GONE WITH THE WIND IN SPACE

This video is sort of boring, but skip to 0:32. I have lost all respect I previously had for Sigourney Weaver. How can anyone seriously describe any film as being like another film, but "in space"? I'm beginning to wonder if Avatar is actually an elaborate hoax to reveal the true ridiculousness of the movie industry, like Joaquin Phoenix's rap career.

HOT TIME TUB MACHINE?

TRAILERBURN

IRON MAN 2


THE RUNAWAYS

COMPLETELY NECESSARY UPDATE

What's better than giant scorpions?

KRAKEN

AND LIAM NEESON AND RALPH FIENNES

MONSTER

In short Monster is the "biopic" of Aileen Wuornos (a prostitute) who became a serial killer after a horrific encounter with an evil man with a handle-bar moustache and trucker cap. I'd like to point out that it is a man with a handle-bar moustache and trucker cap in Mysterious Skin that beats the shit out of Joseph Gordon-Levitt and rapes him, maybe its the same dude.

Anyway the film is on one level, not really about a serial killer, but about a messed up woman finding love in the younger Selby, played by Christina Ricci. They make an odd couple, sort of like a female Marty McFly and John Merrick.

The film is good, it's nothing spectacular, the direction is competent and the acting is dead on. How much of this true story has been embellished, we don't know, but the film does seem to show Aileen as a victim of circumstance and I find that take slightly morally dubious. Of course they did call the film MONSTER, but then there is a little bit of crap voice-over where Aileen mentions a roller-coaster ride of same name that she was scared of for some reason I'm not sure I think it was supposed to be a metaphor for... life?

But the main reason most people will watch this film and gasp is the lovely Charlize Theron looking like a big sweaty toe with a face drawn on it without the eyebrows. "She's so brave" "What committment" "Oscar worthy performance!" Bollocks. Not bollocks to her performance which is pretty good, but bollocks to giving her an oscar for eating some cake and not wearing any make-up. This shouldn't be considered "method acting" or anything "brave" it should be considered as just acting. Charlize Theron is just doing her fucking job. The odd thing is, if she didn't look so awful and her acting was still good, you wouldn't notice, but I dare say the co-star of Hancock and soon Hancock 2 isn't quite Morgan Freeman.

That's my rant over. Good film, not nearly as dark as I'd hoped and a little too forgiving, but hey this is Hollywood. 7/10.

SAINT JOHN of LAS VEGAS (trailer)

This modern retelling of Dante's Inferno stars Steve Buscemi in the title role as an ex-gambler who has to go back to Vegas for some reason, and also gets some off Sarah Silverman. It also features a midget, as his boss. This film looks excellent on its own, but with Buscemi playing the lead, I am very much looking forward to it. US release is 29th January, as for over here, I don't know, but fingers crossed.

THE GOOD THE BAD THE WEIRD

Just before going to see Paranormal Activity (see lazy review below) I was fortunate enough to catch all 129 minutes of Ji-woon Kim's ridiculously spectacular western.

Anyone that enjoys action or films in general owes it to themselves to witness this film. Michael Bay could learn a thing or two from those wiley Koreans. It's a long film, but only dips once, unlike Transformers which dips whenever there isn't an explosion until you become bored of the explosions. Every explosion in The Good The Bad The Weird are great and when it is firing on all cylinders you'll be laughing and clapping like you've never seen moving images before. The photography is mind-blowing and consistently inventive throughout. I zoned out a bit at around 80 minutes in at the opium bar bit, but as soon as the big finale kicked off I was hooked until the cop-out ending.

PARANORMAL ACTIVITY

REVIEW MISSING

Sorry too busy cleaning the shit out of my pants.

10/10. Go see it

Michael Bay directs underwear advert

and it is the most ridiculous piece of advertising ever created. Watch in awe:

Keep watching until 1:14, because the generic advert backdrop behind the sexy women RANDOMLY EXPLODES

IRON MAN 2

GET HYPED

HARRY BROWN

Director: Daniel Barber
Writer: Gary Young
Starring: Michael Caine, Emily Mortimer, David Bradley
Released: 11th November

Even though Harry Brown stars Michael Caine, one of our greatest acting talents, this is a film that could make you extremely fucking depressed about being British. It starts off slowly, with director Barber showing depressing attention to detail when showing us pensioner Harry Brown's day to day life. Ten minutes in I made a vow to kill myself before I hit 60. Caine pulls off a lonely, sickly old man brilliantly.

Brown's motivations for the inevitable vigilante justice are equally grim - he watches chavs murder his best friend on a cameraphone. Look how modern this film is! Needless to say, the chavs are complete bastards. Anyway, after Caine walks about a grey estate in a manky old man's coat for a bit, the film gets going when he goes to buy a gun. This is the weirdest and easily the best scene in the whole film. The two messed up, drug ravaged dealers make for a brilliantly tense exchange - at one point, one of them puts the barrel of a gun in his own mouth, puts a rock of crack in the chamber and uses the gun as a crack pipe, while Caine just stares, shocked. Brilliant. This scene especially makes Harry Brown seem almost like a horror film, and a lot of the ingredients are there: dark colour palette; quiet LOUD bits; gratuitous violence.

After this, unfortunately, Harry Brown becomes less about Harry and more about the two cops who told him about his friend's death. The woman one in the partnership (Emily Mortimer) suspects that maybe Harry killed those chavs, meanwhile the man one is a dick and doesn't care. With the exception of Mortimer's DI Frampton, the police are callous, ineffectual idiots. She shines in the interrogation scene, despite a chav telling her that he'll stab her with his cock.

Then it all gets a bit weird. The chief of police basically starts a war with everyone on the council estate, and you begin to wonder where they got all those Molotov cocktails from so quickly. The action is good, but just out of place - earlier in the film, DI Frampton warns Harry Brown that "this isn't Northern Ireland, Harry" - referring to his Marines service record - and she's not, the final third of the film is nothing like Northern Ireland. With the run-down tower blocks, riot police and random stuff of fire, it's more like Mega City One in a Judge Dredd comic than actual South London. Despite the murderously Shakespearean climax and vague attempt at morally justifying all the violence, I was disappointed that Harry Brown didn't spend a bit more time on its titular character, who was a lot more interesting than lots of other things that Barber throws in.

JURASSIC PARK 4

This is the film I'd like to see. What the preposed Jurassic Park 4 film will ACTUALLY be about I don't know (it's even been denied by producers that the film will even be made) but here's hoping the dinosaurs discover lazer guns and make us extinct.

The film has apparently been stuck in development hell since the release of the third film. The director of that film, Joe Johnston, is still set to direct it although if the plot does involve guns and dinosaurs a certain Mr Bay could be expecting a call.



YEAH!