Film and DVD reviews, analysis and criticism

Film Review - Contact

2007-01-24T14:46:00.000Z

Jodie Foster is a scientist. She's got a big thing about empirical evidence. Over the course of Contact she learns that everybody who makes judgements based on facts is WRONG. She also learns that everybody who just takes things on trust is RIGHT.

The only thing is, the only thing that convinces her of this is an experience that she has - something that she herself can verify.

We the viewers are also meant to take home the view that just believing in something for no real reason, because somebody's told you to, is in some way better than requiring facts. Aside from the flawed logic whereby Jodie Foster renounces facts as a result of a FACT, we're also supposed to adopt this view based on a load of fiction. Because, lest we forget, this is just a film and not real life.

Just who is it that lets Christian Americans make films?

Film Review - The Big Sleep

2007-01-21T15:11:00.006Z

The Big Sleep is a modern day reworking of that fairytale where the princess sleeps for a thousand years. Or a hundred. Or six months. I can never remember.

In this version, the action is transplanted to inner-city Pocklington in North Yorkshire. It's a hard world. A world of macho posturing, weapons and keeping up your reputation. Within this grim, urban land, we meet Karen, played by Oprah Winfrey. She works in the arts centre, unfortunately, not for much longer.

Karen falls asleep. For no real reason, she doesn't wake up for three whole days. When she awakes she's lost her job. Now she must make her way on the harsh streets of Pocklington, three days older, but no more wise. You see: There are no fairytales in Pocklington.

Film Review - A Scanner Darkly

2007-01-18T14:12:00.000Z

I hate it when a film's called something that doesn't seem to make grammatical sense.

You're annoyed that it doesn't seem to scan, but you know that it's probably a totally different meaning that you'd only understand if you watched the film. If you did watch the film, it would all fall into place and the title would reveal itself as perfectly grammatical.

But you don't want to watch the film, because you don't want to be sucked in. Instead, it's far better to rage blindly at something you don't really comprehend. That's the way I always feel anyway.

Keanu Reeves - black mark; Robert Downey Junior - black mark; title - black mark; Based on a Philip K Dick novel - tick.

Ticks and black marks: That's the way to rate a film.

Film Review - Dirty Sanchez

2007-01-17T14:03:00.000Z

Somebody once tricked me into doing an image search for Dirty Sanchez. I didn't know what it was. If you're also ignorant of the 'other' meaning, the clue is in the 'dirty' part. Things with 'dirty' in are never good on the internet.

I'm not going to forgive these Welsh pranksters for their indirect responsibility for this grave error.

Film Review - A Nightmare On Elm Street

2007-01-16T17:15:00.000Z

Karl is a paper boy. Karl delivers his papers flawlessly every day. Karl's round encompasses Elm Street and Willow Drive.

One day, Karl is distracted from his endeavours by thoughts of a vaguely rude film he's seen the night before. Karl's only 11. It's easy to get distracted by things like that when you're 11. Karl absent-mindedly posts a copy of the Sun through the door of a house who ordinarily receive the Financial Times.

Unable to retrieve the paper and now bearing one copy of the Sun too few, Karl attempts to make the best of things by reapportioning the newspapers in such a way as that everyone will receive a newspaper of roughly the correct type, if not exactly the right paper.

With a Sun too few and an FT too many, he attempts to deliver a marginally higher-brow newspaper to everyone, thus breaking down the disparity between all of the houses, rather than inflicting a clearly inappropriate newspaper on just the one customer.

Having to think on his feet and in a state of mild panic, Karl clearly fails. He has A Nightmare On Elm Street.

Film Review - Desperately Seeking Susan

2007-01-15T16:34:00.000Z

Desperately Seeking Susan is the sequel to the critically feted Vaguely Wondering Where Susan Is. The rumour is that there is a third film, currently in production, with the provisional title, Frantically Phoning Round Everyone We Know In The Vague Hope That They've Seen Or Spoken To Susan.

Desperately Seeking Susan is a tour de force from a cinematic perspective. It is one continuous take, on one solitary camera. The actor, Cheggers of pop-playing fame, had to deliver a gargantuan, yet faultless performance. And he managed it.

By the end of the film, Cheggers is completely hoarse. Starting with an inquisitive 'Susan?' progressing to a more tremulous and nervous delivery, before finally, in the climactic moments, attaining a level of worry that could only be classed as desperate. The whole movie hangs on this man and he delivers.

Film Review - Chinatown

2007-01-12T16:29:00.000Z

Chinatown is a wobbly-camera documentary about a group of children taking a day trip in order to learn something about another culture.

Early excitement at the exotic arch leading into Chinatown is quoshed by the realisation that no-one's really thought of anything to do while they're there.

One kid buys two pairs of nice chopsticks to take home.

Film Review - The Breakfast Club

2007-01-11T16:20:00.000Z

Five young things are sentenced to school on a Saturday morning. The only problem is, no-one's thought to bring anything to eat. As they rampage up and down the empty corridors, stomachs rumble, until finally, the jock, played by Emily Pankhurst, strikes lucky - a Club biscuit inside someone's locker.

It's out of date, but it's one of the mint ones which were much nicer than the orange ones or the plain ones. In any case, everyone's starving, so it's going to get eaten. But by whom?

The answer, of course, is no-one. This is a classic parable about co-operation. Being as everyone only thought of themselves back in the Eighties, no-one's going to get the Club biscuit. They'll have to wait until they get home when their mums will make them some sandwiches. They'll probably be rubbish sandwiches though, like tuna or potted beef.

Film Review - Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country

2007-01-10T17:19:00.000Z

The 'Star' part of the title's a bit misleading, because our heros, Cork, Spack, Dr Brannigan, Scotty-too-Hotty and Ayer's Rock don't actually leave Earth. The titular undiscovered country is, in fact, France.

American geography's famously bad, so pretty much every country's 'undiscovered'. This film depicts a Star Trek convention in Lyon. Everyone gets really confused because no-one's speaking English.

The real focus of this film should have been on how such ludicrous names came to exist. Not the screen names, you understand - the real names. I mean, 'Nichelle'? What the hell is that? It's nearly 'Michelle', but let's be brutal here - it isn't. That letter M is crucial in the rendering of the name Michelle. It kicks things off.

Then there's DeForest Kelley. 'Kelley' is a poorly-spelt woman's first name and he's using it for a surname. 'DeForest' is nothing at all. I just... Agh.

Film Review - Splash

2007-01-09T12:06:00.000Z

Sometimes you watch a film and it terrifies you to your very soul. This is one of those films.

Never in the history of cinema has there been such a terrifying concept. What sadistic movie mogul gave this the green light? It's crass irresponsibility of the highest order. Some of us have to sleep at nights. Whoever was responsible for this chilling opus surely hasn't slept since they made that fateful decision.

This film is about a woman who's part-fish.

It doesn't get any more horrendous than that. She's a woman. And she's a fish. She's a fish. But she's a woman. She's fish where she should be legs and she's human-face where she should be gills. It's so shocking my grammar's gone out of the window.

All I can think about is that macabre scaly waist and that full-lipped fish mouth. It's worse than that time when that guy punched that other guy by accident and didn't say sorry.

Film Review - Danielle Steel's Palomino

2007-01-08T17:00:00.000Z

What in the name of the Lord is Palomino? Is it Italian for 'demented'?

If I were going to make a film out of a book, I'd make it out of a good book, like The Good, The Bad and The Ugly: The Screenplay or Pulp Fiction: The Screenplay. You know, something that lends itself to the screen.

I wouldn't make it about a frigging palomino. They're dirty and they steal.

Film Review - Alvin and the Chipmunks Meet Frankenstein

2007-01-05T10:19:00.000Z

Alvin and the Chipmunks Meet Frankenstein is a veritable tour de force. It covers a remarkable amount of ground raising questions about man's innate sense of worthlessness, his propensity for cruelty and his predisposition to drink. All of this is conveyed in knockabout fashion and it's only afterwards that the true depth of what you have witnessed sinks in.

Is Alvin a chipmunk? Why is he always separate? Are we to infer that he is not in fact a chipmunk, but maybe some sort of squat weasel? Why does Simon wear glasses, is this a comment on our short-sighted contemporary ways? And what's the point of Theodore? Just what is it that he does?

Add into the mix Frankenstein, or to be more precise, Frankenstein's monster and there's a recipe for success.

Warning: This film contains images of chipmunks devouring a reanimated composite human consisting of body parts from various cadavers.

Film Review - 7eventy 5ive

2007-01-04T16:25:00.000Z

This is just stupid. Why doesn't anyone acknowledge the fact that the title of this film is effectively Seven-eventy Five-ive - which is moronic.

I hate it when people use numbers in place of letters. Nobody's impressed. Altern8 drew the line under that particular piece of wordplay years ago. Altern8 at least understood the fundamentals of numbers-in-place-of-bits-of-word.

7eventy 5ive stars some people who want slapping senseless at sacrificing their self-respect on the altar of numbers-in-place-of-bits-of-word.

Come on everybody, let's go and find the altar of numbers-in-place-of-bits-of-word, so we can spit on it and draw penises on the side.

Film Review - Spoon

2007-01-03T16:20:00.000Z

Unbelievable. You give a film the best name ever and then ruin it by (a) not making it about a spoon or (b) not making it about a guy who is a complete spoon - ie, a spanner, a tool, a dunce, an eejit.

No. This film's about a guy who's called Spoon. It's not even Mr Spoon of Button Moon fame. That would have been acceptable. This person doesn't even have a single piece of spoon anatomy (that we get to see). He's just called Spoon.

There are a number of Spoons in this film. If only there were a number of spoons (lower-case 's').

Film Review - The Jacket

2007-01-02T16:01:00.000Z

The Jacket is an old-fashioned farce starring George Clooney, Julia Roberts, Britney Spears and Elton John.
Elton John buys a ludicrous, pink, velour jacket encrusted with sapphires. George Clooney buys a ludicrous, pink, velour jacket encrusted with sapphires. Julia Roberts does the same and Britney Spears does the same. Meanwhile, across town, the police are receiving word that a priceless pink, velour jacket encrusted with sapphires has been stolen.

So, by some amazing coincidence, all four stars go for dinner at the same restaurant, separately. They leave their jackets with the special coat guy and he hangs them up. Obviously, all the jackets get mixed up and in a painful series of virtually impossible scenarios, the four stars repeatedly exchange jackets at different locations, without once meeting each other. Occasionally the police confiscate one of the jackets before returning it and confiscating a separate one.

The moral of the film seems to be that regardless of any similarities in clothing, celebrities keep different things in their pockets.

Film Review - Unbreakable

2006-12-31T18:10:00.000Z

Unbreakable is a laugh-a-minute look back on the time when CDs first came out and everyone said that they were indestructible.

At the time, the stock footage of people wetting CDs and jumping up and down on them didn't seem at all outrageous. With the benefit of hindsight, it's side-splitting.

Director, Method Man from the Wu Tang Clan, has created a subtle classic here.

Film Review - Sphere

2006-12-22T18:05:00.000Z

Sphere is a gruelling film to watch. It's about a man called Elderforce trying to make a sphere with only a wooden block and a penknife.

Elderforce is played with aplomb by William H Macy. You're with him every step of the way. Mostly things go badly for Elderforce and Macy's hangdog expression conveys this in an endearing way.

Elderforce takes a lump off the wooden block. He takes too much. It's not round. He takes a bit off the other side, to even things up. The block looks vaguely spherical, but flattened. He takes off bits from the top and the bottom. It's too square. He rounds it and it looks good. But then Elderforce turns it 90 degrees and it's all out of proportion.

Will he ever get that block into a spherical shape? How small will the block be by the time he manages it?

Film Review - Domino

2006-12-21T17:59:00.000Z

Domino is a documentary about the World Domino Championships in Rhyll. You'd think that dominos would make a terrible spectator sport, but you'd be wrong.

The tension really racks up as you put yourself in the position of the players. When that double-six goes down and whoever played the domino roars, you feel for their opponent. As the marker stabs in and out of the scoring block, you feel each insertion like a knife through the hard.

There aren't even any domino rallies, but you still feel exhausted when it ends.

Film Review - Scum

2006-12-19T17:55:00.000Z

Scum is a short art-house film from Paraguay about a man who has to clean a pond. The man, played by Oliver Reed in drag, is not knowledgeable about pond-cleansing and resorts to drinking the entire thing before urinating a replacement.

Reed - whose character is nameless throughout - is utterly baffled by the poor standard of his urine pond and sets about rectifying the situation by lying on his front and punching the yellow water.

Quite what we're meant to make of this is beyond me.

Film Review - Charlie and the Chocolate Factory

2006-12-18T17:36:00.000Z

Charlie and the Chocolate Factory is a grim tale of life in a northern factory town.

Charlie, played by a 19-year-old Ricky Tomlinson, sees no life for himself at the chocolate factory where all his friends work, but in a town with little other employment, he's unlikely to escape his fate.

As ever with these types of films, it is when the action is at its grittiest that the film's heart shines through. At one point, Charlie's mother, played by Pauline Collins implores young Charlie to take a job on the production line, as he has been out of work for months and the family have been reduced to eating chairs. Charlie stands his ground and tells her that Bertie Bassett came to him in a dream and revealed himself as an alternate employer. As his mother breaks down in tears, it's impossible not to feel for her - the liquorice allsort factory is in the neighbouring town.

This film is by turns uplifting, soul-destroying, mind-numbing, intoxicating and gay.

Film Review - 8mm

2006-12-15T12:29:00.000Z

8mm is a shocking exposé of all that is twisted and corrupt in the world of The Measuring Olympics.

You wouldn't think it was easy to cheat when measuring stuff, but you can do it, if you're determined. You also have to be motivated. When the rewards are as high as a gold medal in 'metric evaluation of bits of wood under three metres in length' then right and wrong go out the window.

This squalid practice reaches its nadir when Bob Krystanowicz is caught biroing different numbers onto a competitor's ruler.

Film Review - True Romance

2006-12-14T15:18:00.000Z

Sue Lawley. Thor. It's a marriage made in heaven, right?

WRONG!

Think about it. Lawley's a former newsreader. Thor's a Norse God. Lawley loves autocues. Thor only has eyes for his hammer. This is NOT a true romance.

The final straw for Thor's dad, Odin, is when he finds out that Lawley is a Brummie.

"You may have failed to drain that horn of mead, because it was actually connected to the ocean. You may have set your sister's husband-to-be increasingly difficult and time-consuming tasks, until he was petrified at dawn, on account of his being a dwarf. But you will NOT marry Sue Lawley. She is from Birmingham."

Film Review - Out of Time

2006-12-13T10:12:00.000Z

I can't really remember this film too well, but I'm pretty sure that it was stupid.

As I remember it, the main guy's a crap, corrupt policeman. He steals, he adulterises (yes, that's a word), he drinks. He doesn't kill, but he's only a whisker away, if you ask me. Like I say, I can't remember the details, but the guy's an arse and I'm pretty sure he's a criminal.

He gets framed for a murder. He gets out of it. He gets the girl and the money and free Lego and all sorts of stuff, but he's still a bastard. It's not right. We should write letters.

I was also disappointed that it wasn't a rockumentary about the making of REM's seventh album of the same name.

Film Review - The Pelican Brief

2006-12-12T15:06:00.000Z

The Pelican Brief is a strange, dreamlike film about half a feathered underpant.

Dominik Diamond tries on a strange undergarment in a backstreet clothes shop in Sheffield. He is instantly besotted with these pelican briefs, but unfortunately the shop only takes cash and Dominik doesn't have enough.

Returning later, having visited the cash machine, Dominik is distraught to find that in his absence, half of the pelican briefs have scarpered, leaving merely a pelican brief. Dominik haggles with the shop owner and eventually persuades him to part with the pant for half the price of the full garment. The remainder of the film depicts Dominik's quest to reunite the two halves of his undercrackers.

Film Review - Lucky Number Slevin

2006-12-11T17:51:00.000Z

Film guy comes up with shockingly bad title for film. Film guy attempts to engineer a situation where said shockingly bad title would apply. The result is laughable. The studio ploughs on regardless.

Nobody's called Slevin. It's moronic. No, wait. There's a doctor Eamonn Slevin at the University of Ulster. Clearly Slevin was the best non-fictional name that sounded kind of like 'seven'. It's probably pronounced to rhyme with 'even' but don't let that stop you.

Here are some more film titles that are also shit:

Lucky Number Spevan
Unlucky Thirteed
A World Elevel
Sweet Sixdreen

Feel free to use any of those, Hollywood.

Film Review - Mulholland Drive

2006-12-08T17:47:00.000Z

Don't be fooled by the name. This isn't about Mulholland Drive in Hollywood. It's about a drive down Mulholland Close in Merton, London.

Young Roddy Rocketpants has got a new car. It's an Austin Allegro. He wants to take it for a spin, so he does. Unfortunately, he never gets further than his own road, Mulholland Drive, due to a number of hilarious incidents, which are just too side-splitting to relay.

The only false note in this masterpiece is the question as to why Roddy Rocketpants wants a battered 1970s vehicle when he is the proud owner of trousers that can propel him through the stratosphere.

Film Review - The Ten

2006-12-07T10:40:00.000Z

The Ten is the sequel to The Three Amigos, bizarrely. This time there are ten amigos. It is these amigos, or rather the number of them, that gives rise to the title: The Ten.

Considering there are seven - count them, seven - additional amigos, this is far from three and a third times better than the first installment in the Amigos series. it's probably about 50% better, but I guess that The Four-and-a-Half Amigos just sounded shit. Also, it would have been difficult to gauge the relative merits of the sequel prior to production.

On balance, we'll forgive them the name.

Film Review - Sin City

2006-12-06T17:35:00.000Z

On the one hand, Sin City is a depiction of an extremely corrupt world. It is ultra-stylised and its only responsibility is to entertain.

On the other hand, it's an intensely absorbing motion picture about a big group of actors taking the piss out of one of their number because he's called 'Clive'.

I enjoyed this film immensely. My favourite bit was when Clive finally revealed his surname after much prodding from his fellow cast members. The reaction of Oliver Cromwell from Moonlighting was priceless:

"Owen? Your name's Clive Owen? Aren't you in Last of the Summer Wine?"

Film Review - Master and Commander

2006-12-05T10:26:00.000Z

One guy's a master, one guy's a commander, a third guy's a captain. They argue about who the boss is.

It's an epic, so you have to endure quite a lot of this. One guy, the captain, played by Max Bygraves, habitually makes up quotes to 'prove' that he's the boss. The commander, Tim Curry, yells louder and louder at an ever-escalating pitch. The master, Mr Benn, from children's TV programme, Mr Benn, merely runs away from them and attempts to be master of very small and inconsequential objects.

A sample scene runs as follows:

Mr Benn (under his breath): I'm the master of my pillow...

Captain Bygraves: What was that? Did you say that you were master of the pillow? I think you'll find that the interior minister for seafaring declared on his deathbed that all night-time paraphernalia was under the exclusive command of the captain.

Commander Curry: No. No. No. No. Actually. Actually. That's mine. I'm the commander. I'm the commander. I'm the commander.

This film is complete balls.

Film Review - Young Sherlock Holmes

2006-12-04T14:23:00.000Z

Nothing happens. He's a boy. He's not anything noteworthy. Just a boy.

He plays rounders. He attends school. He eats chips. He smokes opiates. He makes fun of friends. He pines for toys he will never own. He's a boy. A boy in a deerstalker, admittedly, but a boy nonetheless.

I have no clue why they made this film.

Film Review - The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen

2006-11-30T17:13:00.000Z

The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen is a harrowing look into the future of professional football. In a bid to make more and more money, an unnamed satellite TV station devises a league where the competing teams consist of - for want of a better word - 'freaks'. Knowing that this would be leapt upon by critics, the channel rebrand their product as The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen.

So we have Darryl Hannah playing a man who looks like a woman. She's the centre forward for Circus FC. Marlon Dingle, from Emmerdale, appears under a ton of prosthetics as a man who looks like a biscuit. He's a goalie. We get John McCririck as The Mammoth Man - perhaps a nod to The Elephant Man, John Merrick.

Much of the film focuses on the media furore surrounding the league, with many questions posed about the crass voyeuristic nature of the venture. It all finally comes to a head when Tractor Man is revealed as being merely a tractor and not a man in any way.

Film Review - Half Past Dead

2006-11-08T12:45:00.000Z

They made a film called Half Past Dead. They put Steven Seagal in it. They put Ja Rule in it.

You couldn't make it up.

Film Review - Risky Business

2006-11-08T12:32:00.000Z

Risky Business is an epic tale of one man's addiction to danger.

Count Duckula takes the lead role. He is precipitated into his world of addiction after a messy break-up with his girlfriend, played by Teela from He-Man. She accuses him of being staid and boring. As a reaction to this, Duckula takes his behaviour to the opposite extreme.

This is quite a formulaic film and really just consists of a number of 'dare' set-pieces of escalating danger. The set-pieces include Duckula shaking one can of beer out of six, mixing them all up and then opening one by his face. He goes outdoors on a cold day with wet hair. He makes cups of tea with old milk without having sniffed it first. He even attends a feminist lecture wearing a T-shirt emblazoned with the words 'do my ironing, woman'.

From an early point, it's clear that this is only going to end one way. Duckula finally calls time on his reckless risk-taking when he jumps under a cold shower having blindly switched the hot water on and off half and hour earlier.

Film review - The Descent

2006-10-25T14:23:00.000Z

The Descent depicts the harrowing moral descent of former Newsround presenter and current Country File frontman, John Craven.

Craven is embittered by the BBC's refusal to rename Country File, 'John Craven's Country File'. He leaves acrimoniously and takes a job over at ITV as a meteorologist. A similar fate befalls him there as ITV refuse to bow to his demands to rename his slot 'John Craven's weather'. A third and final humiliation comes as he fails in his bid to retitle a low-ratings Channel 5 show 'John Craven's Late Night Page 3 Strip Poker'.

At this point Craven gives in to the dark side. He shouts at the TV. He leaves orange peel on country rambles. He even goes so far as to take the last digestive without asking his wife.

Finally a form of redemption comes. Sky One feature him in their series about celebrities' moral descents post-fame. He successfully lobbies them to rename the episode, 'The Descent of John Craven' as 'John Craven's The Descent', even though it doesn't make any sense.

In the final scene, we see a man rejuvenated; a man who has come to terms with the demands of his own ego. He removes his jumper which sports the words 'John Craven's sweater', neatly folds it and puts it in a drawer.

Film review - One Hour Photo

2006-10-25T14:14:00.000Z

One Hour Photo is a gripping thriller starring Kerry Katona off the Iceland adverts as someone who works in a photo place. She makes a total balls of Dick Cheney's holiday snaps. Cheney goes for her with a knife and she takes out a restraining order.

This is the starting point for a series of nervy scenes with Katona in fairly conspicuous public places and Cheney scheming with his pet dog to in some way harm her.

Not to give away the ending, but Katona gets her comeuppance when Cheney hits her with a five-iron and his dog bites her on the knee.

Film review - Misery

2006-10-25T13:51:00.000Z

Misery's filmed from a first-person perspective as if you're actually there: You fill out an overly complex form for something really innocuous. Then you queue for about an hour. The woman who checks the form says you've done it wrong and sends you away to try again. You queue another hour. The form was right the first time, the second woman says. You do it again. You queue again. Apparently you can't fill in this form until you've filled in a different one somewhere else.

You leave. It's raining. A young woman stops you to say that you look like an ugly celebrity. She thinks it's a compliment.

Misery.

Film Review - The Black Dahlia

2006-10-10T11:00:00.000Z

Who will take the rosette at the annual horticulural show? Will it be Lesley, played by Lesley Garrett? Will it be Leslie, played by Leslie Ash? Will it be Leslie, played by Leslie Nielsen? Will it be Leslie, played by Leslie Grantham?

Or could it be Karl, played by Karl Howman of Brush Strokes and the Flash adverts fame? For he has cultivated a Black Dahlia. And a Black daffodil.

The jury are predominantly goths, so you work it out.

Film Review - Get Carter

2006-10-10T10:53:00.000Z

Get Carter is a rite of passage drama about an 11-year-old boy in the early Nineties, played with élan by Compo from Last of the Summer Wine, who is trying to purchase a Carter USM album before it's been released.

As a colossal fan, the unnamed boy must purchase the album '30 Something' before any of his friends. He hasn't paid any attention to release dates, but has been hearing excerpts from the record on the radio for months. Each day he assumes that the record has been released, but to no avail. It all builds to a climactic finish as release day looms.

Film Review - 12 Angry Men

2006-10-10T10:42:00.000Z

12 Angry Men documents a Sunday league football match between The Red Lion and The Farmer's Arms.

We follow the story through the eyes of Alan or 'Big Al', played by Oliver Cromwell. Big Al is in charge of the Red Lion's side and has the unenviable task of ringing round all of their eligible players midweek in the hope of mustering a side for the match the following Sunday.

In the end, Big Al musters 14 players - an unprecedented success in a league which routinely features undermanned teams. The first half of the match passes without incident and the score lies at 4-4. As the second half gets underway, The Farmer's Arms retake the lead and Big Al decides it's time for action. He sends on a substitute, but due to the unfamiliarity of the situation, he neglects to remove an existing player from the field.

Inevitably The Red Lion score an equaliser and it is at this point that The Farmer's Arms goalkeeper realises that his team's opponents are fielding an extra man. He complains to the referee who has no qualms about awarding the match to The Farmer's Arms. And here we have our 12 Angry Men.

A modern parable studying rage, righteousness and the questioning of officialdom.

Film Review - Philadelphia

2006-10-03T16:46:00.000Z

Michael Winner is a fat, disgusting cheese-lover who stuffs his face and shouts at people. Mrs Winner, played by Geoff Capes, has had enough. She puts her husband on the Philadelphia diet, where Winner can eat as much cream cheese as he likes, but no harder cheeses, not even a camembert or soft brie.

Michael Winner struggles with his addiction. He finds that rather than fulfilling his need for cheese, the Philadelphia is in fact making him need cheese more. It's not cheese. It's barely even food. In a climactic finale, Winner goes down to Tesco and eats literally their entire stock of cheese, even the wax off the Baby-Bels.

It's repulsive.

Film Review - Scream 3

2006-10-03T16:38:00.000Z

You're in the pub with five 18-year-olds. They've had a few ciders and they're talking about changing the world. Everyone else in the pub is looking at you, thinking that you're just like them. Then some more 18-year-olds come in wearing crazy clothes because they're non-conformists. They ask if they can sit with you and join in the conversation. Somebody says 'yes'.

Film Review - Scream 2

2006-10-03T16:36:00.000Z

Some businessman on a golf course and you have to follow him round. He talks to you for the entire round. He's got a new car and there's a new deal in the pipeline at work.

Film Review - Scream

2006-10-03T16:35:00.000Z

Robbie Williams "entertaining his public".

Film Review - The Rules of Attraction

2006-10-03T16:27:00.000Z

The Rules of Attraction is a drama-documentary exploring magnetism, starring Compo from Last of the Summer Wine and Edith from 'Allo 'Allo.

It's admirable that a British picture should tackle a subject which maybe won't bring in the crowds. With British film-making in its current, dire state, the majority of film-makers have chased the largest market. Not here. Instead we are treated to a four hour epic depicting two aged folk testing a plethora of items with a magnet.

"Plastic football..."
"Not magnetic."

"Slice of emmental..."
"Not magnetic."

"House key..."
"Magnetic!"

"Wicker hat..."
"Not magnetic."

Film Review - The House of Usher

2006-10-03T16:22:00.000Z

The House of Usher is a documentary, a Through The Keyhole style appraisal of the dwelling place of hit R'n'B star, Usher.

The voyeuristic nature of this premise leads you to feel quite uncomfortable throughout the piece. One particular scene where Usher is interrupted mid-shit is particularly unsettling. Quite what this scene purports to convey is a question which goes unanswered.

If I wanted to watch rappers shit, I'd knock on their doors and ask politely. Avoid this film like the plague.

Film Review - The Hand That Rocks The Cradle

2006-10-03T16:07:00.000Z

The Hand That Rocks The Cradle is a spin-off of hit Sixties TV show, The Addams Family. The main protagonist is Thing, the disembodied hand that lurched around to no real effect - this is the hand of the title.

Cut from the same cloth as genuine classic, Three Men and a Baby, this is the story of an inappropriate parent struggling to raise a child. Where Three Men and a Baby got its near-endless laughs from a situation where three men all appeared to be the father of a child, here the comedy derives from Thing's appearance.

Laugh as the public run screaming from Thing when it goes to buy nappies. Cry as people run screaming from Thing when it goes to buy baby food. Rejoice as people run screaming from Thing when it goes to buy special shampoo for babies.

Home

2006-09-19T15:28:00.000Z

Film reviews by initial letter:
0-9	A B C	D E F	G H I	J K L	M N O	P Q R	S T U	V W X	Y Z

0-9

2006-09-19T15:09:00.000Z

12 Angry Men
28 Days Later
48 Hours
7eventy 5ive
8mm

Y Z

2006-09-19T15:07:00.000Z

Young Guns
Young Sherlock Holmes

V W X

2006-09-19T15:04:00.000Z

War of the Roses
X-Men: The Last Stand

S T U

2006-09-19T14:57:00.001Z

Scanners
Scooby Doo
Scream
Scream 2
Scream 3
Scum
Sin City
Species
Sphere
Spider-man
Splash
Spoon
Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country
Star Wars Episode II: Attack of the Clones
Star Wars Episode III: Revenge of the Sith
The Ten
True Romance
Unbreakable

P Q R

2006-09-19T14:54:00.000Z

Paycheck
The Pelican Brief
Philadelphia
Planes, Trains and Automobiles
Rainman
Risky Business
Romancing the Stone
The Rules of Attraction

M N O

2006-09-19T14:48:00.000Z

Maid In Manhattan
Master and Commander
The Matrix
The Matrix Reloaded
The Matrix Revolutions
Mickey Blue Eyes
Misery
Mission Impossible
Mission Impossible II
Mission Impossible III
Mulholland Drive
MVP2: Most Vertical Primate 2
A Nightmare On Elm Street
One Hour Photo
Out of Time

J K L

2006-09-19T14:45:00.000Z

The Jacket
The Karate Kid
Kill Bill: Volume I
Kill Bill: Volume II
The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen
Look Who's Talking
Lucky Number Slevin

G H I

2006-09-19T14:41:00.000Z

The Game
Get Carter
Gridlock'd
Half Past Dead
The Hand That Rocks The Cradle
Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire
The House of Usher

D E F

2006-09-19T14:37:00.000Z

The Da Vinci Code
Danielle Steel's Palomino
The Day After Tomorrow
The Descent
Desperately Seeking Susan
Dirty Sanchez
Domino
Donnie Brasco
The English Patient
Flatliners
The Fly

A B C

2006-09-19T14:31:00.000Z

A Scanner Darkly
Along Came A Spider
Alvin and the Chipmunks Meet Frankenstein
Another 48 Hours
Bad Boys
Big
The Big Sleep
The Black Dahlia
BMX Bandits
The Bourne Supremacy
The Breakfast Club
Bull Durham
Care Bears: The Movie
Charlie and the Chocolate Factory
Chinatown
Collateral
Contact
The Contagious Man

Film Review – War of the Roses

2006-05-23T17:24:00.000Z

War of the Roses stars Ian Austin and Chris Silverwood as opposing bowlers during a Lancashire v Yorkshire County Championship match during the late Nineties.

Ian Austin is the burly medium pacer who Lancashire use to hold up one end while they attack from the other. Chris Silverwood is the young paceman trying to catch the England selectors’ eyes. This is a study in ambition and exceeding your own expectations. It’s heart-warming although it’s a little disappointing that so much of the match is rained off resulting in a draw.

Film Review – Scanners

2006-05-23T17:23:00.000Z

What do Hewlett Packard all-in-one printer/copier/scanners do in their day to day life? Find out in this film.

First of all we see the printer/copier/scanner exhibiting its printing potential: Admirable. Next we see the printer/copier/scanner showcasing its copying ability: Capable. Finally we see the printer/copier/scanner proving its scanning worth: Laudable.

A low-budget classic.

Film Review – Rain Man

2006-05-23T17:22:00.000Z

Rain Man is a superhero. Rain Man is made entirely out of water; not primarily out of water, like you or me, but solely out of water. Perennial wet blanket, Ronan Keating plays the lead role.

Does he wash? Can he swim? Does he make chairs wet when he sits on them? None of these questions are answered. Instead we’re treated to thirteen separate occasions where Rain Man rescues someone from a burning building.

Film Review – Planes, Trains and Automobiles

2006-05-23T17:21:00.000Z

Planes, Trains and Automobiles depicts an obsessive compulsive need to document transport as exhibited by a father and son. Oliver Cromwell is the father and Mick Hucknall of Simply Red is the son. Together they travel the length and breadth of the country with the aim of seeing and recording every aeroplane, train and bus that the nation has to offer.

If there’s anything more stultifying than waiting around for trains, it’s waiting around for them without having any intention of boarding one. If there’s anything more boring that that, it’s watching Oliver Cromwell and Mick Hucknall do just that.

Film Review – The Fly

2006-05-23T17:20:00.001Z

The Fly stars Teddy Ruxpin as a scientist experimenting with teleportation who inadvertently mingles his DNA with that of a fly. As Teddy Ruxpin finds himself becoming more and more fly-like various issues are raised.

Teddy Ruxpin hates shit. He can’t bear it. Unfortunately, as a fly, he becomes more and more attracted to it. The Teddy Ruxpin part of him is repulsed, but the fly part of him is undeterred. Most of the film is a cacophony of wailing and simultaneous whooping as Teddy Ruxpin thrashes around in shit.

Film Review – Bull Durham

2006-05-23T17:20:00.000Z

Bull Durham stars celebrity chef, Gary Rhodes, as a baseball player plagued by abuse for having a stupid, stupid name.

Rhodes doesn’t particularly have the physique or accent for a baseball player, but he does have the requisite demeanour as someone who is really quite pissed off about people laughing at his name. At one point a dentist’s receptionist asks his name. Rhodes tells her and she looks confused. The sigh that Rhodes then produces convinces you that he must actually be called Bull Durham to have developed that level of weariness.

Eventually tiring of the name-calling, Bull Durham changes his name to Nicholas Stephen Laquiro-Crap.

Film Review – Big

2006-05-23T17:19:00.000Z

Big stars David Boreanaz as a small boy struggling with the concept of scale. While outwardly normal, David can’t get his head around the fact that objects appear smaller when far away.

An early scene outlines this. David is playing with some small toy cars. He glances out of the window and sees a bus at the end of the road. Thinking it to be the same size as his toys, he sets off to get it. Half-way down the road, the bus passes him. David reaches out with thumb and forefinger, but his arm merely bounces of the side of the vehicle. Chastened, David returns to his room. Upon opening the door, he mistakes one of his toy cars for a real one and panics, thinking he’s going to be run over.

There are any number of similar set-pieces and each one is very poignant. This is an excellent film and admirably raises awareness of a little-known condition.

Film Review – 48 Hours

2006-05-23T17:18:00.000Z

Bob Holness from Blockbusters stars as a pub landlord caught out by new licensing laws. Having spent his entire career closing the pub at 11.30pm sharp, Bob is unprepared for the relaxation in the law. Forced by circumstance to keep his pub open, he finds himself short staffed. Bob must now man the bar for the next 48 hours.

While Bob Holness may have the vague look of a publican, his acting range is stretched by having to depict one after a marathon stint behind the bar. Bob is just too chipper. The whole point of this film is to depict a man out of step with time; a man struggling to adapt to 21st century life. Bob doesn’t look like he’s struggling even after he’s served his thousandth pint. He looks like he’s raring to go.

It’s a shame because other than that, this is a superb film, documenting a part of life that is under-represented in contemporary cinema.

Film Review – Another 48 Hours

2006-05-23T17:16:00.000Z

Just what is the point of Another 48 Hours? 48 Hours was a decent film albeit marred by the inappropriate acting of its star, Bob Holness from Blockbusters. The story said all that needed to be said, so why produce a sequel? Not only that, they’ve not even taken the opportunity to improve on what was glaringly at fault in the first film – Bob’s acting.

Once again, Bob reprises his role as a put-upon publican. Yet again Bob is forced to perform a 48 hour shift after being let down by his employees. Obviously many of the supporting cast recognised the needlessness of this production, because they’re conspicuous by their absence. The many character actors who played regulars in the pub are all gone, replaced by photocopies of themselves stapled together and hung from the pub’s beams. They’re not even in colour. It’s laughable.

So Bob Holness, who struggles to act when speaking to real people, is forced to converse with fluttering, monochrome sheets of paper masquerading as drunk pub regulars. Obviously these characters don’t even have voices, so Bob is forced to do a ventriloquist act and talk to himself. Bob’s no actor. He’s even less of a ventriloquist. Avoid this film at all costs.

Film Review – Romancing the Stone

2006-05-23T17:15:00.000Z

Romancing the Stone tells the tale of one woman’s love affair with a lump of granite. Katie Holmes stars as a movie starlet lost in the Amazon basin. After three days walking and insane through hunger, she stumbles across a satisfyingly smooth piece of granite about eight inches wide. Instantly smitten, she sets about trying to woo it.

There are no prizes for guessing how this film turns out. This is cinema-by-numbers. Holmes naively assumes that she will win the rock over almost instantly, oblivious to its lack of sentience. She is soon disappointed, but raises her game. Still the granite spurns her and she ends up using every trick in the book to try and win it over.

Finally, having given up for good, she lets the act drop and becomes herself. Unsurprisingly, the rock finds this attractive and all ends happily. Romancing the Stone is only different on the surface. Underneath, this film will seem very familiar to any viewer.

Film Review – Flatliners

2006-05-16T17:43:00.000Z

Flatliners stars Julia Roberts, a teenage Jessica Alba and an even younger Natalie Portman. The three of them provide cavity wall insulation for yuppie flats in New York.

Julia Roberts is the business owner primarily, but she also functions as a surrogate mother for Natalie Portman, and to a degree, Jessica Alba. We follow their business through the dark days of the Eighties where fuel efficiency and caring for the environment are foreign concepts. It is in these days that the relationships between the three are fired and set.

As time passes, business picks up. By the end of the film we see that Jessica Alba and Natalie Portman are travelling around with their own bands of insulation technicians. The film tells us that while things may change there are always certain constants. There will always be trios of girls available to insulate your condominium.

Film Review – Along Came a Spider

2006-05-16T17:41:00.000Z

Halle Berry appears as Peter Parker in this prequel to Spider-man. Unable to find an actor with the requisite squeaky voice, director Lee Tamahori took the unusual step of casting a woman. While Halle Berry bears precious little resemblance to a young boy, the voice is at least a higher register than most men’s.

Where the original Spider-man depicts the moment at which Peter Parker gets his superhero abilities, it only hints at what went before. This film fills in the gaps.

It turns out that when Peter Parker was younger, he was Halle Berry. That isn’t to say that Peter Parker merely resembles Halle Berry, which is to be expected being as she is the actress playing the part. No – pre-pubescent Peter was in fact a Hollywood actress called Halle Berry. In casting Halle Berry for the part, Tamahori was forced to make some amendments to the script and this was one.

This is a stupid film. One for fans of Halle Berry only.

Film Review – The English Patient

2006-05-16T17:40:00.000Z

The English Patient, or more accurately, The English: Patient, is a study into one nation’s love of bureaucracy and order.

Madonna stars as an anglophile American. She is trying to get to grips with English life having crossed the Atlantic. At first she struggles to come to terms with a life of endless waiting in queues, but pretty soon she accepts it and, as time goes on, she gets to love it.

Madonna’s film acting has often been criticised, but here she paints a decent portrait of an outsider finding their feet in an alien society. She infuses a good deal of vibrancy into a key scene wherein she shouts at someone pushing into a queue in front of her. This is a necessity as later in the film she is in an identical situation and must react in a more English way. This too is expressed well. She looks at the man haughtily and even goes so far as to tut.

Fittingly, the film itself is outstandingly boring. You will need to draw on their full reserves of patience to endure it in its entirety. Afterwards, you can reward yourself by saying things like: “We nearly walked out half-way through it was that dull.”

Film Review – The Game

2006-05-09T18:20:00.000Z

The Game is a film about a game. The game is called The Game. The rules of The Game are that if you think of The Game, you lose The Game.

So it is that we see talent-free midget, Chad Kroeger, swanning around oblivious to The Game. Intermittently, he remembers The Game and consequently loses. Chad largely fails to express this sequence of internal events and often we are uncertain whether Chad has lost The Game or not. A greater actor would have left the audience in no doubt as to the state of play in The Game, using only subtle facial expressions to let them know of his surprise and subsequent disappointment at remembering The Game and then losing. Chad is forced to resort to shouting: “Oh no! I’ve lost The Game!”

If you’re a big Nickelback fan then by all means go and watch this film. For the rest of us, we’d be better off just playing The Game.

Film Review – The Da Vinci Code

2006-05-09T18:13:00.000Z

Finally, The Da Vinci Code hits our screens. For those unfamiliar with the novel, it concerns the ironically-named Faithless’s assertion that God is a DJ.

Faithless are a band or collective who have been making stadium dance music for some time now. Their sacred cow-busting belief in God’s turntable skills has shaken the world. But how is this brought to the silver screen?

The titular Da Vinci Code is a form of programming used by Faithless’s creative leaders Rollo and Sister Bliss when organising their synthesisers and sequencers. It was through this code that they originally reached their conclusion about the nature of the Lord. Fittingly, it is through this code that the film is presented.

A knowledge of C++ programming is a bare minimum qualification for watching this film as it assumes a frightening degree of shared knowledge and doesn’t wait for stragglers. If you’re in any way intimidated by the idea of a motion picture’s visual half being solely characters used in computer programming then you’d better look elsewhere. The soundtrack is more accessible, although a second song other than ‘God is a DJ’ by Faithless would have been welcome.

The book conquered the literary world. The film is oblique and wilfully unengaging –perhaps one for true fans only.

Film Review – X-Men: The Last Stand

2006-05-09T18:08:00.000Z

X-Men: The Last Stand stars Michael Flatley, Lord of the Dance, as himself. Flatley is clearly a mutant in real life and it has taken some guts for him to essentially come out and admit this.

Having struggled through his childhood burdened with the mutant gift of slightly-twattish-dancing, Flatley arrived in adulthood an egocentric no-mark. His constant need for reassurance and admiration distances him from non-mutants and soon enough he becomes an outcast from society, spending his time dancing twattishly in the forests of New Hampshire.

Flatley’s penchant for enormous belt buckles proves the making of him as it – with Flatley attached – is attracted to Magneto. Flatley teaches Magneto how to dance like a twat. Magneto brings Flatley into peak physical condition. A confrontation with other mutants isn’t long in coming. Michael Flatley, Lord of the Dance's twattish-tap-dancing finale is abhorrent.

Film Review – Gridlock’d

2006-05-09T18:07:00.000Z

Gridlock’d takes place in an indeterminate commuter-belt. Gary and Carl – played with aplomb by Des Lynam and former Prime Minister, John Major – are car sharing. They are on their way to work at an unnamed bank’s head office as usual, but today they are destined to be late.

A jack-knifed lorry on a main thoroughfare brings traffic to a halt. Many cars divert, but the sheer volume of cars on the roads means that everything is at a standstill. Gary and Carl try and withstand the situation as best they can. They listen to the radio. They discuss how much petrol is left. Eventually they crack and start moaning about how they’ll have to work late to make up the time.

As time passes, the two men bond over their shared vitriol. Forced together by a company policy of doing the bare minimum to protect the environment, the two men become first friends and then lovers.

Eventually they abandon the car, pay for flights to San Francisco and live out their days in a nocturnal world of discos and catty bitching about celebrities’ clothes.

Film Review – Mission Impossible

2006-05-09T18:06:00.000Z

Mission Impossible features Tom Selleck as a football manager attempting to compete with all the big English clubs, but with only a fraction of the budget.

Selleck’s club are a bunch of overachievers who have found themselves in the Premier League. Financially outgunned and with only a small squad at his disposal, Selleck sets about wheeling and dealing in the transfer market.

A couple of foreign loan signings initially make a difference, but during the congested Christmas fixture list a spate of injuries make Tom’s task a ‘mission impossible’. After three defeats on the bounce, Tom’s star striker, played by Uma Thurman, calls Tom ‘a tool’ and storms out. The ensuing finale where Tom attempts to talk Thurman round and co-opts a load of YTS lads into the first team makes for compulsive viewing. This is that rarest of things: A rewarding blockbuster.

Film Review – Mission Impossible II

2006-05-09T18:05:00.000Z

Mission Impossible II again stars Tom Selleck and we pick up the story several years down the line. Tom has retired from football due to the stress of management. Nowadays he spends his time unwinding in the garden. Little does Tom know, but there is another ‘mission impossible’ afoot.

Tom’s garden is under attack. On the surface it looks immaculate, yet underneath the leaves of the tropical succulents lie weeds. Bringing all his crisis-management skills to the fore, Tom sets about them, but unless he gets the roots, they just keep on coming back.

The thrill-a-minute approach of the prequel is abandoned in favour of more measured excitement. While the pacing is pedestrian early on, there is an appreciable crescendo towards the finish as Tom purchases increasingly industrial weed killers. The scene where a cat sniffs the recently-chemically-treated lawn while Tom fills a watering can toys with the audience in classic fashion. Will the cat chew the poisoned grass? Will Tom return in time to save the day? These segments are just reward for enduring the early part of the movie, where weak spring light and occasional frosts are holding back the onslaught. Stick with it and you’ll uncover a blockbuster in the truest sense.

Film Review – Mission Impossible III

2006-05-09T18:03:00.000Z

Having conquered the worlds of football and horticulture, Tom Selleck returns in Mission Impossible III. This time he’s attempting a jigsaw.

This film limps from start to finish, like an injured footballer whiling away his time in his garden. You’d be hard-pressed to recognise it as being from the Mission Impossible stable. Tom’s ‘mission impossible’ this time is to complete a thousand piece jigsaw. The twist that we all see coming a mile off – that gives the mission its impossibility – is that several of the pieces are missing.

It’s not a bad concept on the surface, but in practice it takes until the very end of the film before Tom starts to realise that any pieces are missing. You see it coming a mile off and it’s therefore impossible to empathise with Tom at his satisfaction in completing the sky and later the cottage. As Tom gathers the pieces for the stream section of the jigsaw you perk up a little, but the film is almost over by then and there’s only a frankly outrageous plot twist to wrap things up that’s remotely unexpected.

The makers of the Mission Impossible series have truly blotted their copybook with this episode.

Film Review – Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire

2006-05-09T17:59:00.000Z

Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire depicts Harry’s coming-of-age as he descends into a twilight world of debauchery. The goblet of fire is a flaming drambuie that Harry attempts to quaff while still lit, scarring himself in the process.

Previously in this series attention has focused on Harry’s magical abilities as he overcomes foes, often in the form of demons. Cleverly, the demons that Harry must vanquish in this instalment are the demons of his own mind. It becomes clear that after a young life of extraordinary responsibility, Harry’s desires err towards liberation from his life as a wizard.

Instead of conjuring and chanting, Harry wants to drink and dance. Freed from the shackles of education, the young wizard goes wild. As his fellow wizards egg each other on, things spiral out of control. Spells are cast to remove garments from young women they encounter; fights are picked and won through the use of magic.

Will Harry learn to drink responsibly? Will he acknowledge the responsibility vested in his magical gift and cease to use it for womanising? Will he be in a fit state to defend the world come the next fantastical attack?

Film Review - The Matrix

2006-05-02T17:46:00.000Z

The Matrix stars Theodore Logan as Neo. Neo is the chosen one. He eventually saves humanity from enslavement at the hands of the machines by destroying the Matrix. He achieves this by accidentally spilling a cup of tea into his keyboard.

Film Review - The Matrix Reloaded

2006-05-02T17:45:00.000Z

At the start of The Matrix Reloaded, it turns out that the ‘reality’ of the original film was in fact a virtual reality. Neo (Theodore Logan) is again the chosen one as he seeks to free mankind from enslavement within this second Matrix. He achieves this by refusing to die when he’s been shot. The machines are unable to deal with this disobedience of the Matrix’s rules and develop ‘run time errors’ crashing the Matrix’s servers.

Film Review - The Matrix Revolutions

2006-05-02T17:44:00.000Z

The Matrix Revolutions reveals that having brought down two successive Matrices, neither was real and nor is the reality that Neo (Theodore Logan) now inhabits. On this occasion, however, he isn’t The Chosen One, The Saviour, The Prophesised One or anything else of that nature. In fact he’s totally uninvolved. Mankind is eventually liberated from the grip of the machines by cult children’s TV cone, Wizbit, who uses his special cone abilities to ‘rouse’ each and every human in turn. Neo’s last because he’s such a dullard.

Film Review - Species

2006-05-02T17:42:00.000Z

Species is a dramatisation of that period in the eighteenth century when so many of the earth’s creatures were found, identified and then classified. It’s really just a load of professorial types umming and ahhing before saying, “It’s a type of gibbon,” or something similar.

The denouement is a half-hour scene featuring three different experts disagreeing about a duck-billed platypus. Eventually, they class it as a type of spoon and agree not to tell anyone else about the creature, in case they get found out.

Film Review - Kill Bill: Volume I

2006-05-02T17:39:00.000Z

In Kill Bill a kind of furry stegosaurus is feeling bitter about being abandoned by its Religious Studies teacher, Bill. The ancient code of the dinosaurs dictates that any furry dinosaur experiencing feelings of bitterness must seek vengeance. So the stegosaurus sets about its task.

This volume, volume I, charts the furry stegosaurus’s first faltering steps towards the inevitable murder. At first it bakes cakes, little realising this has little or nothing to do with honour killings. After seeking advice from a hairless stegosaurus it starts to channel its aggression and manages to at least make a couple of people stare at it weirdly. The film ends with the furry stegosaurus feeling marginally more confident, but still a bit doubtful.

Film Review - Kill Bill: Volume II

2006-05-02T17:37:00.000Z

Having started down the path of revenge in Kill Bill, in Kill Bill: Volume II the furry stegosaurus trudges reluctantly on. It eventually tracks down its Religious Studies teacher, Bill, working at Blockbuster Video. It finally manages to fell its mentor with a tainted Werther’s Original.

Film Review - Bad Boys

2006-05-02T17:36:00.000Z

The two titular Bad Boys are detectives who go about things their own way. They’re bold and brash and high profile, but they get the job done.

The first is a cat box – one of those transparent plastic boxes with a door at either end in which you take your cat to the vets. The second is a milk crate. Milk crates aren’t all that common these days, but the version starring in Bad Boys is a fairly robust blue affair. It’s rarely seen containing pints of milk, but it’s still heavy enough to trip a fleeing criminal which is essentially the Bad Boys crime-fighting tactic.

Great things come in threes and there are three crimes in this film and each crime in the film is divided into three scenes: Planning, waiting and tripping people up. The film could realistically stand as three half-hour episodes of a TV series, but that isn’t meant as a criticism, merely an observation. There’s a formula at work here. We see the cat box and the milk crate resting in front of a blackboard for ten minutes – this is the planning section. Then there is a long, slow-panning shot of our two heroes lying in wait in a corridor or on some stairs – this is the waiting section. Finally, we see a criminal fleeing the scene of a crime and eventually coming a cropper on either of the two lead characters – this is the tripping people up section. This formula replays three times in different locations and then it’s the end.

Film Review - 28 Days Later

2006-03-21T18:47:00.000Z

When Jim wakes from a four-week coma he quickly makes a horrifying discovery: His electricity has been disconnected. Having seemingly ignored his final reminder, Npower have cut the power meaning Jim’s home full of electrical gadgets is effectively transformed into a junk yard. But that’s not all.

In the 28 days that he has been unconscious, Jim’s hair and nails have continued to grow and he must confront his own image in the mirror in order to rectify this. His house plants have withered and died and he has missed four consecutive pub quizzes at his local.

This is essentially one man’s struggle to make up for lost time. The film tells us to savour every minute we have and make the most of our waking hours as you never know when you might fall into a coma for exactly four weeks. It could labour this point by over dramatising proceedings, but it is in the mundane quality of Jim’s tasks that the message rings true. He’s missed an appointment with a mortgage advisor: ‘That could be me’, you think. The bin in his kitchen has started to smell: ‘That could be my bin’, you think.

In giving the film an everyday feel, the director, Morph, has ‘kept it real’ to use the parlance of our times and there is a greater impact as a result.

Film Review - Mickey Blue Eyes

2006-03-14T13:13:00.000Z

Former England middle-order batsman, John Morris, stars in this film as Mickey Blue Eyes in the tale of a moderately portly cricketer out of his depth when he starts going out with the daughter of a notorious outlaw.

Early on in the film, Mickey Blue Eyes meets Samantha Hood in the beer tent during a one-day international between England and the West Indies at Trent Bridge. This is partly a nod to Morris’ past career, but is also a clue as to the history of Samantha. For Samantha Hood is the daughter of none other than Robin Hood: He who stole from the rich to give to the poor. Robin Hood is played with conviction by Al Pacino who gives him an edgier side to his character than is often portrayed in other renditions of the myth.

The comedy arises from Mickey’s interaction with Robin Hood. Mickey just can’t get to grips with Hood’s vocabulary as Hood speaks in Middle English. This is something of a one joke film and that joke is taken to its extreme with one particular scene in which Robin Hood attempts to teach Mickey Middle English as they cower in the undergrowth in the depths of Sherwood Forest. Mickey just about manages to appreciate how the word ‘enthusiasm’ means ‘extreme religious excitement’ to Hood rather than its contemporary meaning, when Hood and his band of Merry Men accost a wealthy passer-by, relieving him of his Range Rover. Once again, despite his progress, Mickey is still the outsider.

The humour derived from the cross-cultural communication that occurs when people of different time periods converse was done much better in Bill and Ted’s Excellent Adventure.

Film Review - Look Who’s Talking

2006-03-14T13:10:00.000Z

This is, essentially, an arthouse film played out according to rules rather than a script. While a plot concerning the everyday life of an everyday baby takes shape early on, fortunately it is unsustainable according to the rules laid down by director, Malcolm Rifkind.

The rules are as follows: Whoever is talking, all other actors must direct their gaze towards them. Early on, this is relatively straightforward, but the film hinges on one particular scene about a third of the way through. Until this point all focus has been on dull domestic issues, stiltedly presented in this unusual style. Then, all of a sudden, the baby, played by a huge animatronic Stegasaurus, starts crying. The two other actors in the scene, Uncle Bulgaria from the Wombles as the father and Christopher Walken as the mother, suddenly have to whirl round at each and every sound. Now we see the point of these rules. It is no longer a traditional A to B storyline. It is a game.

Each following scene includes additional actors, any of whom can speak at any moment and when they do everyone else must turn towards them. This climaxes in a hugely populated scene, featuring literally thousands of characters on screen, in which everyone is speaking and spinning round and you are uncertain if anyone is succeeding in following the rules.

The point is anyone’s guess. It could allude to the cacophony of advice that arises at times of crisis and our inability to heed it all, or it could just be a grave error on the part of the director.

Film Review - Paycheck

2005-11-04T08:53:00.000Z

Paycheck stars a model of Ben Affleck’s chin hewn from pine as Ben Affleck. Ben is an engineer who does high-level work for companies on short contracts before having his memories of his work erased for security. Oh how you will wish that this technology were real after watching Paycheck. It's not a classic movie.

After watching Ben Affleck ninja around like an unconvincing farmhand for a few minutes, we reach the crucial event. Ben takes a contract working for several years on a project, after which his memories will be erased as per usual. It turns out the project is some sort of see-into-the-future machine. Ben gives it a whirl and lo, he sees his own death. It would have given the film a slightly post-modern touch if Ben’s demise had been the result of a sustained barrage of deafening booing at his acting skills, but unfortunately he’s just shot.

The rest of the film is a Total Recall-esque journey as Ben follows a series of clues set by himself, all with the intention of evading his foreseen demise. Well it would be if the film weren’t actually about smashing lots and lots of panes of glass. Seriously, did they get a job lot from somewhere? Not a second passes without someone flying through a window, hurling something through a window, punching a window or dropping a champagne flute.

Eventually the film ends and you watch something more entertaining, like the letter U. I’ll provide you with something five times as good as Paycheck a couple of lines down.

U U

Film Review - Maid in Manhattan

2005-10-12T18:09:00.000Z

Bit of a play on words, this one. Evil scientist Tibor Natalyov, played by veteran character actor-dolphin, flipper, creates a Jennifer Lopez monster out of body parts, Frankenstein-style and then animates it with the intention of training it to be his maid.

The Jennifer Lopez monster is played by a stereotypical clown – red nose, big feet etc, although in a post-modern touch, the arse stolen from a graveyard to complete the monster is taken from the body of Lopez herself in a cameo role as a corpse.

Almost inevitably Natalyov falls in love with the Lopez monster and tries to force himself upon it. There is a comedy horn sound from the monster’s clown nose as he pins the monster down before he is squirted in the eye by a flower in its lapel. He recoils and Lopez departs never to be seen by him again.

In true bones to monster to riches to bones tradition, the monster embarks on a singing career, makes millions before being pulled apart at the seams by a dalmation on heat.

Film Review - Care Bears: The Movie

2005-10-12T18:08:00.000Z

The Care Bears are brightly coloured teddy bears with love hearts affixed to their fur. Each care bear is bullied relentlessly by less embarrassingly constructed creatures, such as otters and mandrills. The bears put up with this for quite some time, but eventually the remorseless twittering and pecking of an owl causes them to crack.

Their own innate sense of worthlessness manifests itself in the form of blood lust. To compensate for their ludicrous appearance and humiliating name, the Care Bears go on a rampage born of frustration.

Having fled the owl and with their adrenaline still pumping, the bears happen across a gang of teenagers. In a pre-emptive strike, they proceed to hurl bricks at the startled teenagers, who, astonished and frightened, try to run away. A bright green Care Bear picks up the remains of a cigarette that one teenager had been smoking and having felled the smoker with a brick to the temple, green Care Bear extinguishes the cigarette in the prostrate victim’s eye.

Now with a taste for violence, the Care Bears get organised. At first they set a series of ambushes outside a residential home for the disabled, where they burst from the cover of bushes brandishing sickles and scythes. Later they acquire a mortar and bombard the town of Stockton-on-Tees. Finally, they start to deal in plastic explosives and it is left to the viewer to foresee the ultimate end of this cuddly campaign of destruction.

Film Review - Donnie Brasco

2005-10-12T18:06:00.000Z

Legendary England rugby union forward Micky Skinner stars as an FBI agent who goes undercover amongst the mafia as Donnie Brasco.

There is a lot of underlying tension throughout the film as you are never sure if Donnie will be uncovered by his mafia confidante, Lefty, played with aplomb by Al from Home Improvement.

While it may purport to be about an FBI agent trying to combat organised crime from within, the heart of this film lies in Donnie’s struggle to retain his own identity as the kind of guy who sneers at you when you’re vomiting in the gutter. Through necessity he adopts the wise guy persona, but through his friendship with Lefty, the act becomes reality.

At first Donnie has the wrong shoes, the wrong clothes and the wrong facial hair. Lefty also points out that he should carry his money in a roll rather than a wallet. Donnie takes all this on board and then goes the extra mile. He opens up a pizzeria, grows a moustache, develops a huge belly and says ‘wassamatta?’ all the time. He even eats pasta and puts ‘a’ between words, as in: ‘Hey-a. You-a. What-a you think-a you doing?’

Eventually he drinks so much red wine that he loses his grip on his over-sized pepper grinder, which falls on him crushing him to death. His dying words are: ‘Mario. Don’t-a let-a the spaghetti boil over.’

Film Review - The Day After Tomorrow

2005-10-12T18:05:00.000Z

This film summons the sense of an impending apocalypse through the use of relentless banality. The sense of pointlessness throughout is designed to quicken your decline towards death.

We never get to see any of the first two days’ shooting of this motion picture, as the focus is always on the day after tomorrow, at the time of shooting – hence the title. As a result of this we are treated to an hour of Robbie Williams, who appears as himself, acting as himself later on in the week. If you do start to tire of this, persevere as you will be rewarded in the end.

At the hour mark in the film, we see Robbie, on a Thursday, depicting himself acting out the end of the film, which is going to be shot on the Saturday. From then on things really hot up.

With the shooting of the film out of the way, but half-an-hour of film left to fill, we get to see Robbie pretending to go about the business he intends to go about in two days’ time. Mostly this is talking to friends about how rubbish the film he has starred in will be, but be warned, there are also a number of scenes of defecation

Film Review - The Bourne Supremacy

2005-09-28T09:36:00.000Z

Champion the Wonder Horse plays Jason Bourne. He’s some sort of ex-CIA killer suffering from amnesia about whom you struggle to care. Jason gets himself into some scrapes trying to find out why the CIA seems to be trying to kill him. Jason gets himself out of some scrapes largely due to obscenely close-up camera angles giving his pursuers no clue as to his whereabouts. That is all.

Film Review - The Contagious Man

2005-08-04T09:40:00.000Z

The Contagious Man is a variation on the Fugitive. Whereas in the Fugitive, Harrison Ford played a man being hunted by Tommy Lee Jones’ US Marshal; here our man on the run is the carrier of a deadly and highly contagious disease which will kill anyone who comes into contact with him within an hour.

Robocop plays a German who has been working for the same chemical firm for 22 years. He is laid off and whilst trying to find out why, inadvertently causes a skirmish with security that results in his exposure to a deadly chemical.

In the cat role of this cat and mouse caper is Captain Caveman. Captain Caveman used to work for the same chemical firm until exposure to the very same chemical. He unknowingly infected his wife and child, killing them both. He swapped sides and now works as an inspector who basically wanders round quarantining whatever he wants.

The female cat, in this cats and mouse caper is Natalya Zvereva, former Wimbledon women’s and mixed doubles champion. Her part is strangely restricted, as she is quarantined by Captain Caveman in an early scene, when he catches her drinking diet coke.

While the premise of this film has potential, it is ultimately disappointing as it soon boils down to a man-hunt. Your enjoyment will be strictly related to your love of man-machine crime-fighting hybrids and your ability to withstand the sight of someone leaping into the air and hovering whilst shouting their own name and continually hammering the floor with a giant club.

Every now and again other characters appear, but without exception they are all quarantined by Captain Caveman for the most spurious reasons. One unsuspecting government operative is entombed in a plastic tent for looking a little bit like a rat; another for cackling maniacally, earlier in the week; and a train driver is even hauled out of his engine for digesting food in an irregular manner. Quite what this brings to the film, I failed to see.

All in all, this isn’t worth the paper it’s printed on (it comes in flick-book form with an accompanying audio tape).

Film Review - Young Guns

2005-06-23T07:39:00.000Z

Despite lacking the epic, boundary-breaking Bon Jovi soundtrack of its follow-up, Young Guns is still a decent film. Forty-four talented, gun-slinging children known as ‘Regulators’ are entrusted with defending an aged pervert’s farm. When the genial paedo, played by Terence Stamp, is murdered by outraged townsfolk, the Regulators swear vengeance.

At first deputised and operating as an arm of the law, they go about their task with a little too much gusto and are stripped of their authority. Thereafter they continue the fight as fugitives chased by a whole host of bounty hunters and lawmen, including Boba Fett and the Childcatcher.

The savage bairns complete their quest, but remain wanted. One by one they are picked off until only fifteen remain. These fifteen take the only chance they have got by entering a team into England’s Zurich Premiership rugby union competition. The children survive, but are overwhelmed in virtually every fixture due to the chasm in size between theirs and the opposition’s forwards. Unable to gain enough quick ball, their pacy backs are virtual bystanders.

Film Review - Collateral

2005-06-23T07:37:00.000Z

Collateral is a film that promises a lot more than it delivers. Its central premise is relatively original, but once again American cinema-goers have ensured an unsatisfying denouement.

Jamie Foxx is the hub around which the film revolves. He plays Sam, a taxi driver who is kidding himself that he is just biding his time before moving on to better things, specifically a limo hire company of his own. Into Sam’s world steps Vincent, played by a disconcertingly grey-haired Tom Cruise. Vincent is a hired killer and he co-opts Sam into helping him for the evening as he sets about killing a series of witnesses in a high-profile case that is about to start.

What should follow is a scenario where both Vincent and Sam learn from one another, questioning their own views on life and encountering many of life’s complexities and moral questions, all in the space of one tempestuous night. What in fact follows is a turgid odd-couple romance.

From the minute that Vincent steps in the taxi, the pair start to fall out and in Hollywood there’s only one way a relationship like that will end – in bed. The path to this inevitable denouement is a rocky one, at least for the viewer.

How the scriptwriter contrived to get Vincent’s shirt off in the first thirty minutes of the film is one thing. But when he shortly after takes a tumble in a baby oil factory and emerges with a head to toe glossy sheen you can’t help but laugh. Sam’s leather trousered biker disguise is similarly preposterous and when the pair are mistaken for Navy recruits and given uniforms, you are compelled to walk out.

If you do manage to endure all of this, you are rewarded with a turgid half-hour at the end of the film, where Sam and Vincent buy a house and buy home furnishings before throwing a pool party for all their friends, including a number from their short stay in the Navy. The only enjoyment it is possible to glean from this film is a 30-second cameo from Steve the curlew as a hot-shot lawyer on Vincent’s hit list. If that doesn’t appeal, stay away.

Film Review - The Karate Kid

2005-06-08T11:53:00.000Z

The Karate Kid is a cautionary tale of caucasian child slavery in America. A young boy, Daniel, is kidnapped by an aging Chinese man, Mr Miyagi, who forces Daniel to perform back-breaking labour.

Over the course of the film, Daniel is forced to wax cars, paint fences, dig irrigation channels and construct homes for impoverished families. All the while, he is kept in the most horrifying conditions, sleeping on floors and snatching flies from the air to supplement his meagre food rations.

Watching Daniel’s decline as the film progresses is gruelling for the viewer, but there is to be no upturn at the climax. There is no Hollywood happy ending here, be warned. Instead, just as you think our hero’s plight can get no worse, Mr Miyagi reveals his true intentions.

He has been grooming Daniel to perform in illegal, under-12s bare-knuckle fighting. It turns out that gambling on youngsters in these death-matches is big business and Mr Miyagi is something of a kingpin in this shadowy underworld.

The final scene depicts Daniel’s induction in child-fighting. He faces a gnarled 11-year-old veteran. Without wishing to give the ending away, Daniel kicks his head in. But there is no glory in this victory - merely survival.

Film Review - Star Wars Episode III: Revenge of the Sith

2005-05-25T07:48:00.000Z

We all know the story behind Revenge of the Sith: Anakin becomes Darth Vader. That’s what it all boils down to. Of course there are causes. Underlying reasons for Anakin’s switching of allegiance, but if we’re honest, the whole film is about Anakin becoming Darth Vader. We know how it starts and we know how it ends. So what does this film offer?

The first attribute that this film has over its predecessors is its daring use of stop-frame animation. This technique is well known from the award-winning Wallace and Gromit films and older children’s television such as the Magic Roundabout. What’s so arresting about its use here is the fact that all the other Star Wars films are filmed conventionally, so this is a radical departure. George Lucas knew that as long as he retained his formula, the end product would be devoured by ravenous Star Wars fans and yet he has the courage to take this massive gamble. Not only that – he revolutionises the technique by utilising live actors.

The filming must have been arduous for all the actors concerned. In stop-frame animation, a picture is taken and only the tiniest movement is made before the next picture. With dozens of frames a second, a five minute scene could take weeks to film. In one scene Ewan McGregor, playing Obi Wan Kenobi makes a short speech to Anakin - only thirty seconds long - but over the course of which, his beard visibly lengthens. Whoever was responsible for continuity can be forgiven as the entire motion picture must have been a logistical nightmare for them.

There are two benefits to the use of stop-motion animation that must have swayed Lucas. Firstly, you can easily make objects appear on screen as if from nowhere. Simply take one shot without said object and the next with it. When you run the frames consecutively, the object appears to have materialized. This camera trickery explains the Jedi and Sith light sabres, which look far better than the artificial beams of light used in other Star Wars films. In this episode, when a character switches on a light sabre it is a solid plastic tube illuminated from within, like the real ones that you can buy in Woolworth’s or wherever. There are also a number of scenes where Yoda demonstrates the power of the force by plucking coins from behind his ears and rabbits from hats.

The second stop-motion benefit is quite obviously the opportunity to use professional cricketers to voice all of the characters. This also lightens the load on the physical actors on screen. So Anakin is voiced by England academy alumnus and recent senior team member Ian Bell. And in a masterstroke, Lucas casts Graham Thorpe as Obi Wan Kenobi. There is already a master-pupil dynamic between these two players, with Thorpe, the most senior of England’s middle-order batsmen and Bell the most recent arrival. This translates well to their roles in the film.

It’s hard to quibble with any of the film’s flaws, as most arise from innovation and that is to be applauded. If there is one avoidable feature that does detract, though, it is Durham paceman Liam Plunkett’s use of falsetto in voicing Amidala. An unnecessary indulgence in an otherwise majestic finale.

Film Review - Scooby Doo

2005-05-09T06:46:00.000Z

Scooby Doo is a contemporary existentialist musing on the banality and essential paradox of the human condition, featuring a brown dog. The film stars Sarah-Michelle Gellar, Sandy Jardine, Craig Levein and Scooby Doo, as himself. There is also an appearance by Erika Eleniak, who plays the part of Rowan Atkinson.

This latter-day Homeric odyssey focuses on the relationships between each of the main characters and the plot is merely a device to support several set-pieces of character interactivitationalism. The main characters are the five components of the ‘Scooby Gang’ as it is know by media-savvy types. They are; Scooby himself; Daphne, played by Gellar; Velma, played by some bint and Fred and Shaggy, played by Sandy Jardine and Craig Levein, respectively. The casting of Jardine and Levein is transparently an attempt to recreate some of the chemistry from their 86/87 season in midfield for Heart of Midlothian. As you are no doubt aware the 86/87 season was a career-high for Jardine and it came hot on the heels of Levein’s Scottish Young Player of the Year award for the 85/86 season. There is no way of rolling back the years, however and the casting smacks of desperation.

The plot, as was mentioned, is functional at best. It closely follows the framework of all Scooby Doo cartoons. Mysterious evil is afoot. The gang is called to solve the mystery. They do. There is quite a large amount of on-screen time to pad out then and this seemed to be a bridge too far for the producers. Mostly the characters just mock each other. At times they appear to get on, but then, usually mid-sentence, one of the four human participants will suddenly lunge at Scooby Doo, without provocation and proceed to kick the crap out of him, whilst the others look on. The purpose of these attacks, which take place fifty-seven times, is unclear. Is it meant to indicate man’s changeable nature? After all, Scooby Doo is never seen to attack anyone, or is it meant to show man’s hatred of his own animal nature, symbolised by Doo?

The other recurrent theme is moodily lit black and white footage of two unseen persons playing tiddly-winks to a soundtrack of screams. I don’t know if something was lost in the editing process, but this went way over my head. Perhaps that was the intention: to delineate man’s intrinsic ignorance of all things. More likely it was stipulated in Craig Levein’s contract that such scenes would appear. Craig is a notorious tiddly-winks enthusiast and he also likes screaming. The film would probably be more coherent without this aspect, yet it does hold the interest, if only through the viewer’s intrigue.

If you like rope ladders, marmots and flicking maroon paint at strangers’ trench coats then this film is for you. If you are a fan of the work of Steve the Curlew, then you should give it a miss.