Reviews

Rocky Horror reboot review. (Lets Do The Timewarp Again)

Science Fiction Double Feature. Not a great start, the young lady singing this was overplaying her very small part. People might complain about the miming but most of the movie cast miming there. Not good, not terrible either.

Wedding scene into Damn it, Janet! I liked the throw in of the Transylvanians as the funeral party. Cute Mary Shelley grave (There is a light? Nice visual egg! As well as a Frankenstein reference, Score 2 points). When I saw the "grieving widow" I immediately worked out that was Frank, and the Transylvanians aren't having a burial, they're clearly stealing body parts to build Rocky! Very clever & I doubt many people got that. Score 1 point.

Narrator intro. Tim looking as well as can be expected after a stroke, slight paralysis on one side but he speaks well.

There's A Light. Not a bad rendition at all. Riff Raff can't decide if he wanted to be Richard O'Brian or Steve Tyler more. "You're wet." Actually they should be soaked to the skin, Brad should, at least. But both look far too dry. Lose 2 points for this goof.

The Time Warp. Not a good start at all, almost as though Riff Raff had had the song described to him by a deaf person. Emphasis in all the wrong places. Christina Milian playing Magenta? Going a little over the top for my taste. Not sure we needed the constant callbacks to the cinema audience either, if it was supposed to make me feel more part of the experience it failed miserably. Riff Raff confirms the Steve Tyler theory by playing guitar. How easily did I call that before even seeing it? Lose 1 point for being predictable.

Not sure who was playing Columbia but she's cute. Just the right amount of intensity. Song went about 2 choruses too long, I feel.

Sweet Transvestite. No elevator? What the ACTUAL f***? The pitch & chord shift made the opening of this unrecognizable until Laverne Cox started singing. Not good, but not awful. Trying too much to be Tim Curry.

Off to the lab. So an elevator is established but not used in Sweet Transvestite. Cox trying & failing in the Tim Curry impression, even down to his movie ad-lib's. Reactor buttons deliberately made up to look like nipples on breasts. Cute touch. Score 1 point for that.

Sword Of Damocles. Wasn't sure they were going to bother with this. Not sure how they were planning to do Rocky's balcony jump live.

I Can Make You A Man. So so. Not one of my favorite songs any way.

Hot Patootie. Oh dear, you aren't Meatloaf but you tried. Not sure how they were planning to do Eddie's bike jump live.

I Can Make You A Man Reprise. Wasn't once enough?

Touch-A-Touch-Me. I'm getting of tired of Cox's Curry impression by this point, is she not going to try and bring ANYTHING new to the role? The strip at the bottom of Janet's slip makes sense at last and we get a couple of Jesus iconography points (Rocky's hand wound & his hanging from the bed like a cross). This for me was an all or nothing song. It started out well but failed to sustain the power. If you sing this, give it the beans.

Eddie. Not a bad rendition at all. Doctor Scott tried his best but he wasn't a good singer. Score 1 point.

Planet, Schmanet, Janet (aka Wise Up, Janet Weiss). Finally, a song where Cox isn't trying to be Tim Curry! The elevator is actually seen in use and moving in this scene so I'm not sure why they didn't go with its usage in Sweet Transvestite. Score 1 point.

Rose Tint My World. Very well performed indeed, everyone does a good job and they all look great too. Score 1 point.

Floor Show, Fanfare/Don't Dream It - Be It. Decent Enough. They even went with the pool. Score 1 point.

Wild and Untamed Thing/Rose Tint My World. Well, the show is almost over bar the shouting. It hasn't been terrible but they didn't really try to raise this above the movie. Sad, really.

I'm Going Home. I'm not sure why we went through the whole performance referring to Frank by the masculine gender only to have the cast start saying "her" right at the end? Minor switch from using the RKO Tower to using Kong's hand.

Super Heroes. Wow, they're performing this? Totally unexpected! They really did go for a complete performance then. Score 1 point.

Science Fiction/Double Feature (Reprise). Well I guess we needed a proper "lips" performance for this to really be Rocky Horror and they didn't disappoint.

General feelings? No awful but no attempt to really try anything new. Cox just did her impression of Tim Curry which wasn't great. I quite liked the Transylvanians dressed in 70's clothes to reflect the decade this was originally made in. You just can't beat the movie.

Yoga Hosers, A sort of review So what IS Yoga Hosers, eh?

It's a new movie from Kevin Smith, he of Clerks, Dogma and Mallrats fame. Oh, and he also made Jersey Girl. But we'll forgive him for that.

The movie is a kooky story of two Canadian convienience store clerks (played by Kevin's daughter Harley Quinn Smith & Lily Rose Depp) who battle cloned Nazi creatures in an attempt to keep their home free from bad things.

It also features Johnny Depp (under very heavy prosthetics) playing one of his oddest roles yet, a nazi hunter vowing to help the two girls clean up their town.

It's a harmless enough flick that requires little to no brain power to watch and enjoy. Most of the jokes are at the expense of Canada. There are a lot of sight gags and quick references that you won't pick up all in one viewing. So it's a movie you'll probably have to buy on DVD or blu-ray to get the full experience of.

Smith himself plays the Bratzi horde (also under heavy prosthetics) and his Hollywood Babble-on cohort Ralph Garman plays the leader of the Canadian Nazi invasion.

There are some interesting cameos (including Stan Lee, Vanessa Paradis & Haley Joel Osment) but it's a movie best watched purely for the fun of it. If you are a fan of the Hollywood Babble-on podcast, you'll get a decent amount of enjoyment from the movie (and Garman's stock impressions).

Neither of the lead girls are spectacular actressess but they weren't hired for their abilities. There's a lot of nepotism going on in this here movie. Why else is Kevin Smith's wife playing a role? Or his dog Shecky? Or his best friend Jason Mewes? Do I need to know anything about Kevin Smith or his films to enjoy this film? A working knowledge of his humour would help, but it can be enjoyed without that. It is a sequel to his movie Tusk but I haven't seen it and still found this movie enjoyable and watchable.

Can I see this movie in a cinema near me? Probably not, it is available on Netflix though.

Should I watch Yoga Hosers? If you want 90-ish minutes of fun and mindless enjoyment, hell yes.

Is the movie as good as it could possibly be? That's a no, in my opinion. A couple of the scenes with the girls singing could have easily been removed without hurting the plot and shortening the running time.

How do you rate Yoga Hosers? Out of 5? I'd give it a 3. Out of 10? I'd give it a 6.5. Ralph Garman's jokes and impressions raised the overall rating for me.

This is just a review based on watching the first 10 minutes which are available free online.

Literally less than 5 minutes in and they are making stupid mistakes that any decent military consultant should have pulled them up on.

All that "fire" coming from the guns? Google "Flash Eliminator" - when in combat the last thing you want is the enemy able to tell where incoming fire is originating from due to muzzle flash. We have them now & we'd certainly have them in the future. (In fact after Carl takes the ship you can SEE the flash eliminators ON the rifles!) Also calling Medic? Everyone gets basic and battlefield combat first aid training, calling Medic died out in Vietnam, it's why everyone DOES get the training - so anyone can treat most wounds. You might have a specific medic but everyone there should have first aid training.

Also they aren't very well trained as combat troops if everyone is reloaded at EXACTLY the same time, who is providing cover fire during that moment? NO-ONE! If they can't even get the most simple things right is it even worth watching?

Take helicopter cockpits that don't match the exterior chopper shots, exploding AV Fuel that just doesn't (its got an insanely high flash point) and planes that don't even match the lines the characters describing said planes are saying and you've got this Asylum inspired bad rip-off from The Day After Tomorrow combined with elements of Sly Stallone's Daylight.

Nobody on the planet loves one person so much they are willing to risk not only themselves but 2 other family members to go rescue them. Its a no-name cast, very bad effects and even worse continuity (what little there even is of that).

If you just want to watch a terrible movie then give this a watch.

For those wondering why Melissa Joan Hart is starring in this movie look no further than the opening credits mentioning Hartbreak Films, AKA Her moms production company. Every leading role Melissa has ever had in the last 20 something years is due to Hartbreak being attached to the production of whatever it was.

Its called Nepotism. Not what you know but who you know. Paula Hart (Melissas mom) is producer of the movie. It also explains why Emily Hart (Melissas younger sister) also gets a part in the film (although I never saw her character at all).

Yes the movie is a lot like the idea of Saw, its also very similar to the movie Unknown as well.

Its an extremely grown up role for Melissa, the only thing close to this shes done is Silencing Mary. Clearly Paula Hart has gotten over her control freak stage with Melissa and her career.

The twist ending is pretty cool too.

Don't let the title fool you like it fooled me, also don't let IMDb.com's suggestion that it might be like National Treasure fool you either.

All this movie contains is a very poorly disguised tuition about the Mormon lifestyle and their religious practices. The "Treasure Hunt" may initially sound interesting but once all the clues start to turn out to be Bible references you should be able to tell you were being conned and this is just a movie about Mormons & Morminism.

To save you watching it - The Treasure is a family who want to be baptised. It's a SUPER weak ending to a really awful movie with incredibly bad acting and I wouldn't be surprised to discover that if you looked a bit further into the details of the distribution company they are almost certainly linked to The Church Of Mormon.

Like Hitch Hikers Guide To The Galaxy and Alien 3 this film was in development hell for a very long time before an extended legal battle finally allowed its appearance on the silver screen. It may had made millions in both the US and UK box offices already but its still not a very good movie.

Based on an extremely obscure cult comic book series set in a parallel universe it catalogues the lives of a set of retired super heroes on a world where vigilante super heroes have now been outlawed after 40 years of service to their countries and their planet. Now someone is hunting them down and kills one then frames another for murder, the US is on the brink of Nuclear war with Russia (the movie is set in 1985 where Richard Nixon is serving his 3rd term in office) and the nuclear clock is set at 5 minutes to midnight.

The movie constantly moves forwards and backwards in time with no thought given to anyone who has never read the comics or knows nothing about The Watchmen, characters aren't explained very well and one in particular is made to seem very ambiguous about not being a very good person (The Comedian who I actually thought was being played by Robert Downey Jr) as we see him assassinate JFK and help end the Vietnam war, he is also seen to kill American civilians in the 1970's civil unrest race riots and appears to be enjoying his work far too much.

With the constant movement in time you are never exactly sure who is who and what is going on, characters aren't given the chance to develop on screen much and your going to spend almost all of the over 2 and a half hours of the movies duration being extremely confused.

Confused and bored, as the very poorly explained plot (what little there actually is of it) is interspersed with fast action sequences almost immediately followed with long drawn out scenes full of very dull dialogue. Its very badly paced indeed, no thought seems to have given to how the movie should play out and it also seems to have not been cut at all. You get the feeling that what you are watching is everything the director filmed and nothing has been left on the cutting room floor.

The film does show characters like Dr Manhatten (at least you see how he gets his powers) developing a clean alternative to nuclear power & fossil fuels much to the chagrin of various captains of industry, this project is being funded and assisted by the 1st super heroes to ever reveal his real identity Adrian Veidt formerly known as Ozymandias.

The film has a few twists and turns which will catch non comic book fans off guard and ends with Russia & America uniting against a common enemy. I wont reveal who that is or any of the twists but if you can follow the film for any longer than 5 minutes at a time then your doing a lot better than I was.

The special effects are amazing but considering the films budget was $150 million they darn well should be, sadly it seems all the money was squandered on effects and nothing went on a decent script or hiring someone to adapt the comic books to a format that the non comic book geek could easily understand.

Terry Gilliam said it best when he stated the idea of making Watchmen "was unfilmable" and that by "Reducing the story to a two or two-and-a-half hour film seemed to me to take away the essence of what Watchmen is about.". When someone who made great almost unimaginable movies like 12 Monkeys, Brazil & Baron Munchausen tells you your concept is "unfilmable" then you should really listen to him.

Watchmen is a visual spectacle that is too long, badly cut, very badly paced & very badly adapted. More could be been done with Rorschachs narration which could have been utilised to explain the characters much better, also to have dropped the original Minutemen from the movie completely as their appearance just confuses the viewer as to who you are watching.

I guess if the movie is watched with brain disengaged most viewers will enjoy it on the action and effects alone but will get bored during the quiet moments and start to fidget way before it gets anywhere close to the closing titles. Cutting about 45 minutes out of the film would vastly improve its watchability and pacing, in its current form the nicest thing I can say is that it is bearable but only just. Personally I was left wishing for movies like Howard The Duck & Masters Of The Universe, thats how little I enjoyed this film.

This is the last in a series of 4 movies from the Futurama franchise, Matt Groening has said this will almost certainly be the final movie (I know that a figure of 4 was mentioned in various commentaries in the 3 previous films but this is definitely the last of the series) but they may explore the franchise further in other ways, possibly online.

The movie starts in deep space with some reference to DNA then we get the typical Futurama episode (although they start on Mars Vegas as opposed to normally being in New New York) with the little message being written in one of the alien language fonts they use so much so thats the 1st thing for geeks to decode.

The plot revolved around Amy Wongs family having just demolished Mars Vegas to build a bigger better one, after an accident involving campaigning feminists Fry becomes a telepath and he discovers that a foil hat filters them out. Bender watches some Robot Erotica and falls in lust with a Robot Mobster Dons wife.

Fry decides to use his ability to win a million dollars in a poker tournament that Bender also enters to impress his gangsters moll. Fry eliminates the 1st and 2 are killed (and Bender really shouldn't win that hand as those aren't the cards he was dealt) leaving Fry to play Bender for the prize money. Fry should win (4 aces) but Bender has 5 Kings (so should be instantly disqualified for cheating surely?) and tries to flee with his squeeze but they are left digging shallow graves (to those wondering why there are 2 moons thats Phobos & Deimos because the film is set on Mars) but both obviously survive.

Leo Wong (Amys father) sets out his plans for the Universes biggest miniature golf course stating he will destroy 12% of The Milky Way to build the whole course. The fact that this is most of the plot of Hitch Hikers Guide To The Galaxy (who did it far better and much funnier in 1979) goes to show the lack of creativity in these films.

The body of Spiro T Agnew is killed and action finally returns to Earth (30 minutes into the movie) where the head of Nixon orders the hunting down of the feminist activists and Leela who has now joined them. They sabotage the removal of Saturns rings and Leela decides they will need a mascot in the shape of the last living Martian Desert Muck Leech, Fry is captured and we discover the fate of the Universe rests in his hands like it normally always does.

We get a nice Heinlein reference (most non-readers won't pick it up or understand it) and the origins of life in the Universe are explained (it was caused by Chi), Fry is then told he must stop Leo destroying the Violet Dwarf. Bender sells out Leela for money (by bugging Fry's phone) and Fry joins Wongs as a security guard to smash the system from within.

Planet Express Ship is hijacked by the feminists and we finally discover who "The Dark Ones" are. We discover the feminists and the crazy people are both hiding in the same place and Zapp Branigan tries to capture her. Leela takes Fry with her as she is saved by the feminists, the Nimbus is sliced in half (so exactly how DO they lose ALL the men from only half the ship?) and there's an extremely weak bit of scripting that even Duran Duran can't save.

There's an awful goof about what fuels the Planet Express Ship (purists will be screaming loud swear words!) and they are captured by The Nimbus. There is a trial & the feminists are found guilty and sent to prison for 50 years. Bender breaks them out and the repainted Planet Express Ship makes the save. Fry discovers Nixons secret of the moon landing and Fry reaches the same conclusion everyone else had guessed about 20 minutes previously (which is wrong).

The real Dark One is revealed and Groening rips off 2010, The Year We Make Contact. The new lifeform rips off an episode of Star Trek The Next Generation and Fry makes a scary statement. Fry gets soppy and Groening writes the worst and most opening ending ever. It's an awful end to a generally awful series of films and Fox really should have left Futurama the way is was as it'd gone out on a high.

It's based on the same planet as the original (Sirius 6B) & also features the same killer robots however none of the original cast have returned and the film is essentially a rip off of Aliens with a bunch of soldiers exploring a hostile planet investigating a distress call and trying to rescue any humans left alive on Sirius 6B.

The soldiers are told they have 6 days to search and get off the planet before it is hit by meteors which will leave it devoid of all life. We are told why they can't land right next to where the signal was but it was so quick I completely missed the explanation. The soldiers explore a bunker which turns out to be the Screamer manufacturing plant and we see how they scavenge human bodies for parts.

After discussing how much Screamer technology is potentially worth we see our 1st break in discipline when Sexton (one of the soldiers) sneaks away in the night to steal a deactivated Screamer, he hacks it and steals all the information stored inside it however the power he fed it allows it to reactivate after an encounter with a rat. Onboard the ship it appears the engineer is attacked or killed by the reanimated Screamer and whilst exploring a Mining Complex the soldiers are attacked by what appear to be other humans and one of them is killed by a Screamer.

Returning to their ship on day 3 of their mission they do discover their engineer dead (or whats left of him) and decide to try and leave the planet immediately but can't because the Screamer drained their fuel. Sexton tries to convince them its not the same robot they saw in the assembly plant and pretty much gives himself away by acting far too guilty.

On day 4 of the mission the soldiers try to reason with the people they encountered the previous day and explain about their fuel and the storm. We have an argument about if the soldiers are really Screamers or not and we see the interesting Screamer detection method and we discover at least 2 people on the planet are definitely human. The survivors on the planet also tell us a little about different types of Screamers killing each other and this is almost aping the human civil war that was going on in the original movie.

Its hinted that the survivors on the planet may be cannibals and the soldiers discuss the theory even further. When they go to investigate they discover that what they thought were prisoners or the survivors potential food source are actually Screamers (and it's painfully obvious that they are too) but they are easily killed (but not before they themselves kill several people).

By day 5 of the soldiers rescue mission only 2 of the survivors are still alive and only 4 of the solders (including Sexton). During the night the female survivor Hannah pretty much gives away that she is or might be a Screamer (why else would she say Humans are irrational?) and we discover Bronte the gutsy female solder was Hendricksons (Peter Weller in the original movie) daughter.

Entering another bunker to try and find a power source Hannah is accidentally killed (and she was really human) and the soldiers medic is killed and her body is scavenged by a Screamer moments afterwards. The remaining soldiers & Guy the male survivor are saved from a mass Screamer attack by an unknown man using some sort of EMP weapon.

We discover their saviour is Orsow (played by Lance Henriksen) the original creator of the Screamers and he tells them there are no other sources of fuel. Sexton sneaks away and his theft of Screamer technology is discovered by Bronte. Sexton attacks and wounds Orsow, stealing his fuel cells for the ship revealing his mercenary intentions by gladly abandoning the rest of the soldiers.

The removal of the fuel cells starts the self destruct as Sexton kills Orsow and one of the apparently dead soldiers is revealed to have been turned into a Screamer who also kills Sexton. Bronte takes the power cells and destroys Sextons stolen Screamer data chip and she and Guy manage to escape the self destruct and return to the ship.

Guy speculates on a Screamer/Human hybrid and they discover another of the soldiers on board who is also a Screamer and he starts to cast your suspicions about Guy when he used the word "we" a lot but Guy does kill him. They escape the planet and enter suspended animation and we are left wondering if Bronte is now in the same position as her father was 13 years ago, the only human to escape Sirius 6B with a Screamer on board the ship heading for Earth.

Bronte discovers she is pregnant (with Guys baby as they'd had a very annoying soft focus sex scene earlier in the movie but she is way too pregnant after only 2 months) and as Guy reveals he is a Screamer we have an incredibly weak and extremely open ending leaving space for another Screamers movie.

The trouble with this movie is it has virtually no connections to the original, the story is dull and extremely predictable with almost no surprises at all. Half the time you have no clue who characters are (they rarely refer to each other by their names) and there are too many scenes of not much happening with hardly any interaction with the lower grade Screamers. The films 1 big name is killed far too quickly and not utilised very well at all while he is alive. Despite the fact it took 14 years for them to make this most Screamers fans will probably wish they hadn't bothered.

The reason this is an "Of The Dead" movie is because Taurus (the company who made) owned the rights to the name Day Of The Dead and were allowed to use it however they wished, this was nothing to do with George Romero at all. The film is very gory, but decidedly low budget looking.

Starting out in 1968, Ravenside Military Installation in Pennslyvania (according to the fairly helpful graphic but the sign above the main door is more helpful & reads Ravenside Military Hospital) in the middle of some sort of emergency from the alarms and frantic running around. We get a warning (translated from Russian, clearly a soldier who'd defected to return something the Russians had stolen) and in the chaos someone steals what had been returned. We see some of the cheapest looking CGI jeeps and helicopters I've ever encountered and we see exactly what kind of response the Military have sent, the type that results in deadly force with no questions asked. Seemingly their problem is easily solved and the zombies outside obviously went to the Romero School of Acting judging by their loping gait.

Our thief hears the military policy over their radios (By the way, the order "Shoot to kill" is NEVER issued, when you open fire you only ever do it for 1 reason) and there are 2 goofs (the "dead" nurse on the ground who blinks & the sniper upstairs who needs 2 shots to kill someone) as our thief finally succumbs to the disease and is killed, losing his ill gotten booty. Flash forward (the graphic gets around dating the movie exactly by reading "Five Days Ago") and we meet a group of men, one of whom discovers the long dead thiefs booty in what is now Ravenside Memorial Hospital. Funnily enough they live in the Romero Ward and its fairly clear this is some sort of Mental Institution.

We gradually start to find out who are staff and who are patients (its not immediately obvious before they enter the hospital) and get a rough idea of what kind group dynamic they have and what kind of relationships exist. The disease is unleashed again and the 1st signs start to manifest after the patients are returned to their beds and rooms. Dr Donwynn researches on the internet and the patients seemingly start to hallucinate. The following day (4 days ago) and more signs of infection start to manifest in the form of extremely low budget make-up effects (using PVA glue to simulate peeling skin) and we discover there is some sort of connection between all of the infected as they all experience the same feeling as Emma in her restraints. Their symptoms worsen (however none of them seem to question the fact their vomiting up blood & bile? I know their supposed to be mental patients but most of them seemed quite lucid before getting infected) and chaos seems to be ensuing at the hospital and getting worse rapidly.

When Donwynn is asked where they got sick and Dr Heller (the guy in charge) calls it "the DeLuca ravine" its extremely clear Heller knows more than he is letting on about the past of Ravenside. Isaac (one of the patients) discovers he no longer bleeds (so he is already dead then) as Heller considers contacting the military but changes his mind and imposes a quarantine, issues weapons and authorises the use of deadly force. His final order of "aim for the head" proves he knows more than he is telling anyone else and Donwynn finds out exactly what was in the vial and what it does. It appears Donwynn has a connection with all the infected and Marshall the nurse who attacked Emma is shown to be more infected than any of those who were exposed to the vial. A guard is shot & killed and the infected male patients argue as Heller shows us how bad Marshall looks.

The following day (3 days ago) and after a minor scuffle one of the patients gets hold of a gun and it is pretty weird that they are letting the obviously infected Donwynn interact with uninfected staff & patients. Marshall breaks loose and eats Heller as Emma is released & Isaac is shot & Marshall gives us the 1st scare of the movie which is awesome even if it is totally expected. Donwynns informant Jerry confirms the infected are dead and tells us about the origin of the vials and we get to see what caused the original outbreak from the start of the movie. There's the super goof of the guard losing the magazine from his pistol as he fires at Marshall and as the cure is about to be revealed the patients fall into a feeding frenzy on Jerry.

The following day (2 days ago) Heller is now undead, Donwynn discovers how much Heller knew and patients Boris, Sam & Jackie appear to have physically changed after eating Jerry. The cure is seemingly destroyed by Vicky, a junkie looking for a fix and Emma has gone from just pregnant to full term in 3 days as Isaac finds his own solution to being undead. The following day (yesterday) and the news reports the dead walking and attacking the living in a very open and extremely weak non-ending. I say non-ending as there is no real conclusion, no idea of what happened to Emma and her pregnancy. I assume this was left open to further explore the franchise at a later date.

Made in 1985 when the whole world lived under the shadow of the bomb and the Cold War looked like it would never end. Its quite ironic that this film and others before it echoed the fears of the whole planet but not long after its release the political climate started to change and it seemed the threat of nuclear war would finally be gone.

Starting on April 1st 1986, No, its not a joke. In fact not only is it not a joke its the day the world ends with Nukes aplenty going off. Fast forward 15 years from that nightmare to April 1st, 2001 and we are introduced to a couple of people living underground who survived the bombs.

Mainly the story is about Phillip and Marlowe, however that pun is intended as they are 2 guys who dreamt of become Private Investigators so its a post apocalyptic film noir. It's so noir the movie even starts in black & white but it immediately changes to colour once the guys leave their shelter and drive into the outside world.

I knew I recognised the face of Phillip (John Stockwell) and it was because I remembered him playing the role of best friend Dennis in the horror movie Christine, the guy playing Marlowe (Michael Dudikoff) appears to be the worlds greatest bit part actor having been in nothing of any importance.

The helpful trawl tells you the guys are Phillip Hammer and Marlowe Chandler (ignore how their billed in IMDb.com, its wrong) and they'd grown up in a shelter full of 40's memorabilia and sleazy detective novels hence the stupid noir style names.

We also learn about a power struggle over 2 keys that could fire the last nuke left on Earth. The PI's rescue a damsel in distress (who also happens to have one of those keys) from some mutants and agree to get her to the closest phonebooth (like the telephone infrastructure will have survived WW3 or been rebuilt in 15 years?) but as those mutants are dealt with by some unseen force it appears the damsel may have both of the keys. We discover her name is Miles Archer (isn't Miles a mans name?) and a radio bulletin lets us know she was being chased by criminals.

She makes her phone call and bails on her rescuers having seen something that scared her but not before robbing Marlowe and dropping the keys in their car. The film then pretty much degrades into Mad Max meets the Keystone Cops and pretty much stays there. The guys discover the keys and the name on the case that contains them is Dash Hammer - Phillips father, so they set off to discover if he is alive or not.

After a bizarre encounter with Disco Mutants & a girl called Rusty Mars they finally enter Edge City, the closest thing to civilization. They walk around like a complete of complete rubes and you can tell they are going to either be constantly getting in or out of danger. It appears Rusty betrays Phillip to Sternwood, the leader of a local gang for the keys and he is told he will be sold for meat as the residents of Edge City are all cannibals.

There are a great deal of escapes, rescues, captures and betrayals to the point where it just gets plain annoying. We have mutant sewer monsters and more Disco Mutants which get Phillip and Marlowe separated (for no real good reason other than to allow Marlowe a brief moment of glory as he rescues Phillip from the Disco Mutants before they meet back up with Miles who takes them back to her place.

Phillip discovers a book on warhead arming & launch codes and finally realizes exactly what the keys are for and why they are in such high demand. (His flashback to his childhood is extremely inaccurate as its a very well known fact that looking directly into a nuclear blast burns out your retinas so he should actually be blind).

Setting off in 40's outfits that fit them perfectly (stolen from the Disco Mutants, thats what was inside the 2 packages they were carrying) Phillip & Marlowe sucker the gangs following them into a trap in the hope they will all kill each other in the confusion.

There's a nice twist about the identities of 2 of the Mutant leaders which is followed by an extremely pointless battle scene (why bother fighting for something you already have?) which ends up with the keys in Miles' possession. There's an even more pointless Mexican stand off and an unusual outcome with a very weak and incredibly open ending.

I assume it was left so open to allow a sequel if this had been any kind of success so judging from the lack of sequel it probably wasn't. The film is pretty boring, there are lots of periods of nothing happening interspersed with rapid paced action that doesn't last long then a bit of dialogue to following and the cycle continues from start to finish. It's a pretty good example of how not to make a movie and its only real redeeming feature is its 80's soft rock sound track full of artists no-one has ever heard of.

This is an independently made documentary following the fortunes of Ultimate Pro Wrestling (UPW) run by Rick Bassman (who does several short pieces to camera about each of the wrestlers) and some of its workers at the time. Made by shooting from October 2000 until May 2001 many of the UPW roster are featured but the director does eventually decide to focus on Christopher Daniels, Mikey Henderson, Jon Heidenreich and Drzan McBee.

This is a good purchase for fans of WWE or TNA as a few of the wrestlers featured will eventually go on to be stars in those federations (in fact Rob Van Dam and Samoa Joe are both featured in the opening few minutes, you will also get to see John Cena as "The Prototype" at the very start of his wrestling career).

McBee is the 1st person to be featured and came from a Cheerleading background with no previous wrestling knowledge or ability, I assume she thought she'd get by on her large fake breasts and blonde hair and fake tan. Watching her learn to bump is as painful to watch as it must have been for her to do.

Heidenreich is next featured coming from an amateur football background closely followed by Henderson who it states has been wrestling "since the age of 12".

To me the best known of these featured wrestlers is Chris Daniels who went on to be very successful with ROH and TNA. We get to see him working with RVD (who was hugely famous with ECW and WWE) and hear him worry about being able to work due to his age (which is ironic as from all the wrestlers featured apart from Cena & Joe, Chris Daniels is the only one currently still actively wrestling).

Heidenreichs life away from wrestling is a job as a bouncer (Jon would go on to work in WWE but never really get a proper big shot), Bassman expresses some concerns about McBee (because she's not ripped) and we get to see how UPW work with WWE and we also get to see WWE talent scout Bruce Prichard (who may be better known to WWE fans as Brother Love) expressing an interest in Heidenreich.

Henderson gets to work against Juventud Guerrero (you even get to see them practising their match backstage) and Henderson also talks about the risks of injuries and the dangers they face in every match.

Watching the wrestlers train we meet Nathan Jones (former WWE Superstar now turned film actor), we also get to see how training effects their family lives and Daniels visits kids doing backyard wrestling and comments on how senseless their dedication to violence is.

Heidenreich gets his WWE developmental contract and when he talks about the promo class we see Frankie Kazarian (now working as Suicide in TNA) and you get to see how god awful Heidenreich actually is at cutting a promo. You also see him briefly appearing in the TV show 18 Wheels of Justice (fighting against former WWE worker Andrew "Test" Martin).

Daniels gets his 1st professional shot working for WCW and McBee gets her 1st UPW shot working as a mere bell ringer (showing either how slowly she'd progressed as a wrestler or how little faith UPW had in her as a potential wrestler) and Heidenreich's relationship with his girlfriend breaks up due to the long distance issues of him being away at wrestling training.

Daniels flubs (screws up) his 1st match on WCW Nitro against Mike Modest when he goes to springboard off the ropes and slips falling onto his head (but still finishes the match) in the opening 30 seconds of the match. Despite this mistake he is still offered a job at WCW and it seems like misfortune is catching as Heidenreich is involved in a car crash then breaks his hand in a practise match shortly before he is supposed to debut in his 1st proper UPW house match.

When the house show happens Bassman shows more of their WWE connections by introducing Percy Pringle (better known as Paul Bearer), Daniels has his last UPW match and Heidenreich has his 1st. McBee gets to work her 1st match (although not wrestling she interferes in a match between WWE Divas Victoria & Molly Holly) and Heidenreich has the pleasure of jobbing (losing) in his 1st professional match, Daniels loses his title (to a then upcoming Samoa Joe) allowing him to pursue his career in WCW.

As for what happened next? Heidenreich did eventually move up to WWE and got a very short push from them before being released after 3 years. He is now working for the Alabama Wrestling Federation. Daniels was only given a 90 contract by WCW and due to his injury and WCW being bought out by WWE he never got to work another match for them. He spent 5 years working for ROH and is now working for TNA. Henderson never progressed further than UPW and McBee died in 2003 due to complications following surgery.

I've wanted to see this ever since I saw clips of it on Jonathon Ross's "Japanorama" show on BBC3 several years ago. I guess you'd class it as Anime but it was clearly made with a Western audience in mind as most signs and numbers are written in English (Although I did see a poster written in German & some boxes labelled in what looked like French).

You don't need the subtitles switched on as there is English dialogue but the subtitles were clearly translated from Japanese as they do differ from the spoken English dialogue in grammar and structure, not all translations are exact either.

The look of the movie is very much like something from the mind of animator Terry Gilliam, especially the castle on legs striding across the rural countryside. Its very much like something he'd have thought of. It's difficult to know what time period the movie is supposed to be set in seeing Cavalrymen on Horses but steam powered Trams, Trains, Steam Cars & Sedan Chairs too.

It appears the lead character of the film is Sophie who works in a millinery shop (thats hats to you philistines) and we start off meeting her leaving work, being rescued from the over amourous attention of 2 soldiers by a chap who not only seems to know Jedi Mind tricks but can also fly and is being chased by evil black ectoplasmic creatures.

Sophie discusses her encounter with her sister Lettie and they also discuss Howl (he's clearly a Wizard and everyone thinks he's evil and eats womens hearts), returning to the Shop Sophie has a spell cast on her by The Witch Of The Wastes which turns her into an old women. She avoids her mother and leaves town rescuing a scarecrow which repays her with a walking cane and helps her to find shelter, inside Howls Moving Castle. A bit like the Tardis, even though its moving the inside of the castle always remains stationary as though it were a normal static dwelling.

This is obviously a world where magic is totally normal (as Sophie wasn't surprised by a magical scarecrow) as meeting a Fire Demon called Calciifer didn't even seem to phase her, it seems Howls Castle is even more like the Stargate as it is able to be static yet its front door and exterior can be in many different locations at once (Actually it seems to be based on the Terry Pratchett idea of Wandering Shops).

All of the callers seem to think different Wizards live there but none think it is Howl. We discover the man who saved Sophie is of course Howl (who can't be that great a wizard if he doesn't recognise someone under an spell) and to remain close to him she pretends she is his new cleaning lady.

We also discover (thanks to Howl) that Sophie appears as a normal girl when she sleeps. One thing can be said for certain, this is a world where several cities or countries are involved in a war (with flying battleships and iron ships that look like US Civil War steamers) but even the Witch Of The Waste seems to have a Tardis-like Sedan chair, definitely bigger on the inside.

It's rather strange that whilst talking to the Kings Head Sorceror Sulliman (a mistranslation surely as she is clearly female) that Sophie briefly transforms into her younger self whilst making an impassioned speech on Howls behalf. Sulliman had also taken all the magic from The Witch Of The Waste and tried to trap Howl who saves Sophie.

Sophie escapes back to the castle and wakes up but is still young, checking on Howl she tells him she loves him. When he rejects her she becomes old again but it is difficult to know if that was a dream or not. Afer using Calcifer to move the Castle it also completely reconfigures and repairs the interior (again like another aspect of the Tardis, able to add new rooms), Sophie also appears to get younger again when Howl takes her into his secret garden.

From what I could understand Sophie gets younger when she acknowledges her feelings of love for Howl. Sophie is visited by her mother (who was forced to leave a spying bug by Sulliman) but it is destroyed by The Witch Of The Wastes using Calcifer to burn it but it leaves him weakened and unable to protect the house from invasion and bombing.

So many of the images of flying ships and burning birds remind of Battle Of The Planets (Gatchaman) it made me wonder if the maker of this had seen the cartoon as a child. Trying to help Howl Sophie removes Calcifer from the castle which destroys it but he is able to reconfigure it only smaller when she returns him and gives him her hair.

The magical scarecrow saves them from certain death and she kisses him which releases him from a spell, he turns out to be a missing Prince who can stop the war. Sulliman also stops the war using her royal contacts and calcifer repairs the castle and Sophie and Howl fly off into the sky.

It's an odd ending to an odd but sweet film which is apparently very loosely based on a novel by Diana Wynne Jones, the film is just under 2 hours long but I think it could be cut by about 20 minutes as it is just too long in places.

I'll start by saying I don't like Ricky Gervais and have never found him funny so this was going to have to be phenomenal to impress me. As far as I can recall I've only ever seen Greg Kinnear (playing Frank) in "Stuck On You" which I found mildly funny.

Its hard to tell exactly what genre this film was aiming for as it misses comedy by a country mile and it wasn't really romantic enough to be a romcom, the humour (what little there was of it) wasn't really dark enough to be black comedy and its a movie about dead people so its not exactly a feel good flick either so I'd have to class this as an ego pic, solely written for Gervais to front. Fortunately for me Frank dies in the very 1st scene, Gervais plays Bertam Pincus, a dentist (I find it hard to believe he's a comedian so I really struggled to accept him playing a dentist) who is also a complete asshole (Gervais is VERY believable as an asshole) who goes into hospital for some sort of routine bowel operation.

The operation itself is very quickly glossed over as you pass from him going to surgery to being discharged from hospital within mere seconds of each other. But Pincus is soon followed home by an ever increasing group of people who realise only he can see them who then procede to chase him. He returns to the hospital asking about hallucinations and eventually forces the surgeon to admit that he died for 7 minutes and can suddenly see dead people. Pincus refuses to help any of the dead with their unfinished business so they spend the movie generally hounding and following him, Pincus is asked by Frank to help his widow Gwen (Tea Leoni) from marrying another guy which Pincus does by trying to woo her himself which is difficult as he has absolutely no personality and zero clue how to talk to people.

My 1st laugh in the film wasn't anything Gervais said, it was the fact he'd worn a new shirt and forgotten to remove the label. I guess it should speak volumes about how unfunny the man is if that made me laugh. Mainly what I found about Gervais was he's very boring, his whole performance was pretty much delivered in monotone with no life at all (ironic for a guy who can see dead people you'd think but in his case case, not so). Despite the fact we see at least several dozen ghosts follow Pincus near the start of the movie we only ever get to meet a select few and thats one of the less satisfying things about this movie (In my opinion it shows they weren't able to develop their characters or write material for them, either that or they wanted the movie to revolve solely around Gervais & Kinnear which given Gervais' ego is the more likely reason).

Pincus asking the Indian dentist about "extracting information from a hostile" is extremely offensive and very bigoted in its assumption that all Indians are terrorists (I'm rather surprised Gervais as a Brit agreed to do that line as Britain is a very multi cultural country) and Pincus then abuses his position as a Dentist to both extract information and break up Gwens relationship. Even when Frank screws Pincus over you still don't feel sorry for him, Gervais just doesn't illict that response as an actor or a person. His Indian colleague hits it spot on when he describes him as "a f**king prick" which finally leads Pincus to go on missions of mercy for the ghosts who have been following him, helping them with their unfinished business (which in itself is rather sad as they choose to spend less than 2 minutes of the movie doing that and I would have preferred to have seen much more of him helping the ghosts out).

It does feel quite satisfactory that Pincus gets killed (and in the exact same way that Frank did) but rather sadly is revived. The ending is left very open, you have no clue if Pincus still sees ghosts but he does seem to be slightly nicer and Frank did pass over.

As a computer named Colossus it certainly earns it moniker as you see how seriously huge the thing is in the opening scenes in its cavernous type home that looks a bit like the laboratory scenes out of Forbidden Planet", the opening scene shows the level of security protecting Colossus and includes 2 steel blast doors and a radiation shield. From the exterior shots Colossus is clearly kept in some sort of Cheyenne Mountain style complex and it made me wonder if this is where Wargames got a lot of its ideas from.

Sure enough right at the start you hear The President announce that Colossus is controlling the American & Allied defence systems as a completely automatic process with all humans having been removed from the equation. The way The President talks about how intelligent it is but without any emotion makes you also think of Skynet so it seems Terminator also stole ideas from this movie. Dr Charles Forbin (whom the project is named after) is the worlds foremost authority on computers (played by Eric Braeden, although a very familiar face its hard to place him in any other movies) who explains the workings and location of Colossus (in Colorado, where Cheyenne Mountain is. Funny that, eh?) He also explains Colossus will defend itself if attacked (kind of reminds me of that computer in Superman 3 as well!) and also debunks the idea that it may be an artificial intelligence but he does not use that term.

It's funny that as The President is giving his speech about peace the "electronic" doors behind are struggling to close and its quite distracting. Forbin calls to his staff and we get an interesting look into the idea of teleconferencing which is fairly common today. Whilst singing the praises of Colossus The President is interrupted by a warning message (flashing up with a teletype sound effect and it reads Warning, There is another system) and after being called by the Soviet Ambassador it turns out The Russians also have a machine they are going to activate called "Guardian" looking after Soviet defence.

Forbin returns to the human run Colossus programming centre in California where he and his staff investigate the system (2 of his staff turning out to be Miss Fields played by Marion Ross better known from Happy Days and Dr. Chin played by sci-fi stalwart James Hong best known as Choo from Blade Runner) and a rather interesting answer to the question "How long does this usually take" (1100 CPU seconds nicely dating the film by that measurement of processing time) and it is then that Colossus starts to establish communication with the Russian computer system.

They also discover Colossus is making new scientific discoveries previously unknown to man then Guardians calculations catch up and synchronize with Colossus and a few moments later they both stop. Colossus informs them that inter system language has been established (shocking, 2 such powerful computers unaware of binary or hexadecimal!) and then the 2 computers start to communicate on screen in binary (I had to laugh at the female member of Forbin's staff who described it as a "new inter system language" with a man on the staff saying it was "a language only those machines can understand", rather stupid as binary code has been in use since 1946 and this film was made in 1970).

The Russian Premier calls The President, afraid their machine may reveal defence secrets and the 2 men agree to turn both computers off at the same time. Forbin speaks to his Russian counterpart to disconnect the 2 computers and neither man is very happy about it but they arrange to disconnect them. The line is disconnected and Colossus immediately asks why whilst also trying to find another way to reconnect to Guardian at the same time. It fails and is told why it was disconnected and demands to be reconnected (does it not know how to say please? all that processing power and bugger all manners?) with The Russian Premier saying the 2 computers have now learnt man is in control by being able to keep them incommunicado.

The President tells Colossus they won't reconnect it and it then launches a missile at Russia, obviously Guardian retaliates with a counter launch against America (exactly as Colossus knew it would, it was unable to launch against its own country so it forced its opposite number to launch instead verifying the theory of mutually assured destruction. Unfortunately Guardian screws up by launching on an Air Force Base where Colossus had only fired on an oil field. If they were exactly as intelligent they would have both targeted identically strategic targets proving one of them is dumber than a mule).

When asked to used countermeasures against the Russian missile Colossus refuses unless the link is restored forcing them to restore the link between the 2 computers but when asked if the Russian missile will be shot down Colossus says nothing but the missile is confirmed as destroyed however the Russians were unable to restore Guardians link and their oil field and its associated town were wiped out. Colossus then demands to be allowed to monitor the White House line to the Kremlin.

The attempt is then made by Forbins staff to overload Colossus which fails and the men responsible are executed. Colossus then creates a new system which it states will be built on Crete stating the population must be moved or it will deal with the problem. Colossus addresses the world on TV and proclaims itself absolute ruler and explains it knew about the missile sabotage and then detonates them as an example to prevent further attempts at sabotage against it (so the fake detonators planted inside the missiles were somehow forced into operation? how was that done then?) stating it will rule the planet.

Keanu Reeves plays a man whose DNA is sampled in 1928 in the Karakoram Mountains in India (no, its never explained why) and used in the "present day" (conveniently allowing for the film makers to not let the film feel dated by setting a specific year) to create a body for Klaatu, an alien who represents a group of other worlds who have come to Earth to stop Humans destroying the planet by eradicating all human life and using spheres as modern day arks to save the animal life.

Jennifer Connelly plays Helen Benson a sexy scientist who is called in by the government when they detect an object on collision course with Manhattan that they expected to destroy all life only for it to slow down and land in New Yorks Central Park, she is also the "wicked" stepmom to her dead husbands son Jacob (played by the extremely annoying Jaden Smith who you will end up hoping he dies more than the kids in Jurassic Park. Yes, he's THAT annoying!).

The American Government (run by the Secretary Of Defence played by Kathy Bates, another handy way for the film makers to avoid dating the film by not naming The President or Vice President) react as they always do with force and the alien leaving the craft is hurt and taken into custody to be studied. He heals miraculously and Benson intervenes in his questioning which allows him to escape and go on the run.

Klaatu's robot Gort is also captured for study and escapes and commences to remove all traces of life from the planet but Benson and Jacob help him to return to his ship to save the Earth once they show him not all Humans wish to destroy the planet. This entails a visit to a Nobel prize winning Professor (played by John Cleese, personally I would have removed the whole scene with him in as it isn't explained well enough why they are there or how this helps Klaatu learn more about why Human life is worth saving) in a very boring and extremely difficult to follow scene which just seems to be there to slow the action down for a short while.

Like M. Night Shyamalan's The Happening earlier this year this is also an extremely preachy film about the environment and how Humans are destroying the planet. It's not a science fiction film and it's certainly no attempt to try and either remake or improve the 1951 Micheal Rennie version of this film where they'd come to stop us all killing each other during the Cold War. If you don't feel like your watching sections of The Happening and Cloverfield at certain points in the movie then you pay absolutely no attention to movies when you watch them. The film is highly unoriginal (not just because its a remake, because it blatantly steals ideas from things like The Happening and Cloverfield and it takes far too long to get to the point where Gort starts wiping the Earth out.

The visual effects do look very good but as a whole the film has an incredibly cheap feeling about it (possibly due to the very derivative sections of plot and how long the film takes to actually get anywhere) and you are left feeling very unsatisfied indeed. The ending is extremely weak and left far too open to interpretation as to what happened and what will happen next. Reeves himself plays the role of Klaatu too much like a cut scene from The Matrix, he's very stiff and wooden and you feel a waxwork dummy of him would have done a better (and much cheaper) job of the role. Jennifer Connelly isn't really enough of a star to be playing the female lead (most people will only remember her from Labyrinth) so its pretty pathetic to think Keanu is actually the biggest name in this mainly no-name cast.

The director stated Keanu was his 1st and only choice to play Klaatu which reveals several possible things about him - he hasn't got much imagination in regards to casting, he doesn't know many actors (painfully obvious from his wafer thin resume on IMDb.com) or he has no regard for the movie he made so cast the 1st person he could think of. Being forced to watch a movie with a message is fairly annoying at the best of times but when its someone using Hollywood millions to impose their environmental views on the public then its just a waste of effort, time and money that could have been better used if donated to environmental charities instead of ruining a perfectly good science fiction film.

For a film thats listed on Wikipedia as "released in an unfinished form" this is pretty good. Take bits of Silent Hill, Quake 4, The Trench and other various weird and wonderful sci-fi, horror and fantasy films and you get The Mutant Chronicles.

I personally haven't heard of the Role Playing Game this is based on (because I'm not that much of a nerd) but fans of Silent Hill and Quake 4 will all be crying that this has mercilessly ripped off their ideas. Which is completely wrong as the original RPG was written way back in 1993 predating Quake 4 by 12 years and Silent Hill by 6 years so it appears the plot of this game has proved to be very influential indeed.

Thomas Jane is your heroic lead as Mitch Hunter (it's not worth talking about his military rank because it's constantly referred to as different ranks by different characters as they speak to or about him and thats this films first, worst and biggest goof). Exactly why Thomas Jane got this job is hard to know as this is only really his 3rd big movie having previously starred in The Mist (and we had no clue why he was the star in that either), The Punisher (the incredibly weak remake that made Dolph Lungren's version look good) and Deep Blue Sea so he's hardly what you call star material. I assume they cast him because he looked good in the costume and gave off a suitably pretty vibe to the women in the room.

If we're honest John Malkovich is the biggest star in the movie but he's not in it for long (a lot like Sean Pertwee who only appears at the start and end of the film, I felt his character was a complete waste of time) which really makes Ron Perlman (playing religious cleric Brother Samuel) the biggest star in the film but he plays his role like he's only turning up for the wage packet which should really make the producers of Hellboy pretty nervous about getting a 3rd film out of their franchise.

The lesser known members of the cast are the real stars here, people like Devon Aoki as Valerie Duval (probably better known for her role in Sin City and I'm really pleased to see her get a decent well rounded role like this) are the ones who truly shine in roles that don't get much dialogue but the performers really make the most of their characters.

Set in some far flung future after an Ice Age a spaceship lands on Earth and starts turning humans into Mutants using a machine that utilizes dead and dying human bodies as source material. A group of soldiers from all the largest surviving groups manage to seal the spaceship underground effectively ending the mutant threat.

That is until there is global civil war between the various human factions (Fans of Ion Storms Daikatana will think they stole the name Mishima for Asia but the RPG predates the game by 4 years) breaks the seal on the door containing the mutant making spaceship and the nasty mutants are released once more onto an unsuspecting Earth.

The civil war scenes look like a cross between World War 1 (right down to the Allied and German looking costumes and some equipment) and some sort of Steampunk inspired nightmare although the mutants themselves do look as though they were lifted right off the set of Silent Hill or from the Strogg sections of Quake 4.

The clerics lead by Brother Samuel decide their only hope for survival is a suicide mission to plant a long forgotten bomb back into the machine in hopes of stopping production of any further mutants and the chosen group of disgruntled killers is sent off to find a way down to the machine to plant the bomb.

Obviously various members of the group get killed along the way, I won't say who or when as it's more fun to try and guess who is going to get killed next and how. The ending is fairly ambiguous, it does have a resolution of sorts but it left me feeling like they'd cut at least 30 minutes of material to get to the end titles quickly.

I did enjoy the film but it felt like it hadn't been resolved completely at the end, if this was due to the fact they say the film is unfinished then that's understandable. If it was because they were hoping to get a sequel its also a fairly justified reason.

OK, ignore the so called "great opening scene" of the bank robbery. It's good but its nothing to be spouting the word "brilliant" over. The 2nd scene with fake batmen is better but you don't know who the real Batman is, especially when he's talking like he's got a really sore throat or is doing an incredibly poor Clint Eastwood "Dirty Harry" impression.

And that's what ruins his dialogue with Chief Gordon in the 3rd scene in the bank vault and in the rest of the movie in fact. Call me old fashioned but I like to be able to HEAR clearly what the lead character in a movie has to say.

The movie looks OK, its suitably dark in places. The plot is average at best with The Joker robbing mob banks to get their attention so he can offer to kill Batman for half their money. Heath Ledger's performance as The Joker is unimpressive, its not this ultra-dark madman that all the critics & fans will have you believe it is. Cesar Romero's Joker was scarier than that. Jack Nicholson's Joker buries Ledger & keeps the shovel as a souvenir.

Ledger's Joker is not only not scary he's also a liar who can't keep his stories straight. Like the story of how he got the scars on his face. That his father did it or that he did it to himself with a razor to appease his wife.

In the scene where they are having the parade for the dead Commissionar is that Noel Fielding of The Mighty Boosh as one of The Jokers gunmen? We're shown Gordon is killed (and the movie just jumped the shark at that exact moment) and then Bruce Wayne offers to turn himself in as Batman to stop Joker's killing spree.

Local District Attorney Harvey Dent organises a press conference then outs himself as Batman to the surprise of Bruce Wayne.

During the prisoner transfer scene there's lots of views of Lower Whacker Drive so yet again this was filmed in Chicago and they obviously don't think anyone has ever seen The Blues Brothers. More vehicle chase and the ONLY good moment of Ledger's Joker is him demanding Batman run him down on the motorcycle then Joker is captured & its revealed Gordon wasn't really dead & he's appointed Commissionar.

Telling Batman he's captured Dent & Rachel (Batman's love interest from the previous film) he then reveals where they both are so Batman can only rescue one of them. Batman goes to where he thinks Rachel is but it turns out that's where Dent is. Rachel is killed in an explosion (unfortunately her "dead" body blinks when we see it) and half of Dent's face is burnt (this is how he becomes Two-Face).

Having distracted Batman & the Police away from the station Joker uses his phone-call to detonate a bomb inside one of his men then goes to find the Japanese Mob boss that the police had in custody.

The trouble with the movie is it's at least 1 hour too long. It takes too long for Dent to become Two-Face, it takes Joker too long to put his millions of plans into action & achieve all their aims. Threatening the hospitals to allow Joker to get to Dent. The other back story (fronted by Two-Face) of 2 traitors within Gordon's unit (with the 2nd turning about to be Gordon's PA) is played alongside the main plot of The Joker trying to get people to kill each other is just one of the reasons why this movie is too long by an hour. You can't have 2 villains with 2 different agenda's. Pick 1 guy and 1 story and stick with it.

In the hostage situation it was painfully obvious that the clowns were hostages as soon as Gordon looked at them through the binoculars (only a brain dead idiot didn't work THAT out in a microsecond). To have Batman attacked by dogs a 2nd time is just to return to the start of the movie (and whats the point in doing that so close to the damn ending!) and we already knew he'd improved the costume to be bite-proof so this was a pointless scene.

The only really good scene in the whole movie is the reaction of the prisoners on the ferry (throwing their detonator out of the window). The conversation between Joker & Batman is too long and pointless, the movie should end right there (actually it should have ended over an hour ago but that's beside the point) but the director felt the need to close his final storyline with Gordon confronting Two-Face (not like Gordon ever did anything to Dent but why let a huge plot-hole like that spoil you dragging out the ending of your movie).

Two-Face shows exactly how weak (for weak read "incredibly crap paper thin plot idea") his justification of taking Gordon's family is. When a villain is actually telling you the audience that his motives are crap, you (Warner Studio's) should really be considering sacking the person who wrote the script as he's completely derailing himself as having a believable motive.

Two-Face shooting Batman is pointless as the audience already known his costume was upgraded with Kevlar after the 2nd scene. The ending (if you can call it that) is sheer crap. Batman telling Gordon to make Dent a posthumous hero & blame the deaths he had caused on Batman. Batman telling Gordon to send the police after him. And not finding out what happened to The Joker. An incredibly weak movie, WAY too long for its own good. Too many villains with individual story lines to follow. What little ending there is is left gapingly open to allow for a sequel.

Anyone rating this higher than 1/10 either works for Fox or is so much of an idiot (for idiot read "gullible X-Files fan who'll buy anything with the shows name on it") that they actually think this is a good movie.

This is a truly awful movie. It starts out with an unknown woman being chased by 2 unknown male assailants for an unknown reason. Are you starting to see a pattern of unknown stuff? Anyway the FBI contact Scully who is working as a Doctor at a Catholic Hospital to help them find a missing FBI agent but they want her to help them find Mulder (who is wanted by the FBI but we're never told why) as its his kind of case, something weird.

It turns out Scully is living with Mulder (are they married?) so the movie has already jumped the shark as the whole point of their relationship in the series was always a "will they, won't they" and left open to debate.

Mulder is sucked back into a world he'd been away from and goes off to meet the man helping the FBI to find their missing agent, Father Joe (played by Billy Connolly) who is a disgraced and defrocked Priest having been discovered as a Pedophile (you'll get numerous references to his having "buggered Alter Boys") but is also a supposed psychic who is getting visions.

His visions never lead them to the missing agent, instead we go through a world of kidnap, organ harvesting & stem cell research before finally discovering the missing agent (who is found by Mulder) and some very questionable Frankenstein style surgery.

The films plot is far too complicated with characters who you never really learn about getting killed but you won't really care anyway, making it very difficult to follow what little plot there is. The end resolution is pretty crap as well, Father Joe dying. Your also unsure if Scully's patient is ever cured and if Mulder & Scully reunite.

Mitch Pileggi is brought back as Skinner and even he can't save this god awful film. There isn't enough that doesn't confuse to make a clear understandable film that has an actual ending. I didn't even realise Xzibit was playing the Agent who was constantly doubting Father Joe's abilities as it doesn't look like him at all.

I'd wait until this is released on DVD and watch it with the commentary on, it might make the film a bit easier to follow & understand. Otherwise steer well clear, its really awful.

The movie starts with a Spiderman spoof which is your introduction to Rick Riker (played by Drake Bell of "Drake & Josh" fame, personally I'd have given the movie to Josh who is much funnier) and the "Rick Punchers" joke is lifted right out of Airplane so the writers were obviously already scraping the barrel for ideas for this film. Rick's class is on a science trip to The Amalgamated Genetics lab and this is where we get to meet the 1st star name in the film, Brent Spiner (Data in Star Trek TNG) playing Dr Strom. Rick is bitten by a genetically modified dragonfly which is where his powers come from.

We meet our next big star names at Rick's home, his Aunt Lucille (Marion Ross of Happy Days fame) & Uncle Albert (Leslie Nielson of Airplane, Police Squad & Naked Gun fame). And we're introduced to Carlson on the Amalgamated Board of Directors (Dan Castellaneta from The Simpsons) who is then very promptly killed. We're told Rick has slept for 5 days & get some cheap, crappy sexually orientated scenes designed to get the teen male audience paying attention. The Stephen Hawking lookalike's scene is painful to watch and is really a bad idea that doesn't work and isn't remotely funny.

We get another Spiderman spoof (Rick catching the girl and all the planets) but the movie should end right there as Jill was hit in the head by a falling bowling ball which would have broken her skull and killed her stone dead. You get to see Rick's 1st powers emerge (gripping ability & speed) then his 1st rescue which goes very wrong. We also get an incest reference which is in very poor taste indeed. We get a flashback and a Batman spoof in which we discover Rick is solely responsible for the death of his parents. Spoofing Spiderman again Ricks Uncle is shot with Jeffrey Tambor (from Hellboy) playing the Hospital Doctor. We then get an X-men spoof (done very badly as Patrick Stewart is about as white as they come), Barry Bonds is played by yet another lookalike.

We meet Invisible Girl (played by Pamela Anderson looking stunning in her costume!). Ricks 1st outing in his costume (once he fixes his ability to see & breath through it) is another Batman spoof. The Tom Cruise Youtube interview clip is played by yet another lookalike (and not a very good one at that). There are lots of modern references like Youtube, Facebook & Wikipedia all showing that the movie is set in modern day. There's a very weak gay joke (never a good idea to do those either) when Jill is helping Aunt Lucille make Thanksgiving dinner and the pissing scene isn't very funny, just infantile.

The Aunt farting scene isn't particularly funny, just incredibly childish. Anyone finding it funny must have a mental age of about 12. She's killed and then we have a really bad necrophilia joke (is there no topic these people won't try to use to get a cheap laugh out of?) at her funeral, and the even worse cremation joke.

We get the 2 worst lookalikes in the whole movie (Prince Charles & Nelson Mandela) at the awards ceremony and if you didn't already know how infantile or stupidly lowbrow this movie is Landers wins the "Douchebag Of The Year" award. Landers is revealed as The Hourglass (in a really bad scene where the same girl manages to run past Jill twice in the same direction).

Obviously The Hourglass is foiled, Jill is rescued from certain death and the only funny scene in the whole movie is the final one.

I'd like to rank this amongst some of the worst films I've ever seen. Imagine a 3 hour long film with no introduction or ending, in other words your only watching the middle of a film.

The film is very difficult to follow, characters are never really established enough for you to get to know them or feel any affinity for them. The only real known names in the film are Tommy Lee Jones playing Sheriff Ed Tom Bell (who you hardly ever see) & Woody Harrelson playing Carson Wells (who is in no more than 5 scenes). The main characters are Javier Bardem playing Anton Chigurh (who I've never heard of) & Josh Brolin (playing Llewelyn Moss) who is only famous for being the son of James Brolin.

Some how this pile of rubbish managed to win 4 Academy Awards (Best Picture which made me laugh - it must have been up against some right utter trash, Best Director, Best Adapted Screenplay which is also laughable because essentially all they did was film the book this movie is based on & it also won best supporting actor for Javier Bardem) and I wondered if the Acedmy were watching the same movie I was.

If the book is the same as the film then I'm surprised it was ever made into a movie as it's a very poor story indeed. The basic idea is good enough, that a man accidentally finds money & drugs after a drug sale goes wrong & everyone involved gets killed. Moss doesn't want the drugs but he does take the money but the people who were behind buying the drugs want their money back.

Basically the rest of the film is a chase movie from that point onwards with Moss & everyone close to his life being pursued by the man hired to retrieve the money by the people who were buying the drugs who is killing anyone in his way on the journey.

Ed Tom Bell is the local sheriff from the town near where the drug sale went wrong & he is tracking Chigurh who is searching for the money stolen by Moss. The pursuit is long & violent, pretty mindless and quite boring. You can't just expect a movie to be good because 1 guy is killing a lot of people, it has to have an actual story or protagonists you know & care about.

And thats where the movie suffers, never knowing enough about Moss's character. With Bell we at least get a bit of insight into who he is from his voice-overs & scenes with his wife & employees but he's not the lead or even the 2nd lead character & we never get told enough about either of them. We learn almost nothing about Chigurh's character, only a short scene where Wells is hired to find & stop Chigurh (even the reasons behind this are never fully explained).

The ending of the movie is also very weak & difficult to understand. Apparently Moss is killed (I didn't even realise this, thats how hard the film is to follow!), we never know if Moss's wife lives or what happens to the money. We never know how Moss's mother in law dies, who hit Chigurh's car & why.

The film ends very badly, Chigurh walking away from a car accident & Bell wondering how he'll pass the time now he has retired.

Not recommended as there is no start or actual end to the movie.

Take every bad idea from Austin Powers & Wayne's World, liberally mix them with "The Guru" (starring Jimi Mistry & Heather Graham, obviously where Myers stole the idea for this film) and you've got this excuse for a film. Most of the jokes (if you can call them that) are 1 laugh only, if that. Most of them are actually no laughs at all but that doesn't stop Myers jamming them down your throat with the vain hope you might find them funny if he repeats them often enough. A lot of this movie is recycled ideas from the various Austin Powers films and Myers' love of bad puns and word play (he might want to watch Ronnie Barker in "The Two Ronnies" who has been doing it longer, much better and without repeating himself).

Possibly the only funny moment in the film is when Pitka is being beaten up by 2 children in a bar fight. Worst moment would be the "3 girls named Ann" joke. Myers also managed to not only ruin my favourite song by Extreme but also missed a great opportunity for a good cameo (he could have had the Extreme lead singer playing the sitar). Most of the jokes in this film are funny if you are a boy of 12, sadly I'm not 12 any more and Myers is just trying too hard for the entire film. Most punchlines can be seen from a mile away. Verne Troyer has pretty much destroyed any credible career he might have ever had by agreeing to be in this garbage. And don't even mention the "Elephants" scene which is not only totally pointless but slows down the movie at exactly the wrong moment. Myers doing a cameo as himself is the ultimate in ego indulgence in a film, the eventual outcomes are way too obvious as well.

Roanoake wins The Stanley Cup, gets his girl back from Jacques Grande (played very badly by Justin Timberlake), stands up to his mother and Guru Pitka loses his chastity belt, gets the girl & thus is the rip-off of Jimi Mistry's "The Guru" complete, right down to the Bollywood version of a Western dance number at the end.

Sadly this was just a movie to indulge Mike Myers and his love of childish humour so he's made no progress as either a writer or an actor since he made Wayne's World. Anyone could have filled Jessica Alba's role as she's completely forgettable (Heather Graham was much better in "The Guru", far sexier, a better actress and she could actually sing & dance better too!) and not enough was made of Pitka's sidekick/manservant who deserved a much bigger part in the movie.

Not recommended to even the most hardcore Mike Myers fan. Avoid!

Take a script thats been rejected many times and had been doing the rounds for over 10 years. Then make it into a movie by adding your own ideas. And you get Hancock, Will Smith's latest offering about the not very super Superhero.

He's a bum, he's a drunk and all his crime fighting, thief taking & life saving end up costing tax payers lots of money. So he ends up going to jail to reform his ways. He gets himself a publicist to improve his image and eventually he's released early to help foil a bank robbery.

The movie is OK until Charlize Theron is revealed as another superhero and then it well & truly jumps the shark, with an awful CGI fight across the city & pointless storms that are never explained. the film then gets even worse when she says she's his sister and then gets totally pointless when she admits to being his wife.

The whole "we become mortal when we get close to each other" seemed very much like an after thought added to the script by someone who was desperate to make this movie last longer as it had run out of ideas. Hancock got out of jail way too early, there wasn't a bad or powerful enough villain to put against him so they fabricated the pointless romance to make him vulnerable.

Will Smith plays the drunken version of Hancock far more convincingly than the sober side. If the film had stuck to "what if a city had a superhero who wasn't really suited to the role" idea then it might have played out much better & been a more enjoyable film. As it was the "we become mortal when we get close" idea was truly awful, no wonder this film had been rejected for over 10 years.

Best avoided as it adds nothing to the superhero film genre, in fact it actually detracts from it.

Pixar have done it again. I'm going on the record here, this is THE best movie I've ever seen in my entire life. It's simple, beautiful, enchanting, it has a message & has memorable characters.

Wall-e (Waste Allocation Load Lifter Earth-Class) is a robot. His job is to tidy up rubbish. A very noble cause & even more so when it's all the rubbish we humans left behind before blasting off into the stars to leave The Earth in hope that nature could regenerate itself. And this is Wall-e's (he pronounces it Wally) huge task.

I assume centuries ago there were millions like him (you get to see 1 that has broken down that he scavenges parts from) & they all compacted the rubbish until they broke down, leaving only Wall-e left to continue the job on his own over a period of 700 years during which time he became self aware & developed a persona with only a cockroach for company.

The film looks amazing, Wall-e is based the design of Johnny 5 from Short Circuit, he also has elements of E.T in his persona along with the robots Huey, Lewie & Dewey from Silent Running. If you were to take all the best parts of those movies & put them together then you'd start to get close to Wall-e.

Wall-e is alone until a probe lands on Earth containing Eve (Extra-terrestrial Vegetation Evaluator) who is there to search for life. And what does she do as soon as she encounters a hint of life? She shoots at it. That was the cockroach. And again when she meets Wall-e who falls in love with her and helps her to achieve her mission when he finds a plant growing under the rubbish he clears.

This means Wall-e has to protect Eve from the elements until her ship returns to take her back to the last remnants of Humanity. A society living in complete apathy, reliant on robots for everything and have atrophied to the point where they are even unable to walk or sit up without assistance.

Eventually we find out that 700 years in space have caused this to occur & that the autopilot was given orders never to return to Earth as it was declared uninhabitable. Obviously Eve's return with the plant throws a spanner in the works and we spend a short time having Eve & Wall-e being declared rogue robots, being hunted down for destruction so the Autopilot can cover up that life has returned to Earth.

The film does end with the ship returning the humans to Earth & Eve having to repair Wall-e after it seems he has been destroyed but her repair job is too good and he no longer is aware like before. We do have a happy ending as Wall-e regains his awareness and the Humans decide to help earth rebuild itself and get it green again.

There is a strong message behind this film about pollution and the destruction of the ecosystem but its never rammed down your throat or made to seem preachy. It's done tactfully & thoughtfully and does make you leave the film thinking about the issues. M.Night Shamaylan tried to achieve this in "The Happening" & failed miserably. Perhaps he should take a leaf out of Pixar's book and not try so hard.

A simple film with a very strong idea, an excellent & well thought out plot with a positive message and strong ending all put Pixar's message across very well. As Disney were involved, sadly there are moments of too much saccharine but the very strong film makes these bearable.

I would recommend this to everyone!

Suspend all disbelief. There's not a single element of realism in this movie & it's a very sad attempt to try & make a comic into a movie then failing badly as the source material clearly wasn't strong enough.

I'd normally class Morgan Freeman & Angelina Jolie as a good cast but sadly they've got awful roles. The script itself is truly dire, based on a comic I've never read or heard of ever.

Basically we're in a world of superhero assassins where their abilities are right out of The Matrix. The film borrows heavily from things like Bulletproof Monk (I don't actually think there's a single original idea in the whole movie) and viewers are expecting to suspend way too much belief.

The film has too much action (yes, you read that right! Too much!) and suffers in the same way Bad Boys 2 did, just having action scenes for the sake of it because there was no plot or script to follow so they'd just engineer an action sequence for no reason at all than seeing the hero or the other assassins use their magical powers.

We're following Wesley Gibson, a nobody who is dragged into the world of the assassins and trains to become one to kill the man who killed his father. Except thats not the case, the man he kills IS his father and the guy in charge of the assassins (Morgan Freeman in possibly his worst movie role ever) has started to create targets for his own profit.

The film is truly awful, ignore the plot because it's nonexistent. Enjoy looking at Fox (Angelina Jolie) until she decides to kill herself near the end of the film. Terrance Stamp is woefully underused & his character could have done much more.

If you can ignore the ridiculous special effects, CGI and over the top action sequences then you might get a bit of pleasure from watching this. Personally I hated it and if you've seen the trailers then you've seen the best bits of the movie as it really doesn't get any better than the trailer.