'Tis the season

Rare Exports: A Christmas Tale ★★★

Festive Finnish fare.
Horror/comedy - not all that scary or funny but compared to the majority of Christmas themed films, worth a watch.

Klaatu barada yippee ki-yay

Cowboys and Aliens ★★

I like cowboy films, I like alien films, I like films with 'and' in them, so what could go wrong? 

Amnesiac James Bond fighting ageing cattle baron Indiana Jones in a dying western town with drinks supplied by one of the blokes from Moon. 

Adding vicious four armed aliens abducting people for no apparent reason turns what could have been a decent western into an uninteresting mess. 

Like a chicken and egg sandwich, some things just don't mix.

Hail Caesar

Rise of the Planet of the Apes ★★★★

Predictable anti-science message replacing the anti-slavery theme of the original Conquest of the Planet of the Apes.
Green Goblin Jr messing with things he doesn't understand - what would be the point in messing with things you do understand? 

Still it ticks many of my boxes, although ridiculous to say, the CGI super-intelligent rampaging apes don't look totally realistic. 

Manages to entertain and remove the smell left behind from the extremely disappointing Tim Burton 're-imagined' POTA. 

Baby chimps are cuter than human babies - fact. 

Adult chimps are terrifyingly strong and according to the Internet can pull your arms off, eat your face and rip out your testicles with one hand.
Actually only two of those are fact, there doesn't seem to be any evidence of a chimp actually pulling off an arm. 

I for one welcome our new ape masters.

Nochnoy dozor

Night Watch ★★

Russian fantasy/horror based on the book by Sergei Lukyanenko. 

Really big in Russia. Not that good. 

Can't imagine the film would make any sense if you haven't read the book. 

Doesn't quite work but I'll still be trying to hunt down the sequel for completism.

Richard III

Transformers: Dark of the Moon ★

Still manages to disappoint even though I watched it knowing it was going to be terrible. 

It was. 

Not bad enough to be good. Just bad. 

Pointless, confusing, soulless story about giant robots hitting each other repeatedly.

LA Law

The Lincoln Lawyer - ★★★

Reminiscent of a 40s noir thriller without the noir.
Slick, slightly sleazy hard-drinking lawyer has to defend suspicious rich kid who may or may not be a murderer (although he obviously is).
Hard boiled (like an egg) story, told in a fairly unflashy way, maybe a little overwhelmed by the soundtrack sometimes - having 'Moment of Truth' by Gang Starr playing in a legal thriller at the resolution of the plot is a bit too literal but otherwise this is a decent film.
Fairly realistically done except of course for the main lawyer character who although he seems to live from the back of his car and drinks almost constantly, still maintains a successful career and comes over as quite likeable. 
It's wrong to generalise, but in the real world, all lawyers are evil cunts.

Down to the woods

Tucker and Dale vs Evil - ★★★★
Reverse horror/comedy.
College students go camping in the woods and run into hillbillies with chainsaws and woodchippers. Much bloodshed, death and fun ensues.
Enjoyable spoof without the knowing smugness of most spoofs.

Pot a piss

Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part 2 - ★★
Finally after 10 years, it's over and the private school system triumphs over the nose-less.
This film had two speeds, really slow and balls out. The balls out bits were better but it was difficult to see what was going on in the dark.
This was the probably the darkest film I've ever not really seen.
The story was weak, consisting mostly of one big battle, where inexplicably rather than kill all the annoying children in one go, he who must not be nosed stops half way through to allow the film to painfully explain the unnecessary complications of the plot.
Then the boy dies, then he comes back to life - because ermm.. it's magic. Although everyone else who gets killed (and let's face it, not enough of them do) stays dead.
The End. No. There's an epilogue.
It's years later and everyone is wearing make-up to look older and they have children who potentially look as annoying as them and they're off to wonderful public school to join the elite. Fuck off.

Indietragicomicanimation

Mary and Max - ★★★

Australian clay animation film about the friendship between an 8 year old girl in Melbourne and a 44 year old New York man with Asperger's Syndrome.
Dips into occasional mawkish over-sentimentality but generally has a decent script, some amusing scenes and a darkish tone that makes it worth a watch.

Ailuropoda Melanoleuca 2

Kung Fu Panda 2 - ★★

Bland, computer generated, panda-based cartoon.
Instantly forgettable but not offensively terrible.
May not be target audience.

Batman Begin Again

Batman: Year One - ★★★

Well it's an animation based on a graphic novel. No it isn't. It's a cartoon based on a comic book (Batman 404-407) - as if adding the word novel after something gives it some form of literary value.
This is basically Batman when he was a bit shit.
Sort of like Batman Begins but in cartoon form and you can actually hear what people are saying.
Not bad but lacking anything story wise or visually to make it really interesting.

Analphabetic

Alphas Series One - ★★★

Almost overcomes the bad smell left behind after the slightly similar 'Heroes'.
Nearly has a different enough idea of strangely powered misfits, sworn to protect a world that fears and hates them to avoid getting sued by Marvel.
Generally as a whole (and several other qualifiers) this probably just about succeeds by introducing the slight twist that with great power comes some sort of ironic drawback.

It tends towards a fairly standard formulaic plot structure, each episode dealing with a new strangely powered villain, while a vague sinister organization lurks in the background.

Out of the six main characters, three are bearable with the best lines going to the high functioning autistic kid. The other three are bland cyphers for not particularly interesting abilities.

Hopefully the next series will start with their messy deaths and no-one caring.

Paint Your Wagon

Drive - ★★★★

Mechanic/stunt/getaway driver sleepwalks through life until things get a bit unpleasant.
Starts off slow with lots of meaningful looks, arty cityscapes and slightly annoying music and mostly stays that way. Occasionally veers off into horrific vein slicing, head stomping ultra-violence.
Maybe tries too hard to be an enigmatic updated man-with-no-name type western but does so with some style and without chaps.

I an guard (anag)

The Guard - ★★★★★

Irish Lewis on acid, uncovers Scooby Doo style smuggling ring in between caring for dying mother, visiting prostitutes, drinking milkshakes and swimming.
Really well written, acted, filmed.
Also really funny.

Truly, madly, bitey

True Blood Series 4 - ★★★★

The everyday tales of the worlds most annoying telepathic fairy waitress.
This series may not have quite lived up to the bat-shit craziness of the last and probably didn't have a moment as funny as the Russell Edgington spine removal on live TV bit but at least it tried with two still-beating hearts ripped from chests, face melting, lots of beatings, shootings, burnings and most disturbingly the vampire on waitress on vampire (although not necessarily in that order) sex scenes.
For the most part it ticked the required boxes set up in the previous three series, with convoluted go-nowhere plots involving far too many characters all getting to say 'Sookie' in 'Deep South' accents ranging from South London to South Sydney.
Still one of the smartest and funniest series on TV.

Genuinely funny film shocker

The Trip - ★★★★★

Superb.
Did make me a bit hungry though.

Alienate

Attack The Block - ★★★

Not bad. Sort of OK.
British made, fairly low budget alien invasion/comedy/horror film.
Not actually scary or funny but had a few decent visual moments.
Dumps on Battle: Los Angeles, Signs, Battlefield Earth but in turn gets dumped on by Invasion of the Body Snatchers, Village of the Damned, The Thing.
The middle part of the alien invasion/horror centipede.

Deppressing

Pirates of the Caribbean On Stranger Tides - ★

Soulless bottom of the barrel scraper. A film made by accountants for idiots.
Maybe it's to be expected of a series made by Disney based on a theme park ride but there's always the hope that anyone involved might have put even a tiny bit of effort in to create something of interest.
Next in the series, 4 hours of Johhny Depp half-heartedly pulling faces while taking a shit and wiping himself with computer generated high currency bills.
Which never happened in The Crimson Pirate.

Total Recall

Limitless - ★★★

If you can ignore the bullshit non-science about only using 10% of your brain and accept a drug that gives you eidetic memory, superhumanly fast processing power, astonishing creativity, instant problem solving skills and the ability to mimic the physical movements of Bruce Lee then this isn't a terrible thriller.
Unfortunately the only idea they have of what someone with all those abilities would try and do is that they would become a banker. The stock market isn't thrilling, so it needs Russian gangsters, an unresolved murder, some stabbing and the inevitable downside of drugs (addiction, bad hair, special effects) to keep things interesting.

Gooniefield

Super 8 - ★★★★

Tribute to but better than most Spielberg in that it mawkishly celebrates a more recent decade than he usually does.
Actually a decent film. The mainly young cast are less precociously smackable than most child actors.
Decent story, well told, with an even more impressive train crash in a film than the last really good train crash in a film (The Fugitive, Source Code, The Railway Children).

Your Nuts M'Lord

Your Highness - ★★

I get the joke. But one joke spread so painfully thin over an entire film isn't enough. Even the occasional lapse into really bad taste can't save this roc (giant fantasy turkey).

Cap Sized

Captain America - ★★

How to make friends, influence people and kill Nazis using performance enhancing drugs. Taking a superhero film seriously is ridiculous but it's not unreasonable to have certain expectations for an enjoyable action adventure. The first two thirds of the film do the job quite well, the CGI pre-steroid hero effects work well except for one scene in a car where he seems to have shrunk to hobbit size. The transformation and initial confrontation with Hydra (because Nazis aren't evil enough, you need an extra evil science based branch) keeps things going along at a decent pace. Then it falls apart with a series of slow motion explosions, a jump on a train with the plucky sidekick which is racing over a bottomless ravine (guess what happens to the sidekick) and a completely unsatisfying finale where the villain (don't do drugs, they make your face go really red and your nose falls off) just disappears into a special effect.
Then you realise that the final third of the film is solely there as a trailer for next years Avengers film. A bit like getting through the cream, custard and fruit layers of a trifle to find they ran out of sponge and used shit instead. Well only a bit like that.

Superfluous

Super - ★★★ 

More Taxi Driver than Kick Ass but not necessarily in a good way. Seemed a little unclear what it was trying to say, shifting from social satire to comic violence to grotesque gore. Has some interesting ideas with a hero who is clearly mentally ill, fighting crime by hitting people in the head with a spanner because God tells him to. Not terrible but not all that funny.

A Bugs Life

Beetle Queen Conquers Tokyo - ★★★ 
Fairly interesting documentary about the Japanese obsession with bugs, beetles and butterflies. Avoids the usual 'aren't foreigners funny' stereotypes and replaces them with baffling mysticism and slow motion out of focus shots of blurred stuff.
Doesn't really explain their attitude of reverence and respect for all life by catching and killing it.
Makes you ask yourself the question is there really any different between keeping giant beetles as pets instead of cats and dogs?
Yes, of course there is.

It's not easy...

Green Lantern - ★★ Started ok but suffered from a disappointingly predictable story: man finds ring, gets shown how to use it, gets told he's a bit shit, overcomes fear/doubt/stupid mask and defeats planet killing yellow smoke cloud with the power of gravity.
That old one.
Ending felt rushed and anticlimactic, maybe the effects money ran out.

Cricket, lovely cricket

Fire In Babylon - ★★★★ Compared to Senna, this was less polished and had a more traditional documentary style but felt more culturally and historically significant.
Helped in the comparison as it features a much better sport and far more likeable people.

Insert overused winning formula type pun here

Senna - ★★★ Decent documentary on a subject I didn't much care about. Although the family and official footage was interesting, it obviously came at the price of having most of the negative aspects of the man and the sport removed.
Hasn't changed my view of Formula 1 as an elitist anachronism, full of obscenely rich men driving adverts on wheels, far too fast.
Having said that, the in-car racing footage was exciting, the crashes sickening and the build up to the inevitable end quite involving.

When Pop Videos Go Bad

Sucker Punch - ★ Two hours of hitting schoolgirls to see their pants. Everyone involved in this should be put on a list. I think I've gone sepia blind.
Tag line for this - 'You Will Be Unprepared' and I was, I suppose it wouldn't have done so well with the more accurate 'Sepia-toned Shit Vacuum'.

Lower Second

X-Men: First Class - ★★ All X-Men films are fairly tortuous allegories for racial and sexual equality. So casually turning evil or killing all of the black characters in a single scene that made no sense at all and turning the obviously gay Magneto straight is sort of ironic. 
The 60s setting would have been slightly more convincing if anyone spoke or behaved in any way as they did then and the main plot was completely nonsensical even for a comic book film. 
Still, the Magneto bits were quite good although it wasn't explained why a German-born Jew when he got angry (which he does quite frequently) would switch to an Irish accent.
Compared to the previous X-Men: The Last Stand, this film is infinitely better. But that could be said of just about anything.

Mars Needs Euthanizing

Mars Needs Moms - ★ Disney does it again.

Takes a turd, copies the turd, computer generates the turd, animates the turd and then shines it to a fine polish. 
You could probably see your face in this turd, if you'd had anything to do with producing such a souless, humourless, actionless waste of time.

Angels in Hats (spoiler)

The Adjustment Bureau - ★★★ The old, old story of boy meets girl, boy loses girl, then meets girl, then loses girl, then meets girl, then loses girl, then meets hat, then meets girl again.

Hot Sauce

Source Code - ★★★★ Basically a three set film, a train, a station and a lab.
Groundhog Day with less date rape and more explosions. Should have ended two minutes earlier.
May be part of a pattern of films following on from Inception designed to provoke the 'yeah, but what if' response in the witless.

Alien

Paul - ★★★ Better than hoped. Made in and for America and lacking any real edge but as a nerds find alien and get chased around a bit adventure, it really wasn't too bad. I believe Hamlet has a similar story.

Spooky looking kid

Hanna - ★★★ Fairly competent thriller. Held back by it's PG-13 certificate.

God Aweful

Priest - ★★ Would have been disappointing but was exactly as poor as anticipated. Just dull. Poorly thought out post apocalyptic dross. Genuinely sub-Judge Dredd (the film).

Rango

Rango - ★★ Disappointing. Some interesting vaguely arty compositions but not funny or entertaining enough. Standard cowboy story with a lizard.

Monkey Business

Who doesn't like monkeys? That's like, as in enjoy, are entertained by, have a respect for and an affinity towards. I'm not talking 'love', there may well be (let's face it, there are) those who put their inner monkey in a monkey but more of that later, what I'm on about is like.

The great monkeys - chimp, orang-utan, bonobo, gorilla, Galen, Cornelius and Monkey (Great Sage Equal Of Heaven).

Monkey (GSEOH) along with the two Pigsies, Sandy, the woman who was apparently a man and a horse/dragon. OK not the horse, it always felt like a late inferior addition to the pantheon, the scrappy doo of Monkey. Monkey was mythical, he had a staff that got bigger when he rubbed it, he could change into anything, fight with proper sound effects and could fly on a magic cloud. To know as a child, that I could never grow up to fly on a cloud or have a magic staff that grew to epic proportions when I rubbed it, is it any wonder that I lacked that ambition, that my get up and go, got up and left when I was only a teenager.

To paraphrase David Attenborough, there is nothing quite like looking into the eyes of a mountain gorilla that will make you want to turn up the mood lighting and put on some Barry White.

Still however much humanity and kindness you can see in the eyes of a gorilla, the rest of it still looks like a gorilla. Can a human mate with a monkey? Yes. Should a human...show of hands.....good that's a no. Also an adult gorilla is about three times as strong as a human, so why would anyone 'go ape' with a female whose disappointment at a poor performance could rip your arms off.

Can that ill advised jungle jump lead to a human/monkey hybrid? I think so. Ryan Giggs, Wayne Rooney, if they let their hair grow a bit, could be tranquillised and put behind zoo bars without hesitation. Surely somewhere in their ancestry there was a hint of the forbidden banana?

The bonobo we are told lives in a matriarchical society and never goes to war with other tribes. Yet the patriarch chimp will eat, fuck and kill anything that moves and not always in that order. Perhaps this recognition between human and chimp helps to explain which ape we chose to drink tea and move furniture.

Tarzan would have looked an idiot with a little bonobo sidekick and not the completely sensible looking white man in a loincloth, swinging through trees in the middle of Africa. Although the cartoon Tarzan did have a little monkey, maybe a bonobo but then he lacked the speeded up film savagery of Johnny Weissmuller or the 70s sophistication of Ron Ely. In fact I hated the cartoon Tarzan, his monkey was shit.

I want those two hours of my life back

Drive Angry - ★ No Don't.

Four times as shit

I Am Number Four - ★★ Disgraceful waste of some fairly good special effects. Any film that's so lazy and clueless to start with the voice-over exposition - 'I am an alien from the planet Mongo' etc. is probably going to stink out the room and this humourless, dull effort didn't disappoint.

Not the right one

Let Me In - ★★★ Leaving aside the question of why remake a film so close to the original, this wasn't at all bad. Sufficiently dark, bleak and gruesome.

You're Thor

Thor - ★★★★
Likely to be the best of this years superhero nonsense. Had a bit more depth than most with the sibling rivalry, tried a bit too hard to distance itself from the idea that they are 'real' gods. The destroyer armour was done particularly well and it had a bloke with a big hammer hitting people. What more can you want?

Dinosaure

The Extraordinary Adventures of Adèle Blanc-Sec - ★★★ Not bad. Very French what with it being set in France, with French people speaking French. Lots of mummies, a not terribly convincing dinosaur but it moved along at a decent pace and had enough ideas to keep it interesting.

War. Huh?

Battle: Los Angeles - ★ Stereotypical soldiers fight vague nasty aliens after water or something on a set ripped from Call Of Duty.
Grit and the American way triumphing over evil, more fantastical wish fulfilment nonsense than the sub District 9 aliens.
More importantly, it just wasn't that interesting.

The only good elf...

Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part 1 - ★★
As with the book, it plods along far too slowly and introduces unnecessary subplots. If the whole 'hallows' bit and the overlong camping trip had been cut, it could have been wrapped up in one film. Still has a problem in defining any understandable limits on what can or can't be done in a magical world.

ZX82

Tron Legacy - ★★
So the legacy of Tron is a young Jeff Bridges whose lips don't quite match his words and updated 80s graphics?
And neon, lots of neon.
Disappointing but thinking about it, Tron was a bit shit in the first place.

The Kings Apostrophe

The King's Speech - ★★★
Average film. Somehow expected more with the Oscars and all the fuss.
Unbelievable characters and who really could give a toss about a king?

Massive pile of garbage

Gulliver's Travels - ★
I'm supposed to be predisposed to like versions of this (what with my giant size) but this was just terrible.

Just not funny or entertaining. Had it been the cinema, I would have walked out.
So bored I started fast forwarding it.

Jesus lion

The Chronicles Of Narnia: The Voyage Of The Dawn Treader - ★★
Dislikeable children, main antagonist was a vague green mist and that lion is a real problem.

Shit Hornet

The Green Hornet - ★★
Not completely terrible but not far off. Fairly incompetent. Reasonably unlikeable characters. Almost good effects. Moronic plot. Only not actually offensive as I didn't have to watch it in 3D.

Buzz

The Girl Who Kicked The Hornets Nest - ★★★★
Better than the second part, less bleak and rapey than the first, now with added nailgun fun.

More films

The Girl Who Played With Fire - not as bleak as the first one - ★★★
True Grit - Coen Brothers remake, better than the original due to 100% less John Wayne. ★★★★★
Monsters - 'low budget' average road film, given better reviews than it deserves but not terrible. ★★★
The Social Network - better than expected, no likeable characters. ★★★★
Exit Through The Gift Shop - well I liked it. ★★★★