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.