Movies

Long-time readers will know that I’m a big fan of German director Tom Tykwer, who has previously given us such gems as Run Lola Run and Heaven. I’m less of a fan of Patrick Suskind’s gimmicky scent-based novel, which strikes me as a strange choice for  Tykwer’s first big-budget movie, especially given that previous attempts by more established directors like Scorsese, Kubrick, Ridley Scott and Tim Burton have all floundered. Undeterred by this, and by the lack of smell-o-vision cinemas in which to present this experience, Tykwer goes for  loads of close-ups of nostrils, which isn’t the most enticing...

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I’m not a big fan of Mel Gibson the director, and half an hour into Apocalypto I was shaking my head and looking for the remote control. The movie looks good but gets initially bogged down in a load of slapstick and bodily function jokes, like a sort of Carry On Up the Jungle. Eventually the plot starts, and there’s a lot of expensive CGI, shouting, and some nasty human sacrifice, before our hero ends up in a fight to the death with the enemy soldiers. While there’s no denying the excitement of the action scenes (and Gibson has...

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Joe Carnahan made a bit of a splash with Narc a few years back, and has been rewarded here with a bigger budget and cast. He’s also chosen to make a more adventurous movie  stylistically, coming across like a US Guy Ritchie at times, except not quite as annoying. Jeremy Piven plays a gangster turned FBI witness, who becomes the target of myriad hitmen of all shapes, sizes and genders. It’s definitely a blokes movie, featuring snappy dialogue, huge guns and lots of ‘unnecessary’ sex and violence. It didn’t do that well at the box office but apparently is...

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After Star Trek was initially cancelled in 1968, William Shatner must have fancied a Spanish holiday. So here he is, playing halfbreed twin brothers in a Spaghetti western: Johnny Moon is a surly cowboy and Notah Moon is a savage Comanche killer with a liking for peyote (giving Shatner a chance to overact wildly, which he seizes eagerly as you would expect). Joseph Cotten  gets top billing as the local sheriff, and Rossana Yani is the love interest for both Shatners. It’s hard to know where to start. The continuity is all over the place, you see some telegraph ...

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I finally got to see  Zack Snyder’s adaptation of Frank Miller’s 300. This story was previously filmed as The 300 Spartans back in the 60s, and it was a horribly stodgy movie given the exciting  nature of the story it had to tell. Snyder doesn’t permit any risk of the  viewer being bored, throwing effects at the screen even in the quiet scenes. Gerard Butler seems possessed by the  spirit of Brian Blessed, as do the rest of the cast, even the women, and some SF monsters are inexplicably introduced. It’s gory and stupid, consisting mainly of soldiers in...

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In the same way that Disturbia was a teen version of Rear Window, Cherry Crush is a teen version of Body Heat. Jonathan Tucker plays a privileged young photographer who falls for a girl from ‘the wrong side of the tracks’, played appropriately vacuously by Nikki Reed. Assorted plot twists ensue, most of them ridiculous, and especially the final one. The odd thing here is that there’s some nudity in the first five minutes, then later on there isn’t any when the plot really requires it. It’s as if the makers have tried to make a tribute to film...

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I’ve always liked Sandra Bullock, despite the restraining order… I’m pleased to say that she’s recently returned to making thrillers, or at least stopped making exclusively chick movies. In Premonition, she plays a happily-married housewife who is told that her husband has died in a car crash, but wakes the next day to find him still alive. It’s difficult to say too much more without giving something away, but despite numerous plot twists, the movie never really does enough to convince that there’s more than one possible ending or that the Bullock character isn’t very stupid. Julian McMahon is...

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