Reviews

The opening lines of this film are: Alfred "Can I persuade you to take a sandwich with you, sir?" Batman: "I'll get drive-thru."

And then it goes downhill from there, in a neon mess. The first two Burton films were great - this isn't even in the same room. It's cartoonish, badly acted and lazily directed. The whole effort is unsure whether or not it wants to be semi - serious or cheesily camp,and as a result it fails badly at both.

Kilmer is wooden, Carrey is irritating and Kidman is a pointless romantic subplot. Tommy Lee Jones as Two - Face is a bad Joker rip - off. The addition of Robin was clearly designed to appeal to pre - adolescent boys. Let me just say I was a pre - adolescent boy in 1995 and I thought Robin was, as the Americans say, lame. As for the nipples and codpiece on the Batsuit . . .well, you might want to check out websites other than IMDb if that's the sort of thing that floats your boat.

Battleship is 131 minutes of your life that you won't be able to get back. Only watch this if you are a) very hungover, or b) on a life -support machine.

This is somehow related/tied in to the classic board game of the same name. But, playing Battleship the old fashioned way, i.e. with an A4 pad and a pen, is far more engaging and enjoyable than watching this film.

The premise: aliens with advanced technology try half-arsedly to invade earth but are thwarted by naval reprobate Taylor Kitsch and a motley crew of pensioners aboard the decommissioned USS Missouri. The aliens as foes are badly conceived, clumsy, and look like they cannot be bothered. Also, one of said aliens gets his alien ass handed to him by a nerd with a briefcase. 'Nuff said.

The characters are dislikeable, and you can't help wishing that they all die. Liam Neeson is usually a fine actor but he's phoning it in here and I was glad his screen time was kept to a minimum. The CGI in this is very much in the Transfomers tradition - overbearing and loud. Conclusion: Boring derivative and underwhelming.

Guy Ritchie's Snatch is a fun, snappy crime caper populated by flash geezers, psychotic gangsters and inept boxing promoters. The plot - involving a stolen diamond - is almost of secondary importance to the visuals and quickfire dialogue, but is helped along through devices and coincidences and propelled by Ritichie's now - trademark visuals.

This is very much a continuation in the same vein as Lock Stock . . and features some of the same actors including ex-footballer Vinnie Jones, Jason Statham and Alan Ford who has a memorable turn as the ruthless Brick Top.

Statham's boxing promoter Turkish and his dimwitted accomplice Tommy find themselves"on thin fackin' ice" after a fight they rig doesn't go according to plan. Pikey bareknuckle champ Mickey O'Neill (Pitt) incapacitates their original fighter, thereby forcing them to use him in the match. Told to throw the fight, O'Neill instead puts his opponent down with one punch, incurring the wrath of Brick Top and placing them in the one place no sane person wishes to be - in Brick Top's debt. Meanwhile, three even stupider crooks attempt to recover the diamond from Franky (Del Toro) with hilarious results.

I'm from Ireland and find Mr Pitt's pikey/traveller accent hilarious. But, it suits the over the top tone of the film perfectly. The violence and the Cockney one liners are fast and furious.

I'm not going to go into much more detail, so I'll just say the film is extremely good fun and deserves a repeat view.

This is one of those films you actually have to want to see, and I think it deserves a repeat viewing. Having said that, Gummo is definitely not the kind of film you'd sit down and watch with the girlfriend.

Basically, it consists of disjointed vignettes of life in a tornado- devastated hick town. The characters can best be described as white trash. Our two central characters go around killing cats and selling them to a guy who's going to ensure the felines end up in fast food, among other activities. These two boys resemble Beavis and Butt-Head, but with more nihilism and existential pointlessness. The scenes of chair-wrestling rednecks and a waifish boy wearing only floppy rabbit ears, shorts and tennis shoes add some sort of bleak hopelessness to the film as we also get glimpses into porch conversations that have an un- scripted feel to them. Overall, this film isn't easy to watch but is somehow strangely compelling and examines poverty, boredom and pointless small town existence without either romanticising or offering any hope for the future.