Tuesday 30 November 2010

One Millon Years B.C.


Sublime combination of sordid trash, experimental cinema and giant animals.

Sunday 28 November 2010

American: The Bill Hicks Story



Flatly animated photographs backdrop banal storytelling (as well as an awful 'on drugs' sequence) which fills time between slivers of outstanding Hicks performances, of which the familiar steadfastedly refuse to grow tired and the fresh pull forth uncontrollable belches of laughter.

The Spongebob Squarepants Movie


Abject lunacy.

Saturday 27 November 2010

The Host [Gwoemul]


The kind of thing I would expect to see if somebody were to tell me that Wes Anderson was remaking Godzilla, i.e. an eccentric, dysfunctional family, a smaller monster and huge swathes of excellence throughout.

Thursday 25 November 2010

Hierro


Mediocre thriller by a director so desperate to make a ghost story that nothing will deter him, not even the small but vital fact that this is not a ghost story.

Monday 22 November 2010

Jackass 3D


Offers nothing new, which is good because with Jackass I don't want anything new just more of the same laugh a minute idiocy.
By the end I was satisfied that I would no longer require any more Jackass in my life. Then the film surprised me by providing a fond goodbye, which inevitably left me yearning for an encore.

Sunday 21 November 2010

A Bucket Of Blood


Corman's name is usually a byword for cheap nonsense, but here is a story that wouldn't look out of place on a Hitchcock TV series infused with an intelligence that creates a blackly satirical and extremely enjoyable swipe at beatnik culture.

Saturday 20 November 2010

Tango & Cash


More accurately titled 'Tango & Cash: A Load Of Bollocks Things Happening In The Eighties'.

Thursday 18 November 2010

Ninja Assassin


A torrent of ludicrous hokum about a super secret group of hyper efficient assassins, which sporadically lapses into a ninja version of Aliens, props up some pretty good fights the best being a load of ninjas having a scrap in the middle of insanely heavy traffic, at night.

Monday 15 November 2010

Friday the 13th Part 3 [3D]


Brilliantly shit exploitation of the third dimension.

Sunday 14 November 2010

Monsters Inc.


The best I could come up with for this was 'quite nice', although Charlotte disagreed insisting that it was awesome.
Although, she also said it was easily as good as Cats And Dogs 2, which greatly confused me and left me with severe doubts about her abilities to judge cinema.

Thursday 11 November 2010

What Have They Done To Your Daughters? [La polizia chiede aiuto/The Coed Murders]


Neat little gem that unspools a standard giallo thriller, only told from the highly procedural viewpoint of the homicide investigation into the obligatory deaths, the end result being a sort of half-baked, sleazy, italian David Fincher movie.
This is the kind of thing people should be remaking.

Wednesday 10 November 2010

Due Date


Wooden retelling of Planes, Trains & Automobiles.

A Town Called Panic [Panique au village]


If you've ever watched those Cravendale adverts and thought 'They should make a movie like this' (and goodness knows, I have) then you should immediately seek this film out with a level of urgency usually associated with preventing the onset of life changing disease. Yes, it's really that good.

Saturday 6 November 2010

City Of The Living Dead [Paura nella città dei morti viventi/The Gates Of Hell]


Dots of mirthful outrageousness (such as an undead priest staring at a girl so hard that she vomits out her internal organs before tearing her boyfriends brain through the back of his head) unfortunately joined up by a scraggly biro line of cardboard acting, shoddy effects and teleporting zombies that renders the whole affair so dull it took three attempts to get through it.
I'm glad I made the effort though, primarily due to the preposterous synth-techno zombie inferno climax that closes the whole mess.

Friday 5 November 2010

Let Me In


Ineffectual streamlining of an already brilliant film.
There is a level of competence along with fleeting glimpses of originality that suggest Reeves should be making a movie of his own instead of remaking somebody else's as a ponderous failure.

Thursday 4 November 2010

[Rec] 2

Takes a disparate array of familiar, well worn horror movie themes and combines them in wholly original ways creating a sequel so fantastic that it forces re-evaluation of the original as a tense prologue for greatness.
Worth watching if only to bask in the rarity of a horror movie that gets better with every scene and doesn't fumble the ball once.
Incredible.