REVIEW: Red Riding Hood

I can't wait until Amanda Seyfried is actually in a good movie. What a day that'll be.

5:55 PM: Maybe this was a bad idea. Deep in the throes of a none too small brain-fry caused by sitting in a dark room with strangers for six hours, my encore is nothing less then fucking Red Riding Hood. I don't want to be here man, I just wanted to go to the movies, I just liked films. That was all that constituted the game. But then it became a sickness, some fetishistic religion in which I subject myself to seeing every piece of crap just so I can say I did. So I can say, yes I did in fact see Red Riding Hood so I have no need to be happy. My life su...

5.58 PM: Some guy just came in wearing an askew woolen hat. Bell-end.

5.58 PM: ..cks

5:59 PM: I'm pretty sure my popcorn is sweet not salted. I paid 4.65 for this bullshit. This aggression will not stand, Shabina thou hast forsaken me.

6:00 PM: Your Highness sucked.

6.00 PM. Look I don't want to trash-talk Shabina the popcorn counter girl. Why would I? But this time the girl is failing big.

6:03 PM: Screen 9 is starting to fill, many teen girl Posse's. Some mums. Nobody with a penis.

6:05 PM: The most dejected boyfriend ever just walked into what I'm sure he believes to be his prison. His girlfriend is beaming

6:06 PM:

Whipped Boyfriend: I heard Sucker Punch was good....

Dominant Girlfriend: No that's perpetuates a negative representation of women as sex objects.

Whipped Boyfirend: But it has dragons...

Dominant Girlfriend: And a commendation of the male gaze paradigm.

Whipped Boyfriend: Robots?

Dominant girlfirend: Why are you still talking?

Whipped Boyfriend: Jon Hamm?

Dominant Girlfriend: Is he playing Don Draper?

Whipped Boyfriend: Why wou..

Dominant Girlfriend: Then no sale. I think we should see Red Riding Hood.

Whipped Boyfriend: But...

Dominant Girlfriend: It looks fun, and the boys look really fit.

Whipped Boyfriend: How is that any diff...

Dominant Girlfriend: Because it is, OK. Do you want to keep talking asshole, or do you want to queue for tickets and get me a Ben and Jerry's mint flavor.

6:11 PM: I am looking forward to seeing Amanda Seyfried though. Epic crush on her, for she makes finding Nemo eyes sexy.

6:13 PM: Two minutes motherfucker. That feeling you've got from your toenails to your fingertips is called DISINTERESTED APATHY.

6:14 PM: I sense the asshole factor is going to rise as the movie goes on. If one were to scale Cynicism, say from 1 to 20, I'd be at about a 7 now. If I don't hit the twenty by the end of the thing, I'll be surprised.

6:15 PM: Lights go down and for just the briefest of moments we can all pretend we're here to see something good.

6:16 PM: I'd like to clarify to the wonderful people at Warner Bros. That my mind is open to this being good, I would just bet the bank, the lives of family and the soul of my first born that it won't be.

6:18 PM: Pearl and Dean have gone Digital motherfucker, they can also walk on burning coals.

6:20 PM: Is it awesome or depressing that I know every one of these adverts by heart I've been to the cinema so many times. Probably depressing, but at least I can do something you can't do.

6:22 PM: Advertising for Scottish Tourism is flawed at a concept level. Why would people spend their hard earned money on going to Scotland. Why don't they just shoot themselves in the face?

6:25 PM:

Whipped Boyfriend: Can I go to the bathroom?

Dominant Girlfriend: No.

Whipped Boyfriend: Why not?

Dominant Girlfriend: Because what happens if I think of something hilarious to say about one of the trailers?

Whipped Boyfriend: You can tell it to that guy (Pointing at me.)

Dominant Girlfriend: He looks like a homeless person. Hold it.

Whipped Boyfriend: but..

Dominant Girlfriend: I said hold it. Man up and stop being a pussy.

6: 27 PM: Trailers yay. The girl with the dejected boyfriend looked at me weird.

6:28 PM: I'm sorry, but the Arthur trailer looks fucking abysmal.

6:29 PM: Yet everyone is fucking laughing.

6:29 PM: Cynicism scale: 8/20

6:31 PM: POTC 4. Yawn.

6:33 PM: Thor. AND YOU ARE AN OLD MAN AND A FOOL.

6:34 PM: Hopkins you just got served.

6:35 PM: And movie, so here we go, we've got some indie/goth guitar and some phat helicopter pan of some trees.

6:36 PM: Still on trees.

6:37 PM: Hey asshole mocking this for tree shots, its laying the lay of the land fool, showing the 17th century world from God's eye view. You see the prototype damn,the primitive village, this shit is capturing a place in time, art by means of reality.

6:38 PM: ^ ^ What a douche.

6:38 PM: OK we've got a six year old Seyfried and family....Is that Saul Tigh From Battlestar Galactica?

6:39 PM: WELL FRAK ME.

6:41 PM: Six year old Seyfried is hanging out with a much older woodland kid. I think they are supposed to be the the same age.

6:41 PM: " Oh My God she's like 6 and he's like 14."

6:43 PM: Don't kill the rabbit, young Seyfried!

6:44 PM: Epic adult Seyfried introduction, she comes round a tree in slow motion, complete with her amazingly engaging google eyes, and smoldering sensuality.

6:45 PM: Would totally smash it.

6:46 PM: OK adult woodland kid is apparently called Peter and is chopping wood in that niche chick-lit porn kind of way.

6:47 PM: Really fucking awful scene with Seyfried and Peter, and his hair is way too modern.

6: 48 PM: Did they have hair gel in the 17th century, because this is ridiculous.

6:48 PM: I mean seriously, I know teen girls wanting to do unspeakable things to Robert Pattinson's hair is a large part of the Twilight franchise, but this is a period piece motherfucker. Hair gel doesn'te exist for another 400 Years.

6:48 PM: WHAT THE FUCK IS THIS HAIR GEL SHIT.

6:48 PM: Cynicism Scale: 10/20

6:48 PM: What earthly material could that be. If Peter can time travel I'm sure there are more productive things then commandeer hair gel for the pilgrims. Kill Hitler asshole.

6:53 PM: Holy shit, I just pissed away that entire scene raging about that guy's hair, I have no fucking idea what or where I am. Seyfried and Peter talked about how much they loved each other, were going to jack a couple of horses and ride off into the wilderness to get eaten by bears. Then The alarm sounded....

6:54 PM: Seyfried is hot.

6:55 PM: Seyfried's sister got K.O'd by the Wolf. And by that of course I mean killed delicately with a single scratch. Rather then devour her alive as wolves are want to do. You know, that's the only reason THEY KILL SHIT AT ALL.

6:55 PM: Dear Ms Catherine Hardwicke, Wolves are not serial killers. K THNX BYE.

6:57 PM: Seyfried and family, namely Virginia Madsen and dad Billy Burke. Burke was kind of awesome in Drive Angry. And Madsen is an awesome actress who just seems to be in shit movies all the time.

6:59 PM: So here's the sweet and lowdown. Seyfried is totes in love with Peter, but Mum Virginia Madsen wants her to marry Henry, the wealthy son of a blacksmith so Seyfried can have a better life, with more things and shit. But, Seyfried wants to follow her heart because obviously that's the thing to do.

7:00 PM: Dear Virginia Madsen, In the 17th century materialism don't mean shit.You're still going to end up getting Rickets. K THNX BYE.

7:01 PM: The two actors playing Seyfried's love interests are fucking awful by the way. I think Peter is worse then Henry, but that's the definition of a hollow victory.

7:03 PM: OK Saul Tigh is back, and so are a few fucking other randomers, And they gonna hunt the wolf. Fool of a took.

7:04 PM: Peter gets in a sly shot at Henry for being a pussy. Yeah Henry why DON'T you want to charge of into the wildernes with toothpicks and forks to kill a mythical beast. Grow some balls.

7:05 PM: Things I hate in movies - Artificial tension and antipathy between two romantic rivals. I get both of you are after the same vajayjay, but do you both have to look at each other like there's no-one more evil in the world. Pathetic.

7:07 PM: Virginia Madsen just chased off Peter, saying something to the effect of Seyfried is too pretty to be poor. Not gonna argue with that.

7:10 PM: OK we be hunting the wolf, and given how early we are in this movie. This bound to go well.

7:12 PM: They make a pit stop at Grandma Julie's Christie's, where Burke gives a reassuring pep-talk, 'I'm all gristle.'

7:13 PM: Wait Julie Christie's in this movie, that's the Dr. Zhivago, Billy Liar, Don't Look Now, McCabe and Ms Miller, Shampoo Julie Christie. Now that's embarrassing.

7:15 PM: Lukas Haas! Says Gary Oldman's coming!

7:17 PM: OH FUCK YOU MOVIE. You know that artificial tension thing I talked about, well yeah Peter just abandoned Henry and his dad for no fucking reason. Because fuck it, even in life threatening situations, this shit still HAS to happen.

7: 17: PM: Cynicism Scale: 12/20

7:19 PM: Oh shit, Henry's Dad just got merked. and by merked I mean rinsed. And by rinsed I mean killed.

7:21 PM: Then Saul Tigh killed the wolf! Ha. Much more impressive if this weren't so obviously a red herring. So Saul Tigh killed a wolf. So say we all.

7:23 PM: Gary Oldman is coming....

7:25 PM: Seyfried tries to console Henry, but he tells her to fuck off. I should imagine this is the only moment either of these guys won't be a complete Seyfried entranced Nonce, So masculine gender, take your victory.

7: 26 PM: Worse things to be then a Seyfried entranced Nonce, just saying. Her eyes are so blue, you get lost in their mystical depths.

7:27 PM: OLDMAN. Finally. He comes with a posse, many carriages. And a stone Elephant.

7:27 PM: A stone Elephant.

7:27 PM: A stone Elephant.

7:27 PM: That means Oldman hired lackeys specifically to carry his giant-ass stone Elephant. And Travel is no mean feat in that day and age, so they've probably been moving that piece of shit for like, 2 months, possibly more. I'd imagine people have died hauling that thing.

7:27 PM: WHAT THE FUCK IS THIS GIANT-ASS STONE ELEPHANT HAIR GEL SHIT.

7:28 PM: So Oldman's a man of the cloth, most specifically the Vatican's division for pawning werewolves. Got him some daughters, and some African mercenary soldiers.

7:29 PM: Insert your Oldman is colonel Gaddafi joke here.

7: 30 PM: Oldman's wife was a wolf, and he killed the bitch. This scene is designed to let us know the boy is hardcore.

7: 31 PM: A message somewhat undercut by his ridiculous Purple, Jack Nicholson Joker get-up, and epic medallions.

7:32 PM: Saul Tigh gives Oldman shit about how they already killed the wolf. Doesn't believe him. Oh Saul Tigh, you are gonna die very, very soon.

7:34 PM: Ok villagers are celebrating the fake dead wolf, by having a fully clothed dance orgy.

7:35 PM: Some village boy named Claude just did a magic in front of witch-master general Oldman. Mistake, Ladies and gentleman?

7:36 PM: OK This just got awesome, Peter's dancing with another girl , so to make him jealous Seyfried is doing a traditional, medieval dance skew lesbian.

7:38 PM: A quick exchange solves the whole, I'm beneath your class so we can't fuck each other tiff, and Seyfried and Peter are in the barn. OOOH but Henry saw. Intrigue.

7:39 PM: Cynicism Scale: 14/20

7:40 PM: Wow this DOP is not afraid to go right down Seyfried's top. I'm not usually against these things, but that felt gratuitous. Gratuitous but awesome.

7:42 PM: WOLF attack. Hold on movie let me handle my shit, for the surprise you laid on me has me in ribbons. Gosh, so Saul Tigh didn't kill the wolf? Shucks thats a twist.

7:43 PM: Here lies Saul Tigh, merked for his arrogance in regards to wolf-killing, his body is to be found in pieces.

7:44 PM: Oldman's mercenaries are getting destroyed. Seyfried is running. CGI is failing.

7:45 PM: Legendary. Oldman just charged at the wolf screaming 'God is stronger' before getting laid out. How I've missed crazy Oldman. That guy is awesome.

7:46 PM: Wolf chases Seyfried and friend into barn and of she starts talking to the wolf.

SEYFRIED: Please Don't kill me.

WOLF: Bitch be cool. I just want to take you to my wolf lair, where we can be together forever. Or I'll kill you're anonymous friend.

7:48 PM: OK so wolf just fucked off, for seemingly no reason. I thought you wanted Seyfried Wolf. Oh fuck it. She just had a conversation with the wolf. any reason to expect that THIS FUCKING MOVIE WOULD MAKE SENSE AND NOT BE RIDICULOUS AT EVERY FUCKING TURN IS JUST TOO MUCH TO EXPECT RIGHT. NO, BECAUSE THAT WOULD REQUIRE ANYONE TO PUT AN IOTA OF FUCKING THOUGHT INTO IT OTHER THEN, HEY GUYS, TWILIGHT IS POPULAR, LETS DO TWILIGHT BUT DIFFERENT. THAT'LL BE SOMETHING THEY LIKE. WELL FUCK YOU MOVIE. I DON'T HAVE TO TAKE THIS SHIT NO MORE. I DON'T HAVE TO LET YOU FINISH I CAN WALK OUT AND BE FREE. FREE OF SUCH MORONIC BULLSHIT, TO A PLACE WHERE THIS BULLSHIT TAKES UP SPACE IN MY BRAIN I CAN NEVER GET BACK. NO. I'LL REMEMBER THIS MOVIE FOREVER EVEN IF I DON'T WANT TO, JUST FESTERING LIKE SOME PARASITIC ENTITY OF SOULLESSNESS CRUSHING MY SOUL. AAAAAAGGGH...........

7:49 PM: Cynicism Scale :16/20

Whipped Boyfriend: Homeless man looked pissed off.

Dominant Girlfriend: Thats because he lives in a bus station.

7:50 PM: Next Wednesday Instead would like to apologize for its reviewer's temporary loss of composure as we work to restore the status quo.

7:52 PM: Oldman just found magician boy Claude in an attic, and is hitherto putting him in the elephant which is....

7:53 PM: A torture device, not dissimilar to an oven. So begs the question why not just commandeer an oven, instead of hauling a giant-ass elephant through the jungle. Hell to pay for a cool visual.

7:54 PM: Random friend turned out to be Claude's sister and is making several offers to Oldman for her bro's freedom from his elephant prison. When Oldman rejects her sexual advances she tells him Seyfried's native american name is converses-with-wolves.

7:55 PM: I think I just won punning. I feel oddly empty.

7:58 PM: Ok, Everyone be chilling in a barn, Seyfried doesn't deny that her World of Warcraft IP is Converses-with-wolves, and they put some metal donkey-head on her and leave her for the wolf to come and fetch.

7:59 PM: Random friend finds Claude dead in a barn. Poignant. That's why you don't betray Seyfried, for the universe shall strike you down.

8:01 PM: Seyfried be seeing the wolf's eyes in everybody's eyes. this joke grows old quick.

8: 03 PM: Some bitch of a village girl is chastising Seyfried for being a witch, but mostly for being beautiful. Biiiiiitch.

8:05 PM: Henry and Peter conspire to free Seyfried, except these actors are terrible and no-one cares what they say.

8:05 PM: Plan, fire as a distraction. Henry goes in to set her free. Lukas Haas gets stabbed by Gary Oldman. Just coz Oldman has killed a kid, and left our heroine for a monster and not been quite evil enough in the last few minutes, so he commits the sin of all sins. Killing Lukas Haas. Oldman, just because he was in Inception and you weren't. No need to be a dick.

8:07 PM: Oldman's mercenaries are retarded, apparently bamboozled by smoke. They just don't know what to do with themselves.

8:08 PM: Hey they captured Peter and put him in the elephant, let's do a once around in celebration. Can I get an amen for competency.

8: 10 PM: Wolf appears, rinses a few guards, naturally and pins everyone in a church. Which is 'hallowed ground' so the wolf can't enter. Pretty sure that's vampires dickwads. FFS.

8:11 PM: Cynicism Scale: 18/20

8:13 PM: OK, Oldman just charged outside the church with a sword. and got his hand bitten off. What a muppet. This s not behavior befitting Jim Gordon.

8: 13 PM:

Nicolas Cage: I ain't no freakin' monument to justice! I lost my hand! I lost my bride! Johnny has his hand! Johnny has his Bride.

8:15 PM: Oldman got rinsed by his lead African mercenary, in a manner befitting Gaddaffi. A man bitten is a man cursed.

8:16 PM: A man bitten is a man cursed. You get that guys, because the movie sure wants to makesure you've got it. A man bitten is a man cursed. Right.

8:18 PM: Peter has escaped his pointless Elephant prison. Oooh,

8:20 PM: Seyfried shares a final moment with Henry, who we're to understand is a badass but not for her. And goes wandering through the woods to grandma Julie Christie's house. Smart move.

8:22 PM: Confronts Peter in the woods, stabs him because she thinks he's the wolf. His body disappears. Alright if this guy isn't the wolf then he's fucking stupid. Maybe if he spent less time on his hair, he'd know that disappearing into the woods is a bad idea if you're innocent.

8:24 PM: At house, Christie nowhere to be found. But there's Drive Angry's Billy Burke, also known as Seyfried's movie dad. Who I assume is the wolf. That's why he was so sure he wasn't going to get eaten. BECAUSE HE WAS THE WOLF ALL ALONG. Crazy.

8:26 PM: Exposition Five. Burke is explaining why he killed everyone and why he's eaten no-one. This wolf sucks.

8:28 PM: Peter appears, they fight, I don't care. Seyfried kills him with Oldman's dead hand. Call that A suitably Sigourney Weaver move.

8:30 PM: But Peter got bit. You got Bit. Ya bit. So now he's a wolf. Shiiiiiiit.

8:32 PM: After burying daddy, Seyfried and Peter stare into each other's eyes and imagine their future together.

8:33 PM:

Whipped Boyfriend: D'you know what? Fuck this. I'm leaving. This is fucking terrible and Sucker Punch would have been the best film of all time. you suck and I hate you.

Dominant Girlfriend: Stop making noise out of your mouth.

Whipped BoyFriend: OK.

8:34 PM: Montage. Time passes, Henry is a soldier, Seyfried lives alone in the woods, Peter the wolf comes to visit her in wolf form she looks happy, all set to have some inter-species sex. Terrific. You go girl.

8:35 PM: Cynicism Scale 20/20

Closing Sentiments: Just...Just.....Just....It wasn't as bad as the Human Centipede. And Seyfriend is a movie star awaiting that one great movie. So there's that.

Rating: 3/10

REVIEW: Gulliver's Travels

Yes, they called me President the... awesome. You're killing me Jack Black.

Now I haven't read the original Jonathan Swift Gulliver's Travels. But something tells me this isn't the most faithful adaptation, because the movie I just saw doesn't quite fit the description ' Satire of human nature' that Wikipedia tells me it is. Because I just saw a movie where a tiny person disappeared into Jack Black's ass crack and was never seen again. Seriously. Holy shit, 2010 has seen some terrible, terrible films but Gulliver's Travels has got to be up there with the best of them. A thoroughly reprehensible piece of shit, where a movie studio spent 150 million on a series of sight gags. But they're, like, really small and he's really, really big. Plus he's fat so that shit has DOUBLE MEANING. Jonathan Swift can take his satire of human nature and suck on that stuff. They saw the Avatar joke right?

Ergh. Jack Black is not an actor opposed to selling out. He seems to make one odious studio release after another, diluting his persona and appeal a little bit more each time, until we reach this. Where he has at the most hollow and anaesthetized version of himself he has yet to play. Its depressing, because I liked Jack Black once, and theoretically I still do. But this does not help me make my case. Call it his Ace Ventura 2: When Nature Calls. But what is done with Black is somehow less egregious then what is done with Jason Segel, stuck in a half straight-man, half nothing role that just dies on screen, and I refuse to blame Segel for that because I know how funny he can be. Its just this movie has worked very hard at casting funny people and trying its darndest to make them as plain as possible. A misguidedly game Emily Blunt turns up to be the punchbag for a few clueless princess jokes that would have felt tired when the original Shrek came out. I guess Chris O Dowd is the only one to emerge with any credibility, his villain being the only source of any half-chuckles the movie may bleed out of you.

But this is bullshit no mistake, insultingly sanitised with super broad and super obvious reference humour and existing only as a visual experiment, with a super thin and predictable story sketched in on a CGI lunch break. It's just for lack of a more fitting word, awful. It's the kind of film that speaks to the worst of modern film-making, particularly for kids. I can't imagine neither the dumbest kids nor the frattiest adults finding anything to enjoy in this almost pathetic excuse for a film.

Rating: 2/10

REVIEW: Eat, Pray, Love

No matter how good my life is, it will never be good enough for me.

Holy shit. Its rare that you see a movie that not only don't you like, but angers you on every conceivable reactionary level. I feel spiritually, philosophically, psychologically and narratively violated by this movie. I think this goes straight into the much coveted company of the top five most self-satisfied films, but somehow its a worse experience then any of them. I can't in good conscience give it the review I want to give it, because its shot quite nicely, makes good visual use of its variety of exotic locations and has a couple of good characters/performances, but for what it stands for, the message it tries to sell? Fuck this movie. Fuck it in the face.

I should say before the machete's and hacksaws come out that a lot of writing revolves around self-absorption, and in a way it has to. A person can know nothing as well as their own thoughts and experiences so that has to play a part in any creative endeavor. But a writer in a way has a responsibility to be reflective, to be analytical, to question etc. They can just sell self-obsession as gospel. Or they can, but I can say that its toxic. The lead character in this thing Elizabeth Gilbert, played bizarrely joylessly by Julia Roberts, engages in what I can only think to describe as an extreme form of social capitalism, in which people are resources to use and discard. God and spirituality exist for and at your convenience and life should be lived through endless self-indulgence. This kind of sounds like an awesome character, but Gilbert is presented as some kind of trail-blazing hero, a feminista warrior woman whom the female gender should hear roar and adore. But this movie is clearly to me about a woman who has a massive nervous breakdown because she is bored with her life. Its not that anything has gone wrong particularly, as she says, she's living the life she wanted to life, a privileged, rich, cultured existence in New York. But basically its not good enough. Her life should be a permanent fantasy, where every day is a delight and everything revolves wonderfully around her, and boredom is something she is simply to good to experience.

So you know, she leaves her perfectly lovely husband who she loves and goes around the world, where she is always the center of attention and all the people of the world seem to love her. Eat, Pray, Love is the worst kind of ' Hey, look at me. LOOK AT ME.' storytelling I have ever seen, without a whiff of self-awareness and the pretension of enlightenment. In a way I can appreciate the popularity of it because it works as a wish-fulfillment for people who've put responsibility first, but empowerment is one thing and glutinous self-indulgence is another, and why I should have to watch a film about someone getting everything they want all the time and being constantly disappointed by it is something I don't understand and object to thus. That's not enlightenment, its entitlement. And as I apologize profusely for that piece of shit assonance rhyme, one can't help but think this is a glorified self-help book, selling cheap spiritual solutions to rich white people with too much time on their hands. I'd like you to consider that this is two and a half hours of hysteric self-assurance. I hated this movie.

Thankfully, it has a couple of strong moments and performances, Richard Jenkins is as ever terrific, playing a wise Texan Gilbert meets in India, Viola Davis and Billy Crudup bring a lot to small roles and Roberts has her moments I guess, but she does seem an autopilot, and if she somehow fenagles an Oscar nomination for this its the first sign of the rapture, so make your peace with God. A golden globe nomination is a given though. This is far from the worst film this year, but I think it may be the most repellent. For me at least, a poor male twentysomething. Admittedly not the target audience. Still, I feel I make a fair effort to point out misogyny and the many instances of male wrong doing in movies, so not to acknowledge this bullshit would just be chicken shit. Unfortunately the audience I saw this with enjoyed it quite a bit, but in fairness they laughed hysterically at the Life As We Know It trailer so they can fuck off is well. And fuck Ryan Murphy, fuck this epic waste of my time and fuck you too, because fuck it.

Rating: 5/10 (fuck it)

REVIEW: Grown-Ups

The most rewarding scene of Piranha 3D.

You know how there are some movies that are so delusionally unfunny, they feel like the kid you knew in high school, who believed that the secret to being hilarious lied in amping the volume or just not breaking eye contact until you're were forced to laugh out of self-preservation? And do you know how some movies are so thoroughly smug and self-satisfied, that they feel like the guy who so believes in his own awesomeness, that he feels you should be grateful that he's even talking to a plebhead like you? And do you know how some movies are so bereft of talent that almost everyone's presence offends you, to the point it actually makes you angry? Well Grown-Ups is all of these things and more. A movie so lazily awful that it's almost offensive.

This is all Adam Sandler's fault. He has kind of broken out of the C/B- list of comedians to become an honest to Betsy A-lister, whose movies usually make 100 million on the back of his name and here he is, dragging David Spade and Rob Schneider, entities the world has rightly rejected, along with him to the same heights. Sandler, for me at least, is a terrible comedian. He doesn't really add intelligence to the mix, he's not a rubber face like Jim Carrey, he's not a good physical comedian and he doesn't even seem that comfortable with self-deprecation, much preferring to humiliate the supporting cast instead. I don't get why he's done so well for himself, because he's just not very good at what he does. But in a way I'm glad he did, because against all odds I think Sandler is a fantastic dramatic actor, to the point that I am as equally excited to seem him do that kind of work as I am despairing for his comedic roles. And if you have had to see ten Grown-Ups, to get the one performance as good as he gives in Punch Drunk Love then it's worth it. I dejectedly suppose.

Doesn't mean I'm not going to rip these movies to shit though, and Grown-Ups might be the worst of the lot. In past Sandler comedies, they were bad but at least they were movies by some conventional sense. This one just sees Sandler and friends getting paid to hang out and improv unfunny jokes and then laugh really hard at themselves. And believe me they do that a lot in this. So much laughing at stuff that doesn't deserve anything but echoing silence. Its as if they backdoored a laugh-track onto the film just in-case the audience didn't quite get the concept. Which to be fair in this film is a distinct possibility. Sandler is just his usual ineffectual self, Kevin James is probably the least obnoxious, even if he has made a career out of telling fat jokes about himself. Chris Rock is a terrible actor, the Jerry Seinfeld of black comedians in that sense, and something just doesn't seem to click as it should. And as for Rob Schneider and David Spade, well they can just fuck off. But they are not the worst thing in this movie. No, that is Salma Hayek, who a great actress in the right context, can be shockingly awful in the wrong one. And this is the wrong one. Her delivery is just way too big all the time, and frankly its kind of nauseating. Won't be too many worse performances this year I'd imagine.

But Grown-Ups doesn't care what I think. Men of a certain intelligence bought their tickets and made this movie a success and isn't that all that matters. Just call me next time Sandler does a serious one.

Rating: 3/10

REVIEW: The Human Centipede (The First Sequence)

Unfortunately your regular reviewer is too busy doing a hypothetical something else to write this review in the manner to which you've become accustomed. Frankly the notion of the reviewer being busy is something we found very much hilarious, but hey judge not lest ye etc.. The ensuing review is made-up of his notes found at the scene.

8:23 PM: Its the summertime, and the living is easy here in screen one. People seem in good spirits about their decision to spend their Friday night watching the Human Centipede, The first sequence in brackets. It seems to be mostly hipsters, although the goths seem solidly represented. The inevitable nervous irony has already set in. Many jokes about stitching things up.

8:26 PM: The screen is pretty much full, which isn't surprising as this is the only showing of the week. Solid financial strategy Cornerhouse Manchester, this wasn't going to be a cult hit or anything. Its not like its title makes the truthful promise of disgust or anything. Come on.

8:28 PM: Fish are jumping and The Cotton is high. That's right.

8:29 PM: We're a single measurement away from the start of the advertisements (WHOA SHIT) and the atmosphere had devolved from a confident sense of badassery to nervous laughter and near silence. That's right bitches, make like Cyndi Lauper and show you're true colors. Y'all are shitting it. I, on the other hand am a rock of the densest proportions.

8:30 PM: Alright I lied one minute ago. I want to go home and watch Finding Nemo.

8:33 PM: Why is Jack Daniels called No. 7 ? Will anyone ever know?

8:35 PM: I think I'm the only person in this audience who came alone. This either makes me the alpha dog of proceedings or the creepiest guy in the room. I perform both roles so well its hard to differentiate.

8:38 PM: Honest predictions, I don't think this will be a good film by any stretch of the imagination, but it might shit me up, and isn't that all it came here to do?

8:40 PM: End of Advertisements (WHOA SHIT) Could hear a pin drop.

8:42 PM: Trailer for the Girl Who Played With Fire. I love how they don't show any dialogue so everyone thinks its in English. You're being conned fools. By the swedes.

8:43 PM: I like that insight. I'm awesome.

8:45 PM: Lights go down, time to dance. I think this is the most tense cinema screen I've ever been in. Regret fouls the air with its stink.

8:47 PM: I think my glow in the dark pen is getting in everyone's hostile little face. Fuck all of you.

8:48 PM: Okies. Static shot of a motorway. Looks cheap, as do the credits. Hey the Human Centipede is not here to be pretty.

8:50 PM: The villain in his car is a little too on the nose isn't he? This dude looks like Lance Henrikson, and that's some lazy psycho casting. Audience erupts into laughter as bad guy mourns over picture of The canine centipede. I don't know if this is because of nerves or because it looks ridiculous. Plus the dude's name is Tom Six. Comical names are a bad sign.

8:51 PM: Some fat guy just made a Tom Sex joke. He has been rightly shamed by awkward silence.

8:53 PM: Alright this opening seqeuence is pretty shitty. Dime a dozen stalk and abduct and it looks like sixth form digi-cam balls.

8:55 PM: Is this movie going to be shit? He asked dispersively.

8:58 PM: OK, our heroines. And they're awful. Terrific.

9:00 PM: This is getting embarrassing. Their car just broke down in the woods.

9:02 PM: Now they're getting out the car. To look for help guys, surely this can't be..

9:04 PM: And now their walking through the woods.

9:04 PM: For fuck's sake.

Douchebag Intermission: Look, we live in a post-modern age of horror movies. This kind of stupidity of character and writing just won't do, I don't care how good this movie gets when it gets to the centipeding, this is sub-par. This would be sub-par for the Sci-Fi Channel. This would be sub-par for a movie made 30 years ago on the Sci-Fi channel. Jamie Kennedy would have a field day with this shit.

9:07 PM: Loving this valley girl banter as written by a Dutch dude in his forties though.

9:09 PM: " Oh look! There's a House! We're Saved."

9:12 PM: I think the realization that this film is in fact going to suck a hideous amount of ass ( pun intended, bitch) has relieved the air somewhat. The bad laughs are coming thick and fast.

9:14 PM: Don't drink the water, Jenny.

9:16 PM: Don't drink the water, Lindsey.

9:16 PM: Oh well. This German scientist freak guy is ridiculous by the way. The only way this film had any chance of being good was not to make that character into a ridiculous mad scientist pseudo-parody.

9:19 PM: Dr. Heiter as played by Dieter Laser is in fact a ridiculous mad scientist parody. This kind of stuff is teetering dangerously toward 1 or 2 out of ten kind of territory.

9:25 PM: I would have said that the scene which Hieter shows them a slide show of just exactly how they are going to be attached semi-worked if it weren't for the god-awful reacting from our girls and the third. A japanese man in his twenties.

9:26 PM: No please. No. No. Please no. No. No. Please no. No. No. Please No. Sing it loud.

9:28 PM: "The Japanese man can summon great strength in times of trouble." Said by the Japanese dude. This movie is fast approaching the so bad its good kind of territory.

9:33 PM: Lindsey escaped, and so ensued the worst slasher chase sequence since first season Buffy The Vampire Slayer.

9:36 PM: Its operating time. The thing is playing way too much straight. Our Dr. Hitler takes a moment to admire his mouth-slicing, anus-removing work. Seems Proud?

9:38 PM: Money shot. Its the centipede. And it looks. Hilarious. All the gore is covered with bandages so it looks like they're all just kissing each other's ass for no reason. Man that was sure an idea that looked better on paper. Now the rest of this movie is going to be a comedy whether it wants to or not.

9:40 PM: " Hello, my sweet Centipede."

9:44 PM: The Human Centipede is canonballing at such a rate that its vastly approaching The Room bad. Tommy Wiseau bad.

9:46 PM: LOL, Hitler holds up a mirror to himself and laughs maniacally. Trust me there is no irony here.

9:47 PM: Apologist feminism alert! The guy is covered up but the two girls are topless. This would be fine, if the dude in-front of me didn't keep saying 'Nipple' and/or 'sideboob' every time we see, well, nipple or sideboob. We're all mature adults here guys. Lets try and act like it huh.

9:48 PM: Apologetic feminism makes me feel a bigger person. A true child of the modern age.

9:49 PM: Sideboob.

9:51 PM: Oh. My. God. The centipede is now in the back garden, and Dr Hitler is pretending its a dog. Seriously movie?

9:52 PM: " I am not a dog." Nailed it Japanese man.

9:54 PM: In case y'all were curious. Japanese man is first, Lindsey is middle and Jenny brings up the rear.

9:57 PM: Fuck Yeah. Its the notorious they each have to eat each other's shit sequentially scene. Save this movie with your grossness!

9:58 PM: Well that was a washout (Pun always intended) You didn't even see anything. Isn't this supposed to be a horror movie.

10:02 PM: We're pretending we're a dog again. Just Doesn't know what to do with itself? Lame sado-masochist fantasy? I'm certainly not scared. Not really all that disgusted either to be honest.

Douchebag Intermission: Kids, sado-masochism is no joke, and even though these are my notes that I'm making organically in the moment and everything, I feel I have to stop this process in order to acknowledge that I believe that this particular issue is something that deserves the proper respect and intelligence that only...

10:05 PM: ....I'm falling in love with this thing, it just pulled its own version of a Donnie Darko montage, the worst most badly timed fade-outs the world ever did see. Plus the centipede looks so ridiculous it can't really have a poignant moment.

10:06 PM: Nipple.

10:07 PM: It turns out that twice recycled shit isn't quite the source of life one would have thought, and poor Jenny at the back is beginning to rot. That is a pretty cool visual movie, I'll give it that.

10: 09 PM: The Cops. Tell me they've arrived to end this movie.

10:11 PM: While Hitler deals with the fuzz, the centipede tries to escape up some stairs. Maybe it can escape looking ridiculous.

10:11 PM: WOOOOOOH. Nailed it Baxter.

10:15 PM: Lindsey lead the Big C into the room she nearly escaped out of before, but the glass pane has been filled in. That's gotta sting.

10:17 PM: Smash that glass pane, fuck yeah Japanese man.

10:19 PM: Hitler caught up with them, and what is surely the best moment of the film, Japanese man delivers a fairly coherent speech about being punished for his mis-deeds. Akihiro Katamura officially gets the best thing in The Human Centipede award. Is that really an award.

10:20: He just slit his throat. That sure fucks up the centipede. Hitler runs off to kill the cops, while Lindsey holds Jenny's hand. But what's that, Jenny just died from eating too much shit disease. Oh snap.

10:21 PM: Quite the catch-22 being the middle part of an otherwise dead centipede. Bitch be fucked.

10:25 PM: Worst action sequence ever ends in Hitler killing both cops, but the last one shoots him in the head before he dies. Crowd cheers. Dieter Laser you are one terrible actor.

10:28 PM: Cut back to Lindsey, alone in tears. I owe It's A Wonderful Afterlife an apology.

10:29 PM: Sideboob.

Rating: 1/10

REVIEW: The Last Airbender

And lo, the Avatar did light up like an emergency exit sign.

Right. To play devil's advocate, M. Night Shyamalan is to my mind a very talented director. At his best he's a master of tension, of suspense even, in ways that not too many directors are capable of even in their wildest dreams. But his CV reads like something that could analogize the term diminishing returns in a way that makes any other attempt seem redundant. It seems like each time out he sets a standard of shitness that seems definitive, he couldn't make a movie worse then the Village, well except Lady in The Water. But that's where the freefall stops because that movie was such an arrogant piece of shit that it could not, I say could not be...Fuck you The Happening. Alright where approaching amateurism at a fearsome pace here, it would be a joke unworthy of Michael McIntyre for such a talented guy to make a movie worse then this. He just can't. Can't.

Please, we're in the Obama age now. Yes we can, and yes he can. Only this time, he pissed away a sickass budget too, meaning the odious end product is somehow more offensive. I can't believe this guy made Unbreakable ten years ago. The Last Airbender plays like a ten year old's incoherent fantasy scribblings, with about that standard of dialogue too. It's as if Shyamalan had each character's motivations open in a word document as he wrote the script in case, you know, he wrote some words that a human being might actually say. Particularly Slumdog Millionaire Dev Patel's character, who is trying to catch the last Airbender ( or the avatar, if you will) so he can go home.

" I have to capture the Avatar, so I can go home. "

" I'm not leaving until I capture the Avatar, only then can I go home."

" I almost caught the Avatar, and was so close to going home."

Believe you me I'm underselling it. Patel says something along these lines about twenty or so times in the movie. But I'm content to give the kid a pass for this one, because I think its such a terrible script, the worst Shyamalan has ever written and he's powered home some balls, that no-one is going to come of well. I think Patel doesn't embarrass himself and gives it his best shot, similarly I semi-enjoyed The Daily Show's Aasif Mandvi as the villain of the piece, but apart from that its a washout. The lead white kids in particular, Noah Ringer who plays Ahn the Avatar, Nicola Peltz and Jackson Rathbone who play siblings that just kind of follow the Avatar around, are so unbelievably wooden, so unbelievably awful that it makes want to apologize to Daniel Radcliffe and Emma Watson most profusely. Ringer in particular, clearly hired for his kung-fu abilities rather then his acting skills is just an embarrassment. I don't even want to make a joke about it. Except that I just did. But now I don't, the true consequences of its incompetence having sunken in, and I just want to commiserate the state of cinema.

What's tragic about it is that Shyamalan hasn't sold out. In his head, he's still making great, original movies. But that's part of the problem. What's happened to Shyamalan is what everyone said happened to Tarantino. Only this time its actually true. The guy believed his own myth to the point where he both disappeared up his own ass (casting himself as the messiah in one of his own movies I believe) and thought he didn't have to work as hard to get here. He's a cautionary tale as to what can happen to you if you have too much confidence in your own abilities. I still think the guys talented, nothing could convince me otherwise, but it seems I'm only able to talk about that talent in the past tense, because as long as he's making movies like The Last Airbender, he's a laughing stock.

Rating: 3/10

REVIEW: The Rebound

This is a great moment of self-referential acting by anonymous blond biker.

Romantic comedy is a phrase to strike fear in any movie goers heart in the last couple of years. Bride Wars, The Proposal, The Ugly Truth, Did You Hear About The Morgans, Leap Year, Valentine's Day, When In Rome and The Bounty Hunter but to name a few. It seems there's some endless studio conveyor belt pumping out one cynical, dead-eyed movie after another, all unfunny and somehow depressing in their endless and insincere gleefulness. For a genre essentially about how human beings relate to each other and without any kind of genuine humanity, films just lay down and die. And then we're forced to watch them decompose on screen, a never ending abyss of awkwardness, mawkishness and soullessness.

The Rebound is certainly no exception, and wonderfully takes on all those negatives and adds douchiness and self-satisfaction to the mix. Great. Catherine Zeta Jones picked a bizarre film to try to resuscitate her career with, which since her semi-ridiculous Oscar-win with Chicago has come to quite a severe intermission, thanks to a few bad choices and possibly some kids (I don't follow Us weekly as fervently as one might) she's found herself in the position where making a movie like this is viable, it raises her profile and blindsides the cinema going public for about 30 million or so but ultimately its a ninja decision, get in, get paid and get out. Or at least I hope it is. Jones floats through, fairly invisible in her own movie whilst co-star Justin Bartha, who frankly just seems happy to have a lead role in a movie, comes across quite badly. The most horrific thing about it though is the way the movie kind of congratulates itself as it goes along, believing its dull, self-righteous leads to be entirely trailblazing and leaning on some artificially cute kids how just make you re-evaluate your opinions on infanticide.

In its hypothetical defence, Leap Year set the bar so unbelievably low that The Rebound doesn't quite make you want to commit acts of annihilation in quite the same way. Instead it just leaves you painfully and thoroughly bored. Almost numbingly so, until the boredom somehow consumes you and all you can think about is that when Zeta Jones does her wide-eyed exasperation thing, she looks like Dory from Finding Nemo. This film sucks.

Rating: 3/10

REVIEW: Death At A Funeral

Martin Lawrence's face defines who he is.

There's plenty of filmmakers who slowly deteriorate over time, there's those who have a single decade of awesomeness in them, wherever that might be in their career, and then there's the worst kind. Those who announce their talent with a spellbinding film, and spend the rest of their careers a bitch to the law of diminishing returns. Most would say M. Night Shyamalan is the epitome of this, and it very much looks like that's going to be the way of Fernando Meirelles and Richard Kelly too. But my point is that people care about these declines, and talk about them with much venom and regret. No-one it seems, cares about the decline of Neil LaBute, who went from being one of the most unique and ferocious voices in independent cinema to directing camp classics like The Wicker Man and whatever the hell this is. A mediocre remake of a mediocre film maybe? Who cares.

Maybe there were too many shouts of misogyny leveled at him, which led to him into adopting the ' Gonna get paid' philosophy of film-making, which certainly this is. Its hard to argue with that, because in good or bad LaBute films, women are either soulless evil or 2D archetypes that the film will have no interest in. But maybe its because of this that he made what maybe the truest, most horrifyingly powerful film about misogyny that exists, the flat-out masterpiece In The Company Of Men. Lending depth to the mindset only made it more horrifying, these were real people doing these things, and if I were to single out the single most soul-crushing film (in a good way) I'd ever seen it would be that. Given what we know about LaBute, it may well have been a piece of self-deprecation rather then a full on attack, but that makes it all the more poignant. The Shape Of Things is also pretty fucking good, but apart from that the guy was on an unstoppable descent of misfires and mistakes that lead us up to now and Death At A Funeral. A broad, gormless farce where people get shat on and Martin Lawrence has a leading role.

This is the kind of film that you might laugh once or twice, but generally you'll be repulsed or bemused. By his own admission, Chris Rock's acting skills are fairly basic, however hilarious a stand-up he is. It doesn't quite translate. Martin 'Big Momma's House 2' Lawrence can fuck off. Danny Glover and James Marsden, each playing an extended one note joke, are probably the best value, with Glover taking glee in swearing at Tracy Morgan and Marsden bringing an innocent pleasantness to his square stoned off his ass character. This is the second time in two weeks I'm going to call Zoe Saldana extraneous to the movie she's in, which annoys me because I don't even dislike her as much as one would think. Still, not as useless as Luke Wilson. I did enjoy Peter Dinklage again, reprising his role from the first film, and his dignified delivery juxtaposes nicely with the character he's playing.

But otherwise it goes as it goes, and given that the sitcom has kind of claimed the farce at this point, it just seems kind of weak. But when there isn't even a single line to make you laugh, something's up in denver. It wouldn't annoy me so much if I didn't know how talented the guy behind it is. So when you complain over whatever underwhelming enterprise Richard Kelly releases, be thankful that at least he gives a shit about it. LaBute has quite simply, had it with this shit.

Rating: 4/10

REVIEW: Sex And The City 2

Lawrence of her labia. Because someone actually says that in this movie. Gag.

After the first Sex And The City movie came out, a certain opening sentence became quite popular with every single male critic who was faced with the daunting task of reviewing it. It would go along the lines of 'Now I know this movie's not for me, but...' And then generally they would go on to give it a tepid review, negative in the politest possible way. Call it post-feminist apologetics, but a large sect of critics didn't slam a movie they hated out of respect for the women who rallied around it, which is either kind of cool or kind of pathetic depending on your view of it.

Not so much this time though. Because this thing has been massacred, so much so that people have actually put forward the theory that critical savaging has actually severely dented its box office, and made critics relevant again. Yay for hate! I want nothing more then to call misogynist conspiracy on this just to be awesome like that, but Sex And The City 2 is pretty horrific. And while reviews that focus on how ugly, bitchy and old they are are bullshit, ones that mention how its sold out on everything that made it unique and in anyway good in the old days are a slight more valid. Jokes are dumbed down, transformed from clever sarcastic wit into broad, groan inducing double-entendres. ( Some reluctant boyfriend snarled a quite audible 'For Fuck's sake' at the ridiculous name of one of Samantha's conquests. Funniest moment of my movie going experience.) What once was at least a semi-insightful look into modern female sexuality is now pretty much an overblown cartoon, complete with a cringe worthy gay wedding set piece, with the most omigod-hell-swallow-me-right-now moment being Liza Minnelli (who was in Arrested Development and thus is forgiven) singing Beyonce's single ladies. What the fuck guys! What the Fuck.

I don't even like the show that much and even I feel somewhat betrayed by how much this movie sells out on what made it what it is. So either fans are so committed at this point that they are going to sing the praises of whatever putridity is thrown at them - Like the people still watching Heroes in its fourth season - or they don't care, and its the experience of the world and the legacy that matters, and whether the movie is good or not really doesn't matter. It doesn't matter how wooden SJP is, or the fact that there's a scene where a group of muslim women dressed in burkas take them off to reveal the latest New York spring line underneath. Actually let's think on that for a while......

Faring better I guess is Kim Cattrall's Samantha, who despite being ridiculous does gather a couple of cheap laughs and generally its a good comic performance. The other two the movie could give a shit about, one has a subplot so thin it isn't really a subplot and the ginger just gets to be super-excited tourist. The ginger was your best actress guys, give her something to do. My favorite thing about the thing, and the original show to be honest, is Chris Noth's presence as Big. He brings a cool, a calm and most importantly, a dignity that the movie so desperately needs. Even though he pretty much just sits around an apartment, he still stole the movie for me.

A gross, overblown mess that has no reason to exist other then to premiere the Twilight: Eclipse trailer. There looks to be more fighting in this one, and its directed by the awesome David Slade. So, you know. It'll probably be better then this.

Rating: 4/10

REVIEW: Prince Of Persia: The Sands Of Time

Because critics won't hit a movie with glasses in the face.

Jerry Bruckheimer has a great method for pre-empting a franchise. It's called the cunning use of the colon in titles, or the paradigm of the Black Pearl if you will. See Prince of Persia is the brand name, and Sands Of Time is what this particular movie is concerned with. With the colon suggesting that this is one of many adventures to be had with everyone's favorite turn of the AD Arabian time-traveler. Coming out of Prince of Persia, you're not angered, disappointed, surprised, satisfied, irritated, pleased, upset or anything really. Its just two hours of pure ambivalence, something you can see, maybe mildly enjoy and then cleanse from your memory. Its so light and superficial with everything that it does that's its a hard movie to hate. I can't get angry about this the same way I got angry with Iron Man 2, because what would be the point. It knows it already.

Yet with hindsight, maybe I should work real hard and force myself to be angry, because Prince Of Persia is so afraid of any alienating anybody that it literally does nothing. Coasting on a timid familiarity that feasts on the the mindset of the casual viewer, whilst cowering in the corner from critics, making the argument that because it didn't even try to be a good movie, it shouldn't be criticized for being a bad one. And for lots of us, this reasoning plays. Particularly for the sniffier critics, who usually appreciate mainstream movies pleading innocence by stupidity. It keeps everything so wonderfully in its place, doesn't it? I mean leave the good stuff to fucking Tarkovsky, and let the riff-riff eat cake, so to speak. But its an argument I tire of hearing, because in any genre, I want to see movies do gutsy things, do ambitious things and for the love of god at least try to be as good as they can be. So fuck Prince Of Persia and its inoffensiveness, because I know I'd rather see a movie that pissed me off then one not worth talking about at all, which this movie really is. To its core.

I guess I should talk about some stuff that happened in the movie, because after all that is what we do here. I was thoroughly disappointed by how adequate Jake Gyllenhaal's accent was. The trailer promised something notorious and this was part of the reason I was going. This is some Bullshit. He didn't sound like Don Cheadle at all. Far more painful, I think, was his and Gemma Arterton's attempts at banter, which was clearly after some kind of Han Solo/Princess Leia fireworks, but to say that it fell short would be to make a gross understatement. People keep telling me how great Arterton is, but I'm still firmly in the believe it when I see it camp, because right now she's being bad in a lot of bad movies. Ben Kingsley plays a villain slightly more memorable then the Hood in Thunderbirds ( Boy was that a travesty) and Alfred Molina kindly channels Del Boy as an Arabian outlaw. Which is a lot less awesome then it sounds.

Incidentally, I think every single Arabian character, big or small, was played by a white guy, so there's that. Which some might deem to be uncool. Anyway I have better things to do then continue about this penny sweet of a movie, so fuck Jerry Bruckheimer, and fuck the continual curse against video game to movie adaptations. Someone try Metal Gear Solid for fuck's sake.

Rating: 4/10

REVIEW: The Back- Up Plan

How to best verbalize the despair. It's better then Leap Year? Whereas that film left you wanting to massacre everyone in the Western world sequentially with a spoon, The Back-Up Plan left me only wanting to kill anyone directly associated with this particular piece of cinematic scum. Which I find to be life-affirming no? How the world can surprise you.

The film plays as if someone watched Knocked Up, removed anything that might make it conceivably funny, cast a female lead who's celebrity is based on a body part and a male lead who was on Moonlight. Moonlight people. Yeah. Jennifer Lopez, who before her fame really took off made some good movies, U-Turn and Out Of Sight come to mind, but since becoming an inverted commas movie star, she's been pretty ruthless in regards to churning out shite. But hey, I'm all about second chances, but Lopez, based on this at least doesn't really deserve one. Watching her trying to play neurotic is about as convincing as watching Schwarzenegger trying to play pensive. It's just unquantifiable. For a woman, who clearly hasn't experienced a moment of self-doubt in her existence, all the scattiness, all the shrill control-freak romantic comedy mainstays are somehow even more painful, and the performance condescending in its terribleness. Alex O Laughlin serves as the bland man-candy well enough I suppose, but fuck if I'm going to watch his remake of Hawaii 5-0 based on this shit, Jin from Lost or no Jin From Lost.

The studio romantic comedy is circling the drain. Every single one is contemptible and unfunny, and I don't know why this has to be. Sure there are genres I care about more, but for the last five years or so this entire genre is marginalizing itself into extremely degenerative guilty pleasure for women who's favorite movie of the year will be Sex And The City 2 (Compared to The Boys who look forward to taking in the subtleties of Prince Of Persia). And they think this kind of thing is crappy. Women are not stupid, so why does every Hollywood movie aimed at them act as if they were. It truly beguiles me.

Rating: 3/10

REVIEW: Clash Of The Titans

Who the fuck decided that Sam Worthington was a movie star. Was it James Cameron, because I'm pretty sure he cast him because he was a nobody. McG? Well I think he was too busy having the most ridiculous name of all time to think on much of anything else. Well whoever it was, fuck you. Fuck you for inflicting a potential 10 years of a guy, who is (somewhat paradoxically) offensively bland. I didn't realize that an actor being boring could get so ferociously in my grill, but there you go. Its not just that he can't act, which he really, really can't, its that he delivers every line in with his intensity face on, regardless of what he is saying or the situation he is in.

Look, this is a movie called Clash Of The Titans, about giant-ass monsters and a checklist of greek mythology's baddest bads, so I'm not expecting Olivier or anything, but a basic understanding of human emotion would be nice Sam. Douchebag. And where the fuck is his long hair? No-one had a buzzcut in ancient Greece. Not even the cool guys. But anyway, I digress. This movie to sum it up in the simplest sense, is an adventure movie without any sense of adventure. In which monsters are perfectly realized but devoid of life and the movie ends up taking up the identity of its leading man, it may look fine but there's nothing worth caring about.

I guess someone could submit the notion that watching Ralph Fiennes do his Voldemort thing has some value, but Fiennes has been better villains then this, and I can feel how little he gives a shit radiate off every line. Liam Neeson tries to play it straight, but by doing so ends up on the camper side of things. I kind of dug Mads Mikkelson as Worthington's pseudo-mentor, and he has the kind of quiet intensity Worthington wishes he did. But this is a cynical creation, made to make money and destined to disappear from whence it came once its made its money.

If Sam Worthington were a movie it would be Clash Of the Titans. Proficient but dull and uninspiring. I'd never thought I'd say this, but Percy Jackson And The Lightning Thief is the superior Greek Mythology movie of the year.

Rating: 4/10

REVIEW: The Bounty Hunter

Rather then review the Bounty Hunter in a manner conventional, I have decided to be extra smug/awesome and review this profoundly terrible movie through the depiction your emotional responses funnelled through the genius that is Gerard Butler . You know, to bring some light into this dark world.



In you're typical pre-movie state of awesomeness:

After The First thirty seconds and you realize what you're about to go through:

Once Gerard Butler starts trying be funny:

On whether Jennifer Aniston's cinematic unapproachability is a result of her life or her plastic surgery:


On Jason Sudeikis' offensively retarded stalker character:


On how the movie manages to unashamedly ogle Jennifer Aniston at all times:


On the standard of the dialogue, and the prospect of it making you want to run screaming back to the ugly truth:


On the movie's patronising attempts to show some actual humanity:


On the horribly embarrassing Cupid's cabin scene which makes you want to die:


On realizing this movie is almost over:


And if you came with your girlfriend, the realization that she owes you big:


And if you came alone, that the joke is really on you:

Rating: 3/10

REVIEW: Valentine's Day

And so it went on and on. Put it this way, if you found He's Just Not That Into You to be a misunderstood masterpiece then this will be right up your alley. This basically remakes that film, but relocates it to Valentine's Day and throws in a little less cynicism (if that is possible) and a little more Ashton Kutcher. Speaking of which, when you've got Jamie Foxx, Jennifer Garner, Anne Hathaway and countless others in your cast. Why is Ashton Kutcher the god damn lead. Why? I will stop typing while somebody explains it to me. Seriously. Jesting aside, this is a horrible, horrible film. So falsely twee it hurts sometimes, and the portmanteau of it basically leaves you watching ten bad romantic comedies for the price of one. Score.

Fuck describing the plot. I don't care, mostly because they don't care either. Its just a series of weak ass cutesy cliches. Old couple still love each other. Pre-pubescent lovestruck kid. Best friends who really belong with each other. Julia Roberts playing a marine. The usual romantic comedy stuff. There are some good actors here, so in spite of the cack put in front of them they manage to maintain dignity. I'd say Anne Hathaway, Julia Roberts, Jamie Foxx and Topher Grace get a pass. Grace is increasingly becoming one of those actors I kind of like with no real grounding and as I'm sat here I can't name you a great Topher Grace performance. But I guess I like the dude anyway. How generous am I? Also, I won't go so far as to say she has acting ability, but teen country pop singer had an amiable lack of precociousness. She made light of herself and even did a pretty solid pratfall. The worst of it is Kutcher obviously, Garner who can be a good actress, as she drastically proved in Juno, but not here. And pretty much everyone else.

If you want to see a movie to justify your hatred for the world, this is it. Its exactly what it said it was going to be, a hallmark gift card of a movie. So superficial and falsely sweet it actually makes you angry. Plus it literally goes on forever. I have no definitive timing but I'd say this film is a safe two and a half hours. Enjoy.

Rating: 4/10

The Five Movies in 2010 Everyone Will Like But Me

There's nothing quite like being left out of the loop as a movie fan. It happened to me with Avatar, where everyone was going batshit, whilst all I was seeing was like one of the PS1 final fantasy's made into a movie. And not one of the good ones. Anyways, the movies I will be entirely out for a spin for in 2010.


5) Clash Of The Titans

Looks horrible, Sorry guys. And given my increasing hatred of the seemingly randomly selected mega-star of choice Sam Worthington. Not Feeling it. But I think there's no chance of this film making anything less then 200 million. The Transformers 2 of this year, no doubt loud, big and painfully ridiculous. But then given my hysterically terrible record with predictions I'm sure it'll be a classic. Inevitable box office: 243 million

4) Alice In Wonderland

Looks like what can be described as a corporate acid trip. All the crazy imagery is there but it somehow feels lifeless and kinda crappy. From the trailer it looks all blockbustered up, and while I'm sure it will bring the kids in. It looks to continue Tim Burton's sucky streak, Sweeney Todd aside. Inevitable Box Office: 220 million

3) The A Team/ Tron Legacy

It seems that Transformers has opened the floodgates for eighties nostalgia, hence we get these assembly line reproduction of the current thirty-something sects childhood. But both films are sure to be complete balls. Jeff Bridges or no Jeff Bridges. But irony it seems conquers all, and look for a lot of people going 'Hey there's an A Team movie. That sounds AWESOME'. Inevitable Box Office: 282 million/210 million

2) Harry Potter and The Deathly Hallows: Part 1

Aside from the blatantly money-grabbing scheme of splitting this in two, I'm predicted good reviews for this too. You know because of all the dying, and as far as movies go death = credibility. But shit I can't take anymore of these kids acting man, its beginning to depress me. Inevitable Box Office: 370 million

1) Iron Man 2

When I came out of the first Iron Man I'm sure I was missing the joke, because everyone loved it but me. I fully expect this reaction again, reading a million reviews of how amazing the movie is, seeing it, thinking it's a pretty stock blockbuster and then being crushed into irrelevance. The way its destined to go. There is Scarlett Johansson in a catsuit though. There is that. Inevitable Box Office: 412 million

REVIEW: Couples Retreat

Rather then actually talk about this movie, which had the gall to both suck ass and do it at a two hour length. I'm gonna share a little tidbit I noticed about the poster. The movie is about four couples right, yet on posters lowering standards of billboards and tube stations everywhere we only see three. Who's missing? The black couple. They're aren't any less important to the film then the whitefolk but there they aren't, nonetheless. What up with that Couples Retreat. What up with that. Anyway, don't see this movie because its crap.

Total crap. The kind of film that gets steadily worse as it progresses, and by the end of it you're embarrassed to be in the screening, in a way you should have been coming in. OK I knew it was going to be shit going in but it had Jason Bateman in it. It had Kristen Bell in it. Jon Favreau directed Iron Man, admittedly nothing to do with his acting but hey. Vince Vaughn was good at one point in time, even if it was the last millennium. Kristin Davis is the most tolerable member of the Sex in the City cast. It could be OK right?

Wrong. Seeing as the glass half full is an attitude you get nothing but shit for in cinema. Bateman gets a pass because he made some good movies of late, and I'm too much of an Arrested Development fan. Kristen Bell is burning through her Veronica Mars credibility at a worrying rate, and a look at her Imdb page is not reassuring. She seems to be heading down the Katherine Heigl route of movie stardom, AKA lame rom-coms dealing with fish out of water scenarios both in character and literal translation. Vince Vaughn can frankly fuck off back to his big pile of money, Davis gets little to do but stand around in a bikini which to her credit she does very well. Malin Ackerman may be the most charisma-less actress of her generation, pipping Kate Beckinsale by a nose. Faizon Love gets to by the token black guy ignored by the poster. Nothing else to say. Boring myself in continuing to think about this movie.

If you buy this on DVD I will hunt you down and kill you.

Rating: 3/10

Transformers 2: Revenge of the Fallen

Fuck this movie, Fuck it to hell. Fuck the billion dollars it will make worldwide, Fuck the moronic teenage boys who will see it and blaspheme it as better then the Dark Knight. Fuck Michael Bay and his Epilepsy inducing beyond talentless sub Tony Scott approach to film-making. Fuck Shia Lebouef or labeouf or whatever and his entitled fast-talking douche/nerd composite style of acting that makes me want to take a power drill to my ear to ensure that fellow cinema goers get their money's worth. Fuck Megan Fox for taking a role that may well have had more slow-motion bouncing cleavage shots then lines, and while the misogynist in me appreciated this, the reviewer is oath-bound to condemn it. Speaking of misogyny, Fuck a movie that features hundreds upon hundreds of soldiers that are all male and, on a more intellectual level women are presented as either ditzy idiots (Shia's mom), slutty predators (college girl transformer) or complicent girlfriends (good old Megan seems to have had her power-slut vibe from the first movie somewhat neutered.) Oh Right, back to my gimmick. Fuck the insanely offensive ghetto transformer twins speaking in MC Hammer inspired jive so clearly written by a middle class white dude. Fuck John Turturro, for so brazenly taking the paycheck, hamming it up and running. It is now OK to Fuck with the Jesus. Fuck the no mark comic relief best friend who seemed to serve no purpose at all. Fuck the awful plot, if it can be called that, that seems to have been put together on microsoft notebook such is its disregard for making sense. Fuck the time it is taken to insult this movie. Still, it was better then high school Musical 3, so there's that

Rating 4/10