Reviews

Pretty much everyone knows the story of Beowulf - man fights monster, monster's mum and then a dragon - but this ancient story has inspired generations of writers and academics, now it gets a shiny makeover courtesy of Neil Gaiman and Roger Avary.

Beowulf (the man) could have been written as a cookie-cutter hero, but fortunately he's something else - fallible and not yet the hero he must become later in the movie. But (and this is really hard without spoiling the movie), the battle that turns him into a hero also leads inexorably to his undoing. That's something the two writers have brought to the millennia old text and it works perfectly to help fill in some of the gaps in the original poem and provide a back story to events.

A special mention also to Crispin Glover's Grendel. I wasn't particularly struck with the physical realisation of the monster, but the performance is knock out. Instead of just being a rampaging beast, Grendel is almost something to be pitied - a misshapen outcast with noisy neighbours, and his final scene is remarkably touching. Oh and if you don't understand Grendel, you clearly haven't been keeping up with your Old English classes!

But let's be honest, everyone watches a movie about Vikings for the action. And Beowulf delivers this in spades. Here comes my first proviso - Beowulf in the UK is getting a 12A rating, but there is no way I would take a 12 year old to see this film in all its eye-ball spearing, spine-snapping, ligament-tearing glory. This movie would get a higher rating had it been shot in real-life and it's worth considering this before packing the kids into the car. Mostly the violence is justified, but it is there and it's NOT cartoony.

The animation is the talking point of this movie, and its a real step on from the zombified performance of 'Polar Express'. The impression of living, breathing flesh is almost complete with the exception of strangely dead eyes - this movie is a landmark in computer imagery. The majority of the characters are stunningly rendered (Beowulf in particular) in close up, but they somehow look less convincing at a distance. Generally the men are better done than the women, with Queen Wealthow the spitting image of Julie Andrew's queen in Shrek 2.

So, its a violent special effects triumph - could anything be wrong?

Actually yes.

Two things. One - the accents. Oh dear god in heaven above what were they thinking - this is a treasure house of appalling voices, Irish(ish), Scottish(ish), Welsh(ish) are all thrown into the mix, but the standout horrors are Jon Malkovich's take on Danish which might have been inspired by the Muppets and Angelina Jolie dusting off her accent from 'Alexander'.

The second is the 3D projection. For reasons best known to studio executives we're all meant to get very excited by 3D all over again. Beowulf is one of the first movies to be released in the UK using REALD - a system familiar to anyone who has been to a Disney park in the last 20 years. The animators of Beowulf clearly had great fun working out new ways of making things jump out of the screen at the audience, but the effect becomes slightly wearisome after a minute or two. Fortunately things settle down later in the movie and the makers stop trying to show off their new technology.

More disappointing, the poor quality of the Polaroid glasses you have to wear make the image slightly blurry and spoilt by reflections. After years waiting for the crystal clarity of digital projection, the whole thing has been undone by a gimmick. If you have a choice, you might be better off seeing a regular 2D version.

A final comment, Beowulf spends part of the movie naked, bet you can't watch it and not think of Austin Powers.

Well Hello!

So you're interested in SHADO. Well I don't blame you, where else can you wear fabulous new synthetic materials, kill aliens and spend the night partying like its the 1970s?

You said that the swinging youth of the 1960s wouldn't be seen dead in the army. There was no way that you would be so square as to cut your hair, replace the tie-die flares with fatigues and cut back on the medallions.

And we listened.

Yes we've created a whole new paramilitary organisation just for the swinging generation. Why not sit back as I introduce SHADO - the coolest bunch of cats outside of the Stones. If you'll excuse me while I change into my beige jumpsuit and matching sideburn accessories... ...now let's hit the road in my SHADOmobile - notice its swooping lines, fins and gull-wing doors that make it a complete pain to park when doing the shopping at Sainsburys'. SHADOmobiles come in all sorts of fabulous colours not found in nature, including metallic brown, surgical appliance pink, ozone-eating green and a shade of yellow that just screams 'fashion'.

Neat!

Welcome to the way-out SHADO headquarters. I have privileged access thanks to my identity chest medallion. A movie studio? So you noticed our cunning disguise! Believe it or not the whole SHADO operation is run out of the basement next to the props cabinet. That room over there? Well that belongs to Commander Straker - a man well accustomed to the peroxide bottle and not too masculine to refuse a little eye shadow.

If you join us I'm sure he'll have you over for a chat, a drink or two and perhaps something else entirely. A medical? Of course there's a medical, SHADO operatives have to be at the peak of physical perfection, you just never know when you'll have to dance 'til dawn.

Let me just make one point clear. SHADO is an equal opportunities employer. We're always looking for top totty to slip into something suitably clinging.

Yes girls, SHADO needs you!

As a new recruit you will start off delivering coffee to our male leads, after you have mastered that task in regulation 9 inch heels you'll be ready to move on to moving pieces of paper from one side of the room to the other all the time looking absolutely fabulous.

At SHADO the sky is quite literally the limit for liberated women! If you master coffee delivery and paper sorting you could be shortlisted for our Moonbase which keeps a look out for intergalactic UFOs intent on spoiling the party.

Don't frown, you won't look nearly as pretty. You're probably thinking that lunar gravity will play havoc with your totally groovy haircut and you'll have to put the miniskirt in the closet. But you're forgetting - this is SHADO, where fashion comes first.

Not only will you be safe from solar flares, laser guns and alien abduction in our super-slinky silver jumpsuits, knee-high boots and metallic purple wigs but you'll be irresistible to those walking adverts for Blue Stratos - the SHADO interceptor pilots. When you're ready to cut a rug the whole ensemble converts to a silver miniskirt in moments! And remember, we don't care if you want to burn your bra - in fact it'll be an advantage.

Still not convinced about Moonbase? Well here are two words to make up your mind.

Inflatable furniture.

Seriously. It's shot like a porn movie, the stories are sometimes dreadful, acting is robotic and even the effects aren't always great. But for a slice of nostalgia back to a period when someone cut the brakecables on good taste and when restraint and decency went through the rails, down the cliffside and exploded at the bottom - UFO is completely unmissable. And Gabrielle Drake is quite stunningly beautiful, why she never became a bigger star is beyond me.

Go on, its Austin Powers versus the Martians.

The rather unwanted sequel to the sequel of Terminator has limped to the big screen - and whilst its not as bad as it could have been, its certainly not great. Twelve years is a long time to wait for a sequel and T3 feels like T2 warmed over for a kiddie-friendly rating.

Ahnult now looks like he's been inflated with a bicycle pump and freshly dipped in wood-stain - he appears to have been freshly varnished and provides a slightly less realistic central performance than the Cuprinol Man. Once again we have to endure his trademarked sense of 'humour', which is about as funny as being forced to sit through 'Patch Adams' at gun-point. Unlike most people moving from a German-speaking country to America, Ahnult's command of English appears to be getting worse. Not for the first time, I wish the film makers would subtitle him - no, I actually wish they'd cast Ahnult in a silent movie, but I can't expect too much.

The actors playing John Connor and his wife-to-be are so instantly forgettable that their names won't be bothering major casting directors in the future, (but do expect them to turn up in your local video store 'starring in' movies involving post-apocalyptic kickboxing cyborgs travelling through time).

Not to mention which that our best hopes for mankind are so damned brattish that you can't help but root for the machines. On the upside, the new Terminator is very cute and her inflatable breasts are well and truly aimed directly at the teenage male demographic. I have to say that she is perhaps the most attractive way to die since Ellen Barkin did/didn't do it all those years ago in 'Sea of Love', but hasn't someone done the shape-changing unstoppable, liquid metal robot before?

The plot - well there might be one, but don't study it too hard - its like one of those 3D illusions that were all the fashion a decade ago - some people claim to see things of wonder, the rest of us just get a headache working out what all the fuss is about. The movie threatens to become interesting only in the last few minutes, but by then you're probably more worried about deep vein thrombosis setting in than the potential end of the World.

Oh and can I have a word about the first Terminator machines? Their brutish menace is ever so slightly undermined if you've ever seen 'Short Circuit' - 'Number 5 is ALIVE!'

In short - if its a choice between this and 'Hulk' - see 'Hulk'; if its a choice between this and sitting out in the evening sun - slap on some sunblock, after all you won't have long to wait before Blockbuster have plenty of copies of T3 on the shelves.

Best wishes,

Mike.

The veterans of the most terrible experiences are not boastful people, when asked about their recollections they might nod their head, swallow a gulp and say 'I don't want to talk about it.'

Please understand when I say 'I don't want to talk about it.'

'Soldier' is quite possibly the worst movie in history, it sets new depths for bad plotting, excruciating acting and dreadful direction. Words alone cannot describe just how bad it is.

Although NYYYYYYERRRGH! comes pretty close.

Whichever way you look at it (and I advise you not to look at it at all) this movie is capable of inflicting lasting psychological damage on the unprepared. If you want to be prepared for it try chloroform during the opening credits.

This is a buttock-clenchingly terrible film. 'Soldier''s name should be mentioned in hushed tones whenever more than two movie fans are gathered together. It should serve as a reminder that even if 'Rocky IV' was loud, horribly fascistic and unwatchable; it was never *THIS* loud, horribly fascistic and unwatchable.

It is rumoured that if you play 'Soldier' backwards you get a good movie. This is not true, you just get an unfathomably bad movie - in reverse.

Do not watch this movie.

Do not be tempted to rent this movie.

Certainly do not buy this movie.

Even if its buy one - get one free.

Do not watch if you are a big fan of Kurt Russell.

*Especially* if you are a big fan of Kurt Russell.

Just one final question.

'Who do I sue first?'

A big claim? Well yes and no. Firstly I should define what I DON'T mean by horror - men in rubber suits or teenagers with outsized cutlery. If these movies were ever scary it was in the early 1980s when 'Alien' and 'The Texas Chainsaw Massacre' defined those particular genres to such an extent that no one has ever matched their standard.

What I consider horror is something much more subtle and far older - the fears that we all carry inside of us whether we admit it or not.

The terror of death; the ache of loneliness; the fear of a believer that there might not be a God, the worry of the most convinced atheist that there may well be one; the committed rationalist who outwardly denies the unknowable; the constant temptation of evil - those have been the staples of horror from the dawn of time and they still have the power to influence us.

Who hasn't lain awake in the small hours with their heart pounding?

Has anyone not glanced behind them when walking down a lonely country road?

Is there anyone who can honestly say that they haven't thought of doing something that they know to be wrong - just for the sake of it?

Unfortunately these ideas have been out of fashion for a long time. No one has come close to the superb horror of Robert Wise's 'The Haunting' which made a terrifying movie out of banging on the walls and a shaky staircase. Perhaps it is only 'The Blair Witch Project' that has recently attempted a minimalist approach to horror, but that film could not hope to live up to its advance hype and consequently was something of a disappointment. Fortunately 'The Others' arrived in the UK with mercifully little hype and is something of an unknown quantity.

'The Others' takes the staples of a traditional ghost story from the pen of M.R. James and most particularly from Henry James' 'The Turn of the Screw' and produces something that manages to be very familiar and at the same time wholly original. The opening is a wholly discordant voice from childhood radio 'Are you sitting comfortably? Then I'll begin.'

It is the end of 1945, the war in Europe has ground to a halt and a world where the living and the dead are intertwined is trying to recover from the devastation. A young family is trying to settle into a large old house, unsure if the soldier father is alive or dead. The opening shot follows Grace (Nichole Kidman) as she walks to answer the front door. There she finds three servants looking for positions in the rambling house. Apparently the previous household staff had got up and left the house without rhyme or reason, Grace escorts the three through the house, insisting with fragile urgency that they always remember to lock doors after them.

She offers to introduce her children Anne and Nicholas to the new housekeeper, Mrs. Mills. This is the first of many deeply unsettling moments. The curtains *MUST* be draw and lamps lit. Grace disappears into the children's bedroom and wakes them; what monstrous things are going to emerge? The suspense is drawn out until breaking point and then Grace reappears with two angelic looking children. not for the last time the movie throws you off your balance. The children suffer from a form of acute photosensitivity preventing them ever experiencing daylight, hence the locked doors and shuttered windows.

These are the simple props used to support everything that follows.

People and a place on the edge of reality begin to slip into another world entirely. Doors open and close of their own accord, the protective curtains are thrown open, furniture moves, a piano plays in the middle of the night and Anne claims to have seen other people in the house. Throughout, Grace tries to reconcile events with her own deeply-held Catholicism, a terrifying construct where Hell and Purgatory are very close at hand. It is this belief that comes under attack, gradually at first, but as the movie progresses, her world begins to crumble. With control always shifting towards the increasingly sinister Mrs. Mills.

A slight tale to be sure, but then the best horror stories only provide a skeleton (real or metaphorical) for our own fears.

The house is just as much a character as the human beings that live in within; it appears to be adrift from the rest of the World. There might well be a world beyond the massive wall but equally there might be nothing at all. With the curtains constantly drawn the house is filled with a perpetual twilight, but even those times when we are able to glimpse through the windows there is precious little to see with an unchanging grey fog shrouding the autumn countryside.

The movie reeks of death; there is persistent question of whether father is alive or dead; the belongings of departed former occupants are covered by shroud-like dust sheets, antique photographs of unknown people (including a particularly macabre photograph album) look out from shelves, whilst the garden is covered with autumnal leaves. Mortality is a presence in the house, even the hope of an afterlife is coloured by Grace's firm belief in the fate awaiting sinners and the less penitent.

Nicole Kidman is as pale, brittle and delicate as porcelain in the role of Grace. As her grasp on the control of the house slips with ever-increasing speed, her world begins to falter and it is entirely possible that Grace will shatter under the pressure. She believes in a loving God yet he appears to shun her when she needs him most, whilst the fight against evil appears to have robbed Grace of her husband. Outwardly she tries to maintain the restrained chill expected of an upper-class woman in the 1940s, yet inwardly this is a loving mother and distraught wife, desperate for some form of emotional support.

The children are central to the film - there is none of the preternatural adulthood offered by Haley Joel Osment, these are very real children. Nicholas (James Bentley) is at the age where he is still

trusting of everyone and tied firmly to his mother, a very real innocent. Anne (Alakina Bentley) is older, just at the stage where she is starting to show independence and at an age where children are capable of very real cruelty. Much of the narrative is driven by Anne's interactions with the remainder of the cast, and Bentley proves more than adequate for the task, sometimes frighteningly adult, at other times a helpless child.

The servants are characters from the pages of Dickensian fiction, the slightest of the roles is Lydia (Elaine Cassidy) a disconcerting mute who clearly knows something about the house's past, but cannot, or will not let on. Eric Sykes plays Mr Tuttle the gardener and manages to cast off a long history of comedy roles to give a subtle, almost otherwordly performance. However it is Fionnula Flanaghan's Mrs Mills who provides the counterweight to Grace. She gradually unveils herself as the movie progresses, starting off as the sweet-smiling, efficient servant, but slowly transforming into the centre of power in the house; threatening, all-knowing and truly terrifying. Mrs. Mills is a worthy successor to Judith Anderson's legendary Mrs. Danvers from Daphne du Maurier's 'Rebecca'.

Extraordinarily, this very British movie is directed by Spanard - Alejandro Amenabar who has redefined the genre with complete mastery much like Ang Lee's take on 'Sense and Sensibility'.

'The Others' is an astonishingly beautifully made movie. Each scene is set and lit like an oil painting. Shadows and the darkness play just as important a role as the warm glow from oil lamps and the fires. Daylight where it is allowed to intrude is a frigid blue-white colour, bleaching life and colour from everything it touches.

Sound plays an important part in telling the story, there are plenty of minor chords and shrieking strings to set your nerves on edge, but it is the quiet that is the most memorable. Entire scenes are played out in near silence serving to heighten the almost unbearable tension of the latter part of the movie.

So is the movie scary? Undoubtedly yes, the pacing is perfect with enough false climaxes and unexpected shocks to keep even the most demanding horror fan happy. It takes its time to set up all of the pieces, but as the whole story is put into place, the screw is gradually being tightened. Situations becomes increasingly claustrophobic, Grace's nerve falters and Mrs. Mills appears to feed on her weakness - where is it leading?

Fortunately the end of the story is extremely satisfying and comes quite unexpectedly. In retrospect, or on a second viewing you will see all of the clues to the solution littered through the narrative, but none are so obvious that you will put the whole thing together until the director is ready for you.

Oh and I didn't sit comfortably at all.

Health warning. If you read the following plot very quickly it might make sense. But it should be treated like quicksand. If you stop you'll be drawn down into the murky depths of idiocy. Now take a deep breath...

The ever-devious US military has been collecting the still-warm corpses of its own Vietnam dead and then re-animating them with super powers (which any mad scientist would tell you is never a good idea). By injecting these zombies with some glow in the dark goo they conveniently forget everything and can be unleashed to defend freedom, democracy and bad plots everywhere. Jean Claude van Damme plays the hero who has to save a plucky reporter (Ally Walker) from the attentions of the US military and a rogue colleague played by Dolph Lundgren. After an interminable series of chases it all ends up as a nasty zombie versus zombie versus combine harvester fight.

You can breathe again now.

If you hadn't guessed, they passed on the original title of 'Zombie Commandos From Hell' and called them Universal Soldiers - a title so unwieldy that they are referred to throughout as Unisols.

Unisol? That isn't very scary; it sounds more like a haemorrhoid preparation. Which might just come in handy.

If it had been a B-feature made on a tiny budget 'Universal Soldier' could have been played for fun. With a witty script and some sly in-jokes the whole thing could have become a camp classic. Unfortunately it is an incredibly po-faced film with no sense of humour - about itself or its cast. And it is dumb - even for an action movie. No care has been taken with basic plot development or continuity.

Our top-secret stealthy commandos go round in a special plane and an even more distinctive truck (one that comes with Transformer-style pop-up sections and a dry-ice machine). Had they painted it green with flowers on the side and named it the Mystery Mobile they couldn't be more obvious. Each Unisol comes with a heads-up camera that appears to show the world through the exciting new medium of Teletext. Despite their super-powers they are sensitive to heat, so they are deployed to a desert wearing padded jackets (Sadly, this does give Jean Claude van Damme the perfect excuse to take his clothes off - again). When Unisols move, they stagger around like the Addams Family butler (and have you noticed how Dolph Lundgren and Lurch could have been separated at birth?), yet underwater they can swim faster than a man can run - AND NOT GET THEIR CLOTHES WET!

Incredible stuff!

Worst of all, there is a plot hole that is so obvious it is incredible no one noticed during production. Our heroes are trapped at a petrol station, the Unisol truck drives up, EVERYONE gets out of the truck and starts looking for them. Do our heroes (a) get into the cab of the truck and drive off leaving their enemies safely behind, or (b) go into the back of the Mystery Mobile and start looking for clues?

Hint: don't choose (a).

'Universal Soldier' is the freakish result of some genetically engineered script writing. A demonic plan was unleashed to graft the undemanding half of 'Frankenstein' to an even less-demanding part of 'Terminator', all Carolco needed were two suitable leads to play the walking dead. They picked Jean-Claude van Damme and Dolph Lundgren. With the exception of the remarkable height difference between the two leads (and we are talking about at least a foot!) this has to be perfect casting.

Unfortunately dream casting can't help a fatally flawed movie. It is a sad fact that it is very difficult to make zombie characters interesting; without any common reference the audience has no emotional involvement with the story. Zombies have largely been restricted to shambling around the woods chewing on teenagers; perhaps wisely no one has seriously considered them starring in a period piece opposite Kate Winslet or a romantic comedy with Meg Ryan ('When Harry Ate Sally' anyone?).

There are two ways to make such characters interesting. One is to give them a tiny facet of humanity - the scene in Frankenstein where he meets the blind man, or the relationship between the Terminator and the child John Conner show how this can be pulled off successfully. The second is to play them as ruthless machines, bent on destruction (Terminator first time round).

There is none of that in this movie, and it manages to miss both solutions. The attempted relationship between the newly human van Damme and Ally Walker is undermined by having him suddenly regain all his memories and playing the part of a normal human being with a Pinnochio complex. The man-child role is a challenging one for skilled actors, in the hands of someone less talented it is embarrassing. Want to guess what it is here?

The second part is undermined by not keeping the bad guy as an unthinking machine. Lundgren's character suddenly regains his psychotic personality. This is clearly someone suffering from a medical problem, not the usual two-dimensional movie killer. A clever plot (think Frankenstein (the book)) might want to try and resolve the problem by playing on the human part of the character; a bad plot would have him kicked to death and chopped to pieces. Want to guess again?

The second problem is the casting. Obviously Carolco couldn't afford the salaries demanded by Schwarzenegger and Stallone, so they had to pick from the B-squad, and it shows. van Damme rolls through this movie on the twin charms of having puppy dog eyes and showing his backside. Lundgren emotes his role with all the charm of a run-down Speak and Spell machine. (Which is odd, because when I've seen Dolph Lundgren interviewed he's witty and charming; but put him in front of the movie camera and you're wondering if someone has forgotten to flick the 'ON' switch).

Individually they are painful to watch; together - excruciating.

It's not a complete loss on the performance front; if you watch very carefully you'll see that Ally Walker is in fact acting (and stands out a mile for doing so). Her lines are ludicrous, her character is painfully underdeveloped but Walker does a reasonable job of trying to play a halfway-realistic character. Sadly what starts off as an independent, successful woman is quickly reduced to bimbette status screaming on the sidelines. So much for feminism.

Is there anything else to recommend this movie. No, not really, there is a neat abseiling stunt near the beginning and lots of stuff blows up, but for the first time in my life I would have to admit that not nearly enough stuff blows up.

Universal Soldier's greatest contribution to movie history has to be that it helped sink Carolco. Cinema audiences stayed away in droves from this charmless production and it is perhaps best remembered for the desperate publicity 'fight' between Lundgren and van Damme at Cannes. The franchise spawned some sequels with ever decreasing budgets. The directors, Roland Emmerich and Dean Devlin went on to make two even worse, but somehow more successful movies - 'Stargate' and 'Independence Day'. The two leads descended to the bottom shelf of your local video store never to return. Ally Walker sadly vanished from our screens and you still can't buy cans of Unisol.

'Universal Soldier' is best watched on a long cold winter's night when you don't want to go to bed and there is nothing else on television.

But then again, have you considered taking up astronomy?

In 1765 something was stalking the mountains of south-western France. A 'beast' that pounced on humans and animals with terrible ferocity. Indeed they beast became so notorious that the King of France dispatched envoys to find out what was happening and to kill the creature. By the end, the Beast of Gevaudan had killed over 100 people, to this day, no one is entirely sure what it was, wolf? hyena? or something supernatural? Whatever it was, shepherds had the same life-expectancy as the red-suited guys in 'Star Trek'. The Beast is a popular myth in France, albeit one rooted firmly in reality; somewhat surprisingly it is little known to the outside world, and perhaps incredibly it has never been made into a movie. Until now, and what a movie!

Categorising 'Le Pacte des Loups' would be tricky, but I'll try. Its a period costume horror martial-arts werewolf movie and surprisingly all those pieces work together provided you don't concentrate too hard. Why no one has previously made a period costume horror martial-arts werewolf movie before is a mystery, but I expect plenty of imitations in the future.

Taking the Beast as its starting point the movie quickly diverges from historical fact and steps up the pace. We are introduced to the two heroes, Gregoire de Fronsac (Samuel le Bihan) and Mani (Mark Dacascos) in the midst of a torrential storm that culminates in the first of many magnificently staged fights. De Fronsac has been dispatched by the King to find the Beast. De Fronsac represents the new rational world of the Enlightenment which is being forced to confront the backward, superstitious France outside of the capital. Mani, an Iroquois shaman and hunter befriended by de Fronsac whilst adventuring in the Americas brings another type of wisdom entirely. At the time of the movie America was a dark and mysterious place, home to all of the fears of Europeans. Of course it was shortly to become the home of the very republicanism that would sweep across France and remake the Old World in a new image.

'Le Pacte des Loups' wears its republican colours on its sleeve and uses the conflict between rationalism and the stereotypical backward villagers to drive home the point. This is good old-fashioned horror movie territory and the source of much of the plot. Guvaudan is the sort of village that would give the inhabitants of Sleepy Hollow the creeps. If it were in England, Christopher Lee would be the lord of the manor and Peter Cushing the priest.

'Le Pacte des Loups' has one of the strongest French language casts possible, a mix of veterans and some up and coming talent. Here it is dominated by the priest Sardis (Jean-François Stévenin) and the saturnine Jean Francois (Vincent Cassel), a crippled hunter and explorer who rapidly becomes more dangerous than the Beast itself. Both are scornful of the changes coming from Paris and seek to shield their world from the future. The remainder of the population are either stupid, indolent, superstitious or just evil, holding back the new rational world of the big cities. The Beast is very much an extension of their way, as much as it is a physical monster, the Beast is a projection of all the villagers hatreds and bigotry.

A strong female role is unusual in movies, but two? And such different characters. There is the strikingly elegant and almost hypnotic courtesan Sylvia (Monica Bellucci), playing her role of seductress with frigid professionalism. In a world where women had little more than their wits to protect them, she is the most dangerous of all and far more than she first appears. For most of the movie you are unsure if she is going to help or hinder the heroes, she is always mysterious and captivating.

In complete contrast there is the innocent, fragile, and astonishingly beautiful, Madeiline (Emilie Dequenne), younger sister to the protective Jean Francois. Surrounded by evil, prejudice and superstition on all sides she is clearly the romantic heroine, but is also intended to represent the French Republic; the very symbol of which gives her name. De Fronsac falls hopelessly in love with this witty and charming woman, but in doing so he risks further conflict with Jean Francois.

The two leads are fantastic and share a chemistry reminiscent of the relationship between Butch and Sundance. Le Fronsac is wise when needed, with a sensational put down for those who think that Mani is less than human. Mani is a man of few words but utterly dominates the screen when present. Needless to say, they are both fantastic fighters.

Horror movies live or die by the creature and fortunately this movie delivers. Wisely there is never a chance to get a good look at the animal - it is enough to know that it is big and nasty, the viewer's mind will fill in the details. The creature is also used surprisingly sparingly. When the viewer might expect it to pounce it doesn't, a few minutes later it appears out of nowhere - wonderful, shocking stuff reminiscent of 'Alien'.

Whilst the design of the animal from the Creature Workshop is perfect, some of the CGI work is a little below the standards we have come to expect - a couple of the daylight shots are well-below par, but the nighttime work is outstanding. Indeed one shot where the creature stalks out of the fog behind the hero has to be amongst the most effective CGI work in film.

Cinematically this is some of the best work of late; it bears many resemblences to Ridley Scott's 'Gladiator' - luscious slow character-forming scenes mixed in with frantic camera work for the action scenes. Again, this strange hybrid style works exceptionally well, although perhaps it can get a little too frantic. Just about every camera and digital trick is used at least once, some to excellent effect (one flashback scene is particularly striking, using a strongly solarised effect to give it an otherworldly texture).

One of the designers was previously involved with Merchant Ivory productions and the luxurious interior scenes have every bit as much detail as any period piece, (and a special word for the costumes that use some of the most sumptuous fabrics possible). A good deal of the film is lit by candle or fire light, filling the screen with warm oranges and flesh tones (and the movie *never* misses a chance to show lots of flesh).

In contrast the exterior shots are frequently chill blues and washed out hues, making the French countryside look like a hostile world that could conceal all forms of dark secrets. The countryside itself is magnificently filmed and quite different to the stereotypical French landscapes.

Tragically all this splendour is playing to minuscule audiences, I saw it with just five other people whilst the queues for 'American Pie 2' stretched across the auditorium. Do yourself a favour and try a foreign language movie. For those people who think French cinema involves two middle aged peasants smoking Gauloises whilst arguing about the finer points of philosophy this film will come as a revelation.

At 140 minutes perhaps the movie runs a little too long and there are one too many plot twists (there is one near the end that is VERY difficult to accept, but just wince and accept it), but it doesn't outstay its welcome.

For the English-speaking market the film has been subtitled. Sadly they seem to be quite workmanlike translations and some of the wittier dialogue isn't translated, a shame because the script (even to this very poor French speaker) sparkles. A number of misspellings and grammatical errors in the subtitles should have been caught earlier, but for once you can actually read the subtitles.

This isn't great art, it doesn't redefine the genre and it doesn't preach. Horror by is very nature is irrational, there is nothing to learn from horror (apart from don't split up a group and never go down to the basement to check why the lights went out). This movie delivers over two hours of solid entertainment, you'll probably come out with a silly grin on your face - and what more do you want?

Finally, a word of praise for the most imaginative dissolve between two shots I have ever seen - a woman's breast fading into a mountain. No doubt the women of the World are eager to find out just what Christophe Gans can do with the Eiffel Tower.

In short, I have to give 'Le Pacte des Loups' two paws up.

That snarl...

That scowl...

The acts of random violence...

The gutteral voice...

The fetish wear...

That shaven head...

It can mean only one thing...

GRACE JONES IS BACK!

Actually my sources tell me that the title role in Blade wasn't played by the 1980s diva, but by Wesley Snipes.

All in all this is not an improvement.

Blade is an adaptation of a comic character; somehow in the transfer from the simplistic, two-dimensional world of the printed page it has become even more simplistic and lost a couple of dimensions.

The plot is hackneyed almost beyond belief and adds nothing to the vampire genre, in fact, much like Nosferatu, it seems to suck the life out of the audience. In brief, upwardly mobile vampire wants to become more powerful but is opposed by Blade, half-human, half-vampire, all annoying. It all climaxes with Blade being put in a vampire juice press, some bad martial arts and the most pitiful CGI since 1968.

Blade has to be the least empathic character since Dolph Lundgren's Punisher (also a comic adaptation, perhaps there is a trend here?). Surely the audience is meant to be on the same side as the 'hero'? And whilst a vampire can be a tragic character, this is not true of Blade, he is relentlessly cruel, scornful and not a whole lot better than the bad guys.

I assume that Wesley Snipes has an 'acting' career purely so that everyone else can be compared favourably. As he snarls his way through his movie you find yourself looking for a stake - even a ballpoint pen - anything to put Blade in the grave.

As a piece of narcissism, Blade is pretty much unbeatable - we are treated to endless lingering shots of a gym-fresh Snipes for no reason whatsoever. Likewise no other actor is allowed any chance to give a reasonable performance; the likes of Steven Dorff *CAN* act, but they have to play second fiddle to Snipes' tedious performance.

Kris Kristofferson used to appear in good movies, here he is reduced to a sidekick that you just know isn't going to make it through to the final reel. And what happens when Blade finds out? Yes, you guessed it, he rushes to the scene to wreak his revenge in the villain's giant underground lair.

Why can't world-domination take place in a quiet country house? They always go ahead in underground cathedrals that would have had Albert Speer wondering if they were a little grandiose. A lot of these plans could be stopped right now if local councils paid more attention to plans for extending sub-basements.

The rest of the movie is just as dull and unimaginative with nothing new to add to the genre. Vampires have been done to undeath and perhaps they should be laid to rest for a while - at least until someone can think of some way to make them interesting again.

To finish, there *IS* a Grace Jones vampire movie, it's called Vamp and it's about ten times better than this.

Ray Bradbury's 'Something Wicked This Way Comes' is a classic novel about the transition from childhood to being an adult. It deals with becoming independent from our parents, the dread of loosing a loved one and the very real possibility of being alone in the world. There is also the classic morality story of there being no such thing as a free gift - there is always some price to be paid.

This is a very dark story set in the classic mid-Twentieth century America of a Rockwell painting. The most innocent of places with the very best people you could imagine. But underneath the pristine surface, there is something dark gnawing at their souls. When a carnival comes to town, blown in with the autumn winds, it begins to feed on the evil in the town.

As a piece of cinema this is truly gorgeous, best seen through a good film print or the laserdisk transfer. The opening scenes of the autumnal countryside are superlative and are almost too pretty to be true, which only serve to contrast the darkness of the later scenes.

The central performances are all absolutely excellent. Jason Robards is almost typecast as Mr Halloway, the decent American father, but manages to pull some subtleties out of what could have been a by-the-numbers performance. You are never in doubt that he really does love his son and the exchanges between them ring true. Halloway is a man with a lifetime of regrets; missed opportunities and poor decisions who realises that he is the only person standing in the way of evil. Robard's performance is magical; you can't help but empathise with him.

Particularly when evil is played by a young and rarely bettered Jonathan Pryce. As the sleek and lupine Mr. Dark he comes across as the ultimate Victorian villain - one moment charming, the next terrifying beyond belief. Wonderful delivery of fabulous lines raise this bad guy above almost others in recent movies. The conflict between Dark and Halloway in the library is an all-time classic, both spitting their lines in a scene that will have you on the edge of your seat.

The movie is aided by some top-notch effects that still look good in the CGI age. Once again the library scene is perfection, with effects being used to enhance the acting - not overwhelm it. As Dark tears pages from a book, they flare up, illuminating the scene briefly before returning it to gloom. It may not sound much, but compared to the modern orgies of graphics, it is a blessed relief.

'Something Wicked...' is one of the last horror movies that allowed the audience's own fears to do most of the work. It didn't play gross just to get a quick scream and a guilty laugh, it builds on the very real fears we have inside our heads and lets them do the hard work.

Bradbury adopted his own book into the movie and fortunately kept almost all of the material. A pre-Eisner Disney then made a neglected classic without worrying if the Sand Witch would look good in a burger chain promotion.

Oh and then there are the spiders, but that would be telling...

'Enigma' is based on Robert Harris' novel of the same title and is a competent if unadventurous reworking of the book. The story revolves around the top-secret British code-breaking operation at Bletchley Park. One of the great secrets of World War II, it only became known to the World in the late 1970s and it has taken until now for a film to be made of the story.

This is a fictional account and whilst the details are correct, the characters and plot were created for the story. Tom Jericho is a mathematician who broke into the German Naval 'Shark' cipher. With the ciphers broken, the British had been able to route convoys away from U-boats and continue the war. On a personal note, he became involved (on a very creaky bed) with the beautiful Claire and suffered a nervous breakdown from overwork. Jericho returns to Bletchley Park to find that Shark has changed. The British convoys cannot be protected from the U-Boats and the future of the War is at stake unless the codes can be broken. On a personal note, Claire is missing and the suspicion of murder points at Tom... then he discovers some mysterious ciphers from Eastern Europe.

With a gently plodding pace, quiet score and long lingering shots of the English countryside 'Enigma' looks and feels like an ITV drama on a Sunday evening. Only the smell of greasy popcorn and rancid hotdogs told me I wasn't in the comfort of my own living room and I should behave with some decorum.

A film that doesn't feel like a film isn't a bad thing, but at certain times 'Enigma' really did need to pick up the pace and run with the plot. Even the chases feel slow!

The movie does fumble its two main climaxes by revealing them too early and one straight after the other. The scenes in which the Shark cipher is broken and the mysterious codes cracked *should* have been exciting, but they were nothing more than interesting. A shame because the preceding scenes of the gathering U-boats were filled with tension.

And after these revelations the last 15 minutes feels a little superfluous, even though it should be leading to a point of high drama.

Script wise Tom Stoppard does a good job of condensing the book into a movie and manages to avoid the common problem of movies requiring detailed knowledge that needs to be explained to the audience. All too often these movies drop into neutral, you get an information dump, and then the movie picks up again. Here most of the knowledge is imparted in the dialogue, with one exception - unless you know how codes were broken, the cracking of Shark is going to make no sense whatsoever.

The dialogue feels right for the period and Stoppard has great fun with the reptilian Wigram (played with oily menace by Jeremy Northam), giving him most of the choice dialogue.

Acting, its a mixed bunch. Three great central perfomances by Dougray Scott, Kate Winslet and Northam are almost wiped out by the sheer badness of Saffron Burrows. If it hadn't been for Estella Warren's non-performance in 'Planet of the Apes', Ms. Burrows would walk away with the award for 'Most annoying female character in a motion picture'. A one note performance that will grate on your nerves and raise the question 'does she honestly think she can act?'

The film feels right, (although I doubt if Britain had fields of oil seed rape in the 1940s) and the drabness of the country comes across well. The coarse fabric, the terrible food and the backwardness of the country in comparison to America of the same period are all well produced and it is a big contrast to the gloss of U571 (which is not *that* bad a movie).

Plus points for a film that has Germans speaking German and not in zee very heavily aczented English. Ja?

A couple of minor problems that could have been resolved with some thought. It is hard to believe that security was quite so lax at Bletchley Park, if the movie is to be believed it is possible to borrow Britain's only Enigma machine from a secure room and no one will comment on it, likewise you can go to secure listening stations no one asks for authorisation? And in a country stricken with fuel rationing, where did they get all the petrol from? Still, compared to the plot holes in many movies these are small problems.

'Enigma' is a perfectly competent movie and should be on your list of films to watch. It's good to see a British film telling the story of Enigma (sorry America, but we did do it), but 'Enigma' isn't as good as it could have been. Still a British film that doesn't feature East End gangsters and/or Vinnie Jones? Definitely a plus.

This is an 'okay' film, the acting is 'okay', the script is 'okay', the direction is 'okay' and so on. At no point does it ever threaten to become exciting, but neither does it ever try putting you to sleep. So it's definitely another movie from Rob Cohen.

The main problem is that this is a virtual retread (ahem) of the far superior 'Point Break'. The plot? An undercover cop gets involved with a group of fast-living criminals and finds himself with divided loyalties thanks to a beautiful woman. If you've seen 'Point Break' you'll be constantly comparing the two and finding the older movie to be far superior.

'Point Break' was well structured, there was a constant pull on the central character, dragging him into the criminal gang until he found himself deeply and inextricably caught up in their activities. Whereas 'The Fast and the Furious''s Officer O'Connor is even more gung-ho than the bad guys. Who can care what happens to the good guy if he wants to be the baddie?

It's also lazily directed. 'Point Break' left your heart pounding with its chase scenes or the incomparable parachute drop. Here, there is little that hasn't been seen before and done better. The first car race does work well, but the climactic car chase is far too long, not at all well edited, and falls flat. Likewise it fails to utilise the locations. If you travel through nighttime LA, you see something between a dream and an industrial nightmare - here it is a few neon lit streets that could have been anywhere. What a waste of a great location.

Finally the movie has a lazy ending which appears to have been lifted directly from 'Point Break', the cop who is friends with the master criminal in one final confrontation. Except that this time it is a gutless ending which stinks of pandering to focus groups.

In its defence, 'The Fast and the Furious' has two great points, the cars and Vin Diesel. The cars - well they are astonishing beasts and lovingly shot, Vin Diesel, once again has real presence on-screen and exudes menace. He is definitely bound for greater things, perhaps even a role where he can exercise his acting?

If Summer 2001 had been a normal movie year, 'The Fast and the Furious' would have done respectable box-office and then sunk without trace. With precious little competition it has done far better than expected, but that says more about the other movies than this one.

All in all, it's strange that a movie that revolves around cars doesn't appear to be firing on all cylinders.

Perhaps an entire generation was scarred by the voices of the Mysterons - between them and the Daleks I spent a good part of my childhood hiding behind the sofa. It was certainly a golden age for children with the prodigious talents of Gerry Anderson ensuring a constant stream of spectacular programmes for after school entertainment.

'Captain Scarlet' was a follow-on to the immensely successful 'Thunderbirds', and whilst technically superior it never achieved the same level of popularity. Why? I think the answer lies in 'Captain Scarlet' being a darker production, sometime after 'Thunderbirds' Gerry Anderson seems to have lost a lot of his faith in humanity. The Mysteron conflict is started by human stupidity. Technology goes horribly wrong - and this time people die as a consequence.

Or maybe it's just unpopular because the theme music isn't anywhere as catchy.

Storywise, well there is a common plot. The Mysterons kindly inform Earth of their latest plan by means of a cryptic clue, (obviously they are a race of frustrated Martian crossword compilers). Shortly afterwards they use their patented replication technology to make a copy of a person who then goes about fulfilling the Mysteron plans; think 'Invasion of the Bodysnatchers' remade for kids. The Mysteron chief agent on Earth was the creepy Captain Black who desperately needed a shave and somehow managed to escape every week. It's all up to Captain Scarlet and his colour-coordinated sidekicks to save the day in a nuclear-powered, high-rise, high-speed world.

It is clear that Gerry Anderson was just itching to move into live-action television (something he would achieve with the later 'UFO'), and was running into the limitations of puppets. Whilst technical advances between 'Thunderbirds' and 'Captain Scarlet' meant that it was possible to produce anatomically correctly proportioned puppets; string puppets could not be made to walk convincingly. So 'Captain Scarlet' is filled with shots of sitting people, moving walkways or head and shoulder shots. The use of much thinner strings on the puppets and insert shots for hands helps sell the illusion.

In the end the weaknesses don't matter. The Century 21 team had established the formula with 'Thunderbirds'. Mix some high speed chases, a perilous situation for the heroes and end it all with a satisfying explosion or two and you can ensure that 25 minutes whip past before anyone can nit-pick.

Like any Anderson production, the story used a lavish number of models and sets (almost all of which ended up in ruins by the end of the programme). Many of them are now classics - the SPV tank and the futuristic Spectrum Patrol Car were lovingly moulded into die-cast toys and were repeatedly crashed in living rooms around the country. If anyone has mine, please let me know! As always the special effects were of the very highest standard (many of the people involved went on to work with Kubrick on '2001') and still look good today.

Re-watching the programme, one thing I found particularly striking were the strong roles given to women characters people who weren't British or American. Spectrum agents are a mix of all nationalities and ethnicities, apparently Anderson wanted children of all races to have heroes and learn to play together - not a bad aim for the 1960s and something that more programmes could remember.

Looking at it today, 'Captain Scarlet' has survived much better than most programming of the era. Produced on a lavish budget and shot on film, it has been digitally remastered for re-broadcast and DVD and positively glows. Somehow the colours look richer than modern productions and the storytelling doesn't appear to be designed for the very stupid. Even down to the classic retro-futuristic fonts and the wonderful Century 21 logo it still looks modern.

In short, I still love it.

As they used to say at the end of each show; Captain Scarlet is indestructible. You are not. Remember this, do not try to imitate him.

Geoffrey Chaucer wrote about a knight's tale in his Canterbury Tales, he also pops up in this movie as a frequently nude gambling addict, but I think that's about all the two have in common. It is quite possible that the studio wanted to produce a blockbusting version of Canterbury Tales, but correctly reasoned that a satirical look at late medieval pilgrimage wasn't going to be a smash hit, took the title and ran with it.

This is a high concept movie - so high concept that it probably suffers from vertigo. It is also very silly - fortunately it knows that. Think of what you would get in the result of a multiple pileup between 'Ivanhoe', 'Rocky', 'Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves' and whole lot of 'Monty Python and the Holy Grail' and you are pretty close to 'A Knight's Tale'. So poor boy masquerades as a well-heeled knight, tours Europe with his faithful sidekick, becomes the number one smash hit on the jousting circuit, wins the heart of the girl and finds himself on the wrong side of the local rogue.

And that's it - no worries over the feudal system, plague, the Crusades, the intricacies of medieval language and certainly not the music. This is a modern film for modern people with very short attention spans.

For some reason the movie has been the subject of huge amounts of outrage for not being a faithful rendition of the period. Which is very strange; when Shakespeare is updated to modern Manhattan or the ghetto the makers are applauded for making it relevant. Two years ago, everyone loved 'Shakespeare in Love' for its topical references. Okay, 'A Knight's Tale' isn't *that* good, but neither did it claim to be anything more than pure entertainment. It has great fun with its WWF (the wrestlers not the animal lovers) and Nike references and the rock soundtrack. If you are likely to be offended, go watch the BBC's adaptation of 'Ivanhoe' and revel in its hurdy gurdy music and beards the size of rose bushes.

Acting wise its a mixed affair. Heath Ledger is perfectly good as William, but like most modern heroes is underwritten. His love interest, Jocelyn, is devastatingly beautiful, but has all the charisma of a wet blanket. Rufus Sewell plays the villain with the lip-smacking relish of someone knowing that being the Sheriff of Nottingham did Alan Rickman no harm at all. In my opinion the best part is Paul Bettany as Chaucer who gets all the best lines and the most opportunity to play the crowd. Script wise it isn't memorable, but I can't remember many horrible lines either.

Once again the Czech Republic stands in for medieval Europe and looks splendid. The armour, weapons and horses are suitably authentic and beautifully done. The jousts themselves are well shot and reasonably exciting, so no problems there.

Once again let me say - this is a no-brainer movie. You will learn absolutely nothing about the period but who cares? This is a summer movie after all and up against the limp opposition of the last few months stands to do quite well. So leave your brain at home and have fun down at the jousts.

'Planet of the Apes' was originally made in 1968 and turned out to be a box office smash, despite a rather limp plot and none too subtle allusions to the racial problems wracking America. It went on to spawn a number of weaker sequels and a short-lived TV show with ever decreasing results.

Having said that, any of them have to be better than this luke-warm effort from Tim Burton. The studio was clear that this was not a sequel or remaking of the first film, it was a 're-imagination' - but it is quite clear that imagination is one thing missing from this movie.

As with almost all big studio movies in 2001, the plot has been released back into the wild and is noticeable by its absence. To make up for this oversight the movie lurches from set-piece to set-piece throwing off any semblance of thought and coherence.

Rather than have a plot, the movie sets up all sorts of gimmicks to get the heroes out of difficult situations. Mark Wahlberg has a gun in his survival kit, uses it to scare off some hostile apes. But two minutes later the gun is destroyed - oh no, what will they do now? No problems, right at the end of the movie ANOTHER gun is introduced from thin air to help out the heroes. Why not just keep the first one, or not have a gun at all?

Instead of having the heroes, (or heaven forbid), the audience think, the movie always plays dumb. The climax is set in a ruined space ship that has been sitting in the desert for thousands of years. This ship (a hugely impressive set) has rusted through almost entirely, collapsed in places and is filled with sand. Yet little tiny switches work first time, convenient doors open and close with satisfying swooshing noises and there are video clips to explain the plot to the hard of thinking. There is simply no magic to the film, no satisfaction in working it out for yourself.

And when its not playing dumb, it has gaps in the logic that make you go 'eh'? For instance, if the apes and the humans are both only on this deserted planet because of a crashed space ship, where did the horses come from?

Is there anything worth seeing? Yes, Tim Roth's performance *IS* excellent, he does convince you that he is playing an ape and has a fine time chewing the scenery in the finest pantomime tradition.

This is helped by some truly astonishing prosthetics used on his face. The rest of the ape designs are less successful, particularly Helena Bonham Carter's mask which is so thick and expressionless that she looks like a Muppet and forces her to talk with an irritating lisp.

But if there is one thing that sums up all that is wrong with the film it is Estella Warren - beautiful, blond and completely and utterly pointless. Long lingering shots are devoted to her pouting and flicking her hair, but she does nothing else. Perhaps it's my age I couldn't help but think of Raquel Welch in 'One Million Years BC', but at least she had the decency to be chased by a dinosaur,

Ms. Warren just stands in the background like a sulky teenager appealing to the teenage demographic. Perhaps I'm being too hard on her, because she does provide a tiny glimpse of hope for humanity. Apes may well be ascendant, mankind is reduced to savagery and the whole edifice of Western civilisation has come tumbling down but thanks to Estella Warren we know there is a bright future for orthodontistry, a girl can be sure of a fabulous leg wax and there is no shortage of non-smear lip gloss.

A planet run by apes doesn't sound quite so bad now does it?

According to the marketing blurb, 25% of the rendering time for Final Fantasy was spent on Aki Ross's hair. Which works out at something like $35 million of hair care worries. Not even Jennifer Aniston has worried that much about her hair, and let's be honest if you are THAT concerned about hair you should be in a crack Vidal Sassoon styling squad and not making movies.

But nothing could better sum up all that is wrong with this $140 million fiasco. Square decided that they wanted to have perfectly realistic characters and spent all their time and resources on that aim, rather than developing a story. The characters do look amazing (albeit scarily like they're cousins to Captain Scarlet), but they might as well be cardboard cut-outs inhabiting a plot that is less Asimov than Sonic the Hedgehog.

The movie moves at a glacial pace which mistakes pretentious histrionics for intelligence. The inadvertantly amusingly named Doctor Sid burbles on about 'Gaia' and spirits in a touchy feely manner, but it all boils down to 'there are some evil orange blobs, go collect the blue blobs before the timer runs out.' Unfortunately there are no bonus rounds, no high scores and no refunds.

But then 'Final Fantasy' is from the same writer as the 'Final Fantasy' games - tedious affairs with next to no interactivity, illiterate scripts and emaciated character development. A joke used to be that the 'Final Fantasy' games made good movies, but lousy games. Well now we know, the movies suck as well.

A friend said the failure of this movie is that the public aren't prepared to accept Japanese thinking and dramatisations. Well sorry, I've seen a lot of Japanese cinema and read a lot of Japanese literature. This movie is bad, not because of any cultural differences, but through having a plot that seems to have been written by a 5 years old to fit on the back of a game box.

It looks gorgeous, no doubt about it. As a showcase of Square's animators and the Maya software it is without parallel. But it is also a terrible movie. Ten years ago we all marvelled at the graphics in 'The Lawnmower Man', ten years before that the whole revolution was kicked off by 'Tron'. But who can honestly say either one was a good movie?

Compare 'Final Fantasy' to anything from Pixar or the recent PDI 'Shrek' and you see where 'Final Fantasy' goes horribly wrong. Both of those start off with a script, that script is polished and reworked until it is perfect. Only then does work on character development begin and only after that does the rendering technology take over.

Why spend 25% of your time rendering hair when it isn't needed? Give the character short hair and spend those processor cycles on moving the plot forward. If you can't make people photorealistic, don't bother, use a stylised approach. No one thinks that Andy in Toy Story is a real child, but he is a thousand times more appealing than Aki and her plastic friends; no one would mistake Disney's Tarzan for a real human, but there is a character in those drawings, Aki Ross is nothing more than a mannequin.

But at the end of the day Aki Ross does have lovely hair, and perhaps that matters more to the people at Square and Columbia than storytelling.

Let's get one thing straight - if you want to watch a Western, go see one of the classics. This movie is not a Western, it just happens to be set there.

Jackie Chan is still relatively unknown in the West, but one of Asia's greatest stars. With any luck, more movies like this will make him more popular over here as we sorely need some actors who look like they're enjoying their job. Chan does that throughout the movie and you can't help but grin along.

The real surprise had to be Owen Wilson, who has popped up in bit parts in many movies, but until now his roles haven't actually required him to act - what a mistake. He plays a surfer-dude born one century too early making ends meet as a bandit so laid back he's almost horizontal.

Combining his verbal skills with Chan's eyewatering martial arts and physical dexterity was a great move. The two play off each other brilliantly (and nowhere better than in a bath scene that had me crying in laughter).

It isn't perfect, it needs some editing in places and there is some unnecessary swearing that might offend some, but it *is* a lot of fun. If you haven't seen any Jackie Chan before this is a good place to start.

I grew up in Cornwall in the SouthWest of England, it's an area with close contacts to the sea and the toll taken on those who work in boats. In 1981, the area was devastated by the loss with all hands of the local lifeboat during a colossal storm. The events portrayed in 'The Perfect Storm' should have had a great deal of resonance - unfortunately, they didn't. The movie shows Hollywoood at its best - and worst.

What was good? There is no denying that the special effects steal the movie. Not only do they take computer technology to new levels, but they actually make the story possible. There is simply no way to fault the use of effects to depict an almost inconceivable event. As a showcase for the powers of ILM it can't be faulted.

Secondly, the cast were well chosen for the roles. Even George Clooney sets his smirk aside and gets down to acting.

But the rest is all wrong...

Firstly, the script. In short, it is appalling, more deserving of a made for TV movie on a small budget than a big feature. Some of the lines are so bad that you have to laugh - even when a struggle for life and death is being depicted on screen.

Secondly, the structure of the movie. It takes almost an hour to get going, far too much time is spent on the set-up or 'exploring' the characters. Unfortunately, with such a weak script, the characters can come across as cardboard cutouts taken from central casting and its hard to care about them.

Thirdly, the sound. Storms are loud - granted, but the filmmakers had paid a lot of money for James Horner's score. So they pumped up the volume of the music. Then they realised that Horner's music (which has to be one of his worst scores by the way) was swamping the sound effects - so the effects were cranked up... somewhere under there is the dialogue. If you're watching this through a good home cinema system you might be able to get the voice track - in a cinema - no chance.

Fourthly, the makers seemed to lack confidence in their subject. All of the events of ANDREA GAIL must be assumed to have happened - there is no evidence. So we have a crew rivalry, a shark attack, not one but two men overboard and a proposterous sequence where George Clooney tries to cut some equipment free. None of this is known to have happened, but tit had to go in to make the movie come across like a theme park ride.

Finally, the ending. The movie should have ended about five minutes before it actually does. The awesome image used on the poster is taken from the scene that should have ended the film. Instead we get some of the cheesiest dialogue in the film as ANDREA GAIL sinks below the waves. The film looses its impact and descends into emotional syrup.

Obviously the people at the studio didn't have enough guts to got out with a bang, perhaps they felt it would play badly in the MidWest - who knows, but perhaps a director's cut will come along one day with a less anodyne ending.

In short, a missed opportunity. The people who work on the seas, those who are involved in search and rescue and their loved ones who wait back on shore deserve a better film.

You might want to sit down. Ultraviolet is stylish, smart and dare I say it - British…

British science fiction has a bad reputation with the people who commission programmes for television. It has often been lumped in with children's programming, or consigned to a minority channel with a minimal budget. With no chance of filming spectacle, the writers fell back on plotting and characterisation, it may have looked cheap and nasty, but the glory always lay in the writing. However, up against an endless supply of glossy, vacuous American imports British SF was an endangered species.

Fortunately, Channel 4 were willing to take a risk when they commissioned Ultraviolet. They chose to make a series that subverted the staple police drama with vampires.

Mention vampires to people and they may think of Christopher Lee in a cloak, a Californian teenage girl's extracurricular activities or the foppish dandies of Anne Rice's novels, but the legends go back into the depths of mythology. The vampire mythos has been in and out of fashion for the last couple of centuries. It was popular in the Victorian era in a society coloured by the grim world of the newly industrialised cities, infant mortality and mass illnesses. It languished for most of the last century, only to come out of the shadows with the onset of AIDS and worries for the environment.

Ultraviolet takes the mythical vampire and gives it a twist. This is a world recognisably our own, but with a dark core. These vampires live in the shadows – not only the physical darkness of night, but they are also lurking in the gloomier parts of society. They have interests in cancer, AIDS and the outcasts of society. They manipulate society to their own ends through human servants – willing and otherwise.

The Catholic Church – in connivance with the British government has set up a team to investigate suspicious events and where necessary to destroy the vampires. This is a long way from Buffy's stakes and a spell in the library. This team comes equipped with SWAT commandos, guns, grenades and all the latest scientific equipment.

Jack Davenport plays a policeman who falls into this alternate world when one of his colleagues goes missing.

The episodes do feature an ongoing thread which reaches a conclusion in the final episode. However, most of the plot of each episode is self-contained, so even if you chance across an odd episode you will be able to pick up the story. Ultraviolet is not suitable for children as it contains discussion of such topics as paedophilia and abortion –both subjects are sensitively handled, but are bound to offend some people.

The makers chose to use actors that could do justice to the material. If you tuned in halfway through an episode without realising what you were watching you could easily believe it was a glossy detective drama. Dialogue is well handled and understated – they act and sound like government officials, not bit players in a Hammer Horror film.

Visually it looks superb, it was shot on film and the screen glows with cool colours not normally seen outside of big budget productions. The producers took advantage of the London scenery, daytime scenes are set in the leafy suburbs, whilst night shots feature the seedier side of the metropolis – amusement arcades, grim tube stations and lonely streets. Special effects are used sparingly and are competently handled to propel the story forward.

Six hour long episodes were made. Part of me would like to see more of this dark world, to see the development of the grand plot and the characters, but another part says that it would have been impossible to maintain the standard without repeating some of the plot lines.

A minor classic.

This movie is shameful. America's ongoing islamopobia is given the full Hollywood treatment. After the collapse of the USSR it appears that the studios are picking out new anti-American targets to satisfy their craving a big, bad enemy. It was hard enough to put up with the veiled racism of movies such as ‘The Siege', but ‘Rules of Engagement' positively flaunts its prejudices.

Once again, Arabs and Muslims are depicted as fanatics intent on destroying America whilst US soldiers are blameless and heroic upholders of Western civilisation betrayed by cowardly politicians.

No other ethnic group could be treated in the same manner as Muslims, Hollywood has sunk to the levels last seen in the 1950s anti-Communist movies, that big name stars and directors attach their name to such features is truly appalling.

The old excuse that this was fiction is trotted out by apologists, but surely studios must realise that the politics of the Middle East are not to be trifled with. Producing such a feature can only antagonise people's deeply held beliefs. How would they feel if their own religious convictions were trivialised and simplified to make suitable villains to be gunned down by all-American heroes?

It's hard to imagine who was the target audience for this disgrace. One would hope that the average viewer could see what a biased and disingenuous story was being told. Perhaps the dismal box office for this film is an indication that people can see through the lies.