Reviews

This is the first sequel in the Star Wars franchise in 32 years. A long time ago in an era far, far away.

The First Order, the new Empire, is set up awfully fast in The Force Awakens. The last time we saw the Empire at the end of Return of the Jedi, it was defeated and destroyed. Here, somehow, it's at full strength again and even has Star Destroyers and a battle station that dwarfs the Death Star. I think the writers have missed an opportunity to show The First Order as underdog fanatics plotting to overthrow the New Republic in a patient build-up. But nope, we get one line that they have risen from the ashes of the Empire and, that's it, they're back, just like that.

The writing is shorn of George Lucas's devotion to Joseph Campbell's mythic structure. While that gave unprecedented depth to the original trilogy, it bogged the prequels down in clunky exposition dialogue. The new script loses the mythic structure but gains pace and humour again that is reminiscent of A New Hope. The pulling back from full-on CGI aids the realism too.

Lawrence Kasdan who co-wrote The Empire Strikes Back returns as co- writer here, but The Force Awakens is nowhere near as good as that masterpiece. There were so many great lines in the original trilogy "The force will be with you…always," "I am your Father" and "I've got a bad feeling about this." Some of them are repeated in The Force Awakens but there is nothing new to challenge the old lines. That is a pity. (In the age of the instantaneous internet, could the "I am your father" moment be kept secret now? I doubt it. I accidentally saw a major spoiler for The Force Awakens while typing in a hashtag on Twitter.)

Michael Arndt gives lectures on the original trilogy and wrote the first draft of The Force Awakens script. Perhaps he's great at analysing why Star Wars works but not so great at creating something new. The script is okay, nothing more (there is a nice riff on the father/son theme that runs through every Star Wars movie and Han Solo finally accepting The Force as being true is a nice payoff to his "hokey religion" dismissal in 1977).

Harrison Ford brings a much-needed weary wit and charisma to the film in reprising his old scoundrel Han Solo. He's clearly enjoying himself and the film lifts whenever he's on screen. Ford is given some better lines and more to do than in Indiana Jones & The Kingdom of the Crystal Skull, but, just as in that film, the older stars are shoved aside in favour of the newcomers who aren't that interesting.

Carrie Fisher looks like she's been at the Botox. The only parts of her face she can move are her lips and even that's a struggle. It doesn't look like her and it is a shock seeing her as a shrunken old woman.

We know Daisy Ridley is miscast in the lead role. We know because J.J. Abrams told her on set that her acting was "wooden." If you've cast someone that can't act in the lead role of the biggest franchise in film history, you've hired the wrong person. Ms Ridley compensates by over- acting horribly, shouting every line with her eyes as wide as possible. She runs (a lot) and cries (a lot). Apart from that, the jury is still out on her. Then again, Star Wars has a history of not-great acting, so she's probably keeping up a great tradition.

Muhammad Ali-lookalike, John Boyega, took some criticism in early reviews, but I actually thought he had good comic timing, the audience liked him and he even struck up a buddy rapport with old grumpy pants himself, Harrison Ford. Let's hope we see more of him in the sequels and spin-offs, he's the best of the new breed.

John Williams returns to score the picture and it's okay, nothing as unforgettable as Vader's Theme from Empire. Darth Vader himself is, for me, the greatest villain in movie history and he is sorely missed. Vader choked people to death by breaking their necks if they defied him. Whereas new baddie Kylo Ren takes his frustration out by incinerating inanimate objects with his lightsaber to keep the rating kiddie- friendly. There's also some predictable PC casting. Everything that was white and male before now has to be rebooted as female, ethnic and/or LGBT (we're getting an all-female Ghostbusters reboot and possibly a black James Bond in the future.)

The Force Awakens isn't as good as I thought it was going to be and I doubt it will stand up to repeat reviewing as the original trilogy did but it is perhaps the best that can be expected now George Lucas has bailed out on his film company. It will no doubt break box office records. No film could probably live up to the hype anyway. It is good to have Star Wars back in whatever form it's in (I think I know the big plot twist in the next movie too but I won't spoil it for you, dear reader.)

I was very cautious about this sequel. When it was announced, I wondered how they could possibly top Rise of the Planet of the Apes. Then Rise director Rupert Wyatt bowed out and I had even more fears that it was going to be a Tim Burtonesque ape disaster. I needn't have worried. Matt Reeves has come in and done a superb job of directing. Fox also wisely kept Rise writers Amanda Silver and Rick Jaffa on board. They started out writing movies like The Hand That Rocks The Cradle which was okay if derivative. There was no indication that they would have the capacity to write anything as layered as Rise or Dawn of the Planet of the Apes then. For me, they are the best screenwriters currently working in Hollywood and I'm not alone in thinking that. Steven Spielberg has hired them to write the new Jurassic Park movie Jurassic World while James Cameron has them working on two of the Avatar sequels. Praise from Caesar(s).

The expert writing is old-school brilliant. It is patient, this is not a dumbed-down action movie to placate non-English-speaking markets. The story and characters have the complexity of a novel. Perhaps this will make movie studios see that audiences want intelligent movies that stand up to repeat viewing as Dawn will and not forgettable junk that's little more than chewing gum for the eyes.

The crux of the story revolves around several power struggles. Ape leader Caesar, raised by kind humans, is struggling internally with his love for humans but also with their capacity for cruelty towards animals that he experienced first-hand in Rise. His second-in-command is Koba, a laboratory chimpanzee who was never shown the good side of humanity. As Koba puts it, he was caged and tortured and points to his scarred body as an example of "human work." He wants to wipe out all people. Koba is the embodiment of human guilt over our treatment of animals. He would be the villain of the piece but he was made so by humans and like all great villains, you see where he is coming from and you even slightly admire and like him until you remind yourself that he is a killer (Shakespeare did that with characters like Richard III). If animals did rise up against us, they would be totally justified in annihilating us as that is what we have done to them since the dawn of time.

The power struggle on the ape side is reflected on the human side. Gary Oldman is the Koba of the humans; he fears apes, doesn't trust them and wants to obliterate them all. Oldman is only in the movie for about ten minutes at the start and end and you kind of wonder why a great actor is given such little screen time and so little to do. It was probably a marketing thing. He is the only real big name actor in this movie and they needed someone to put on the poster to sell it. The writers understand that drama is conflict and with these constant power struggles and hunting and war scenes, there is non-stop drama from start to finish in Dawn. The writers come to the fatalistic conclusion that however much the Doves on both sides try to placate the Hawks, the Hawks will get their war in the end.

And get his war Koba does in spectacular fashion. The scene where Koba rides screaming on horseback through flames with two machines guns blazing is like something out of Scarface (the way the apes speak also has more than an echo of Tony Montana.) There is also a nod to The Godfather when Caesar just barely survives Koba's assassination attempt (with a name like Caesar, he was always going to be a target for that) and starts doling out sage counter-attack strategies to his underlings like Brando's Don Corleone did. When the apes set fire to the San Franciscan human enclave, it's hard not to push the Caesar analogy and see it as Rome burning.

The directing, ape acting (especially the indispensable Andy Serkis) and special effects are also superb but, more importantly, they mesh together perfectly with the writing to push the whole thing to another level. The Motion-Capture or Mo-Cap has evolved to the point where they can finally do realistic CGI eyes (just look at how bad the eyes of Jabba The Hutt are in the 1997 Special Edition of Star Wars to see what I mean but it was 17 years ago and technology has moved on a hell of a lot since then). No longer are the eyes glassy-looking, hollow and fake. These ape eyes show concentration, emotion and depth. For the first time, there is believable consciousness behind the eyes. They even end the movie on an extreme close-up of Caesar's eyes, there's confidence for you and the effect stands up to scrutiny.

The Charlton Heston ape movies had Orang-Utans (the politicians/clergy) using Gorilla muscle (the army) to suppress the liberal scientist Chimpanzees. Gorillas have been docile so far and will have to start morphing into their militaristic future selves in the already-planned next Apes movie. That goes for the Orang-Utans too (We see in Dawn that Maurice is clearly The Lawgiver of the Heston movies teaching young apes their commandment that "Ape Shall Not Kill Ape.")

I rarely want to see a movie a second time in the cinema but Dawn of the Planet of the Apes is one of them. I was disappointed with X-Men: Days of Future Past, it was good but not great as I thought it would be. Edge of Tomorrow was okay but Dawn is the real deal. This will be looked on as a classic in future years and rightly so. It's thrilling to see a franchise so many of us grew up with being done better than the first time out. Long may it continue.

Not even two years after the event, the movie about the decade-long pursuit and killing of Al Qaeda terrorist leader and 9/11 plotter Osama Bin Laden comes to the big screen. It's been nominated for a Best Picture Oscar, so I was expecting something incredible.

It reminded me a little of The French Connection with the hero obsessed with catching the bearded bad guy leading to a downbeat, make-up-your-own-mind conclusion. It also reminded me of The Silence of the Lambs with the female protagonist up against a sexist, bureaucratic male brick wall as she tries to put an end to an evil man's killing spree.

While Zero Dark Thirty is fascinating on a technical front and very good on the methods used to hunt Bin Laden, it falls down on the most important front: characterisation. The lead character is called simply Maya (we never find out her surname, not even a fictitious one). We only find out two personal things about her; she was recruited to the CIA from high school and she has no friends (remember how we were made to care about Clarice Starling in Silence of the Lambs with all the childhood memories about the death of her cop father?). So we know almost nothing about Maya and therefore we don't really care about her. It's hard to care about a character you've seen torturing suspects anyway, even if they are allegedly guilty. Maya is also charmless and humourless and there is no comic relief in a film of two and a half hours. I don't believe Maya would be allowed to harass her superior by writing on his window in red ink every day or that she would describe herself as a "motherf***er" to the head of the CIA without some sort of reprimand.

Reviewers have been raving about Jessica Chastain's performance and I have to wonder why. She was okay in it. I can't really see anything great about her performance mostly because her part is underwritten as such a one-note character. Only in the final scene does she do anything impressive with some very convincing tears but up until then, it was an average performance.

Also, Seal Team Six, the team that eventually killed Bin Laden, are portrayed as a bunch of bored jocks goofing off in the desert. They even get put down by Maya and just stand there like dummies. Again, I didn't believe that an elite unit of extremely tough men like them would take that from anyone. It really downplays Seal Team Six's significance in the whole thing and gives Maya credit for everything. This is a female director making a feminist point and I do believe she has taken a lot of creative licence to get that point across and the film suffers for it.

As virtually every reviewer has remarked, the last half hour with the assault on Bin Laden's compound is the best part of the film with director Kathryn Bigelow in her element. No more torture, no more talking, no more feminist point-scoring, it is pure action and suspense. You finally start to feel something. Even though we all know the outcome, the stakes are enormous. It's like a mini-film within a film like the stoned helicopter sequence in Goodfellas. With Tomahawk missiles, Apache helicopters and Bin Laden's codename Geronimo, it seems the Indian Wars are still ongoing at least in the American psyche. Geronimo is defeated once more and his body flown out where it is formally identified by the all-powerful Maya.

The film ends ambiguously with the line: "Where do you want to go?" as Maya sits alone in a huge plane crying. Is Kathryn Bigelow desperate to re-establish the character's femininity in the last scene after stomping through the film with a ruthless, robotic persona? Is Maya crying for herself or for what she's done in the movie? Is she crying because her 10-year obsession Bin Laden is dead and her life is essentially pointless now? Is it Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder or PMT? Your guess is as good as mine.

As I was leaving the cinema, I overheard some middle-aged people debating the film. This woman said she believed that Bin Laden is still alive and that the movie was only saying he was dead for propaganda purposes. It seems the mysterious, invincible aura of Osama Bin Laden still exists for some people. For me, he is dead. I mourn not his passing but at what we have become in the fight against him.

When Alien first appeared in 1979, it really was a game-changer for the science fiction genre. For the first time, a creature from outer space looked believably extra-terrestrial on screen and had a five-stage life cycle (egg, face-hugger, chest-burster, young adult and adult or warrior as James Cameron calls it) straight out of Biology 101.

James Cameron's Aliens was that rarity, something that respected the first film but nevertheless improved upon it to make one of the best sequels ever made (Sigourney Weaver got an Oscar nomination for her performance, how many sci-fi films can boast about that? Not many).

Alien 3 literally crashed the franchise and, while Alien Resurrection was an improvement, that's not saying much. Alien Vs Predator wasn't bad, Alien Vs Predator: Requiem with annoying teenagers added to the mix was a forgettable misfire to say the least.

And now, 33 years on, original director Ridley Scott has returned to the franchise he kicked off in such dazzling style. Comparisons have been made to George Lucas returning to the Star Wars series to do prequels with mixed results but I believe Ridley Scott's effort here is better than that.

The film starts off with a huge albino giant with killer abs drinking what looks like an eel smoothie and having something awful happen to him (he's like a cross between the Silver Surfer, the monsters in Duran Duran's Wild Boys video and that bald dude from The Hills Have Eyes.) Fast forward 2,000 years to the year 2089. Noomi Rapace plays Doctor Elizabeth Shaw, an archaeologist who discovers primitive cave paintings that seem to point to alien visitation in prehistory. Another fast-forward of four years, finds Shaw on board the spaceship Prometheus in deep space about to stop off at the planet hinted at in the cave paintings. Weyland Industries (the evil company from the first Alien films hasn't merged with Yutani just yet) has funded this exploration to the tune of a trillion dollars.

Charlize Theron and Michael Fassbender are perfect Aryan blondes in the mould of Rutger Hauer and Daryl Hannah from Blade Runner. Theron's character starts out as a cold control freak reminiscent of Nurse Ratched in One Flew Over The Cuckoo's Nest. When she is prepared to let people die on the planet or even take up a flame-thrower and kill them herself, she becomes something much darker. Later on, it is revealed that she is old Peter Weyland's daughter and, when she refers to her father as a king, it takes on a Shakespearean, King Lear dimension of the old man giving control of his kingdom to his vicious daughter.

Ireland's Michael Fassbender gives another assured, notable performance and he is rapidly bagging all the plum acting gigs going. It is interesting to see him progress as an actor.

Noomi Rapace is impregnated with a precursor of the chest-burster and gives herself an astonishing DIY abortion that has to be seen to be believed. (If this is a prequel to Alien, how come they didn't have all that fancy medical equipment, 360-degree helmets and 3D cave-mapping drones in a time that is supposed to be more technologically advanced? Another question I had was, if it was so easy to infect the space crew by skin contact or airborne droplet infection, why bother evolving into the chest burster? Seems a much faster way of transmission.)

The film is nowhere near as bad as the first reviews suggested. I think it was just the weight of 33 years of expectation not being met (what could live up to the reputation of the classic Alien we all grew up watching again and again on VHS, DVD and now Blu-Ray?) The ending of Prometheus is left tantalizingly open for a sequel with many questions still unanswered and I believe there could be life in the old Star Beast yet.

Rise Of The Planet Of The Apes is a triumph on every level. I am a long-time fan of this series (there's old home movie footage of me at age 7 wearing a Planet Of The Apes mask at Halloween). The Tim Burton remake of Planet Of The Apes was a mess and a disaster in 2001. When I heard they were doing Rise of the Planet of the Apes, I didn't hold out much hope for it. The director Rupert Wyatt had only made one other movie, The Escapist. And the writers had a patchy track record. From this inauspicious beginning, they have fashioned a movie or real heart and technical proficiency. (Wyatt is a name to watch out for in the future)

In the early days of computer-generated imagery (CGI), they had trouble rendering fur and eyes convincingly. Judging from this movie, they can now do both photo-realistically. They can capture not only an actor's facial movements but intelligence, fear and anger in the eyes too. That is some leap forward and that is what makes Caesar the ape a fully-fledged character that you care about and root for in his many trials and tribulations.

Rise Of The Apes is the story of a chimp called Caesar and his rise to power as leader of an ape revolution. It is essentially a remake of Conquest Of The Planet Of The Apes but, with a bigger budget than Conquest, Rise can expand on ideas only hinted at in the old movie.

For the first time in the apes series, we have a plausible explanation for why apes can talk. In the 1968 Planet Of The Apes, Charlton Heston sees from his spaceship's clock that he is some 2,000 years in the future, nowhere near enough time for apes to evolve the power of speech. That's where Rise Of The Planet Of The Apes comes in. Here, they have gene therapy and the cure for Alzheimer's disease providing the unexpected side-effect of raising an ape's IQ rapidly (similar to how the cure for cancer mutated in I Am Legend, a remake of another Charlton Heston sci-fi flick). Exposure to the more aggressive virus later pushes Caesar's intelligence further and gives him the power of speech.

There's a really good scene where Caesar demonstrates how it is easy to break one stick (an ape alone) but harder to break many sticks together. This bundle of sticks in his hand is like the fasces of ancient Rome, the word fascism originates from it and is an intelligent reminder of the cruel, genocidal society the apes will create in the future when it comes to their treatment of humans. It also reminds us that today's revolutionaries are tomorrow's dictators because absolute power corrupts absolutely.

There are some who questioned the relevance of Frieda Pinto's character, but I don't care. The girl is utterly gorgeous in a Halle Berry kind of way. If she has a flaw, I can't see it. I have no problem watching her all glammed up here.

The final ape assault is a tremendous outburst of primal ferocity brilliantly rendered by the WETA effects team. It leaves it open for a sequel (or sequels as the writers and director have said).

I smiled to myself at the end with the ape virus being spread around the world via airports and even to Africa. It's the HIV pandemic in reverse, a disease which started out in apes in Africa. Sly humour which ties in nicely with the satire of the 1968 original (I would argue that this is the best movie in the apes series since the first one in 1968 and I never thought I would ever see that or say it about a new movie.)

There's life in the old ape yet! And I, for one, am looking forward to seeing what they do with ape series next. Today San Francisco, tomorrow THE WORLD!

Brooklyn's Finest is a cynical, ironic title as, it would seem from this movie that there is no one fine, whether they're cop or criminal, in the borough of Brooklyn. Everyone is using, robbing and/or killing everyone else. It's like that old John Lennon song: "Everyone's hustling for a buck or a dime/I'll scratch your back and you knife mine."

Director Antoine Fuqua is back on Training Day territory here both in subject matter and with star Ethan Hawke and he has a real feel for the street milieu. Richard Gere is on familiar ground here too wearing the same uniform he had on in Internal Affairs (it's a credit to his genetics that he doesn't seem a day older 20 years on from that movie).

There are three stories; Richard Gere plays a burnt-out veteran cop one week from retirement (haven't we seen this movie before? The "cop-a-week-from-retirement" is as bad a stereotype as the criminal doing "one last job.") He is forced to train in rookies and his experienced callousness clashes with their youthful idealism and forces him to re-examine his life.

Ethan Hawke plays a Noo Yawk, Catholic, Italian-American dirty cop (count those clichés, people). His name is Sal and he has kids named Vinnie and Vito (yes, really, it has all the ethnic depth of the Goodfellas episode of The Simpsons). He is desperate to move his pregnant wife to a better, healthier home and so he decides to kill drug dealers and steal their drug money every time his team makes a bust (as you do).

Don Cheadle is an undercover cop wrestling with the guilt he feels about setting up a criminal (Wesley Snipes, good to see him in a major film again) he is close to. It's this story that works best.

The three stories connect at the end and it leads to some highly unlikely coincidences. Just as Richard Gere is about to blow his own brains out in a car, a missing girl he remembers from a police notice board appears behind him. And the three main characters find themselves in the same slum project at the same time going after three different sets of criminals. You can see the tragic ending coming, but there are some surprises.

The main problem with the film is that there's no one to root for. There are no heroes until the final scene and by then it's too late. There are only bad guys and even badder guys. It's a world of perpetual darkness and it does stay with you after you've seen it, but the clichés and stereotypes blunt it's impact and make it too much like other movies like The New Centurions or Fort Apache: The Bronx. File under missed opportunity.

Firstly may I say that I am not, nor have I ever been a member of Facebook. And, after seeing the ruthless, cutthroat way the website was set up by Mark Zuckerberg (Jesse Eisenberg), I have no inclination to join it at any time in the future (if only to stop job interviewers and the Taxman spying on me to see if I'm telling the truth.)

The above quote about every creation myth needing a Devil sums up the movie. You could argue that Zuckerberg is the Lucifer who wants to take over Eduardo Saverin's Heaven (played by Anthony Perkins lookalike Andrew Garfield), the difference being that it's God (Saverin) who gets cast out of the kingdom, not Zuckerberg. Enter Napster creator Shawn Fanning (Justin Timberlake) and the movie then becomes a retelling of the Faust legend with Zuckerberg being completely seduced by Fanning's promises of wealth and power but he must sacrifice friendship to achieve it. (If you ever wanted proof that Nice Guys Finish Last, just see Eduardo Saverin here.) Jesse Eisenberg has been typecast as nerds in his career so far (e.g. Zombieland), but he's never played one as well as he does here and such a complex one at that. I don't know the real Mark Zuckerberg, but he is portrayed here as an undoubtedly talented computer programmer/hacker (A genius? Who knows, maybe.) He certainly has a ferocious focus, confidence and drive for such a young man. He is also two-faced, arrogant and completely unreliable. Essentially, Zuckerberg's character boils down to him being a hyper-sensitive, vengeful nerd with a chip on his shoulder, endlessly trying to get one over on the people he views as superior to him, even if they want to help him.

I've never really understood the appeal of Justin Timberlake to women. I've always thought he was a rather plain-looking guy who tried too hard to act black and was really only famous for having once dated Britney Spears. But if he's half as devilishly charming in real life as he is in this movie, I can see why he's catnip to the ladies (his millions don't hurt either, right). Timberlake was a leftfield casting choice by director David Fincher that pays off brilliantly.

The women in the movie are treated like cattle, but then again so are the men who get stepped on by Zuckerberg and Fanning as they rise to power. (I had no idea that Asian women were such a commodity among the rich).

The script is by Aaron Sorkin, a writer who's been around for a long time. He wrote A Few Good Men as far back as 1992 and The West Wing, but this is far and away the best thing he's ever written and he's sure to get an Oscar nomination for his work, if not win the coveted statuette outright. The movie has parallels with Citizen Kane and Martin Scorsese's The Aviator (when the girl in the opening scenes accuses Zuckerberg of having OCD, the parallels with that other young American billionaire Howard Hughes are made clear).

It's hard to break new ground when you've been a movie director for 18 years, but David Fincher has managed to do that here. You can't compare it to anything he's done before. He could well be an Oscar contender too.

I first saw "Dirty Harry" back in the 1980s and I never get tired of watching it. It's so well-made that it's always a pleasure to watch. The script is one of the best Hollywood scripts ever and is filled with unforgettable characters, dialogue and action scenes.

According to the Mayor of San Francisco (the great John Vernon), "there's a madman loose." The madman in question is a serial killer called Scorpio (he is also a paedophile, a rapist, a thief and an extortionist). Enter his opponent - unconventional cop Inspector Harry Callahan. From the start it's clear that Harry does things his way and resents authority, but he's a good cop and is let loose to hunt down Scorpio.

It's in the conflict between Harry and Scorpio that the movie really comes into its own. They are equals in many ways, both are expert marksmen, both are control freaks and both enjoy sadistic games (Harry taunts suspects to go for their gun if they think he's out of bullets, a kind of variation on Russian Roulette. Scorpio kidnaps and buries a young girl and he runs Harry from one phone booth to another, if Harry misses one call, she dies. It turns out she was dead all along and Harry was wasting his time.) It could also be argued that Harry is as crazy as Scorpio, just look at his face when he steps on Scorpio's wounded leg in the football stadium to get him to confess the buried girl's whereabouts. Yet they are different in that they are on opposite sides of the law.

Like Buffalo Bill in "The Silence of the Lambs," Scorpio is a fictionalized version of a real killer. The Zodiac Killer terrorized Northern California in the late 60s and was still at large when this movie came out (he has never been caught to this day). In one of his infamous taunting letters to the press, he claimed he would shoot a bus full of children. Although Zodiac never carried out that threat, Scorpio makes good on it in this movie by hijacking a school bus with children on board (while Scorpio never kills any of them, he has already killed a young black boy and raped and killed a young girl earlier in the film, so it's quite possible he could have harmed the kids had Harry not intervened).

Andy Robinson has a field day playing Scorpio and he never really got a role that good again and it's a pity. Clint Eastwood suggested him to Don Siegel after seeing him in a stage play.

John Wayne and Frank Sinatra were once in the running to play Harry Callahan - Wayne passed, Sinatra injured his hand. Thank God for that, Clint Eastwood was never better than in this and the role of Harry fits him like a glove (if you want to see what Wayne and Sinatra would have been like, check out "McQ" and "The First Deadly Sin" respectively.)

The running gag throughout the movie is the reason why Callahan is called Dirty Harry. Another cop gives his theory that it's because Harry "hates everybody" and goes on to list all the racial slurs for those types of people. Harry himself, after stopping a suicidal jumper, explains that he's Dirty Harry because he gets "every sh*t job that comes along." Another possible explanation for Harry's nickname comes in two scenes where he voyeuristically spies on naked girls while tracking Scorpio (this voyeurism is another way he is like Scorpio, the movie begins with Scorpio watching a girl swimming in a rooftop pool through a telescopic sight and Harry even follows Scorpio to a strip joint later on).

There is a fascinating example of how primitive criminal profiling was back in 1971. The chief of police makes a throwaway comment about how "sick guys" rob the same place many times. Today, forensics and profilers would be all over this case from the first murder and Harry's old-fashioned leg work would take a back seat.

The subtext of Dirty Harry is really about the beginnings of Political Correctness and how old school cop Harry is unable and unwilling to conform to it. Harry would have begun his career as a cop when police brutality and racism were the norm and confessions were routinely beaten out of suspects. He gets a rude awakening when he tries that heavy-handed tactic on Scorpio and is berated by his superiors for it. It's clearly a shock for him; the other shock is that Scorpio goes free because Harry never got a warrant even though the dogs in the street know he's guilty as hell. It leads to the famous finale in which Harry, having cut through the bureaucracy and killed Scorpio, realizes he can no longer function as a cop in the system and throws his badge into the water. Box office success would dictate that Harry would get a replacement badge for four sequels. None of those movies could touch the original "Dirty Harry" (although the first half hour of "Sudden Impact" came close to matching it and gave us that other classic Harry line "Go ahead, make my day."). "Dirty Harry" remains an all-time classic nearly 40 years after its release and it remains my favorite Clint Eastwood movie and his best collaboration with director Don Siegel.

In the mid-1990s, Quentin Tarantino argued that his idol Robert De Niro had let quality control in his career slip. "The care in the work isn't there anymore", he noted. Well, if you wanted proof of that argument, this movie is it.

Reuniting with his "This Boy's Life" director Michael Caton-Jones (this is easily the worst movie he's ever directed), Robert De Niro sleepwalks his way through this movie for the money. He's overweight and looks utterly bored throughout. Only at the end does De Niro wake up and start trying to come up with something, but by then it's too late to care.

Allegedly based on a true story (you could have fooled me, the script is an awful collection of cop clichés and junkie stereotypes), the film concerns the drug-addicted son of a cop who accidentally gets caught up in murders and goes on the run. De Niro plays the father cop who must choose between family loyalty and his job (have a guess which one he chooses. It's obvious from the start).

With De Niro on autopilot, it falls to the rest of the cast to try and cover up for him. William Forsythe, De Niro's co-star from "Once Upon A Time In America", is in this as a drug dealer called Spyder (original name, huh? He has a conversation with a junkie that goes "Hey, Snake." "Hey, Spyder." Yup, it's that bad.) George Dzundza crops up as the hero's obese cop partner who gets bloodily murdered (the exact same role he played in "Basic Instinct.") The younger actors playing the junkies do everything obvious and overdo it at that. The only person who comes out of this with any credibility is Frances McDormand who manages to work up something realistic in her scenes with De Niro, but you can't polish a turd and this script is just that.

The explanation for De Niro's son turning to drugs is an unbelievable "you-weren't-there-for-me-dad" self-pitying rant at the end. Yes, folks, drug addiction really is that simple. How this script got through to production is a mystery. It's amateur hour nonsense.

This movie is so unambitious and uninspired; you have to wonder why they bothered making it at all. Avoid.

Based on a script Robert Rodriguez wrote back in 1994, "Predators" finally makes it to the big screen 16 years later. It's also the first direct Predator sequel (without Aliens in it) since "Predator 2" in 1990, so it's good to see it back again like an old friend returning after a long absence.

"Predators" has an interesting premise. The Predator species are no longer content to travel all the way to earth to hunt random victims in hot zones of conflict (did Schwarzenegger's victory convince them that humans had an unfair home advantage on Earth?). Now, their hunts are premeditated; they stalk their human prey, kidnap them from Earth and parachute them onto their home planet so the games can begin on their terms and on their turf.

The prey here is the usual multi-ethnic mix familiar from the original "Predator" movies and "Alien." We have the Hispanic female (Alice Braga from "I Am Legend") and the black mercenary, etc. We also get new types like a Japanese Yakuza gangster, a death row prisoner and a fighter from Chechnya no less. They do the usual squabbling/bonding as they try to figure out what the hell is going on.

Laurence Fishburne shows up for an all-too-brief cameo (with "Apocalypse Now" references) as a nutty lone survivor of previous Predator hunts. He has an imaginary friend that he talks to all the time and Fishburne is clearly having a blast, but he is not in it long enough. Pity.

There is a surprising amount of dialogue and Alan Silvestri's score lifted from the original "Predator" movie. They even pinch lines from James Cameron's Aliens.

Adrien Brody was a surprise casting choice for the lead here; he's not the first guy you think of as an action hero being quite thin and lanky usually. At the end though, he does get to take his shirt off (revealing a surprisingly buff bod) to go mano-a-mano with the Predator. Credit the writers for not going with the usual Predator self-destruct finale. The end also has a twist and sets it up for a sequel nicely (Rodriguez apparently wrote enough material for three "Predators" movies back in the 90s).

"Predators" is a return to form for the Predator franchise after the sloppy "Alien Vs Predator: Requiem" and is a worthy addition to the genre. I hope there will be a sequel (how about Stallone's Expendables team going up against the Predators? That would be awesome…hope you're reading this Fox!) There's life in the old beast yet!

The first Iron Man was a delight to behold. When Tony Stark eventually took to the skies in his fully-operational red Iron Man suit and flew to Afghanistan, the movie took on a giddy, magical feel not seen since "Superman" with Christopher Reeve back in the day. It was so clear what Iron Man could do and who his enemies were.

The same cannot be said for "Iron Man 2" which is lumbered with a script that is just dreadful and fails to deliver on every level.

Take the first scene between Robert Downey Jr. and Gwyneth Paltrow. The makers must have been trying to do some sort of rapid-fire screwball comedy dialogue but all they succeed in doing is getting the actors to talk over one another so its hard to make out what's being said. What they say isn't funny or interesting either, it's all shallow sound bites.

Superhero movies are only as good as their villain, e.g. Doc Ock in "Spiderman 2" or Lex Luthor in Chris Reeves "Superman" movies. The villain in "Iron Man 2" is a Russian called Whiplash played by Mickey Rourke (I hope he was paid well, as it does nothing for him or his career.) Whiplash makes his big arrival in the movie by attacking Tony Stark's racing car with electrified whips. This is a good start but once Whiplash has his whips taken from him, he becomes a very ordinary villain indeed with no other special powers to threaten Iron Man with. He is taken off to jail almost immediately and fades into the background for most of the film. It makes Whiplash look foolish instead of menacing and the character never recovers. His motivation for attacking Tony Stark/Iron Man is also not very clear or convincing, something about his father being betrayed by Stark's father but it's never explained any further(a flashback might have helped).

Scarlett Johannson looks gorgeous and tough as Natalie Rushman/Natasha Romanoff. She has some killer moves but strangely never gets to use them on the villain Whiplash. That would have made the script more interesting.

There is also an appearance by Samuel L. Jackson wearing an eye-patch that seems to set up the long-in-development Avengers movie that teams up the Marvel characters. It's a diversion about money that we don't need, it takes us out of the story when it should be all about getting Whiplash.

Then there's the finale. Whiplash attacks Stark again and fails...again (he's clearly incompetent). The resolution is far too easy. There's no twist to make Stark work hard for victory and that's boring.

Sam Rockwell, as the other villain, unveils a series of drone-style Iron Men and they gang up to attack Iron Man and his pal (Don Cheadle also in an Iron Man suit) but there are so many flying around at the end and the editing is so rapid that it's hard to tell what's happening. It's muddled, where the original "Iron Man" was crystal clear. That's the problem with this sequel. It feels rushed. The stench of desperation to top the first movie comes off the screen. Better take more care with "Iron Man 3."

P.S. Sam Rockwell's dancing is hilarious. It's almost worth another star.

Michael Corleone. Tony Montana. Carlito Brigante. All classic gangster characters brought to life by the great Al Pacino. He can add his portrayal of Benjamin 'Lefty' Ruggiero from "Donnie Brasco" to that rogue's gallery. Like a master musician, Pacino has found yet another riff on his gangster persona that is totally different from previous efforts. That's a true indication of Pacino's talent.

The film is based on the true story of how FBI Agent Joe Pistone infiltrated a New York mafia family for years under the alias of Donnie Brasco in the late 1970s and the toll it took on him and his wife and kids. Pistone/Brasco (Johnny Depp) is taken under the wing of veteran mobster Lefty Ruggiero(aka Horse Cock) played by Al Pacino and it's the touching almost father/son relationship between them that is the heart of this movie.

The script does things to the story in the book that actually hurt its credibility. In the book, Pistone could not participate in any crime or even, where possible, not be present when one was taking place. In this film though, not only do we see Agent Pistone witnessing murders, we also see him hacking up corpses for disposal and stealing $300,000 from the mob. Complete nonsense, of course. The evidence he amassed would have counted for nothing if he had done that for real. To avoid participating in crimes, Agent Pistone had to constantly advise his mafia cohorts against carrying out robberies. This made them suspicious and eventually culminated in the most tense scene in the book, strangely missing from the film. One day, some wise-guys took Pistone to a warehouse and asked him for the name and number of someone who could vouch for him. If Pistone couldn't think of one or the name didn't check out, they would kill him right there and then in the warehouse. Pistone gave them and a name and number and the mobsters went to investigate, leaving Pistone to sweat it out, knowing he could die the second they returned. Hours later, the mobsters came back to the warehouse and said Pistone's alibi checked out. Pistone had to let them see that he was not taking it lightly and lashed out at one of them. They never questioned his loyalty again. That would have made an incredible scene in this movie and I don't know why it wasn't included.

This is one Al Pacino's best performances, his Lefty can be an ice-cold killer one minute or a desperate father the next (his son is a junkie). He gives out fatherly advice to Donnie, but is also like an annoying relative. Lefty is the opposite of Mafia don Michael Corleone in "The Godfather" who was born into Mafia royalty and called the shots as the head honcho. Lefty is an older man way down the ranks of the mob who has missed his big chance and moans about it constantly. He feels disrespected by his Mafia colleagues and is drawn to Donnie Brasco as he is the only person in the film that gives him any respect.

Johnny Depp does well in the title role of Donnie Brasco/Agent Pistone and this is part of what I call his Crime Trilogy; "Public Enemies", "Blow" and "Donnie Brasco." Michael Madsen, still riding the crest of the "Reservoir Dogs" wave back in 1996 when this was made, is good as mob boss Sonny Black. Sadly, Madsen's career kind of went off the rails after this and he started doing stuff like "Species II" and the awful Bond movie "Die Another Day" and he ended up doing DTV movies mostly. Oddly, this very New York movie was directed by Brit Mike Newell and this is easily the best movie he's ever made. I would like to see him do another mob movie to see if can recapture the form he showed here.

The script by Paul Attanasio was nominated for an Oscar and it gives a top actor like Al Pacino something he can really get his teeth into and he runs with it and makes it into something special (Pacino should have been Oscar-nominated too for his work here but he wasn't). Pacino needs material of this quality again; his recent movies "88 Minutes" and "Righteous Kill" didn't really set the world on fire.

"Donnie Brasco" is an excellent mob movie that got rave reviews when it came out but is strangely forgotten about these days and never plays on TV much (possibly because it wasn't made by one of the major studios). That's a shame, as it's worth checking out if you haven't seen it.

It's four years since drug kingpin Alain Charnier escaped the police dragnet in New York (he explains in the sequel that he bribed his way out of trouble). The massive drugs haul that was captured was also stolen by corrupt NYPD officers (true story, also covered briefly in Ridley Scott's "American Gangster.") Now New York's finest, Popeye Doyle (Gene Hackman reprising his Oscar-winning role), is after Charnier (or "Frog One" as he calls him) on his home turf in France.

While the first film was mostly based on a true story (there was no spectacular car chase in the real case and Eddie Egan, the real Popeye Doyle, never shot one of his own men), for the sequel we are in pure fiction territory. No New York cop ever went looking for the real Charnier in France, he remained there protected by friends in high places and never faced justice.

Missing from this sequel are director William Friedkin and co-star Roy Scheider. Hackman and Friedkin fell out on the set of the first movie when Hackman stormed off after he felt he was being humiliated by Friedkin. They never worked together again ("Manchurian Candidate" director John Frankenheimer took over directing duties on this sequel and he does a good job). Roy Scheider is sorely missed, but he literally had bigger fish to fry in 1975 playing another cop in a little movie called "Jaws" for a young director called Steven Spielberg. Besides, Scheider had already done a sort of "French Connection" sequel two years earlier with "The Seven-Ups." It was another New York-set cop movie and had several similar hair-raising car chases in it. "The Seven-Ups" was directed by "French Connection" producer Philip D'Antoni, had the same editor and even starred some of the same actors like Scheider and Tony Lo Bianco. Alexander Jacobs co-wrote "The Seven-Ups" and "French Connection II."

Popeye Doyle is a fish out of water in "French Connection II" and this symbolism is taken literally in the opening scenes where the French custom of pinning paper fish to people as an April Fool's joke is shown. The taxi Doyle takes to the French police headquarters has a paper fish attached to the door.

The natural antagonism between the hot-headed Irish-American and his equally hot-headed French colleagues is good for some laughs (that historic Franco-American mistrust is even a running gag in shows like "The Simpsons"!). There are also some funny hand-held shots of Hackman walking around Marseilles and interacting with the public. It's like a holiday home movie from hell as Hackman's character struggles with the language, the locals and looks lost and he wanders the labyrinthine streets in search of his quarry.

Later on in the film, Charnier finds out that Doyle has followed him to France to continue the game of cat-and-mouse they started in New York. Charnier has Doyle kidnapped and shot up with heroin over and over until he becomes a junkie. They dump him in front of the police station and Doyle must try to go cold turkey to get off the drugs they've pumped him with. In a basement cell, Doyle goes through hell in scene after scene.

Some critics thought this segment of the film was overlong and irrelevant and that it robbed Doyle of his former menace. I disagree for several reasons; (1) the first "French Connection" was essentially a police procedural drama which was mainly focused on what the police do and how they do it in their war against drug dealers. It never really showed in detail the devastation these drugs do to people, so it was relevant to explore that in the sequel (2) Gene Hackman won an Oscar for his role as Popeye Doyle and perhaps he felt he had to defend his title in this sequel with these "cold turkey" scenes as he really goes to town screaming, raving and convulsing in pain. If there's a better depiction of the agony someone goes through to get off drugs, I haven't seen it. He is utterly convincing, but was surprisingly not even Oscar-nominated for his work this time out.

Doyle finally gives Charnier his comeuppance at the end by putting a bullet through his heart as his arrogant foe almost escapes again on his yacht. Even if this never happened for real, it's dramatically satisfying and Hollywood gives the audience what it wants. As sequels go, it's one of the best recapturing the character of Doyle and style of Friedkin well.

John Frankenheimer must have enjoyed shooting this movie in France, as he returned 23 years later to shoot a movie even more like the original "French Connection" with its kinetic car chases – "Ronin" with Robert De Niro in 1998. Gene Hackman never played Popeye Doyle again and he is now retired from movies. That's sad as the man was an acting genius and never gave a bad performance in over four decades dedicated to his craft. This movie proves that yet again.

It's New York in 1974 and architect Paul Kersey (Charles Bronson) has a good life and a happy family. That is all shattered one day when three thugs (one played by a very young Jeff Goldblum) follow Kersey's wife and daughter home from the supermarket. They attack them and end up killing his wife and leaving his daughter catatonic. Kersey takes to the streets and starts blasting away muggers left, right and centre in a series of vigilante attacks. The killings end when he is warned to leave town by the police or face a prison term.

There are some problems with the script of "Death Wish" that blunt its power somewhat. While it's realistic that Kersey would not be able to find his wife's killers in a city the size of New York, it's not dramatically satisfying that he never pinpoints them. You want to see Kersey make the thugs pay for what they did. Instead, what happens is that Kersey randomly shoots a load of muggers and his wife's murderers get away scot-free. It makes the whole movie seem pointless.

The movie also goes off the point halfway through when Kersey has to leave New York and go out West for a business meeting with a character called Janechill. The writers try to make the connection that Kersey is like a gunfighter from the old West dispensing justice when the law fails to do so. They even go so far as to give the Bronson character John Wayne's line from "True Grit" when he confronts a mugger: "Fill your hand." It's a diversion we don't need to a point that's laboured too much. Again, it may be realistic for Kersey to have to leave New York on business, but it's not dramatically satisfying as it takes him away from the problem we want to see him solve for a long time. The second act sags quite a bit here.

That's one of the reasons why "Death Wish II" is a better movie. Bronson's character finds and kills every one of the gang responsible for murdering his daughter and there is no midway distraction from what he sets out to do.

Life imitated art when Bernie Goetz really did shoot some muggers on a New York subway in 1984 and all the old arguments raised in this movie came up again; Is it right to take the law into your own hands? Is it okay to shoot "scum" who "deserve it"? Should gun controls be tougher?, etc.

"Death Wish" is a good movie if a little dated now. More importantly, it finally made Charles Bronson an A-list star in his 50s and he made four sequels, the fifth of which would be his last theatrical release. Without this, Hollywood would have missed out on old Stoneface Bronson and for that we should be grateful.

Iraq. The present. American bomb disposal units lead by Jeremy Renner's character have the thankless task of defusing sneakily-planted bombs (IEDs or Improvised Explosive Devices) in the deserted streets of Baghdad. They put their lives on the line daily and put themselves through constant stress and danger.

In this movie, Iraq is as disorientating and its people as alien to the Americans as Vietnam and its people were back in the 1960s and 70s during that conflict. The black character Sanborn says at one stage: "They all look the same to us." This is a phrase that many GIs said about Asians back in 'Nam.

The first half of this movie is loaded with some of the most nerve-wracking scenes of sweat-soaked tension to hit the screen recently. Brilliantly shot and edited, they have a shaky-cam documentary quality with some cutaways to strange images caught on-the-fly (the cat with the injured paw limping away, the kids looking on from balconies and the mini-tornado in the desert).

Some of it doesn't ring true, particularly the boozy, homo-erotic horseplay back at the barracks. There is also an odd scene where a load of (incompetent?) British soldiers (including a cameo by a VERY well-known English actor) get killed by snipers and it's up to the heroic Americans to save their asses.

The second half becomes more predictable and sentimental, particularly the overdone speeches about having kids or the ludicrous lengths Renner's character goes to to try and save one. Renner was nominated for a Best Actor Oscar but he didn't particularly impress me, he's okay, nothing more.

This movie won the Best Picture Oscar recently and, for me, it's a double award for the troops out in Iraq and for the efforts of the filmmakers (just as Sean Penn's Oscar for "Milk" was really for the struggles of Harvey Milk and the gay community and for Penn's efforts).

"The Hurt Locker" is certainly a good film, but I don't think it's a great one and I'm not sure people will look back on it as a classic.

This is the first live concert movie from George Michael. He also says it will be the only one he ever releases. If that's true, it's a fine record to leave behind of his 2006/2007 "25 Live Tour." I saw him twice myself on that tour and it was spectacular. I saw him once indoors and once outdoors and the vast screen and lighting behind him looked far better indoors in the dark.

This concert was recorded indoors at Earls Court in London in August 2007. George is in fine voice throughout and does some surprising cover versionsin particular an excellent version of Nina Simone's "Feelin' Good." All his greatest hits are here including "Faith" "Careless Whisper" and "Outside" and old Wham! favourites like "I'm Your Man" and "Everything She Wants."

There's some fascinating backstage footage between songs showing him towelling off, doing costume changes and using obscene amounts of hairspray before running back on to thrill the crowd. George is exhausted by the end but he gives it his all and you won't be disappointed when you see this show. It's great entertainment from start to finish.

This film came out in 2009, but it could have come out in 1969 judging by its hippy, trippy visuals (check out the scene where the tribe join hands and chant as they worship a glowing tree!), its tree-hugging, pacifist stance and its intentional similarities with the Vietnam conflict (helicopter gunships destroying vast tracts of jungle as they attack the indigenous inhabitants).

It's 12 years on from Titanic and writer/director/producer/editor James Cameron has returned with this astonishing visual feast. Like Titanic and T2 before it, it's the most expensive film ever made and every cent of it is up there on the silver screen in amazing 3D.

Paraplegic Jake Sully (Sam Worthington) arrives on the fertile planet of Pandora and builds up trust with the native people through an avatar which enables him to become a nine-foot blue cat-like alien (sounds plausible!).

The Na'vi, the tribe Sully comes into contact with, have a little bit of everything in their creation; a hint of Native American (Mohican haircuts, bows and arrows), a dash of Jamaican (dreadlocks and a slight Jamaican accent) and some African tribal designs used in their costumes and jewellery.

As with the Irish immigrants in "Titanic", Cameron is again on the side of the oppressed underdog in "Avatar." The villains in "Avatar" are greedy, genocidal strip-miners who want to steal the rich mineral deposits of Pandora for themselves (note the similarity with the grabbing of oil in Iraq). Cameron reveals his true colours as an old hippie with this ecologically-correct, anti-war movie (surprising for a man who nuked and shot up everything in sight in the 80s with "Aliens" and "The Terminator" with all their close-ups of gleaming hardware and phallic guns dispensing empty shell casings all over the place, I guess old JC is growing up).

There are also nods to other movies including Predator and Last of the Mohicans.

Sigourney Weaver reunites with Cameron here for the first time since "Aliens" in 1986 and it's always good to see her on screen even if it is a little sad to see one of your childhood heroes getting older.

Once again, James Cameron creates a warrior woman to sit alongside Ellen Ripley in "Aliens" or Sarah Connor in "Terminator 2: Judgment Day." She is called Neytiri (played through the magic of CGI by black actress Zoe Saldana).

Sam Worthington is better here than he was in "Terminator: Salvation", but the jury is still out on him as an actor. He seems to lack the charisma that the really great stars have. Only time will tell if his Hollywood career has legs.

"Avatar" is a long film, but it is enjoyable. As with all 3D movies, there are some scenes you just feel were put in to show off the technology and they do seem to go on a little long but the staggering final battle just about makes up for any earlier flaws. Once again James Cameron has pushed the boundaries of what is possible in cinema and that can only be a good thing. What will he think of next?

Quentin Tarantino has been on a downward spiral recently and "Death Proof" seemed to signal that he had run out of ideas and was now imitating himself. "Inglorious Basterds" got generally good reviews from the critics, but I stayed away from the cinema release (that would have been unthinkable back in Tarantino's "Pulp Fiction" heyday, oh how the mighty have fallen!) The film is a Jewish World War II revenge fantasy about a team of Jewish G.I.s lead by Brad Pitt who launch an "Apache resistance" against the Nazis behind enemy lines, scalping their victims to spread terror in the German ranks.

The film seems to be a love letter to Tarantino's Jewish financier Harvey Weinstein who has bankrolled every one of his movies for the last 15 years. It's also a tip of the hat to the movie-obsessed French for honouring him with the Palme D'Or for "Pulp Fiction." As Tarantino knows more about movies than probably any human being alive, he makes "Inglorious Basterds" a movie about a Nazi movie premiere which gives him the opportunity to get his fan-boy rocks off as his characters discuss obscure European films and filmmakers.

Brad Pitt recently said that he's lost interest in acting and it shows as he way overdoes his performance here as Lieutenant Aldo Raine. He speaks in an overly-loud redneck accent and reduces his character to a walking comic book of tough-guy clichés. Tarantino, once the master of dialogue, doesn't help him much with the lines he gives him to speak (just look at the scene where Pitt complains over and over and about being in a basement. Okay, Quentin, we get it!).

Christoph Waltz received universal praise for his performance as SS Colonel Hans Landa and it is impressive to see him act in three different languages (English, French and German) and he is playing something different than the usual sadistic Nazi monster (e.g. Ralph Fiennes in "Schindler's List"). Waltz's Landa is quite a charming SS man and, at first, it did seem ridiculous that he would let Jewish girl Shoshanna escape the massacre of her family. However, the plot that Landa hatches to save his own neck and prosper in the United States makes his leniency seem believable later.

Diane Kruger plays the German actress Bridget von Hammersmark and it's interesting to see her acting in her native German language for once instead of the American-English she affects in the "National Treasure" movies.

Mike Myers has a pointless, one-scene cameo as a British officer. He's heavily-disguised with make-up and filmed in long-shot (was the make-up not good enough for close-ups, Quentin?).

Eli Roth, Tarantino acolyte and director of the "Hostel" movies, appears as "The Bear Jew" Donnie Donowitz and he's bulked up alarmingly for the part. Elliott Gould probably would have played this part if the movie had been made in the 70s.

There are nods to other movies. The deal Pitt strikes with Landa is reminiscent of the bargain Clint Eastwood struck with a German Panzer commander to share the gold in "Kelly's Heroes" (Tarantino even uses a piece of original music from that film in "Inglorious Basterds.") The fiery massacre of the Nazis in the locked cinema recalls the finale of "The Dirty Dozen" and the "all the rotten eggs in one basket" line is from "The Great Escape." Any historically-accurate movie about an assassination attempt on Hitler would end in failure. We know Hitler survived every attempt on his life and committed suicide in his bunker in May 1945. But this is Tarantinoland and thank God it is. Here we see the Fuhrer get his comeuppance from the machine-gun of a Jew (Eli Roth) and his body seems to get riddled with bullets for about three hours (who could accuse Quentin of overkill?!). It's followed by a suicide bombing of the whole place (nice topical touch, Quentin). It's an audacious move on Tarantino's part to rewrite history the way he saw fit and it's this mental ending that makes the film stand out from others of its kind.

I had to watch "Inglorious Basterds" in several sittings on DVD as I kept falling asleep during the first half (not a good sign). The early scenes are endlessly talky (an old Tarantino problem that he refuses to address) and could have been trimmed to get to the point a lot quicker.

"Pulp Fiction" is stuffed with classic moments from start to finish and there is nothing of that level in this movie. It has many typical Tarantino moments (a Mexican stand-off, close-ups of women's feet) but it takes a long, long, long time to get going. The ending is so out there and different that you just about forgive Tarantino for his extravagances. Just about.

It's the zombie apocalypse. We meet Columbus, our nervous, nerdy, young hero filling up his car. In voice-over, he gives us a quick rundown of his rules of survival and then demonstrates them when he's attacked by two zombies in a car park.

On a deserted highway strewn with the detritus of the old world that once existed, Columbus runs into the crazy but dumb Tallahassee (the characters call themselves after the place they come from so they don't get too close to one another). Played by Woody Harrelson, he clearly is having a great time with his role. Without his charm, the film would really suffer as the younger actors don't bring a lot to the party.

Later on, they meet two double-crossing sisters (the older one played by a deep-voiced, huge-eyed Lindsay Lohan lookalike, the younger one played by Little Miss Sunshine's Abigail Breslin). These characters are so selfish, mean-spirited and ultimately stupid that it's hard to feel anything for them. The romance between Columbus and Wichita at the end feels forced and phoney.

The cameo by Bill Murray is a welcome respite. The affection the filmmakers and other actors have for him and his death in it, raise Murray to the level of national treasure. The world, even at its end, seems a much darker place without him.

As everything that happens in the film follows the lead character's rules for survival to the letter, there are no surprises. He seems to know everything in advance. The writers get so caught up in their own cleverness that they don't see the bigger picture of what they're doing. The zombies never really come close to turning the tables on the heroes and that kills any tension there might be (even when they are vastly outnumbered and surrounded, their lives are never really in any danger and they easily find a way out of any situation.) The self-conscious humour and deafening rock soundtrack constantly remind you that nothing bad is going to happen to the heroes.

Never as funny as Shaun of the Dead (Harrelson's running Twinkie gag isn't really that funny to begin with and the payoff is a letdown), never as intense as Dawn of the Dead, it falls between the two stools. So it's a good movie, not a great one. It's fun while it's on but never reaches the heights of George A. Romero's zombie flicks or 28 Days Later for that matter. There is apparently a sequel on the way; hopefully it will be tighter and scarier than the original.

This is an ill-advised sequel to "Saturday Night Fever." Changes have been made to John Travolta's Tony Manero character that hurt this follow-up. The first movie grounded his character beautifully with the job he had, the neighbourhood he lived in, the gang he ran with and the family he had. That is all gone in this movie and Manero is now rootless AND ruthless. He's moved from Brooklyn to Manhattan and is pursuing a career as a dancer in the rarefied world of Broadway.

There was a great example in the first film of what a nice guy Tony was beneath the immature, rough exterior. He danced with a rather plain-looking, obsessed fan out of sympathy. The character he has become in this film is unsympathetic. Girls throw themselves at him and he acts stuck-up. He two-times the only person who really cares about him (Cynthia Rhodes) with an English lead dancer (Finola Hughes) who's such a bitch that you wonder what he sees in her. When he beds her, it's not touching, it's Manero being stupidly macho and sleeping his way to the top.

Late in the film he returns to his old Brooklyn neighbourhood and it makes you yearn for the first film even more. The group of friends he had back then have all mysteriously disappeared as has his family. In "Saturday Night Fever", he had a brother who had just quit the priesthood, a father, a grandmother and a little sister. What happened to them? No explanation is ever given. "Staying Alive" lacks heart and realistic characters. His mother is the only character from the first film to reappear along with him (the one good choice they made is not to bring back Karen Lynn Gorney, Travolta's love interest from the first movie. She wasn't a good dancer, actress or even a great beauty and she was miscast in the role. This was proved by the fact that she never got a major part like that again.) Manero is a essentially a selfish loner now with no male friends. When he succeeds at the end it feels hollow as he's not the guy the world fell in love with five years earlier.

The balletic Broadway dancing in this also isn't as good as the kinetic disco-dancing in the first film. That dancing was about an ordinary guy becoming a superstar on the dance floor on a Saturday night and people could relate to it. Not many can relate to the Broadway dancing here. It doesn't have the same awe that his disco moves had and it has an elitist, snobby, "so what" feel to it.

Sylvester Stallone wrote and directed this movie back in 1983 and he has a cameo when he bumps into Travolta's character as he's walking down the street. Travolta actually looks a bit like Rambo with his black headband, long hair and new muscles. "Satan's Alley," the Broadway show at the end, is also presented as a kind of duel in the style of a climactic "Rocky" fight. Stallone even hired his brother Frank to write and sing some of the songs and they can't compare with the classic Bee Gees soundtrack from "Saturday Night Fever." (Nepotism sucks.) This sequel is too much of a Stallone movie when it should have been about the original characters.

Rumours of a third movie featuring Manero working for MTV thankfully never materialised and the character of Tony Manero passed into movie history. This sequel was a disappointment and perhaps they realized that the iconic image of Travolta in the white suit and the 70s soundtrack were out-of-place in the 1980s and were a once-in-a-lifetime deal.

After Arnold Schwarzenegger destroyed the liquid metal T-1000 at the end of "Terminator 2: Judgment Day," the world breathed a collective sigh of relief. Then the monster box-office takings came in and it was decided that SkyNet was far from finished. In "Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines," those crafty old machines try a different tack. Brawn had its chance to kill Sarah and John Connor and blew it. This time SkyNet send back a villainous creation that will use feminine wiles; the T-X or Terminatrix.

The T-X is embodied in the luscious form of Kristanna Loken. Some people had problems with her performance, but she does okay and she's very easy on the eye. Her abilities are good too, she squeals like a fax machine to hack in to the L.A. school computer and track down John Connor and his future lieutenants, she can inflate her chest at will to get out of a traffic fine (and what woman wouldn't love THAT?) and she can go toe-to-toe with Arnold in a scrap (she even emasculates his power by grabbing his testicles which is Arnold's cue to deliver a puzzled expression before she hurls him through the air). She also has an arm that can turn into a laser gun/flamethrower.

Her nemesis is also sent back through time and it is our old friend/enemy Arnold Schwarzenegger as a seriously outclassed T-800. Arnie was 56 when he made this film and he had undergone heart valve replacement surgery, so his excellent physical conditioning is remarkable.

Arnold, as in the other Terminator movies, arrives back in our time naked. So he heads to the nearest venue to acquire clothes: a strip club. However, this sequence goes too far into comedy, having Arnold demand the clothes of an effeminate male stripper and having him wear silly sunglasses for cheap laughs (his "talk to the hand" catchphrase is sooo late-90s and was already out of date by 2003). Also the forced appearance of Doctor Silberman after the graveyard shootout is a laboured joke and a sop to the fans that doesn't really work.

Nick Stahl plays John Connor and he goes through the whole movie looking like he's about to wet his pants. He didn't have the range as an actor to do justice to the role of John Connor (and he was totally unconvincing as an old John Connor in the future war sequence!) What a pity Edward Furlong blew the gig with his drug problems. He was perfect casting for Connor and had a good rapport with Schwarzenegger on screen. Linda Hamilton is sorely missed too.

The special effects look slightly ropey because James Cameron isn't calling the shots and pushing for perfection on this one. He would never have accepted the shots of the Hunter-Killers in the future war sequence, they look like something out of a video game. The script also suffers because Cameron isn't involved. The Terminator came to him in a nightmare, so it is his vision he was following completely. He knew exactly how the Terminator universe should look and he really cared about the characters. Other directors in the Terminator series are really just hacks for hire, using the franchise to get a leg up they don't deserve.

There are good things about T3; the crane chase, the Terminator tricking John Connor and Kate Brewster into saving themselves and the apocalyptic ending as seen from space which is awesome and unexpected. The protagonists in the other Terminator movies always managed to avert Judgment Day and it was a shock for audiences to see the heroes fail and for the world to be destroyed.

The Terminator is such a good story that it would be hard to screw it up. Even Terminator Salvation had flashes of brilliance (only flashes mind!). "Terminator 3" looks better now than it did when it came out. Many prefer it to "Terminator Salvation" as it has things that movie doesn't; a real Arnold, time travel and street battles in a present-day setting. Essentially, it is the end of a trilogy that James Cameron started back in 1984 (Salvation would abandon the structure, main setting and noir look of Cameron's movies). It was also the beginning of the end of Arnold Schwarzenegger's acting career before he became Governor of California.

The action sequences are the best thing about T3. Even though the special effects look a bit ropey and there is hardly any future war in this one, it's still a fast-paced, watchable movie.

To paraphrase Simon Cowell, "Halloween II" is a Marmite movie – you either love it or hate it. I fall into the former category. I saw "Halloween II" before I saw the original "Halloween" and I guess it kind of ruined the first movie for me, because so much more happens in the sequel. The first movie takes a long time to get going, characters have to be set up and a lot of stalking happens before Michael Myers strikes for the first time. The sequel doesn't have to do any of that and takes off right from the ending of "Halloween."

John Carpenter turned down the chance to direct this sequel, but he co-wrote it, produced it and did the excellent synthesized score with Alan Howarth (the start of a long and successful collaboration between them.) Rick Rosenthal was chosen to helm the sequel, but Carpenter came back later to direct some additional scenes that added more gore to the movie. (Carpenter was criticized for this but slasher films had become gorier in the three years since the first film and he was responding to the market. Also, Michael Myers can't spend a long time stalking his victims anymore. Doctor Loomis and the police know he's on the loose in Haddonfield when this film starts and he's wounded and, like a wounded animal, at his most dangerous. That's why his kill count quadruples here. So it is a logical progression.)

Dean Cundey, the great cinematographer whose atmospheric, prowling camera-work added so much to the first movie, thankfully also came back for this movie. Without him, there would not have been the same feeling of menace throughout.

In the first Halloween movie, we find out that Laurie Strode (Jamie Lee Curtis) has a crush on a boy called Ben Tramer and wants to go to the Prom with him. Well, as if having all her friends murdered by The Shape and barely surviving herself isn't bad enough, she also has the added trauma of Ben Tramer being flattened by a police car in this movie and bursting into flames against a van! As Laurie is drugged up and in shock in the hospital, she would have only discovered what had happened to Ben after she'd recovered from it all. Another kick in the guts for poor Laurie.

People have always wondered why the hospital that Laurie is taken to, Haddonfield Memorial, is so deserted. That could easily have been addressed by Carpenter when he wrote the script. I've always figured that the hospital in "Halloween II" was a lot like the police station in "Assault on Precinct 13" in that it was closing down and about to be re-located somewhere else. Laurie just happened to arrive on its last night in operation with a skeleton crew.

It's easy to see what movies John Carpenter was watching when he was writing "Halloween II"; 1. ALIEN (1979): In 1974. John Carpenter co-wrote "Dark Star" with Dan O'Bannon. It was a comedy about how an alien gets on board a spaceship and creates havoc. O'Bannon subsequently recycled that plot as a horror movie in the screenplay for "Alien." It clearly had a big impact on Carpenter. "Halloween II" is essentially a re-working of "Alien" with a hospital replacing the spaceship, The Shape standing in for the Xenomorph and nurses and paramedics substituted for the blue-collar space crew. In "Halloween II" one of the female characters berates a male colleague for swearing, just as in "Alien." "Alien" influenced Carpenter so much that his next movie was a remake of "The Thing" in 1982.

2. THE EMPIRE STRIKES BACK (1980): The big twist in the sequel to Star Wars was the shocking revelation that Darth Vader is actually Luke Skywalker's father. Carpenter tries the same trick with "Halloween II," by making Laurie Strode the sister of Michael Myers. Again, Carpenter was criticized for this plot twist, but, again, it's quite logical. If Myers stalked his victims in the first film at random, why would he go to all the trouble of coming after Laurie again at the hospital? The sister twist is the reason.

3. Dracula (1979): "Dracula" concludes with Van Helsing (Laurence Olivier) being impaled by Dracula (Frank Langella) with one of his own stakes, but, as he dies, he makes sure that he defeats the vampire by sticking a hook in his back and having him hoisted into the sunlight where he disintegrates. "Halloween II" ends in a similar way with Dr. Loomis (Donald Pleasence) being stabbed in the stomach by Michael Myers with a scalpel, but, as he dies (or so we thought at the time), he turns on the gas in the operating theater of the hospital and blows himself and his patient Michael Myers to smithereens. Even though nobody could have survived such an enormous explosion, box office demanded that both Loomis and Myers lived and they returned for "Halloween 4" in 1988 (just as well, as it was a pretty good film that wouldn't have been the same without the great Donald Pleasence.)

I like "Halloween II." It was made during that golden period in John Carpenter's career between 1976 with "Assault on Precinct 13" and ending in 1982 with the critically-mauled but now-loved "The Thing." After that, Carpenter's heart didn't seem to be in it. There were flashes of the old master in "They Live" in 1988 and "Vampires" in 1997, but he was never the same director after the critics tore him apart for making "The Thing." The great thing is, we still have his movies from that golden period to watch and enjoy. "Halloween II" is a regular in my DVD player around October 31st and always will be. If Rob Zombie's "Halloween II" is even half as good, I'll be happy.

"Gran Torino" is the latest incarnation of Clint Eastwood's archetypal tough-as-nails yet soft-centred character. He plays Walt Kowalski, an elderly Korean War veteran who still harbours a grudge against Asian people. He doesn't give a damn what he says or who he says it to. He says what most people only dare to think and there's a refreshing freedom in the film because of it. He's just lost his wife and is facing up to life alone in a neighbourhood that has changed around him while he's remained the same.

The catalyst for change comes in the form of his Hmong neighbours. A local gang of thugs forces Thao, the Asian boy who lives next door to Clint, to try and steal his prized Gran Torino car as an initiation rite into their gang. This propels Clint into action as his confrontations with various local gangs escalate into a bloody climax.

It's his relationship with Thao that is the heart of the film. Clint sees the young boy as an opportunity to purge himself of some (but not all) of his hatred of Asians and to pass on some of his wisdom before he himself passes on. He becomes a father figure to the boy.

The film manages to list seemingly every slang word for every ethnic group that there is (it avoids the N-word, choosing "Spooks" instead). It's a bit like that scene in "Lenny" with Dustin Hoffman where he looks out into the crowd at his stand-up comedy show and uses every derogatory nickname for every ethnic group in his audience: "I see a Wop…two Kikes…Over there's a couple of lace-curtain Irish Micks…" It has themes similar to Clint's "The Outlaw Josey Wales" and John Wayne's "The Shootist" (directed by Clint's old friend and mentor Don Siegel and John Wayne's last movie). It's like "Josey Wales" in that both movies deal with an angry, lonely man gradually allowing people back into his life after bottling up his emotions for a long time following a trauma (both characters also spit beef jerky constantly and have to deal with a cantankerous old woman who doesn't like them very much). It's also a kind of urban Western update of "The Shootist" in that Clint's character, although it's never specifically stated that he's dying of cancer but heavily implied, picks a fight with the evil local gang in the hope he'll catch a bullet and go out in a blaze of glory rather than succumb to the slow agony of cancer (just like John Wayne did). (You could also argue that Clint's character is a bit like Peter Finch in "Network" in that he's "mad as hell" and "not going to take it anymore!")

Clint sings (or, better put, growls like Louis Armstrong) part of the song he composed with his son Kyle and Jamie Cullum over the end credits. We've been listening to Clint sing since "Paint You Wagon" and it's another reminder of his vast and varied career.

(Strangely, when I left the cinema, I saw an Asian boy who was the spitting image of the kid in this film. Directly behind him was a Golden Labrador that looked exactly like the dog in this film!)

The film is a tad overrated. It's a good film, but not a great one. Above average certainly, but not a classic. Perhaps the critics were raving about it out of respect to Eastwood the actor, the director, the icon and the man. (It's a testament to Clint that he's still pushing himself at his age, still curious and still making consistent, high-quality, challenging entertainment long after he could have given it all up to go fishing or play golf).

If this really is Clint Eastwood's last film as actor and star as he claims, I will miss him. (I can remember renting "Firefox" on VHS for my 13th birthday and "Sudden Impact" for my 14th, so I've been a fan for as long as I can remember.) Just like that other Western legend, John Wayne, Clint has found an appropriate film to bow out with. But I guess if anyone has earned his retirement at 79 years of age, it's him. Thank you, Sir, for a lifetime of entertainment. What will we do without you? You are truly one of the all-time greats. Now ride off into the sunset, cowboy. Adios, amigo.

Before this movie came out, it was hard to believe that Mickey Rourke was once hailed as "the new Brando." With "The Wrestler" it looks like he's finally made good on the early promise he showed as an actor back in the 80s.

He plays Randy The Ram, a wrestler whose best days are long gone. He tells his daughter he's "a broken down piece of meat." (a line that echoes Brando's desperation of "I coulda been a contender" in "On The Waterfront.") With his tight facelift, gravelly voice and blonde bimbo hair, he looks like Charles Bronson in drag, but he's in great shape for a man of his age.

The film has strong echoes of the first "Rocky" movie. Both movies concern down-on-their-luck fighters struggling to make ends meet who get one last shot at the big time. Both films have a downbeat, documentary, slice-of-life style (like Rourke, Stallone was also hailed as "the new Brando" by critics after the first "Rocky" movie). Rourke's "Adrian" is played by Marisa Tomei. She plays a stripper having an on-off relationship with Randy. It's a surprise to see the hot little body that Marisa's got in this (although her face has gone so thin that she looks like she needs a good meal). If anything, Randy the Ram is an even more sympathetic character than Stallone's character in "Rocky." He's older, sicker and virtually alone in the world.

Both Rourke and Tomei have connections with Sylvester Stallone. Rourke starred with Stallone in "Get Carter" and Tomei played Sly's daughter in "Oscar." Casting coincidence? I think not. The makers of this film know their movie history and they knew exactly what they were trying to do.

The script is terrific. It never loses focus on either its themes or its characters. It gives the audience a forensic look inside the world of wrestling (if you doubted wrestling was a fix, it's made crystal clear here). From the endemic steroid abuse to applying fake tan, visits to the hairdresser and the injuries sustained in the matches themselves, we get a warts-and-all tour through Randy's oddball, gladiatorial existence. The bouts in the ring are an affectionate parody of the WWE that we're all so familiar with (indeed, Rourke has apparently been approached by the WWE to take part in the next Wrestlemania. Life is imitating art already!).

If there was one thing I didn't like about this film, it's the inconclusive ending. I don't know if they're leaving it open for a sequel or if you're just supposed to make your mind up about whether Rourke's character survives or not. Either way, it feels like a bit of a cheat. They could have easily wrapped the whole thing up with one final scene.

Apart from that, this was first-rate entertainment all the way. If Mickey Rourke wins the Oscar, I don't think anyone would begrudge him his win. He's stepped on a lot of toes in Hollywood, but he's paid the price with years in the wilderness (anyone who remembers his bit-part performance as a transvestite convict in "The Animal Factory" (2000) will know that). A few years back when he was starting his comeback, he said that he hoped a director would give him a chance as he would "come through like a motherf***er for him." I think he's just done that. Well done, Mickey.