Cobra

Sylvia Stallone was in full lazy 80's mode here. Probably why he spends most of the film with stupidly reflective shades on (spot the film crew) so he can shut his eyes when the other characters are doing stuff. Or so you can't see his eyes roll when Miami Sound Machine come on the soundtrack again.

Mr Cobra is a tough cop who has to protect Brigitte Nielsen from an evil gang of evils, led by a baddie with the most baddie looking face I've ever seen. And an awesome chin. After an excruciating glamour photo scene where Brigitte poses with 80's robots, the plot gets a bit Tom and Jerry all the way till the industrial ending. Oh and there's a bit where about 50 people fall off motorbikes.

Mr Cobra's cop boss was the baddie in Dirty Harry. That can't be right.

All a bit rubbish but rescued by the line "This is where the law stops and i start, sucker".

The Ghost

Blessed with an incredibly distracting accent, Ewan McGregor is hired by a fat, bald Belushi to do writing stuff for ex PM. Ex PM is ex Bond who excels at gesticulating wildly when on the phone. Ex PM's ex Ghost writer is now extinct but why exactly? Excuse me but I didn't really care.

Dull film this. Lots of blah, blah. Rains a lot. A bit like Bladerunner then but a lot less interesting. Even figuring out one of the plot points pretty quickly was boring. Had hoped for a lot more from what looked like a pacy, intelligent thriller. It ain't. Deffo not intelligent like what I is.

Speaking of which, how the hell was a glaring typo allowed to get on the scene where a Sky News report comes on a telly and the onscreen text refers to the 'Bristish' Prime Minister? It's shown about four times too! Gah. Bad spelling AND bad accents.

Why make Ewan speakytalk like that? And why is Belushi in it for about 3 minutes? Random bit of stunt casting there. The BMW satnav system gets a lot of airtime though. Might have been the best thing in it. At least it had a sensible voice.

Star Wars Episode III: Revenge Of The Sith

First Star Wars film I've watched all year - bad form that! They'll be kicking me out of the Tattooine super-geek club soon. Anyway, Luke was desperate to have a 'movie-night' and I figured he was just about ready to deal with the darkness of Anakin's fall to the dark side.

This prequel trilogy has had a fair old pasting to be sure and a lot of it is completely justified. There's a lot of scenes that would be better off in a trash compactor - particularly almost every single one between Anakin and Padme. God they make me cringe. But apart from the glaring badness I think a lot of people miss the best aspect of the series which is Palpatine's rise to power.

I genuinely believe the story arc that Lucas came up with of how the Emperor manipulates everyone and everything around him is borderline genius. Forget Darth Vader, the real star of these films is the wrinkly old dude in the black hood.

Away from the Machievellian plotting (that took some typing), there's so much else to enjoy as well. The opening sequence is a whizzing rush of space battles leading straight into lightsaber duels and finally on to thunderous crash landing. I could watch it on loop all day. John Williams' score is as awesome as ever - it never lets you have any doubts as to the motives or emotions of the characters. And you get to see a lot more worlds in this film too, all of which are brilliantly imaginative and vividly realised by the ILM boffins (now there's a word I've not used in about 15 years!).

Order 66 is still chilling. Luke didn't like the 'death sensations' (as he put it) of this sequence - good phrase that, would make a great band name. That was the only time he flinched a bit during the movie though so he's reached another stage in his movie watch career. Might have to give Lord Of The Rings a go soon.

Revenge Of The Sith is a great film and provides thrilling links for Star Wars geeks between the old and the new. It really stitches the two trilogies together and I enjoyed this viewing as much as ever - it flew by in way less than 12 parsecs.

Four Lions

In a previous career I had to write a feature on Chris Morris, during all the Brass Eye furore. At one point in the, close to excellent, write me up I labelled him as a 'comedy terrorist' and now here I am doing another, far from excellent, write me up on his film comedy about terrorists. It's almost like things have come full circle or circle of life or summink.

Considering how highly I rate Morris, I was expecting this to be the best film EVER so was surprised that it took me a long while to get into it. An attack of the snooze-a-tron didn't help either as it made me a bit foggy and this is a film that is brain funny not HaHa funny. A bit of rewind action later and I was back in the swing of things like a jungle VIP and pleased to see that Morris' eye for the absurd was as sharp as ever. The sight of suicide bombers running around in ostrich and ninja turtle costumes just challenges you not to laugh at it.

More challenging for me though was the balance of the silliness against the endearingly supportive family of one of the hapless bombers. The scenes between father and son were uncomfortably sad - aided by the film's naturalistic style.

If you like your comedy to be a bit edgy and you don't read the Daily Mail you'll find much to enjoy here. I'll leave it to cleverer people than me to analyse Four Lion's place in these troubled times though. Someone that would never use the word 'cleverer' would be ideal.

Cemetery Junction

Not much of a title is it really? I'm all for avoiding the judging of books by their covers but I can't help but think it was at least partially accountable for the sluggish business this did at the cinema.

That's pretty much the biggest negative that this oxymoron can come up for the film though. Really enjoyed it. Not least because it's gloriously English. Gervais and Merchant again create a bunch of characters that feel completely honest and believable. They really are clever sods. Subtle, poignant and affecting scenes seem to be their speciality.

They get the best out of their cast too. Fiennes and Goode make excellent gits and the main three fellas (all newcomers) are each very good. Definitely got the rock and roll star vibe from the grinny, chinny one.

It's another film that clocks off at the 90 minute mark too which is great. Does everything you want and expect it to do and sends you off with a warm glow in your red pumpy thing. And I don't mean the bodypart that would be affected by a big-titted vampire (see the film before you judge me).

Amusing to spot the round-headed buffoon Karl Pilkington in a blink or you'll miss him cameo too.

The Hunger

Continuing my current obsession with all things Bowie, I thought it was about time I saw this. You could say I was a bit peckish for The Hunger and my appetite was certainly stirred by the weirdy-o opening scenes. Really had no idea what the flibbetygib this film was all about although I knew it was an 80's vampiry thingy.

Turned out to be something far more creepy than that rather kneejerk summary. Proper creepy too. I really liked the slow burning story and the sombre mood for the first half and the fact I had no sense of what was going on. But just as I'd got myself comfortable it lurched off and became a chilling, disturbing melodrama accompanied by mental bursts of 80's keyboards and heavily reverbed screaming. There's some imagery here that will definitely leave a mark on this impressionable, little chap. Nasty stuff - especially the heaven and hell allegory where both destinations are equally unpleasant. Shudder.

Some great make-up on the Thin White Duke and several bits of unexpected sauciness from Suzie Sarandon too. Helped to break up the funereal atmosphere somewhat.

Don't get me wrong lovely reader, it's a really good film - very original and well shot by Tony Scott before he was 'Bruckheimered'. I just found it a bit too unsettling for a Monday night movie. It wasn't what the movie doctor ordered on this occasion.

One more thing - Willem Defoe completely steals the show as '2nd phone booth youth'.

Scott Pilgrim Vs. The World

Fight! Jeez what a film! Seems a complete waste of time writing about something as ferociously visual as this but I'll have a pop. Or if you want a 'skip to the end' summary - I loved it but it was a hard fought love. CONTINUE?

Clearly I had a good idea what to expect. I am a film nerd and that's my pretend job. But for the first 20 minutes or so, I found my inner monologue disturbing my concentration with 'you're not really enjoying this are you' sneers. It was true. What was all this hipster talky-talk and self-conscious wackiness? Does Michael Cera have to be so whingey? He sounds like Luke Skywalker moaning about having to go and pick up some power converters.

I resolved to battle on. Fight! Slowly and steadily, the magic started to happen until - POWER UP - I was fully plugged in and ready to play. Which is all really just a ham fisted (mMMmmmm ham) way of saying that it clicked and from then on I was hooked. In some ways, I almost love the film more because it had to win me over.

My cinema-going chum asked me how on earth he'd describe it to his wife. I said he should say that it was a love story in the style of a musical where awesome computer game type fights replace the songs. To me, this makes complete sense. Instead of the characters stopping to burst into a song and dance routine they leap through the air and throw dragon-kicks and fireballs at each other.

Edgar Wright is fab. I've liked everything he's done that I've seen that he's done. The energy he creates on the screen is incredible - your eyes won't be popped anything like it this year. It's also a film that celebrates being young without condascending those lucky enough to still be young (aw bless 'em) but above all it champions pop-culture and the most successful form of entertainment on the planet - video games. Cinema (and mass media in general) usually doesn't 'get' video games but this is a love-letter to anyone that's ever waggled their joystick into the small hours. The coins dropping from the vanishing bodies are beep-beepingly brilliant. LEVEL UP.

Don't worry if the sight of the Universal logo with an 8-bit version of the theme does nothing for you though, there's still much to enjoy without knowing your Commodores from your MegaDrives. The fight scenes are fun and thrilling (like the Matrix when the Matrix was good), there's loads of humour and sight gags, the offbeat cast hit all the right beats (loved the grumpy ginger drummer girl), the soundtrack's cool and the whole thing is just refreshingly refreshing. How could you not enjoy a movie that includes Vegan Police and a battle of the bands that leads to a mental shockwave monster smackdown.

Go and see it. Not enough people have. GAME OVER.