from the amount of blows he takes to the head. I thought the way the old woman found a poster of the guy in his bag was a cheap way of her finding out who to look for, and it made little difference because she magically just seemed to find them in a pub anyway. I suppose that was the obvious place to look for an 18 year old though.

The flashback sequence where Rapunzel realises she's the kidnapped princess was cheap and reminded me of that scene in Spirited Away where the girl just comes out with the right answers off the top of her head. This was the only big problem with the film for me, and it's pretty much just down to lazy writing.

Films with songs in take liberties with exposition, and they tread a fine line between singing about what's going on, and singing about what is actually happening because it needs to be said but would be awkward to just come out and say it in dialogue. The first song of the film falls into the latter, and rivals Rebecca Black's Friday for stating the fucking obvious.

The animation in the film is very nice, and as always I enjoyed the quirks of the film, like Rapunzel trying to hide the guy in the wardrobe, and of course, Max the horse. The trouble for me is something that affects all animated films, so don't take this personally, Tangled. Because animation allows you to do things bigger and more over-the-top than live action, animated films seem to exploit this to the extreme. In every animated film there is at least one ridiculous chase scene and/or fight scene, and I'm beginning to get bored of them now. Just because you can do something doesn't mean you have to.

Having said that, Tangled is a very good family film, and if you enjoy animation you should definitely give it a watch.

Paranormal Activity 2 is a film which asks a question. That question being "What would happen if they had a baby and a dog in Paranormal Activity 1?" The answer to which is "The same thing with more barking and crying."

The film follows the family of the sister of the girl from the first film. Yeah.

The first thing I noticed with the film is that they were keeping up with the whole 'This is real footage' thing, which was stupid. It worked for the first because it was low budget and basically made a name for itself on the back of word of mouth. This was a big budget Hollywood production, and it was a little cringe-worthy to see them try the same thing again just so that they could stick to the format of the first film. I also enjoyed the credits at the end of the film. Sure took a lot of people to make this "actual footage".

The reasons for filming everything are either stupid or non-existent. For some of it, they're filming stuff of their baby, which is acceptable, but then they also seem to just wander round the house with a camera for no reason. I sincerely hope that the dad isn't filming his '50 inch monster' or his wife in the bath for his son to watch in years to come. They also install CCTV cameras in every room of the house after what they think is a break-in. This didn't make sense to me either. Maybe on the outside of the house, but not in every single room. This was once again a example of the film struggling to set up the same situation as the first film. The problem is that this format doesn't really work when the people aren't looking for ghosts, because without that there is no reason to film everything and then everything else about the concept falls down.

The acting in this film isn't very good. The dad character is too cynical and his stubbornness gets frustrating very quickly. So stubborn that at one point he actually says "Why did you even open the door? Someone just knocked and you opened the door? Who does that??" .....Normal people?

The woman who plays the mum is by far the worst actress though. She doesn't seem that bothered when all the cupboards around her blow open, and she seems pretty indifferent when she's being dragged around the house by an invisible monster. I'm guessing they cast her based on how well she could play 'catatonic possessed lady'.

For me, the first film felt like a concept rather than a story, and Paranormal Activity 2 is just a copy. The "story" is essentially the same with the addition of a baby and a dog, and it draws so many parallels to the first film that they don't feel like playful nods to the original. Even some of the twists in the story are identical to the first, like looking up on the internet to discover what they're dealing with. The most confusing, blatant, and cringe-inducing tie-in with the first film though has to be the dad burning a photo of the character from the first film. I did not understand that one bit. "My wife has been possessed by a demon so I'm going to burn a photo of her sister." I think this guy is the one who's really possessed. Crazy bastard.

The film falls down in the same areas that the first did. Probably because they're pretty much identical. Why would a demon that wanted to kill you spend time dicking about opening cupboards when you're not looking? The film is great at building atmosphere, though the pacing, which was really nice in the first film, becomes a bit of a mess towards the end of this one. I'll give Paranormal Activity 2 credit for having more go on than the first film, but with very little story and a flawed concept, and the fact that it's almost a carbon copy of the first film, it's just not enough. This isn't so much a prequal to the first film, it's the big studios having their go at Paranormal Activity 1.

Now before I get into this, I want to make clear that I set out to do this review with an unbiased opinion of Avatar. I put all the stuff about it being a rip-off of many films out of my mind when I sat down to watch it, so if I come to that conclusion, so be it.

Avatar is a rip-off of many films. It's a ripped-off story littered with little bits and pieces of what I would normally call homages, but under the circumstances will term petty theft. In fact the only original thing I can find about Avatar is that no one has had the balls to rip off so many films on such a scale before. The biggest victim of James Cameron's "inspiration" in my eyes is Dances with Wolves, and the similarities are so vast that Kevin Costner's career must be spinning in its grave.

However, originality isn't the only element required to make a good film, so we can't write Avatar off just on that basis. Well, actually we kind of can. Because it is pretty much just a collage of other films, it's so incredibly predictable that it's boring to watch, and this is made even more painful by the excessive 2 hour 40 minute run time.

Avatar also made 3D cool, which I hate. When I first saw this film in the cinema, the 3D effects were impressive, but they didn't add anything to the film, and you kind of phase them out after a bit. The 3D also ruined the lovely vivid colours of the film, and for me the aesthetic was its only redeeming factor.

The visual design of the film really is outstanding, but for me it doesn't make up for the lacklustre story, and you get the impression that the only idea James Cameron had for this film was the visuals, and he just chucked together a script to show them off.

The film is about a mining company who go to an alien planet to get unobtainium (subtle) at the cost of destroying the planet and the native people. A cripple called Jake gets accepted by the native people while he's in his 'avatar' and then he turns against the humans and fights to stop them.

The only gripes I have with the actual execution of the story on the whole are little bits and pieces, like Jake being able to use the avatar perfectly well straight away after being moaned at for having no experience, and the natives appearing to be very intelligent but then using arrows against metal aircraft to no avail, and then later on the arrows work against the aircraft. Stuff like that are the only problems I noticed with the film as it went on.

That's the trouble with Avatar. It cost half a billion dollars to make, and you can tell. It looks amazing, and the script is very well written (you can't even see the seams!). 10 out of 10 for execution. The problem lies in the story. It's as if someone came to James Cameron and said "You can have half a billion dollars to make a film but you have to come up with it right now." And James Cameron just ran around screaming "EPIC!!!"

Avatar is 3 hours of clichés. Pretty though.

Léon is a film about a man called Léon who can only sleep whilst dressed as Ringo Starr. He's also an assassin.

The film kicks off with the not-so-subtle murdering of an entire family, bar one young girl. The thing that struck me about this is how casual the whole thing is. The men that do it are supposedly linked to the police, but even so, they don't try and cover it up in any way. They just stroll in there dressed like hard men, shoot the place up, and then walk off. Surely that isn't in the handbook?

Some of the actors are absolutely horrible. There's a woman who sees her lover in a headlock with a knife at his throat and just doesn't seem arsed, and then there's a kid hiding under his bed with a big smile on his face while his entire family are shot to pieces around him. I appreciate that they didn't play a big part in the film, but you would think someone would ensure they were capable of playing the tiny role they did have to a good standard.

That aside, the main cast was very good. Jean Reno played Léon very well, though the character itself was a bit all over the place. Most of the time he seems like a nice guy, but there are occasions where he becomes either very childish or very professional. I think this was supposed to show a conflicted character, but it came off to me as inconsistent, because in most cases the sudden changes in personality were unprompted.

The big bad British guy is played by Gary Oldman, and very well. He stole the show in my eyes, and it's a shame we didn't see more of him throughout the film. Not just because he was brilliant, but because his character is never buffed out in the film. He's supposed to be involved with the police in some way, and this is important to the story, but it's not really explained in what capacity. And I would love to know which position in the police allows you to go murdering families and have a huge SWAT team at your beckon call.

Natalie Portman plays Matilda, the petite femme fatale (not yoghurt!) very well, but her character also suffers from inconsistency. Sometimes she's being very childish, like being stubborn and laughing at a piggy oven mit and playing dress-up, and then other times she acts very adult. Her age in the film is quite ambiguous, but at either end of the potential age spectrum, at least one aspect of her personality wouldn't fit. I also found the way she was sexualised in the film a bit weird. She says that she's 18, but it's kind of implied that she's lying. She certainly doesn't look it. And she didn't in 1994 either. But she would have been 13 when this film was made, and I just found it quite unusual to see such a young girl sexualised in the way that she is. It's not so overt that it's paedophilic, but it's definitely enough to make you question if Léon is willingly acting as a father figure or "more".

The film was littered with annoying little continuity bits and pieces and expositional dialogue which were mildly annoying. Things like the headmistress of a school explaining the entire back story of  their relationship over the phone, and Léon saying don't stand in front of the windows because of snipers and then standing in front of a window in the next room and not being shot to bits. Those things are a bit annoying. What's more annoying is when those kind of things play a bigger part in the story, such as someone threading an RPG through a tiny hole in a door, or Gary Oldman hiding in the exact right place on the off chance that Léon walks past. Those I can't forgive so easily.

On the whole, I thought it was a very good film. Brilliantly acted by the main cast, an interesting story that makes you think, and some very nice direction from Besson. My only gripes with it are minor. Go watch it.

Juno is the endearing story of a 16 year old girl who gets knocked up and then decides to give away what comes out.

The first thing that struck me about this film is that the dialogue is very witty, but at the cost of believability in places. It's kind of like a childish Kevin Smith style, but the trouble is that the language doesn't sound appropriate for the age of the characters a lot of the time.

The Juno character in particular I wasn't too keen on. Not only did her language and interests seem really inappropriate for a 16 year old girl, but I found her really quite annoying. She's so obnoxious. I appreciate that they wanted her to be this kooky, alternative character, but it felt like a middle-aged man forced inside the body of a teenage girl. And that's against the law for a reason.

Having said that, I think Ellen Page was very good in the film, as were the rest of the cast. Michael Cera played his usual role of awkward teen, but it worked pretty well and his character Bleaker was more believable than Juno in my eyes. The relationship between the two, which you would think would be a prominent part of the film considering it's about pregnancy, takes a back seat for most of it, until it finally rears it's acne-ridden head at the end to wrap things up with a nice happy bow.

There is a lot of music in this film. Like 60% of it must be set to this light-hearted, whimsical, innocent, lo-fi acoustic soundtrack, and that's because those elements (except lo-fi) need to be reinforced constantly throughout the film so that it doesn't get bogged down with the pregnant teenager in the room. It would be near impossible for this film to be as fun as it wants to be if it attempted to tackle the issue of teen pregnancy, so it does everything it can to avoid doing so, and this is evident not only in the constant audible reinforcement, but through Juno's and her parents', and indeed most characters' seeming indifference to her pregnancy. This for me is where the film's biggest flaw is. The film makers seem to think that it would have been impossible to be funny and edgy at the same time, and that is damn wrong. Maybe it's just a British thing, but the best comedy comes from the most controversial of places in my eyes. Comedy doesn't have to be light-hearted to be funny, but even putting the need for funny aside for a second, I think they missed an opportunity to take a stab at the issue here.

The film is very funny and enjoyable to watch, but it felt empty to me by completely ignoring the issue that it's essentially based on. It's like if they did a film about a murderer who had to be stopped because he was ruining peoples' carpets with the blood.

Special is a film about a man called Les who begins a drug trial program and then maybe gets super powers but also maybe just goes mad.

The first thing I noticed about this film is that the star, Michael Rapaport, isn't such a great actor. He's mostly either over-acting or under-acting. Like 70% of the time I would say his actions miss the mark. And he has a weird face. It's like the Elephant man had cosmetic surgery.

The film utilises a voice-over which is supposed to be Les' diary during the course of the drug trial, but it mostly serves as an outlet for either glazing over important things like back story, or pumping out steaming piles of pretentious ponderings on life. I see the point in having it in the film, but they should have either stuck to their guns about it being a diary, or just left it as an unexplained narration, because flitting between the two formats was weird and annoying.

I don't understand why the guy decides he wants to fight crime like a super hero. He just seems to put a costume on and start spearing people. There's also one scene which resolved itself far too easily and was really the only annoying scene in the film for me, which is a shame because it's sole purpose was to serve the pointless love-interest plot thread. Les is in a shop and a man pulls a gun on the check-out girl who our hero fancies. Les decides that since he can read minds, that he can totally take this guy to pain town, so he spears him. The stupid thing is that the criminal gets straight back up, picks the gun up, and runs off without doing anything. You just got speared and made a fool of in front of everyone, and more to the point YOU HAVE A FUCKING GUN!! Do something, man!!

I really enjoyed the ambiguity of if his powers are real or not throughout the film. There's lots of twists and turns and I found myself going "It's real.....Oh wait, it's not real......Oh! Oh it is real!!....OMFG IT'S ALL A LIE!!!11!111!!!!" etc. However, even with the ambiguity there were parts where some of the characters' reactions didn't make sense. In one scene he's sat in a car with his two chums and then teleports to a roof. And the two guys just sit there. Now if his powers were real, they should be like WTF?, and if they're not, surely they would have noticed him leave the car and climb a building?

The seemingly compulsory love-interest plot is pointless and cringe-worthy in this film. It only serves to wrap things up, and the way it does this is just generally uninspired and bad.

The ending was a bit silly to me, because it seems to want to end on a high, but the only high it achieves is that he got hit by a car, then optionally got hit by a car again, but then didn't get hit by a car a third time. Cue victory music?

This film is like Kick-Ass meets Eternal Sunshine of a Spotless Mind, and it wouldn't surprise me if this film influenced how Kick-Ass was made, because they are really quite similar.

Overall, I enjoyed the film. I thought it had a really good story. The only trouble is that the inexperience of the writers/directors shows in all areas; from the questionable casting decisions, derivative direction, to the sloppy writing. Don't let me put you off it though. It is a pretty good film and definitely worth a watch.

Your Highness is a silly medieval comedy from the guy who brought us Pineapple Express, and is pretty much what you would expect. Danny McBride plays Zach Galifianakis as a prince who is trapped in the shadow of his older and better brother. An evil warlock steals Zooey Deschanel and the two go on a quest to save her, with much fun and frolics and penis on the way.


There's only one big problem I have with this film, and that's the accents. Zooey Deschanel should be killed for that garbled nonsense she was trying to pass off as British. James Franco and Natalie Portman were slightly better, so I'll let them off with a gentle wounding.


Apart from that, the only flaws I noticed were that there are some pretty weak reasons for some of the twists (won't go into more detail to avoid spoilers), and some stupid bits like at one point some samurai come out of nowhere and attack them. That was a bit weird.


Also, there is an abundance of swearing in the film, used in contrast to the olde English language for comic effect, but this grows old pretty fast at the start of the film because of the amount it's used. There's a lapse in the middle of the film where it completely stops, and this gives the swearing towards the end of the film a little reprieve, but certainly around the start of the film the "saying fuck for a punchline" bit was becoming grating.


The film is very quirky, and I enjoyed how knowingly goofy it was being in parts, but on the whole I felt the trailer over-sold it a little, as it was definitely not as funny as I was hoping. It's the kind of film you could just whack on when you're getting pissed with your mates and laugh at. Kind of a less-funny Superbad. Having said that, it's a decent film and worth a watch, just don't expect to be rofl-ing.

Spirited Away is a very highly acclaimed film from the much renowned Studio Ghibli. It's also one of the most flawed films I have ever seen.

The trouble I find with most anime is that they tend to rely on wild leaps of the imagination to push the story forward. I'm not sure if this is down to bad translation or just differing attitudes to story, but I tend to like to know why things are happening, especially if they are essential to the story.

A prime example of this in Spirited Away, and two examples of some of the most on-the-nose, expositional dialogue I've ever heard, would be when the evil witch is giving the girl a job. She says "That stupid oath I took to give work to anyone who asks." Right.

Who would make you take that kind of oath?
Who did you make this oath to when you seem to be the big boss around here?
And if you made that oath, why did it take so long for this poor girl to get a job?

It's just horrible writing to plug a hole in the story.

The other example is right at the end of the film when the girl is riding on the back of the boy in dragon form. Out of the blue she goes "I've just remembered something. When I was a kid I fell in a river called Kohaku, so your real name is Kohaku." And she's right.

WHAT THE FUCK?!?!?!

Seriously, I have no idea how this Miyazaki guy got to be so big when he's writing shit like that. I actually stopped the film and skipped back a minute to make sure I hadn't missed something when that line came out of her mouth. And then I paused it for a few minutes to self-harm after I had the horrific confirmation.

The film seems to rely on happy coincidences and unexplained events far too much. There's the No Face monster that comes out of nowhere and decides to help the girl. Then eats people and chases the girl. Then gets on a train with the girl. Then does some knitting. And that's the last we see of it. There was absolutely no pay off to that plot thread.

There's also something about the witch giving you a fake name, and if you forget your real name you can't go home, but this is never explained. If I forgot my name, my mum wouldn't lock me out. She'd take me to the hospital.

All the creatures in this world seem to hate humans at the start, and this is also never explained and doesn't make any sense at all because the majority of the work force are human, and they seem to forget that the little girl is human as soon as she gets a job.

This big dragon flies into her house at one point, and she assumes it's the little boy Haku. Based on nothing. And then carries on calling it Haku until it turns out it actually is Haku. Can I get this girl to pick some lottery numbers?

There's a scene where this big turd monster comes in for a bath, and then it turns out that it isn't a turd monster, it's some dragon that we've seen a glimpse of before and never see again. And that dragon leaves a little turd for the girl to pick up, which she then spends the rest of the film feeding to anything with an open mouth. How she knows it would solve all their aliments I will never know. Is dragon shit an everyday remedy in Japan?

The ending of this film was just terrible. After investing 2 hours, I wanted a bit more than "You guessed right. Off you go." It's also very selfish, because she doesn't get rid of the evil witch and save the world, she just frees her parents and herself and goes home, leaving all those people and creatures that helped her to an eternity of slavery.

Overall, the film was very pretty to look at, and I did enjoy some of the quirks, but for me it was ruined by the sheer amount of plot holes. Coincidence is not good story telling, and I'm actually stunned that this film gets the praise it does when it doesn't make any sense.

Office Space is a film that starts off being a light-hearted comedy about a guy who decides he's had enough of his mundane everyday life, and ends up being about a group of guys who fuck up a heist. I don't get why this is. The first half of the film is packed with clever and funny gags, and then suddenly they stop because the guy decides he wants to pinch some money.

The first qualm I encountered with the film is that the main character Peter decides he has had enough of his job and goes off to do whatever he wants, and then spends most of his time at work just being a dick. That's like donating money anonymously to an orphanage and then demanding that all the children line up and thank you personally. If you've decided that working in that office was soul destroying and that you now don't give a toss about anything, why keep going back there?? In my eyes, Peter hasn't snapped and decided to go off and not give a shit. He just wants to look cool.

There is also this relationship with Jennifer Aniston that comes out of nowhere, and is basically only there to motivate the massive U-turns of attitude Peter makes. In this sense, Jennifer Aniston is a dead end.

I'm kind of confused as to whether or not we are supposed to like Peter as a character, because he establishes himself as a show-boating dick, and then becomes a criminal, all with a smug sense of self-righteousness that makes me think the writers wanted Peter to represent the every-man, living the dream of the depressed guy stuck in a cubical and giving two fingers to the system. He doesn't represent this. Milton represents this, but who wants to identify with that goofy fucker?

I was really enjoying this film up until the jokes stopped coming and the heist film kicked in. It's half decent.

Yesterday I watched an episode of Sharpe with Elizabeth Hurley in it, and that reminded me of this film which also stars her. I have seen this film before, but I was a teenage boy back then, so my viewing style differed this time. I had the sound on and watched all of it.

The plot here is your typical "Guy can't get the girl. Guy goes on a life changing journey. Guy gets the girl." You know. The kind that only Americans love and only Americans make. Anyway, our hero Elliot starts off as a right goof-ball, before bumping into the British devil who says she will give him 7 wishes in exchange for his soul. He says she's crazy and walks away, but then she appears around the corner and gets him a burger and he seems convinced, which leads me to believe that anyone with an identical twin and a few quid could get this guy to do pretty much anything. I find it hard to believe that it's so easy to go from SHE'S CRAZY! to OPPORTUNITY OF A LIFETIME!! If a man told Elliot his faeces tasted like rainbows, would he be sceptical until the guy took a mouthful himself and then beamed a brown-teethed grin in his direction? If you think someone's mad, they generally are.

The area that this film really falls down is that the devil gives Elliot a device that lets him leave his wishes at any time. This means that the next hour of crazy antics they have lined up for us shouldn't have happened, because surely you would leave a situation before you end up hanging from the bottom of a helicopter being fired at by pissed off Russians with assault rifles. Surely you must see that coming.

The characters in this film are all very one-dimensional. The devil is a swindler, all of the characters Elliot becomes in his wishes are extremes of either stupidity or sensitivity or intelligence, and Elliot himself is just putty to be moulded by these experiences without any resistance at all. He never seems to learn from each failed wish either. You would think a person would just adjust the previous wish to fix the area where it went wrong. Well not Elliot. He thinks if a plan fails then the next logical step is to go for the polar opposite. If being stupid and famous failed because you had a tiny dick, then obviously the remedy is to wish for intelligence and class. That's the sure-fire fix for micro-penis.

The woman he spends all of his wishes trying to get never seems to be nice either. In the first wish she cheats on him, in the second she goes off and cheats on him, in the third she just wants to find out if he has a big dick, and in the other wishes she doesn't get chance to cheat/crotch-watch because he's either gay or Abraham Lincoln. He'd have been better off just wishing that she wasn't a stupid whore.

The film has lots of plot holes, such as why are souls so important? This is a point raised by the characters in the film at one point (and rightfully so). However, they do nothing to solve it. It's as if the film thinks that if it's aware of its problems, that they don't matter.

The film does have some funny moments, but on the whole it's just churned out crap with the most unoriginal plot and bland characters to boot.

So this is a film that I enjoyed a lot when I was younger, though this was clearly before I acquired anything resembling taste in films because I thought Nicolas Cage was an amazing actor based on his performance in Gone In 60 Seconds. Yuck.

Lord of War presents itself as a stylish action/thriller/drama based on the real-life events of a gunrunner. He starts off small and then becomes hugely successful in the space of a cut; becomes the best, loses everything, but then it turns out he didn't lose anything. Nothing important anyway. Just his wife, son, parents and Jared Leto. Seriously, at the end of the film he just goes and gets on with selling his shooters, seemingly completely unaffected.

The film is an enjoyable watch (for the first 2 thirds at least) purely because it's about a smart-arse being a smart-arse and getting away with it, and you can be willing to forgive the plot holes because of this, but the one thing that really annoys me with this film is the way the characters speak. When it comes to dialogue, this film is so far up its own arse that it has a metaphor for the smell. Every line has to have some sort of add-on to make it sound smooth and clever and deep. I'm willing to forgive films for doing this occasionally, but it's pretty much every line in Lord of War.

"What's the 'Beware of the Dog' sign about? We don't have a dog." 
"It's to remind me to beware of the dog inside me."

Really? Well I hope it humps your heart on the offbeat and you die of cardiac arrest. People don't talk like that!! Even Nicolas Cage's narration is full of these pretensions.

"To this day I don't know what Vit was running from. Then again, maybe he didn't know."

Urgh. My tip to anyone watching Lord of War is cover your ears whenever you hear a connective, because what follows will add to nothing except the writer's ego.

So, yeah. Lord of War isn't the worst film in the world. It just has the most annoying dialogue in the world. And Jared Leto.