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I pretty much walked into this film later than most everyone else on the planet, although I think there is a guy somewhere in deepest darkest Azerbaijan sitting in a mud hut that hasn’t seen this movie yet. I was sceptical at first as to the validity of a film that is, for all intent and purpose, based on a theme park ride especially one as saccharin as the “Pirates of the Caribbean” from Disney World. Fear not, the pirates in the movie do not burst into song well not as you’d notice anyway and the acting is better than the animatronic puppet name sakes. Speaking of acting, there is one performance in this movie that outshines, out camps out performs any other and that is the character of Captain Jack Sparrow played by the eternally youthful Johnny Depp. His grand show of flamboyance and quiet madness is fascinating to watch, perhaps not hysterically funny but it will raise smiles throughout the films length. There has never been a pirate like this in the history...

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The cinema lights dim, the instantly recognisable Warner Brothers logo then lots of green numbers and letters whizzing up and down a black screen… hmmm I’ve seen this before. Wait! What’s this? Reloaded? Woohoo! Okay so everyone on the planet has seen the Matrix, we all know how bullet time works and computers do all the hard work so we don’t have to. Well given the extent of the fight scenes in Reloaded I’d say hats off to all the computers that did months of wire work and fight training for this one. And no this is not a comment at the acting ability of our Mr Reeve, honest. The opening scene with Trinity fighting an Agent or later with Neo and his antics with Mr Smith in the school yard sticks out as two of those jaw dropping moments where you struggle to see the joins and will happily suspend your disbelief just to enjoy what are two fantastic set pieces in the film. Throw into that mix some fantastic car chance sequences and you already have enough action for two...

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Now, the first thing I thought of when I heard Mike Myers was doing The Cat, I started thinking about The Grinch. The Grinch was always spoiled for me because it wasn't The Grinch on screen, it was Jim Carrey in a suit. I was expecting to watch Cat in the Hat and see not The Cat, but Mike Myers in a suit. I was delighted that this wasn't the case. I can't tell how Myers did it exactly, but his mannerisms and voice completely changed throughout the film. Unfortunately, they seemed to change to a variety of other characters he's done. At times it was "Austin Powers in the Hat" or "The guy from So I Married an Axe Murderer in the Hat" The film is a slightly extended version of the book, with a narrator giving us some of the classic lines. Two children are home on a rainy day when they suddenly meet a Cat in a Hat who proceeds to show them how to have fun in all sorts of out of control ways. However, the madcap antics of the Cat are broken up with Herman...

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Bad Santa aims to be several films at once. A heart warming Christmas tale of reform. A darkly black comedy about everything wrong with Santa and Christmastime. A sarcastic poke at all the tiny gags and jokes that other Santa films work in half-heartedly. Sadly, it fails in its attempts at all three and feels like a long string of tiny jokes hooked together in haphazard fashion. Billy Bob Thornton is Willie, a mall Santa for the Christmas season that hates his job. At the start of the film we see him, several days worth of beard on his face, chainsmoking and slamming down shots at the local boozer before stumbling into the alley behind the pub and projectile vomiting. Freeze frame. Movie title. We get it, he's a bad Santa. The last day of work, Willie manages to soil himself and insult the security guard before leaving for the night. As the security alarm counts itself down to 30, a snowman from the Santa display runs pell-mell through the store to abort the...

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Okay I know I’m a bit late with this one and the world has seen the movie by now but hey, my short-term memory ain’t what it used to be. Computer generated animation, at what point do we stop caring? Seems that we now take it totally for granted in as much as we don’t bother to mention it at all even when the whole movie is made using the process! So what marks out these films from others? Well in Pixar’s case it’s two things, story telling and characterisation. In the last few years Pixar have been responsible for creating some of the most memorable characters to hit the silver screen, not to mention the most merchandise since the Star Wars franchise kicked off back in the late 70’s. On to the movie…The film revolves around a clownfish named Marlin (voiced by Albert Brooks) who lives in the sunny Australian Great Barrier reef with his son, Nemo (voiced by Alexander Gould). Marlin is an overprotective dad due to the fact his wife and other 400 kids were eaten. This did...

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It's 1977. Two couples are out on the night before Halloween, compiling information for a book they are writing on roadside attractions. They stop for gas at a place called Captain Spaulding's Museum of Monsters and Madmen, which is run by a man in a clown suit named...Captain Spaulding funnily enough. While they are chatting he informs them of his world famous Murder Ride which the boys promptly buy tickets for. 'This ride is a fun trip through psychopath lane, depicting scenes from famous mass murderers evil-doings. The last one deals with the local mystery of Dr. Satan. This man performed some unethical experiments in the local Mental Institute and was later hanged by the townsfolk but the next day his body was gone. Captain Spaulding informs the two couples that this hanging tree is located "not a few hundred feet from where your asses presently sit". Well one of the guys decides they have to see this murder tree and ends up convincing all the others to embark on this...

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This sound familiar? A robot called a Terminator comes back from the future, another Terminator comes back. They are both looking for someone, who we got set up with in the opening five minutes of the movie. They find them where upon a big chance scene occurs, throw in a large consignment of weapons and a dramatic showdown for added spice. Yup it’s the plot from Terminator 2, which, if I recall rightly, was a warmed over version of the plot from the original movies. How long do they think we will keep eating leftovers? Saving graces. This it the point where I normally comment of some kick ass special effect or great acting that saves the film from the trash heap, but alas it is not to be in this case. Arnie is as wooden as ever and perhaps getting a bit too flabby around the edges to play a hard as nails cyborg of the future. It would appear that Nick Stahl went to the Arnold Schwarzenegger school of acting and has a two dimensional character giving the impression he is...

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Ok so someone had to go and I’ll tell you, there were arguments about this mainly due to the fond memories me and Morton have of the original 1969 classic of the same name with Michael Cain and gang, 3 minis, a traffic jam, Italy and some gold among other things. So obviously neither of us wanted our memory tarnished by another rubbish remake. In the end I gave in and with that trudged to the UGC for what I fully believed to be 2 hours of mindless drivel ripping up a classic. So what do we have, no Cain but at least we get Norton who has to be one of the best actors of this generation, I was never a great fan of Cain anyways so no loss there. Wahlberg as the leader of a band of thieves, inside man Steve (Norton), computer genius Lyle (Green), wheelman handsome Rob (Statham), explosives expert Left-Ear (Mos Def) and safecracker John Bridger (Sutherland). It all starts in Italy with a $35 million gold heist but that quickly moves to Los Angeles after Norton double cross the team...

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I apologise in advance for this review sounding fan boyish in any way but you have to understand I have been collecting slasher movies from the age of 13 (as my video and DVD collections will contest) and Jason just happens to be my number one favourite slasher of them all with Michael Myers running a close second. So sit back, relax, turn off all the lights and read as I go on and on about how wonderful this movie is. This movie sucks! On so many levels this movie could have saved the slasher flicks from another decade a tedious B movie status, but alas it was not to be. Freddy and Jason fans have been waiting for a movie like this for years and it’s a shame to see such a chance wasted. A rather standard script complete with obligatory shower scene, the old “if you have sex / do drugs / drink alcohol you will die” motif doesn’t help matters much and the characterisation, if you can call it that, of most of the players is standard teen cinema nonsense. There’s even...

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An immortal battle for supremacy between vampires and werewolves is raging. Selene (Kate Beckinsale) is a vampire warrior sworn to destroy the werewolves, who finds herself doubting her leaders when she encounters Michael (Scott Speedman) a human. The movie starts with an action packed shoot out in a subway where we find the vampires hunting down werewolves who are in turn hunting Michael for reasons unkown. It would be very easy to pass over this movie as another Matrix bandwagon jumper, but really I think we all have to get over that. The Matrix brought in a new style of cinematography and styling; subsequent films aren't ripping it off any more than film noir was taken up as a dominant style of it's time. What the Matrix did was introduce a new genre (or amalgam of genres), and Underworld, like Equilibrium before it, is a film within that genre. Ok now I’ve got that off my chest on with the review… The fight scenes in the subway and in general do have a very familiar...