Reviews

Just about the best 007 movie since On He Majesty's Secret Service, Skyfall also delivers on the promise Daniel Craig first showed in Casino Royale, but was squandered in Quantum of Solace. Here is a Bond with action to set your pulse racing from the off and a story that makes (almost) perfect sense. Beautifully photographed Roger Deakins and expertly directed by Sam Mendes no less, its great to see the copious talent involved in this long-delayed project has not been wasted. Javier Bardem is Bond villain in the classic mould and the gags are finally back but - and this is the thing - they're great gags (my personal favourite involves an old couple and a Tube train but you'll have your own). I saw it with an audience who cheered and applauded the climax. An absolute pleasure, Mr Bond.

"Kill List" could have been invented for the phrase "don't believe the hype". For many, it was the best film of the bunch at the 2011 Frightfest in London, but 2011 was by far the poorest year for that festival.

In a nutshell then, this is a cheapo, slavishly derivative sub-Shane Meadows slasher pic. This doesn't so much pay homage to as blatantly rip off elements of "The Wicker Man" and "A Serbian Film". It also seems to think its an original idea to use Tarantino-style episode names to separate the various killings, the details of which I have already forgotten even though I only saw this last week.

Having shared the experience with a completely non-plussed audience who laughed out loud a the stupidest ending you'll see all year, I think it's fair to say that's 90 minutes I'll not get back.

If you want real UK genre originality, go back to your DVDs of "Dead Man's Shoes", "Eden Lake" or "Peeping Tom" and give this craven little upstart a miss.

"Blooming Heck" lisps hapless lead Anthony Way halfway through this flat, poorly acted, poorly directed mess of a film. That's my review in a nutshell if you want to stop reading now. Yep, this isn't going to be pretty, "Garden" fans. What's that? This film has no fans?

Things get off to a bad start the moment (former choirboy, you've been warned...) Way first comes loping and blinking into focus. Based on the book, I'd sort of envisioned the titular Tom as a likable, down to earth sort of boy that most kids could vaguely identify with. As opposed to an awkward, gurning,public school irritant with zero charisma and a terrible hair cut.

Titular indeed.

Because make no mistake, whatever qualities this film possesses (some nice photography and...er), this is car-crash cinema, utterly depth-charged by a central performance so staggeringly poor you'll be agreeing with Elvis (and 78% of all Americans, apparently) that shooting your TV screen with a high-calibre handgun is a a Good Thing. There are scenes in this film where poor Anthony can barely get his words out in the right order, let alone with any semblance of believability. Its as if the director (I use the term loosely)just thought "Sod it, I can't be bothered to re-shoot this idiot, he's not going to get any better..."

But the cross-fade addicted "director" doesn't help himself by fumbling key moments and allowing ham-fisted editing into his final cut. Witness the moment when young Tom comes in from the garden and, blank-faced as ever, drops out of view as the picture quickly fades to black. Has he died? Has he fainted? (probably - he certainly seems the type). What are we supposed to make of this moment? Does anyone making this tosh actually care?

The poor lad is so utterly at sea it must be catching because, whoops, his co-star (as Hattie) is also a total plank. So folks, here's a film centering on two kids and neither of them can act in any way shape or form that convinces. What else is there to rescue this repugnant, BAFTA-courting mess?

How about the music! Ahh the "score"...

You know that saying that the best incidental film music is the unobtrusive variety you don't notice? Well, it's not true, because it it was it would have meant no careers for John Williams, John Barry, Jerry Goldsmith and most of the other great composers. But it still rings true when you have to endure the by-numbers, twee, jingle-jangle hack job of a score that curses this movie's entire running time, without let-up. My poor old teeth are still recovering from the permanent edge this soul-destroyingly trite aural holocaust put them on. This is officially the worst film music of all time, no question, and I've sat through a number of Hans Zimmer/Michael Bay collaborations so I knows da territory folks.

My son is 9 years old and isn't a cynical culture assassin like his Dad; he enjoyed the book and wanted to see this film to see how it came over on screen. At the 10 minute point he turned to me un-prompted and used a colourful adjective (that rhymes with "ducking pit"; I blame the parents) to critique what he was seeing. On this occasion I'll let him off - after all, I've always impressed upon him the importance of telling the truth.

Still, the garden's got hedges shaped like squirrels.

2/10 (for the topiary)

Wow, I wonder how many of the positive reviews on IMDb are the work of a controlling witch? Because make no mistake, this isn't just a bad Argento film, this is really poor film-making, period.

Devoid of a coherent plot, riddled with bad performances and lacking all of the style and élan that lifted his work so high above the competition in the 1970s, "Mother of Tears" painfully lays bare the empty cupboard of Argento's remnant talent. All that remains is decent turn from Asia Argento, an over-reliance on gore FX, some fun with Udo Keir and a cartoon of a cliché that purports to be the culmination of Argento's great trilogy. Well, OK, but it is to SUSPIRIA and INFERNO as SUPERMAN IV:THE QUEST FOR PEACE is to SUPERMAN I and II. That's "insult", folks.

Just tragic.

Some observations (as Gareth Keenan would say)...

Well, this is a decent movie but I'm not at all sure how it is "by some margin" (according to Barbara Brocolli) the most expensive 007 movie made. I mean, for one thing it's a good 45 minutes shorter than the average Bond movie and for another, no major set-piece apart from the last one is actually *that* major. Oh sure, its all guns guns guns and lots of rapid cuts of Daniel Craig rolling around amid showers of broken glass but I'm still wondering...where da money go Boss? But then, this is Casino Royale part 2, and as such works quite well even if it feels more of an appendage or extra limb to Martin Campbell's superior entry. But it's still a bloody good action film. (over) edited to within an inch of it's life and replete with stunning stunts and thrills. Craig and Dench are almost a double act in this one - she seems to pop up all over the place as though second guessing his every move. Which is an amazingly generous use of her time considering he's just this new agent, just starting out, apparently...

And yes, the plot is slight and feels under-developed but its not that different from any other Bond film. Basically, any film company that continues to employ two hacks like Neil Purves and Robert Wade (the literary genuius's behind "The World Is Not Enough" and "Die Another Day") gets what it pays for. Which is a damn shame because things started to look up a bit in 2006...

But see this for film what it is - a lean and hungry return for the best Bond actor since Connery in a rather dull storyline. By no means the ball-drop the critics would have you believe but not the greatest either. A decent modern Bond film that keeps up in the air the ball "Casino Royale" first kicked but doesn't exactly have any juggling tricks.

Let me be honest here, I'm fully signed up to the "Harry Potter is an irritating little git" brigade. But then, that's what hype does for you. No, I've never actually read one of the books at publication and, if I did (which is unlikely), it certainly wouldn't be in a breathless dash to the finish line along with 10 squillion others (usually to be found on tubes trains to work, on park benches or other public places as if to say "Look! I'm reading the new Harry Potter!"). Harry Potter is great stuff but, please, keep it indoors people.

So, having overcome my in-built inhibitions, what of this third Potter epic?

This could well turn out as the best of a very impressive series. Visually stunning and brimming with inventiveness, this owes something to the weird and wonderful likes of the "Singing Ringing Tree" and the warped vision of stop motion-master Jan Svankmeyer (Alice). Not the sort of thing one expects from a movie aimed at the average 14 year old. Its power to scare and thrill in equal measure is a tribute to director Cuaron and his team.

So if you're still a Potter cynic, who can blame you. But if you love fantasy cinema, don't ignore this film

I have not laughed uncontrollably in a cinema for as long as I can recall but this movie almost had me in casualty. This is an absolute gem - deliciously sick, twisted,cynical, whatever; you name it, it's probably that too.

A word on the technical accomplishment of the movie. The puppets, as Trey and Matt have discovered, were a nightmare to work with but the perseverance involved (I can but guess) has evidently paid off. Even though they are deliberately "puppety" in a "Thunderbirds" kind of way (no bad thing, "Thunderbirds" still rule), there's a marvellous range of expression and facial subtlety on display.

Best jokes? I'm not going to spoil it. You'll want the DVD of this so you can enjoy over and over. Just don't show Michael Moore, Sean Penn, Susan Sarandon or any of the other po-faced egomaniacs who get rightly slaughtered here. Enjoy.

With all the hoo-ha about this being too kiddie-centric, I have to admit it did make me feel a bit like a big kid watching it. Of course, most of the reviews are 100% right about the lame plot and dodgy acting, but it's still lots of fun if you're young or young at heart. The bottom line is, if children like it it's succeeded. There you go, that's magnamonous od he isn't it? Considering the fact that I nearly fell asleep half way through and only perked up when Sophia Myles was on screen. Now that Working Title have blown their chances of a franchise (jolly well done you clueless idiots) how about a Lady Penelope movie aimed at grown ups? Just don't book Jonathan Frakes again. Or any of the other crew. Or any of the actors who played the Tracys.

The thing is, "Spaced" (the TV series from which this is closely derived) was perfect. Did I say that? Blimey, a perfect series. Wow. So this is not perfect because it occasionally looses it's way trying to balance it's heady blend of extreme horror, genuine drama and big 'ol fashioned belly laughs. That's a hard trick to pull off and "Shaun" succeeds way more than it fails.

In the red corner, Shaun (the magnificently louche Simon Pegg) and his mate agonise over which of his precious LP collection to spin at the zombies' heads while the undead loom over them. Very threatening (not). In the green corner, a really heavy scene in the pub where Shaun has to shoot his dear old mum in the head because she's copped a bite from a nasty. The latter is much more effective than the former and I can't help but think (director) Edgar Wright is really hankering to make this a full-on drama. He has all the tools.

Anyway, see "Shaun" because it's really good, much better than 28 Days Later.

Two films in and its now too late for Lucas's "prequel' trilogy to be regarded as anything other than the greatest act of creative suicide in the modern cinema. No matter how good Episode 3 may be (and lets not kid ourselves, it stars Hayden Christiansen - is that his name?), there can be no doubt that these bloated, portentious, self-agrandising CGI cartoons have de-constructed the Lucas myth beyond redemption.

The awful acting we expect, but Portman and Thingy make Mark Hamill and Carrie Fisher look like Laurence Oliver and Vivian Leigh! If I live to be 101 I hope their mind-numbingly awful "courtship" scenes never cross my glance again. There are words to accurately describe it that the rules of posting here do not allow.

Like a lot of Star Wars fans old enough to remember the originals on the big screen, I tend to go back and see these films again. These are supposed to be the ultimate fantasy epics, the cheerleaders for modern escapism. This time, I went back to see if it really was as wooden and un-engaging as I'd first thought. George, you really have lost the plot. Lovely to look at yet empty at the core. We don't care about your worlds anymore, Peter Jackson has shown us the new way. Oh, and you owe me 12 quid.

Actually, Pulp Fiction might be the "better film"(tm) but this wonderful bit of celluloid has a different agenda - pure cinematic adrenaline. I saw this on the afternoon of it's first day's exclusive presentation run at the Empire Theatre in London. I wasn't intending to rush out and see it so soon but, hell, it's the new Tarantino isn't it? A good move, as it goes because this movie *seriously* rocks and I have no hesitation in recommending it to any fans of the grindhouse genre it celebrates. Sure, it's plotless but so are most of the movies I love now come I think about it. This, like those movies (2001, Apocalypse Now, Jaws) is concerned with the *experience* of cinema. CGI-obsessed studios take note - this is the real deal. Bravo Quenten -Jackie Brown is just a fading memory. We're all kids again, so enjoy.

Well, I previously said this movie was a modern day successor to The Spy Who Loved Me and Brosnan's best. That was in the warm glow of post cinema viewing. Now I've got the DVD and guess what? It's a dog. In fact, so was The World Is Not Enough (only marginally less so). I felt the same way about Attack of the Clones too and now we all know that's a dog too! Die Another Day has some good scenes - the swordfight, the Q scene - and Brosnan gets better with each film, but this is really poor stuff. The introduction of Halle Berry's character Jinx features the most cardboard dialogue and painfully laboured acting I've seen since Plan 9 From Outer Space. Oh, hang on, I've just remebered the love scene between Hayden Christiansen and Natalie Portman in AOTC... Anyway, add to the awful direction some extremely rushed CGI (why couldn't they have fixed the ice sled scene for the DVD?), utterly convoluted script and and the painfully misguided attempts to try and out-do every previous 007 film setpiece and all you get is a big loud mess. Goldeneye is Citizen Kane in comparison. Lee Tamahori? I here he's considering helming the sequel to XXX, the lame Bond rip-off starring Vin Diesel. I doubt he's up to the task.

One word:Wow.

Imagine if Lucasfilm's "Droids" cartoon was so good it eclipsed the bona fide Star Wars movies in every way - storyline, imagination, design, music - you name it. What sets out to complement "Reloaded" just steamrollers it. This is the most amazing anime you'll see this year or next. Best of the bunch? That's a tough one as the quality is so uniformly brilliant but for sheer hell for leather breadth of of vision it has to be "The Second Renaissance I & II". But then what about the thoroughly deranged "Matriculated"...the visually astonishing "Final Flight of the Osiris" (how "Final Fantasy *should* have looked)...the understated brilliance of "Beyond".

This is all the best ideas the Wachowski's have had on the subject - shame about "Reloaded" but never mind, this comes highly recommended.

So there's these two teenagers interned in the mountains who give them themselves the Maoist equivalent of a PS2 fix via tatty old copies of Balzac and other banned Western philo-lit. Except it's not even as interesting as that because it's all so utterly, painfully insubstantial that you've little to do but admire the landscape and doze off (along with the rest of the audience). Keen though it is, this film simply does not stimulate that node of the brain that most rights-of-passage movies aim for. Undeveloped moments of character humour and pretty pictures do not a movie make. An expensive student flick. In Chinese.

Best drug movie ever made. A celebration of psychotic over-indulgence. I've never been a big Depp fan - he's always seem way too impressed with himself for my liking. You know, the whole Mr Spooky face Tim Burton trip does nothing for me. But here he can give himself a big slap on the back because his take on Hunter Thompson is a blast. The voice, in particular, is a comedic Exocet that nails a whole heap of surreal payoffs such as "You can turn your back on a friend but you can NEVER turn your back on a drug..."

I'll say one thing though, it sure helps to have been arse faced in Vegas to appreciate the full paranoid rush of it all...Anyway, this is one of Gilliam's most successful and Johnny D's s back in my good books.

There's a tiny scene in this movie that is more chilling than the rape or the murder. During the rape, in the background at the end of the subway, a silhouetted figure appears - an ordinary Pierre on his way from A to B. He pauses, momentarily mesmerised by the scene unfolding before him, then slopes off into the shadows.

He'll take the Overpass.

This is your choice with this movie. Avoid it but all means (most will), walk out if you must, but consider your options because this is film that forces you to confront your reaction to on-screen violence like no other I have seen. Bar one: At the end of Noe's "I Stand Alone", shortly before a scene of shocking violence between father and daughter, a flashing caption appears warning the audience that time is counting down to the impending violence and they really should leave the theatre if they can't handle it. In other words time is about to destroy everything but, if you know the score, you have the choice. You can turn away and take the overpass or you can confront "it". It won't be pretty but life is not pretty. At the beginning of "Irreversible" an old man confesses to a stranger that he slept with his daughter: "I can't stop thinking about it...she was so cute...". The stranger muses on this and attempts to comfort the old man: "There are no bad deeds, only deeds".

That's right, this film will take you to a very dark place indeed.

Gasper Noe is a great film maker and "Irreversible" could be his defining work. Outside of all the hype over his confrontational style, the man clearly wants us to walk out of the cinema (at the end of the film, if at all possible) and have an intelligent debate about real violence and our response to it. This is the polar opposite to "gratuitous". These are Big Ideas folks! Stick that "2001" poster right slap bang in shot one more time Gasper - you and I are on the same wavelength.

Yes it's true, the gritty nightmare of the opening scenes are darker and more sweat-inducing than any I have witnessed in contemporary cinema. Really, they are. The breakneck chaos of the mens' search for the Rectum club, the (inky) black humour of the "she-male" scene in the alley, the shattering of the (wrong!) head in the gay club (not a big fan of those establishments I gather, Gasper?) and of course the rape of Belluchi - all contrive to nail you to your seat. Unless your're my friend Ben, of course, who shot the hell out of his seat about six minutes into the rape never to be seen again.

Yes, these sequences may shock even the most jaded and disensitised 21st Century film-jock out of his torpor. The acting is superb and the camerawork typically (for Noe) unhinged. The ending, like that of "I Stand Alone" leaves the audience in some doubt as to whether the nastiness all happened at all. Sometimes we need a mental get-out clause, Gasper obviously does as he's done this ending two films in a row. The final flourish of strobing cuts the movie dead without end credits (we had those at the beginning, of course) and you may, as I did, find yourself stunned, exhausted and rather impressed. Now, whatever your response, try discussing your immediate reaction with your fellow shell-shocked audience member - it often helps to share the experience of being run over by a train.

Before he disappeared into his own personal Rectum Club, David Cronenberg had the potential to make a movie like this. Ah, no matter...

I wouldn't compel anyone to see this movie but I'd certainly remind them of their choice. I've pitched my flag - I think it's a great movie.

An oddball movie, a hybrid of (would be) Hollywood tough-guy melodrama and UK kitchen sink sensibility. And yes, starring Dr Who, The Prisoner, 007, Man from UNCLE and many more. Certainly the greatest cast of cult actors ever to appear together, well, ever. This movie is terrible and magnificent in equal measure. To me it is staggeringly watchable. The premise is seriously skewered yet endearing all the same: 1950s English truckdrivers behaving like 1850s American outlaws in a Never Never Land where trucks are allowed to habitually run at 80mph down country lanes without so much a peep from the plod.

McGoohan is a star turn here and Peggy Cummins makes for a surprisingly un-frigid lead (look, the UK film industry in the 1950s didn't do sexy -what do you mean Diana Dors? - proves my point!!). But the film belongs to Baker - brooding, smouldering, moral, vengeful, utterly magnificent. We don't make them like him, or like this any more.

You can read a million analysis on how revolutionary McGoohan was for his time, what fascinates me is how he did it within the constricts of the mid-60s British family-hour television system.

To get this series off the ground he hoodwinked the television establishment with his star power and charisma. In particular, he used his close alliance with Lew Grade, Head of Association Television and ITC, to get funding to put on the screen a unique adrenalin rush of darkly provocative mind-food loosely disguised as a spy drama. They didn't know what has hit them - it sure wasn't Danger Man...

He did it with the style of the Bond Films crossed with Kafka laced with LSD. He did it for the watching audience, not his bank balance, as the series far exceeded it's original budget, as he surely knew it would, and he was forced to take a Hollywood role mid-series to help bankroll the final episodes. He did it knowing it's ultimate strength would lie in impacting quickly, burning it's presence on the popular conscience and incinerating itself before our very eyes after just 17 episodes. He did it knowing he'd be investing too much of himself, burning too many bridges along the way, to ever truly escape the shadow No.6 would cast over his career and our expectations of it.

And he did it every Sunday night on ITV between Coronation Street and Sunday Night At The London Palladium.

It was the ultimate covert operation.

Fall Out.

Licence To Kill - I watched the DVD the other day and was pleasantly surprised, after all these years, to see how well it stands up. Oh, not as Bond film of course, that's a very warped world to conform to at the best of times - but as a thriller it's right up there.

Dalton, who was like a rabbit caught in the headlights of the more Bondian Living Daylights, is right at home here. Robert Davi and Benicio Del Torro are excellent villains. Look out for the scene in the cocaine factory near the end where Benicio meets his end; never has Bond's imminant demise been more hidiously contrived than his hanging by his wrists over the whizzing jaws of the cocane grinder, Benicio leering down at him and cutting the thin binding that will surely send 007 to his awful doom...

Best of all is the gob-smacking finale with the trucks - excellent stuff

This movie goes that extra mile and is right up there as a Goldfinger or Spy Who Loved Me for the XXX generation. Truly, nobody does it better. This movie deserves to be the biggest box office of all the Bonds and Pierce Brosnan is really hitting his stride. By comparison, The World Is Not Enough was a pitiful nonentity. It's been a long time since a Bond flick has delivered on this sort of scale - this just pips Goldeneye as Brosnan's best (I was beginning to think he'd never top his superb 1995 debut). Role on the DVD - Die Another Day is a new Bond classic.

This is truly a worthy sequel. A brilliant re-imagining with increased budget and, yes, something approaching a story. But don't be surprised if you lose the plot yourself, just sit back and be amazed by this work of live manga brilliance. Be perversely moved too, as I was, by the family story at the heart of the work. The effects are unique and uniquely unreal, as they were in the original. This is one filmaker's nightmares rendered real. These two films, along with Lynch's Eraserhead, are the real deal. The cutting is fast so as to cause many (already extreme) shots to register on the subconscious more than the seeing eye. It will haunt you. Very highly recommended indeed.

With all due repect to the user who somehow remembers the ancient Republic serials doing a better live action/effects mix that this high-tech Sixties extravaganza, you really won't see the join in Medding's seamless recreation of a British motorway (built in one third scale and mixed with real motorway shots for the climactic Tigermoth escape sequence). Indeed, so realistic is this shot that on the DVD commentary Sylvia Anderson (who spends most of her time pointing out the live action shots vs the model shots, like we really need to know) exclaimes "now that's definitely not a model shot!". Sorry Sylv, love, it is and it's quite likely the best you'll ever see (or be hoodwinked by). If you love Thunderbirds, the Andersons or just damn fine effect work, come worship at the alter of Derek Meddings: see Thunderbird Six.

A tough and sexy ride if you like your thrills rough and cheap. Whatever feminist agenda the makers might wish to expound here is (literally) shot to pieces the moment these characters shoot an innocent women at a cash machine. This ain't Thelma and Louise. Hell, this isn't even Straw Dogs. This is rough-house porn-ploitation with some half-decent performances and a (nearly) non-existent plot. Forget subtext, shut down your brain and you'll find much to enjoy here. Extreme, yet somehow, rather likeable. Not so sure that's what the makers intended but I applaud their effort. Entertaining.