Reviews

Don't get me wrong - this is an exciting movie that does not let the franchise down. But we have seen most of it before, some almost frame by frame. Putting a woman and a black male actor upfront as heroes really is tokenism in trying to make the film distinctive, because it is not. Yes, the CGI is better than some earlier efforts and it looks realistic compared to some $200M comic book adaptations around. True, the action is relentless (Mad Max has obviously started a trend - one to be regretted), and the film suffers for it. The villains are underused and really pretty pathetic - the son of Han and Leia could not frighten a kindergarten birthday party! And the Starkiller base must have had a very secretive funder over the previous decades of chaos following the death of the Emperor! Resistance and Republic - just another theme thrown away in the rush. And how does the heroine turn into a pretty potent jedi with absolutely no training?! Answers another day, I suppose. Okay, but not worth the long wait on balance!

In the 1950s when television was beginning to make inroads into the cinema-going audience, Hollywood made films that were grander, bigger, more colourful, and shot on location. So you got huge big budget historical epics, but also smaller films that were given wide screen and colourful location treatment. Thus some movies like the 'crime noir' genre were opened out into big screen colour, thus almost at a stroke cutting 'noir' off from its' roots in black and white. This is such a film. But, despite the fact that Don Siegel is the director, the movie is short on suspense and any deep characterisation - at 80 minutes it really is too short for much. But perhaps the budget was being too stretched! However, we get lots of aerial shots of the tremendous Grand Canyon, and a spirited, breathtaking denouement on a tramway over the said gorge. The actors try, against a very ordinary script. But the plot is fairly preposterous - unknowns taking gold out of an old mine with no-one noticing, until murder of a John Doe sets the flawed Deputy Sheriff (Cornel Wilde) off in pursuit. There are political pressures as well, but never fully realised. A romantic element is in the backdrop and provides the vital breakthrough, but it never all adds up to much, except the scenery and location.

I had seen the play and enjoyed it, both the writing and the excellent acting of Dame Maggie Smith. Believe me, this so-called movie is not a film at all. It is a star vehicle for a tremendously bravura performance by the leading actress, almost like a studio of the thirties giving one of its' leading ladies a blank cheque.

The plot is simple. An old lady (Maggie Smith) travels around North London parking her battered old van and living in squalor in the same place for months on end. Finally when the yellow lines are painted, Alan Bennett the writer (Alex Jennings) allows her to park in his drive - and she stays for fifteen years! The relationship between the two is the heart of the screenplay, or it should be. But, no, we have to open it up as it is a film, and it loses its way dramatically! It becomes a minor mystery story as we discover bit by bit who she was and why she was living as she was. All of which was found out only after her death, as the film says at the end! So the interchange between the two main protagonists gets lost amidst cinematic clichés and other characters putting in their two pennyworth, including Bennett's mother. There is also an attempt (pretty poor it must be said) by the writer to find himself in his writing. Cue a very seedy rent boyish sub theme and so-called coming out, which was not really present in the play and is almost gratuitous and forced in the film.

And why do we have the stage device of two Bennetts - one the writer and the other the 'living' - on screen at once? As one reviewer said, could we not have had a voice over? It is silly and looks terribly stagey as the rest of the film tries to open out and be realistic. All in all a right mess that is not a film at all.

As a postscript, Mr Bennett and his concerns about 'northernness', old ladies (especially his mother) and the details of toilet behaviour are just old hat. What made them funny in the 70s, 80s, and 90s are now almost forgotten, and this piece seems to have been made at least a decade too late. How anyone under 55 can relate to it is beyond me! Your name is on the writing credits, Mr Bennett, and you have ruined your own work, or did the 'script doctors' get at it? Oh dear, what an utter mess.

Do not listen to the nay sayers - you know the boring, poor acting, bad script brigade. Just go and watch a gentle film that does not have CGI (to take the budget up to M$150), feisty women, heavy in your face message, is 'dark' or based on a comic/graphic novel with loads of youf starlets who cannot act! It is a movie that will not stretch you, but will amuse, especially the older members of the audience, for whom the wistfulness of one last adventure is understandable and meaningful. Forget the backpacks being too light, the change of boots not seen, the ages of the main players, and wallow in two guys trying to do something tough and trying to get some meaning out of their adventure. Yes, there does not appear to be enough effort expended (same with 'Wild') and the vistas do not last, but in the book Bryson and pal eventually are overcome by the tree cover on the trail and give up. Plot - famous writer busy doing nothing decides to hike the Appalachian Trail - a tough long distance hiking trail on the east side of the US. He has to get a companion and the only one who will agree is a dissipated old mate from Des Moines, Iowa, whom Bill Bryson grew up with. Cue clashes of different paths taken by the two men as they stumble and grouch the inclines of the Trail. The acting is downbeat - rightly so - and the direction slow and uninvolving like the authorial distance that Bryson employs in his books And the movie sums up America's attitude to walking with Kmart sequence. Redford (Bryson) walks through a swamp, while Nolte (Katz) takes a taxi. The shop is barely a few hundred yards away!

Someone came up with the idea in Hollywood that the hopeless position of 'Apollo 13' could be crossed with the CGI/techniques of 'Gravity.' And as the story is not true we can really go to town on the jeopardy elements in space as well as on Mars. Hence we have someone left behind on the red planet with little hope of rescue, trying desperately to think of ways of staying alive - Daniel Defoe - does he still get royalties for rip offs of 'Robinson Crusoe?' For most of the time it all seems comparatively easy, and you do not believe for one minute that we are anywhere but in the desert on Earth, even Wadi Rum from 'Lawrence of Arabia.' Atmosphere is the same!!!! Work is just a matter of humping a few things, and trouble can all be fixed with white tape!!!! The middle of this film is awfully boring and totally uninteresting - drama having to be provided by painful expressions of disbelief and horror at the predicament of Matt Damon (the stranded astronaut) by Edifor and Wiig that does not really convince. Action in the last third is pure Hollywood - let's space walk without a safety rope, and we can cut our spacesuit to use pas propulsion! For most of the film you are looking and feeling with Matt Damon (not a lot as he is given little to work on), but just in case you did not get his predicament, there is a totally redundant speech by him on what he faced as the final scene! But worst of all, there is a hole in the plot so large it undermines the rickety edifice of a superficial movie completely. They leave Matt Damon because of a storm on Mars which threatens to topple the MAV (escape rocket back to orbit), and it would have done if they had not left. Guess how Matt Damon escapes the red planet? Another MAV has been sent early for a later mission and is sitting upright untouched some thousands of kilometres across the surface! Oh, really, come on Mr Scott and Hollywood that is cheating your audience. Acting is basic and perfunctory. Direction just a red shaded desert scene with endless vistas. Script needed heavy doctoring - forget the jokes, they are mere pleasantries! Overall another over-hyped film that is pretty empty and ordinary.

Rogue Nation delivers set piece action and thrills to satisfy most of the intended audience, but basically they are rather hackneyed and fourth rate. They do not make up for the acres of empty space at the heart of the movie's plot and characterisation. Let alone the script and direction which are utterly predictable and gone through strictly by numbers. A just about good enough film that does not try too hard. After all, predictability is the key to a franchise success, or a dreadful bore to the uncommitted and unenthusiastic - there really is only an hour's TV episode material here. True, it carries it all off with gloss and panache, but then the Chinese backers would want to be sure on a return for their investment! Tom Cruise (looking older) gives his all-American, polished, believable performance we come to expect in his action genre films, while the support cast do their thing like moving wallpaper. Rebecca Ferguson flaunting her slightly heavy thighs at almost every opportunity is an interesting choice as the femme fatale (good or bad?), but Swedish/UK cool does not add a lot to a very clichéd role. Sean Harris (unrecognisable) tries to method act the chief villain and still manages to make no impression. Just like Philip Seymour Hoffman in an earlier MI, you have to chew a bit of scenery rather than stay cold at a very great distance! Can we have a franchise-free (particularly comic-based ones) and Matt Damon not lost in space year of movies, please, and get back to some straightforward, effects-free entertainment that Hollywood used to do so well!?

This is a Chinese martial arts film but aspires to something more meaningful - the cost of redemption from an awful crime. The main character is pretty familiar - ordinary peasant in two horse village, who somehow manages to overcome a merciless bandit in a one on one fight! Premise is familiar, but this takes some working out because it is brilliantly filmed so that the peasant does not look very capable, just lucky. But a brilliant detective is on his heels, and desperately searching for the truth. Of course, the peasant turns out to be a brilliant martial arts exponent (played by Donny Yen what would you expect?) who has committed horrific murders. Cue his old gang (with ruthlessly violent old father/leader in the van) find out and the scene is set for the final battle between father and son/ evil and maybe good.

It is a film that takes its time, with beautiful photography, fine acting, and an interesting plot that takes its time to unravel. The direction and action work very well. But it could do with a bit of 'go' at times.

If Arnold Schwartzenegger were not in this movie, it would be truly awful. He provides the context, background, affection, and nostalgia for past efforts - except the truly ludicrous T4! He and his cyborg remain the rock solid foundation of the franchise, showing other younger actors that they are trying too hard or simply are not good enough. The two main younger male stars are frankly a waste of space with no gravitas or presence to warrant their participation, while Emilia Clarke just about passes muster as the young girl too mature for her years on the edge of crying 'help' throughout. But, no, this is 2015, only kick ass girls allowed!!!!!!!!!!!!! And this is where the trouble with the movie begins. The movie has several multi-dimensional timelines which are impossible to follow, so changes pop up all the time, and we have to wait around as an audience as some tawdry attempt at explanation is made. it is all too much and far too confusing. So much so, as soon as you start to think 'what a load of rubbish,' up pops the next action, bang, wallop sequence is thrown at you.

Yes, awful script, unmemorable performances, lazy direction all lead to a fifth rate film, but good ol' Arnie he keeps you watching and remembering when fun and fright with the old 'Terminator' worked so brilliantly.

The book is apparently the memoirs of a trek along the 1000 mile Pacific Crest Trail by Cheryl Strayed after her life fell apart following the early death of her mother. The hike and writing about it became a catharsis and redemption for her. The film is an attempt to show a fairly ordinary woman, who goes badly off the rails, who then walks herself back to reality and a normal life. Reese Witherspoon gives it her best shot in the lead role. Despite being a little small for the role, she wholeheartedly shows her body off and indulges in a few rude sex scenes as she falls from grace. She looks in great shape, and her admirers will not feel short changed! But the script dwells far too long - in flashback - on the past, and encourages you to dislike her character. She lets down a good husband, and her mother's memory. The walk requires the lead to suffer, review her life, gain some new insights, and finally to reach some sort of redemption. On all fronts the screenplay short changes us. She suffers a bit, but you do not get a real impression and feel for the three month hike. Personal insights in diary form are notoriously personal and often cliché-ridden. Cue for mumblecore acting to quickly waltz over any embarrassment! Redemption, if you're not paying attention, comes again in a minute long mumbling voice over that says everything in her life ended happily!!!!! It does not work overall and, therefore, is a disappointment. And the original photos taken on the hike (shown over the final credits) of Cheryl show her happy and smiling! Um... The direction is adequate, photography good, and the supports played well, but that script by Mr Hornby - get back to North London watching Arsene Wenger fail again and again to find your mojo. This is awful stuff. If you want a feel for what a long hike can do for relationships, watch again and again the scenes near the end with the three young men. They are odd but believable because they show the impact of a long arduous hike together, which Ms Witherspoon's character never quite manages.

The Brothers are no longer, and their films are getting worse by the movie. This drivel is supposed to be about a wretched anglo-Russian girl (Kunis) who miraculously has the same genetic imprint as a millennia-old royal just dead in outer space. The royal was part of a family looking for profit from creating life on suitable planets which are then farmed for their body fluids to produce immortal bath salts for those who can pay. Cra* concept and an even worse script, direction, and character development has resulted! It is all CGI, but for what? The characters are totally uninteresting. Even the evil offspring of the dead royal, who just ooze 'orribleness and are of course played by British actors (including star of the moment Eddie Redmayne!), are one-dimensional. The hero, half wolf, half man, Channing Tatum, remains stony faced and just jets about on a set of gravity boots better than Superman! The only interest is Sean Bean and whether he will last beyond the second reel. From the trailer he looked certain for an early demise but he keeps hanging on! The script is just a series of bang crashes, and scenes of jeopardy for our two leads and how are they going to get out of them - yawn, yawn! The CGI is boring inside two minutes. And the whole film is a derivative sham. You will recognise 'Star Wars' 'North by North West' 'Jurassic Park 2' 'Superman' 'Flash Gordon' and particularly 'Dune' as well as many others. Oh, it is truly awful!!!!!!!!!!

Brother and sister - give up film making now and save the industry from another mega ($170M) flop!

You have all heard of a police procedural, well, this is a CIA procedural, until the killing of Osama bin Laden just before release meant the film finishes on a high of US Seals celebrating executing an old man as if they had won the Super Bowl! Presumably it was meant to end on a real low note of the heroine working for 11 years to find bin Laden, but not succeeding! I started watching with anticipation. So immediate scenes of US callously torturing countless Arabs ( all excused by the need for revenge for 9/11 - 2,000 - how many innocent killed at Hiroshima?), before heroine (with permanent pained and liberal disapproving look played by Jessica Chastain) introduces a little more subtlety. Don't bother trying to catch the inaudible dialogue, it is pure mumblecore and irrelevant - US filmmakers believe you do not want to know or care about the identity of the various Arabs being tortured. This is a procedural and it boringly drifts along with subtitles showing the different locations (more important than the Arabic characters?) where the various torturing takes place.

Frankly I gave up after 40 minutes and turned to a tenth repeat of 'Foyle's War!' I then watched the end - or should that be two ends? The proper one finishes with a downbeat assessment of 11 years of faithful, hangdog failure, and your career is safe as a minor operative. Then suddenly we are in Afghanistan/Pakistan watching a fully togged, lit up Navy SEAL unit helicoptering in to kill and then steal the body of bin Laden. And guess who gets to visually identify the corpse? Yes, our heroine, the minor operative. Crass and at odds with the rest of the film.

This is really a dramatized documentary for TV. Clichés crowd in from the director and scriptwriter, as well as twitching facials from Ms Chastain instead of acting still. It is a boring non-event except to an American audience, as the early torture criticism (?) is overwhelmed by the final section. To show how bad this film is. After bin Laden is dead, Ms Chastain leaves on an huge transport empty plane - "You can go anywhere" and the dreaded utterly predictable visual from Ms Bigelow comes - the huge ramp of the plane closes (Yes, closure for the heroine!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Argh!!!!!!!!!!!!) Oscars for direction and screenplay - please!!!!

A good film, a decent attempt at trying to make a 'Man In Search Of His Own Identity' movie like Bergman, Fellini, Antonioni etc did in the 60s and 70s. It does it through the painful struggles to stage a play on Broadway allied to the agonies and ego of a washed up, former superhero actor trying to go legit. The medium of the last chance for a fading thespian has been done before, but not for a while. Remember Bette Davis and Ann Baxter going head to head in the early 50s? What makes this film stand out is the artifice of the film (until the very end)apparently being shot in one long continuous take! It works brilliantly, but overpowers the film. The script is good in parts, but is repetitive and fairly mundane with little depth. Actorly tantrums and one-upmanship do not make for a two hour movie these days. The acting is good, but bound by the limits of the story, eg Edward Norton's character is real on stage but all an act off it - and we are supposed to care! The film takes pot shots at Hollywood - how brave! - but apart from repeatedly going on about cartoon superhero movies and celebrity there is little here but a moan that falls short of a rant. The 'right on' bits about the impact of social media seem arch and merely included for the movie to look relevant to today. But this film is trying to do something worthy, and everyone, except the scriptwriters, are doing their best. It is worth seeing but too high hopes and the hype will leave you flat.

This movie is a decent enough attempt to present a quite interesting time in Danish history, when with an unhinged King on the throne a 'Man of the Enlightenment' tried to force through his new ideas as Chief Minister on a very conservative, almost feudal, society in the latter part of the eighteenth century. Oh, and by the way, Struansee (Chief Minister played by Mads Mikkelsen) was conducting a lusty affair with the young Queen from England/Hanover. (Played by 2015's It Girl Alicia Vikander). Of course, it all ends in tears, and the conservative court triumphs and overturns all the progressive work done by the reformers. It is a good presentation of the romance, but the budget looks thin in places; the court itself is never fully portrayed; the so-called progressive ideas are barely illustrated; their impact on the people never demonstrated; Ms Vikander never convinces by looks or acting that she is a Princess and brother to the King of England; and it all feels far too modern and sloppy. The worst illustration is the King and Queen's first night together. He pushes himself upon her, which she rejects like a 2015 modern woman who says 'no' at the last minute. But then the king saunters over to the other side of the bedroom, orders her to bed and get undressed. Without a murmur, Ms Vikander gets into bed and strips off to become pregnant immediately! The script is dull and plodding, while the direction is absent without leave. Characterisation is minimal, except for the role of the King, but even here things are not clear enough. History is altered to favour the lovers, and the film is far less than it should be.

I really do not know why this film was made - it is just such a boring mess! I know the director Ridley Scott would have been brought up on afternoon long epics in the Fifties and Sixties, and it would appear that he thinks he can do them better for modern audiences, eg Gladiator, Kingdom of Heaven and this concoction. But he is terribly terribly wrong. He makes long movies with some thrilling visuals, true, but his films (since Blade Runner) have mostly lacked anything like a decent script and absolutely no characterisation. And here it happens again. The story of Exodus is re-imagined with an existential, faith all over the place Moses troubled like some latter day Marlon Brando figure in On The Waterfront; Ramses is some SS thug from a concentration camp circa 1943; and God (after a nod to the burning bush) is represented by a young boy. None of this works at all! So why bother, Sir Ridley? The classic confrontations between a rampant Old Testament Charlton Heston and a proud, domineering Yul Brynner are replaced by silly, sly meetings between Bale and Edgerton down in the stables, where Bale sympathises with his 'brother' but apologises for all the plagues because God is so vengeful! Most of the dialogue is confusing, and other smaller matters like the character of the High Priestess ( who must be putting the cause of female bishops in Africa back another millennium by being such a cheeky chops!) and the role of the Palace females who pop in and out to no effect (how Sigourney Weaver had the cheek to take the money I don't know). No, don't go to this mish mash, unless you want to see Scott take more than a few swipes at rampant Zionism and the irony of modern day Israel oppressing the Palestinians. Instead sit back and revel in some real old fashioned spectacle with the King of the Epics - Charlton Heston - as he frees his people from tyranny - all with a commentary from Cecil B de Mille himself in the remake of 'The Ten Commandments.' There is no tapping out on stone here at the dictation of a lad of those commandments, but a full blooded bolts of fire from Heaven,

At last THE END of Peter Jackson's mind and bum numbing CGI so-called epic spectacles. They have become increasingly repetitive, dull, uninteresting and smugly self- satisfied at their own success. Scripts are shallow and full of plot holes, as they vainly struggle to catch the fine timbre of say 'Ben Hur' or 'El CID'. That the director and his writers fall short is due to elongation, greed and a belief in their own legendary status. It is called hubris. The plot is simple -dragon killed, orcs are on the rampage, and King Dwarf goes mad a la 'Sierra Madre.' Cue overlong battle between five armies for the treasure! Since when do Stephen Fry's miserable plebs constitute a fighting force? Yes, you guessed it - the Orcs almost win hands down until a drawn out fight sees their barbarian leader downed and a Dr Who arrives with the Eagles - Roman Legions - to sweep all before them (just like the ghost army in LOTR! Oh dear, this really is a fresh film! Various lines are tied up to lead onto the main book/film, except what happens to all the treasure? Terribly unsatisfactory, only illuminated by the odd bit of acting from messes Freeman and Armitage, who deserved better from this lazy, long drawn out, over hyped children's serial.

This movie is not meant to be realistic - hence pay no attention to the liberal PC naysayers ringing their hands about poor Yemen and incorrect dialect. Just believe me this film is dull, tedious, and totally derivative. It is meant to be a gentle, wistful comedy/drama about some not very realistic subject. The sort of thing Will Hay and Alec Guinness did for Ealing Studios in the 40s and 50s, and Bill McKenna did for Rank in the late 50s. So a rich Sheikh asks a doubting Euan MacGregor to build a salmon fishing river in the mountains of Yemen with the help of Emily Blunt as PR Manager. Both are attached, but the main thrust of the plot is will they get together. Something you lose interest about halfway through! A huge subplot is the involvement of UK government through foul-mouthed Kristin Scott Thomas playing the PM's Press Secretary looking for a good news story. This is now so hackneyed and predictable that it just grates dreadfully. The script is poorish, full of plot holes ( who built the dam and when?), the direction slow and often lazy, and the acting sluggish and rather disinterested. The only shining light is Rachael Stirling playing MacGregor's wife, who acts everybody else off the screen in a short cameo. Boring in the extreme - it totally fails to draw you in to its idiosyncrasies.

This really is an extremely poor film by any standards. Obviously paid contributors have boosted its score to ridiculous levels! 'Memento, was absolutely brilliant, but Christopher Nolan's films from then on have got worse and worse -a distinct case of the Emperor,s New Clothes! 'Inception' was a sheer disaster with loads of holes in plot and characterisation, but this lacks any interesting plot or characters whatsoever.

For a start it is obvious that Nolan went to see '2001 - A Space Odyssey' when he was younger and has been dreaming about remaking it and taking it further. Um, well messrs Clarke and Kubrick made a better job of it! That,s the end of the film written off - don,t pay attention to the very last fifteen minutes it is an embarrassment except for the 'Star Wars' imagery. The main plot is mankind is doomed, and only a mission to outer space through a wormhole can save us. A few films have done this better. There is no money for space exploration apparently, but nobody notices numerous rockets being fired into space! Please! When the mission lands on one of the selected planets the plot comes close to utter stupidity trying to resemble 'Total Recall!' And it does not get any better as we rerun 'Gravity' and '2001' before the Starchild repeat. Plot goes even more haywire then. There is so much mumbo jumbo that one loses interest entirely. The space sequences unfortunately have been trumped by 'Gravity' so the spectacle is empty and ungripping. The actors try but who cares about such an over-hyped, unbelievable piece of twaddle and s.....!

A note to mr Nolan jnr - go and watch 'Shane' if you want to make a movie about love and family. Otherwise, give us all a rest from your ill-conceived so-called masterpieces!

Now I know why the movie business is almost in terminal decline. Successful movies are comic book franchises desperately trying to get away with deep darkness mixed with CGI, while the unsuccessful like this merely copy anything that's passing by and feature endless product placement.

T without a Spanishhe style is all Bourne. You know jump cutting for endless chases (both car and on foot), and then stop for breath while someone explains a laughable creaky plot with a sombre serious face. Oh, and, of course, the real villain is a rogue in the CIA. Bruce Willis takes a paycheck for 30 minutes' of non-effort to set the ball rolling, while his son, henry Cavill then tries to chase down who kidnapped the rest of his family. Apparently daddy did a naughty thing and took a briefcase from some very violent and angry people! OOoooh! The acting tries, but cannot fight a long struggle against a terrible script and St Vitus Dance directing.

The plot holes mount up. The reveals you don't care about. Both Sigourney Weaver and Henry Cavill get up and walk away from upturned cars with the merest trickle of blood! Weaver shoots down several Spanish pedestrians in the street and has a ten minute mayhem of a car chase without a Spanish policeman or car in sight! Oh, and Colm Meaney flies in from his Majorca home for forty second cameo at the end.

Sad, sad, but I think there is some Israeli involvement here because the propaganda about how wonderful Mossad is at fighting terrorism is stuck right in your face. It started out like an exotic British thriller from the late 50s/early 60s with someone like Laurence Harvey or Richard Todd and morphed into a car crash of a ... well, it just wasn't a movie really.

A good effort at trying to portray war in its gory, dirty messiness - both in literal and ethical terms. But ultimately it fails on two counts. Firstly, it tries to be an all-embracing depiction of every war there ever was, but it is set in WW2, and it does not fully convince of its historical setting, eg incidents, characterisation, general philosophical observations in the script, and the incompetence of the Wehrmacht reveal a desire for universality rather historical accuracy. So we get soldiers depicted as if they are fighting in Vietnam or Iraq (you know modern liberal hand ringing about atrocities committed by US personnel), and new tropes of war based on YouTube videos from Iraq- officers do not really fight wars (if they do, they look 15 and get killed almost immediately. So why do snipers have orders to take out officers first and make soldiers leaderless? And every soldier must literally depict that they are suffering from PTSD so we get every actor, bar Brad Pitt, twitching his head slightly! The second failure is that the film revels in and perpetuates all the old clichés of the genre. Yes, the new kid who has to be shown how to fight total war; the war weary vets who have almost descended to an animal state; US GIs fighting almost impossible odds on their own; a couple of scenes with female civilians as 'normal life' is partially reconnected to; characters who have appeared in 95% of previous war films and are so recogniseable; and bits of other better films dragged in because the director/writer does not know how to be original. The latter sees Pitt and La Boeuf reconnect by spouting biblical quotations, just like Peckinpah's 'Ride The High Country' as Randolph Scott and Joel MacRae rediscover their bonds of trust and friendship for the final shoot out. While the decision to stay and fight a probably terminal stand is straight out of 'The Magnificent Seven.' It does portray a very bloody business, and the tank battle with the Tiger is thrilling, but the final battle is sheer Errol Flynn/Clint Eastwood with Veteran Wehrmacht/SS going down in their hundreds before the superstar's automatic weapons! And please why did the film have to pinch the ending of 'All Quiet On The Western Front?' Shame on you! The film should have just got on with telling how it was, not how Hollywood thinks it now is.

Big spoilers in this review! From the off this movie was slow, slovenly written, tediously directed with some half decent acting. I just could not connect to the characters, which were just there to be manipulated by the writer(a theme of the film). Plot - wife disappears, apparently killed by her husband, who becomes increasingly under pressure to be arrested (media and a rent-a-mob crowd holding banners!). Suddenly big twist as wife reappears to tell her story, and the film drags itself to an unsatisfactory conclusion with the odd pot shot at the amoral media (TV actually). The plot of the first half owes itself to 40s noir with all those pictures with Barbara Stanwyck and Lana Turner in - now regularly revisited in made-for-TV movies. Then the second half turns into 'Basic Instinct' with buckets of blood, and the will she - won't she get away with it trying to drum up some vague tension. We even get a sex scene, where the wife's panties never move but she is being entered by a right schmuck. Another case of the star actress does not flash but earlier a minor actress goes topless in a fumble with the husband!

Awful rubbish and a waste of two and half hours of my life. Certainly not the intricate shredding of marriage as an institution by everyone using facades/manipulation to merely survive that the press reviews trumpet. It is unbelievable because the characters have stepped out of an author's head and not anything remotely resembling real life. The only problem for reviewers was a lacklustre final third which some have tries to explain away as satire.

The day after I saw the movie, I was still mulling over that problematic final third, when it struck me that the whole thing built into a savage condemnation/diatribe at FEMALE EMPOWERMENT - something the Liberal Intelligentsia could never approve of, even if they noticed it1 Let me explain. the wife (Rosamund Pike who is OK) is upper middle class and well educated, but also a psychopathic, manipulative, uber-bitch. The two female TV anchors are well spoken, manipulative bullies and control freaks. The working class robber from the motel (don't ask) is a manipulative, vicious, controlling bitch. In fact, out of the six female characters in the last third of the film, only two are likable - one, the twin sister, loves her brother (Affleck) unconditionally, while the other, the detective, has treated the husband with outstanding even-handedness. And the non-moving pantie scene takes on another meaning - it is a visual which tells you that a man does not really enter an empowered female! But all you liberals will be screaming 'no.' So how is it Ben Affleck yells out - 'God save me from female empowerment!' Or did I hear it in 'Midsomer Murders' later in the evening!? Yes, well done, Mr Fincher, you really have slipped in a crafty anti-feminist movie right under their noses!

A last point - shouldn't the final scene have been of the two robbers in the motel recognising the wife on TV and saying to each other 'Now we can make some real money!' Pity the movie did not star Reese Witherspoon herself (given a producer credit here) and her husband had been played by ex Ryan Phillippe. Now that would have made for a really engaging and creepy movie!

Singers struggle to get a recording contract from a poor background, magically make a breakthrough, hit 'no 1s,' get spoilt by success, fall into debt, and break up. Oh, and a miraculous reunion when entering the Hall of Fame. How many groups does this apply to? Well, with 'Jersey Boys' it is Frankie Valli and the Four Seasons, and it is based on a successful and long running stage musical. The only thing to mark it out is that one of the singer characters is a tired, glorified rerun of a cheap young hood from Scorseseland. So, if you like the 4 Seasons, you'll at least enjoy the musical renditions. But it is a plodding, almost 'Made for TV' movie with little cinema, and a very old fashioned script that would have been out of date in 1960! The performances have been honed on stage and the actors just about get away with them on screen, although Christopher Walkden shows everyone what screen acting is like in a downbeat impression of a New Jersey mafia boss. Clint Eastwood directs competently (I have never seen him as anything special in the Director's chair, so not disappointed).

But the major bugbear is the Tony Da Vito character. Once again an East Coast chippy goodfella gets the full treatment on screen as some kind of wise guy we should all admire more than condemn - America's fascination and glorification of two bit smart ass crooks (eg 'Hustle') shows a cancer at the heart of US cultural values. Yes, thank you, Mr Scorsese! This may be needed at the heart of the film but is vastly overplayed. Oh, and by the way, plot holes and lack of depth of characterisation abound, but let's face it you have to 'Walk Like A Man' and 'Big Girls Don't Cry.'

To an oldie like myself, part of this movie felt like a modern sequel to two James Michener adaptations in the Sixties - 'Hawaii' (about the first missionaries from US to Hawaii) and 'Diamond Head' (about the next generation who headed the annexation of Hawaii for the US) - with the family descendants of those first missionaries grappling with the sale of land bequeathed to them by the last King of Hawaii. But that plot line barely gets a look in and is perfunctory at best. Parallel to this 'letting go' is the personal issue for George Clooney and his two daughters of 'letting go' of his wife/their mother who has been brain damaged in a boating accident. Personal and Societal running along with each other to some form of redemption - geddit?? Unfortunately both parts of the story are boring, uninvolving, and almost fake in its attempts to create emotional grip. The direction is lacklustre and Payne does not seem interested in the content. The script is downbeat, tedious and plain awful. The characterisation across the board is done by numbers and would disgrace a soap. While the acting - even the phone company would not ordinarily let people phone these in! from a few minutes in, I just thought 'So what?' and this was my final thought as redemption was reached with a totally corny Clooney eulogy. Hopelessly poor.

Is this film doomed to go down as a critically OK movie that failed at the box office? What a shame, alongside such absolute rubbish as 'Iron Man3' and 'Avatar' - standing in the top 3 of earning movies!!!!! Yes, the film is an expensive blockbuster with Tom Cruise as star - seems box office poison alongside mumbling riffs of rubbish from Downey jnr and little blue smurfs in outer space! Yes, it is a video game on the big screen - hero gets killed but gets another life every time fighting an alien race with killer instincts, so that he can learn how to defeat them. The film bangs along after a slowish start to establish the character and the situations which he, and we, will return to with growing irony and knowingness. There is the spectacular landing in Normandy to rout the aliens that turns into a massacre, and gives Cruise his apparent immortality - no drones visible so this is not controversial in the States!!! Thereafter, with the help of a former soldier, who experienced similar re-settings of the day, the hero grows into a true warrior from a PR wimp. The script is sharp, if somewhat incidental - certainly does not spend too much time on explanation - and the direction cleverly understated with masses of CGI. And, yes, Tom pulls it off to carry the film in that all-American solid way that no longer seems to get the crowds cheering. Ah well, go and see on the big screen and enjoy the spectacle without all the hype and very predictable dross surrounding 'X Men' and other comic bores this summer.

This is a valiant attempt by Gareth Edwards to make a significant westernised 'Godzilla' movie. Much of it is good, but it is let down by trying too hard to be significant (too much of American humans saving the world as usual) and lets itself down badly by delaying the entry in full scope of the King of the Monsters himself. The bad guys - Mutos - are too derivative, less interesting to look at and wonder about, and never given a proper description of their destructive powers, and given too much screen time compared to Godzilla. The story takes a long time to wind up - the much underused Ken Watanabe and Sally Hawkins just have to look frighteningly surprised as creatures begin to emerge into reality. Trashing Las Vegas comes not a moment too soon, and the sub plots with the young soldier and his father play out in far too familiar ways. There are tropes from too many other movies, including US army platoons fighting aliens/monsters almost alone. Worst move of the film, Gareth, almost as bad as the Halo jump copied from 'Starship Troopers 3!' But let's get onto the good. Spectacle, some excellent CGI (especially the wreck of Janjiro power station), a very good Godzilla who moves properly, a great deal of tension and build up, and a grandstand finish (perhaps too much destruction - also a fault of 'Man of Steel'). You get swept up in it, but the faults start as soon as you start thinking about it afterwards. But it does deliver a lot of the time.