Disturbia

I have renamed this film DisturbiAD (in my head - I don't think it'll catch on).

How much product placement is in this film?

There is loads of product placement in this film.

The film is about a guy who is under house arrest, who starts perving on the next door neighbour and the rest of the street. He thinks that another neighbour is a bad man. The kind of bad man who kills red headed women. Which is naughty and needs to be stopped by a bunch of teenagers.

Trinity from the matrix is the teenagers mom and the guy was in transformers earlier in the summer (when he wasn't under house arrest). Most of their conversations were sponsored by Apple and Xbox.

There was even a bit where he mentioned the hard drive size of his ipod.

It wasn't a bad film, but I was just distracted by thoughts of sweet, sweet Coke, Twinkies and Tom Clancy's Rainbow Six.

6/10

Withnail and I

Wow. I've seen this films a fair few times now, but never on the big screen.

So it was awesome to see it on a bloody huge screen.

It's one of my favoutite films!

9/10

Run, Fatboy, Run

Simon Pegg is awesome. Spaced is my favourite TV series. Ever.

I had high hopes for this.

...and it turned out to be a normal rom-com.

It wasn't bad, there was a few funny bits, but really, what was the point?

4/10

1408

Imagine a film about a hotel room.

Boring huh?

Now imagine a film about an Evil F%%%ing Hotel Room.

Suprisingly also boring.

3/10

Seraphim Falls

What the hell was this film about>

It was ok at the start, but then went weird.

I saw this film, so you don't have to.

2/10

Wicker Man

Shockingly, I haven't seen this film before. Which is a bit weird really.

Once the film got past it's strange (and very seventies) beginning, it turns into a pretty disturbing film.

I really enjoyed seeing it, and to see the final scene in a beautiful transfer, on a huge screen was a treat.

8/10

Sugarhouse

Well I went into this one knowing nothing about it and was suprised by this great little thriller about a Suit-Wearing-Man who wants to buy a gun.

It is based on a stage play, and does feel like it at times, but the script is great and I got totally immersed in it.

Plus, it was good to see Andy Serkis playing a human!

6/10

The Bourne Ultimatum

Well, I wasn't the most excited by the prospect of this, the series has been good so far, but not really my kind of film...

...until I saw this.

This is what blackbusters should be like.

9/10

Eagle vs Shark

I can't wait for this to come out on DVD. There are so many jokes in this geek rom-com. The characters aren't pretty, sometimes not even likeable, but they are so well played they are hilarious.

There are so many jokes and so many great little touches that I want to see this again and again. It might not be the best film I've seen all year, but when it is this bloody funny, it doesn't matter at all.

8/10

The Simpsons Movie

It isn't a movie, it is just an episode stretched to 90 minutes.

However, it is a good episode, so I'm not complaining. I just think that they didn't really expand the Simpsons in any way in this film (apart from length and widthways).

I actually saw this film again the very next day after I had just seen it and still laughed all the way through it.

It is a good laugh - 8/10

Transformers

Lots of money was thrown at a script with an uneven tone and lack of plot.

The money didn't help.

I wasn't impressed. I didn't think the effects were worth the money spent on the film and to be honest, I got bored. I wanted the film to end.

A film with bloody big robots fighting each other shouldn't be boring.

3/10

Hairspray

I really enjoyed this - I had a big grin on my face all the through it.

It has a bit of a story and even a message to get across - but it doesn't let that get in the way of entertainment.

Yes - entertainment, a word that many of the big summer films have completely forgotten is important.

My only question - what the hell is John Travolta's accent supposed to be?

I hope we see some of the cast back in other musicals soon - there were some terrific performers.

I was singing some of the songs for days afterwards - 7/10

Die hard 4.0

I loved the trailer for this film. It told me what I was going to see when I went to see Die Hard 4.0 - a big, stupid, brash, loud bit of entertainment.

And it didn't disappoint.

It isn't to say that this is the greatest film ever, and it did get ridiculous towards the end, but whatever, sometimes I want to see explosions and giggle.

6/10

The Lives Of Others

This film wasn't on my local cinema during its release, but I managed to catch it on a "Wednesday Special" and I am glad I did.

Set in East Germany, The Lives Of Others follows a Party agent who is assigned to monitor a playright. What follows is European cinema at its finest.

I don't want to say much more about the plot - this is a film that haunted me for days afterwards.

Brilliant. 9.5/10

Dead Silence

Well, I've seen worse films I suppose, but this was a bit pointless.

It was very nice to look at though.

BUT REALLY - A HORROR FILM WITH VENTRILOQUIST'S DOLLS IN IT SHOULD BE SCARY>

Ok, rant over.

I'm sorry.

2/10

The Flying Scotsman

I haven't been to the cinema very often recently, mainly because I'm not interested in Spiderman, Fantastic 4 et al. I saw ghost rider earlier in the year. I don't need to see anymore bad comic films.

My reaction to seeing this weeks cinema listings was one of relief when I saw that there was a film that looked like it didn't involve explosions and car chases.

This is a biopic of Graeme Obree - a Scot who broke the one hour distance record with a home-made bike in the mid-nineties. He battled with depression and the Internation Cycling Union (who ruled his bike design illegal) during his racing career.

The film is beautifully shot (and partly set in Glasgow - which is always a good thing) and the performances are pretty good - I just felt that Obree's depression wasn't handled as well as it could have been.

All in all, it is a sports movie - and fits the blueprint for such a film perfectly. At least it wasn't about American Football!

I really liked it, and definately recommend it.

oh, and there WAS a car chase!

7/10

Shrek the third

As they didn't bother to write a script, should I bother writing a review?

There was no story, the animation was often ropey.

I was bored.

lazy - 1 / 10

FANTASTIC FOUR: RISE OF THE SILVER SUFER

This was the first new film I'd seen in a number of weeks. On account of there being no new films out I wanted to see, plus there being films on at my local cinema that I'd seen but were worth watching again

I went to this cinema this evening on the bat of having worked the last 7 days in a row. I was tired and had been sat in front of a computer for 10 hours with a bit of a hangover. Still I tired to suppress all my expectations, I thought I'd go with an open mind and hoped to be pleasantly surprised.

Suffice to say I WAS NOT PLEASANTLY SURPRISED.

There was wooden acting, bad blue screen, wooden characters, super-heroes with rubbish super powers, rubbish plot lines. Even Jessica Alba didn't look good for the whole time I was watching. There were cheesy lines, the guy who played William Wilberforce in Amazing Grace was like the wooden guy from the Cuprinol adverts. The story didn't hang together. The final action sequence was shot on the same stage as the final scene of Superman I.

I hadn't seen the 1st film in this series so was confused by the continuing plots.

Stan Lee has a cameo role in this film - he must've been hanging his head in his hands when he saw how the makers of this film had destroyed his many hours of creative work on the original comics.

DO NOT GO TO SEE THIS FILM.

It does not even merit a mark out of 10. A thoroughly disappointing film

Zodiac

After Panic Room, David Fincher has bounced back and made a stylish, intelligent and very well made film. He has reigned in a lot of his crazy camera moves (that probably wouldn't have been appropriate in this 1970s based film), and kept a restrained hold on a story that spans about fifteen years.

Yes, it is sprawling, yes it is long, and yes, the end isn't as good as a fictional one but this is a quality film.

I'm glad Fincher is back, I just hope it doesn't take so long for his next film to come out.

8/10

Paradise Lost

After viewing the trailer package with this film, I am a bit worried. Films are getting a bit sick at the moment. All the trailers were for torture horror - it's getting a bit old now, so it looks like they are just going to get gorier and sicker.

That's ok every so often, but where have the supernatural horrors gone?

They don't even have proper zombies anymore...

I'm sure it'll all be cyclical and there'll be remakes of Nightmare on Elm Street and stuff in two years time.

Probably with even more gore.

Anyway, on to the business in hand - Paradise Lost.

It begins a bit like The Beach - a bunch of tourists are in a bus crash and so are left stranded somewhere in Brazil. Luckily, they find a spectacular beach nearby, with an amazing bar and get absolutely hammered. They awake the next morning to find that they have been robbed, the bar is gone and they are lost.

And hunted.

Then, unfortunately it becomes a bit of a torture horror. Which is a shame, it could have been done much more subtly and made this film a lot better. Although I was complaining about torture horror a couple of minutes ago, it is okay, if done well; however, the huge amount of them coming out at the moment leaves this film in the middle of the pile in that genre and as such, will be forgotten about.

I'm not going to give away the reason for the tourists being hunted, but I thought that the premise was good, and could have made a really good horror film, rather than this mediocre film.

I will leave this review with a positive note though - there is a chase sequence set in underwater caves - it is pretty cool.

Anyway, enough rambling about this film.

4/10

Catch a Fire

Catch a Fire is set in South Africa in the 1980s and is about an apolitical guy, just living his life until the ANC bomb the oil refinery where he works.

With fantastic performances and a great ending, Catch a Fire is definately worth seeing.

7/10

The Magicians

As we left the cinema, my girlfriend said, "Wild Hogs was funnier."

She was right. We both like Peep Show and so were really looking forward to this film.

Oh well.

3/10

28 Weeks Later

Wow.

This film begins with one of, if not the greatest old school zombie attacks I have ever seen.

Except that they attackers weren't zombies, they were Infected and so the scene moves at somthing approaching a million miles an hour.

Truly awesome.

The rest of the film was big, stupid, but very fun.

8/10

SPIDERMAN 3

I had 2 atempts at going to see this film, and finally managed it on the 3rd. It confirms all the critics suspicions about itself. It is too long, there are too many plot lines going on, the bit where Peter Parker goes evil is like a Lynx advert, it is not anywhere near as much fun as the first 2 films.

Had it been shotrter, with less plot lines and no Lynx advert it would've been awesome.

If you've seen the first 2 and you've been sucked in by the hype (as I was) go see it. If you haven't it's not worth the bother.

I'm going to give this 4.6 out of 10

Wild Hogs

I can't believe we went to see this, but after a mishap involving someone forgetting to give someone else a lift we arrived to the cinema too late to see 28 weeks later, and the next film on was Wild Hogs.

Well, it wasn't quite as bad as expected, but I wouldn't recommend it to anyone.

3/10

Goya's Ghosts

I'm trying to not see Spiderman 3, even though that seems to be the only film on at the cinema at the moment, so I went to see Goya's Ghosts.

It's about the Spanish Inquisition, and is pretty interesting, although slightly ridiculous.

I enjoyed it, even though it didn't really know how to end and so the credits seemed to just suddenly appear to end it.

7/10

This Is England

The performances were absolutely fantastic, the film looked pretty damn good and there was some cool tunes on it.

And yet, I was left wanting.

I don't know what it was, maybe I was expecting it to end up somewhere else, but I was left disappointed.

I was looking forward to this one too...

I don't really know how to rate this, it is better than average, erm, maybe 6.3/10

shame

Provoked: A True Story

So, there wasn't much on at the cinema last night really. But that didn't stop me. it was time for something different anyway.

So I saw Provoked: A True Story.

It is a true story (no, really it is - look at the title) about a woman who sets fire to her husband after he has physically and sexually abused her for ten years.

If you just go with the flow, it does the job.

Not bad for a low-budget indie crossover flic.

I'm gonna check out some proper Bollywood stuff soon - the trailer for Ta Ra Rum Pum looked like it should be good for a laugh.

The Phil Mitchell playing a Policeman bit was hilarious! 5/10

Fracture

Fracture is a good, solid, old fashioned dialogue based drama where it is obvious how the film will end, but you have no idea how it will manage to get there.

And it is a lot of fun watching the plot threads fall into place.


They don't make them like this very often anymore...

7/10

Curse Of The Golden Flower

After Hero and The House of the Flying Daggers, comes Curse of the Golden flower. Sumptuous in its intricately detailed pink and yellow sets and costumes, Curse of the Golden Flower is very pretty, and has some very good set-pieces, but none of the heart of the films mentioned above.

5/10

The Messengers

The Pang brother's breakout film, The Eye, is one of my favourite films. I remember seeing it in the UGC(now cineworld) in Glasgow with the volume turned up full and being absolutely terrified.

Crazily terrified.

The Eye (especially loud) is creepy as hell.

So, what about The Messengers?

It was ok, and was efficiently scary, but predictable.

My advice is that if you haven't seen it already, go and rent The Eye (the original one).

And then sleep with your light on.

The Messengers gets 5/10 - mainly for the cool spidery-type guy. If the Avril Lavigne girly had been killed, it might have got seven.

Amazing Grace

This is a film that deserves to be seen - and as such it was a shame that the cinema was empty.

Amazing Grace is about William Wilberforce and his battle to abolish slavery.

It is a story that everyone should know about and proves that, with determination, you can make the world a better place.

8/10

Sunshine

In space, it seems, people go mad, kill each other or get devoured by aliens.

There are no aliens in Sunshine, so you can guess what happens...

Sunshine is about the Astronauts of Icarus 2 - the second mission to reignite the dying Sun after the crew of the Icarus 1 failed their mission.

The film starts as the Icarus 2 is approaching Mercury on the final phase of their mission.

And then the mission begins to go wrong...

Sunshine is a proper science fiction film - there is some action in it - but this is a film about Man and it is almost truly great.

The sound and visual effects are spectacular (even more so as this was a low budget film) and the tempo and scariness really draw you into the film, the ending is bizarre though as so many serious, adult sci-fi films are.

9/10

The Namesake

This is about a family from Calcutta who move to New York and who try to balance the conflicts between their different cultures. The film is mainly seen through the eyes of the son, who by a series of events, is named Gogol.

I really liked this - especially as the last few films I have seen haven't exactly been fantastic.

8/10

Becoming Jane

I was hoping for something snappier then this, the dialogue was great, but there was too many times when nothing happened in this film. It was a waste of very fine actors.

I'm disappointed.

5/10

TMNT

I didn't go into TMNT expecting much (however John was crushed as he was expecting it to be live action so he could see Sarah Michelle Gellar) and was pleasantly surprised that this old franchise actually ended up being quite good.

Some of the animation was spectacular - although the human characters didn't really fit in with the style - and the story - being a kind of rip off of Ghostbusters wasn't too bad.

So all in all not too bad - if you were 7 years old, it would be the most awesome film that you had ever seen!

6/10

The Illusionist

I was glad that this wasn't a copy of The Prestige (which was a pretty decent thriller) . However, they really needn't have bothered with it, it was all great and lovely and pretty and well acted.

And then they spoiled it all with a crap ending.

5/10

300

The cinema manager was pretty cool as there was a bit of a mix up and the film shouldn't have been advertised on their website - this advanced preview was a private showing for a magazine.

Nevertheless, we managed to get in, although with the mix up we missed the start, but I don't think that much was missed.

It's not like it was a plot driven film - Neill Cumpston, a contributor to aint it cool said it best "I can’t spoil the plot because THANK GOD THERE ISN’T ONE. Just ass kicking that kicks ass that, while said ass is getting kicked, is kicking yet more ass that’s hitting someone’s balls with a hammer made of ice but the ice is frozen whiskey."

He's pretty much got it spot on.

The film is about 300 Spartans battling the approaching Persian army (roughly totaling a million men). The film goes for it pretty much from the beginning, focusing on epic battles rather than plot.

Not that the is anything wrong with that - the battles were cool, and just got bigger and badder as it went on.

Where it all fell down though, was that the film had the style but it was missing the one thing that elevates such a film to greatness - heart.

I wasn't that bothered when one of the Spartans was killed, which I think I should have been, seeing as it was a film about 300 against a million.

I'll forgive the film for this though, as it got the spectacle bit right and it had a bit of a metal soundtrack (but with the now-obligatory Gladiator-style bits when it was a bit sad!).

6/10

Ghost Rider

I walked into the theatre knowing that this wasn't going to be very good...

...and was shocked that it was awesome.

I'm kidding - It was the usual pointless, uninspired Marvel rubbish.

3/10

The Number 23

When Jim Carrey is good, he is pretty good. In The Number 23, Jim Carrey is good. And it looked pretty.

And now for the cons...

It wanted to be clever but it wasn't clever. And if it was, I still wouldn't have liked it as it spends the last 45 hours chirping about how bloody clever the film was.

I mean, there are lines like "Did you see what colour his tie was? It was pink, that is red and white. Red and white adds up to 92. 92 divided by 4 is 23."

And that is the substance of the film. It was annoying.

I was praying for Jim Carrey to be run over by a bus just so that it would end.

I wanted to like it, but it sucked.

Should I give this film 2 or 3 out of 10? Oh 2 and 3 is 23. IT IS NOT CLEVER

Scenes of a Sexual Nature

This is about a day on Hampstead Heath - the camera moves between various couples discussing relationships. There are quite a few familiar faces, most notably Ewan McGregor, but ultimately, I wasn't really sure of the point of the whole exercise.

5/10

The Science Of Sleep

Romantic comedies suck right?

Well... they tend to do when they are the formulaic tripe that tends to be on at a multiplex, fortunately The Science of Sleep uses special effects made out of cardboard, tri-lingual dialogue and general weirdness and mayhem to keep it out of the formulaic rom-com category.

And that is the way it should be.

One of the best films that I've seen so far this year - 8/10

Hot Fuzz

It was very weird seeing Simon Pegg not playing a slacker, but he pulled it off. I thought that after the success of Shaun of the Dead, that the Pegg/Wright team would make a more International film, so it was a surprise to see an even more British film.

In a weird way, this reminds me of the Matrix - where there's loads of setup just so that the film can get to that bit in the script where Neo says, "Guns, we needs lots of guns." And then they walk into the lobby and all hell breaks loose.

This film is like that, except that the point where all hell breaks loose involves an old woman. And is hilarious.

Awesome!

I need to see this film again!

Cornetto? - 8/10


EDIT - I've see it again and it was even better!

El Laberinto del Fauno (Pan's Labyrinth)

I was lucky enough to get to see my favourite film of 2006 on the big screen again last week.

Since then, it has won three well deserved Oscars.

This film is so brutal, and contains true horror and bizarre images and characters, and yet still retains an innocence and fragility.

It blew me away on first viewing and blew me away last Wednesday.

A masterpiece - 10/10