Reviews

Possum is a story about a puppeteer named Phillip (played by Sean Harris, a remarkably underrated actor that I first saw in Harry Brown).

More to the point, it's a harrowing and deeply surreal story about murder and child abuse, along with all the unfathomable horrors that come along with those topics.

Phillip returns to his hometown to visit his Uncle Maurice (Alun Armstrong), bringing along a bag containing a disgusting spider-like puppet with him. Maurice lives in a dillapidated, bleak and damaged house and maintains a bizarre, cruel relationship with Phillip.

Phillip is an incredibly sad, child-like and submissive man. This is especially the case around Maurice, from whom he meekly accepts directives as if he has no free will of his own.

For most of the entire run-time of the film, Phillip attempts to dispose of the revolting puppet (which apparently somehow ruined his career working with children as well). However, it survives all attempts to destroy it and keeps returning unharmed.

This begins to completely defy all logic and it becomes clear that Phillip is a very unreliable protagonist and narrator. The film feels very experimental in this regard, often appearing at times like huge segments of the story may be entirely occurring inside Phillip's head.

Alun Armstrong's performance in this film is remarkable, to the point that I found his vile behaviour at the end of the film left me feeling genuinely shocked and sickened.

He is so far from his nerdy, kindly cop character from "New Tricks" that it's completely jarring, and it makes him a perfect casting for one of the most repulsive characters I've seen in a film.

I feel like upon watching Possum again, I will appreciate it more, as it is very layered and surreal. I do have criticisms, however.

It's a very slow, drawn-out film to the point that it almost feels that nothing really happens until the last ten minutes. I can imagine less patient viewers might grow bored with the glacial pacing and repeated locations.

It's also relentlessly, remorselessly BLEAK. Even Phillip's "triumph" and good deed at the end of the film feels hollow; he is so damaged, his trauma is so deep, that it feels like a Pyrrhic victory.

Interestingly, I didn't really find the film "scary" in a traditional horror way. It's more like it's disturbing material, if that makes sense. It felt to me that overall, the film is not so much trying to scare you like a classical horror flick. Instead it's about communicating the awfulness of a taboo social problem.

However, I still feel the film is overall very good. It deals with some incredibly dark material and does so fearlessly. The ending especially shows the despicable, truly ugly side of abusers in a grotesque realistic way that I haven't seen any other film approach so boldly.

If you go into it expecting some monster movie or a slasher film or such nonsense you will be disappointed. As a remarkably dark, slow building character drama the film is very well constructed.

I was put off watching In Bruges for years by the terrible marketing for the movie.

The cheesy posters and curly handwriting on the back of the DVD case imply that you're going to be watching a cheap slapstick, silly crime comedy aiming for a-laugh-a-minute. Not usually my thing.

In reality, In Bruges is altogether different - it blew me away. It's far more profound, disturbing and thought-provoking than.the lacklustre advertising would imply. Oh, and it's really funny at times too.

The film, written and directed by Martin McDonagh, could best be summed up as a tragedy. Excellent dark humour sprinkled liberally throughout to expertly relieve some of the otherwise dour mood.

We follow two killers-for-hire, Ray and Ken (Colin Farrel and Brendan Gleeson) as they arrive in the Belgium town of Bruges. Laying low from an assassination-gone-wrong, the two men are a quintessential odd couple. Eventually, they hear from their boss, Harry (Ralph Fiennes).

Ray is impulsive, ignorant, violent and young. Ken is older, wiser, more cultured and more gentle in his disposition.

Around the half-way mark, the film suddenly.shows the actual events of the bungled job. Ray is revealed to have committed a profoundly heinous-yet-accidental crime, and it's from here that the film gets really interesting.

The medieval streets of Bruges are the perfect setting for the exploration of morality, judgement and the difficult question of redemption that follows. The film soaks itself in this ancient, almost Biblical sense of judgement even down to the fabulous soundtrack by Carter Burwell.

As the two men explore the city we hear pleasant light strings that give way over time to sinister orchestral movements.

The narrative slowly builds to an inevitable confrontation between Ray, Ken and Harry. Through incredible acting and scriptwriting, the movie is able to put the audience in the remarkable position of rooting for all the characters at once for different reasons - even the "villain" of the story.

There's a massive amount of subtle depth to the characters, particularly in Ken's implied past and his relationship with Harry. So much is left unsaid, yet implied. Every time you watch the film you notice a new piece of clever foreshadowing, a snappy new meaning to the dialogue.

I also love that the movie gives no easy answers to the question of sin and guilt. Does Ray deserve a happy ending? Does he deserve to rot in hell? Does he deserve a bit of both? Are Harry and Ken any better?

The ending itself is perfection. The film comes full circle, all of it's themes and characters arcs colliding and looping upon themselves. The comedy gives way one final time to a crushingly sad, sincere conclusion to the death and mayhem we've witnessed. Moral judgement for all that sin is not just accepted, it's begged for. Fade to black.

In an age of disappointing remakes and re-imaginings of older work, I wish I'd watched In Bruges sooner. I think in coming decades it will be regarded as an underrated all-time-great movie. In the future, I will certainly be looking at more of McDonagh's work.

This film is absolutely baffling, I am genuinely confused how the script actually got made.

We're meant to root for a privileged upper middle class young woman who has a good job in the city and decides to start cheating on her doting fiancé with an obnoxious idiot. The reason? She's can't sleep well and she's a bit bored too.

Wow, it must be so hard being a good looking, wealthy young professional with a partner who loves you to bits. What a terrible life this woman has, I sure hope her plan to smash a decent man's heart to pieces goes well!

Whoever wrote this must be completely in cloud cuckooland. This "protagonist" is so cruel and heartless, she even goes to the wedding and decides to jilt her loving fiancé right at the last minute to twist the knife even harder.

For some insane reason this moral degeneracy, superficiality and total lack of self-awareness is played as a kind of lovey-dovey "funny" romcom plot. It's even more bizarre to make this a "Christmas" plot too.

The one time of year where people are supposed to be celebrating love, honesty, kindness...and we have a film that deliberately and cynically celebrates being a complete self-absorbed a**hole.

Cell starts off by ticking some interesting boxes. We have Sam L. Jackson, a very charismatic A-list actor opposite John Cusack, an equally talented guy who has produced some good movies himself.

Then we have Stephen King on board, adapting his novel, which concerns a bunch of people going insane due to some kind of malicious cell phone signal. So far, this actually sounds pretty good, right?

Well, wrong. Sam L. Jackson seems kind of bored with the material here (and frankly it doesn't give him anything to work with, so I'm not surprised). John Cusack looks like he's going to fall asleep half the time. The script is God awful, with an absolutely laughable ending that renders the entire film pointless from the ground up. Add all to that a weird cheapness about the whole production (I guess they blew the whole budget on the two leads) and some dodgy CGI and you end up with a stinker of a film.

The first scene, we see Cusack wandering an airport and the cell signal hits, turning everyone around on their phones into rampaging crazies. There's gore and violence but it feels sort of over the top almost to the point of being silly. Nonetheless, it's an okay opening.

Sadly we go immediately downhill when Cusack runs down some stairs to the airport basement and the crazed zombies...stop following? Like, everything just goes nice and quiet. This happens over and over throughout the movie; characters go from being in danger in one scene, to walking 2 metres away and having a leisurely chat. It's bizarre.

Anyway, we're then introduced to one of dozens of obnoxious characters, some guy who claims he's a DJ. His dialogue is thus: "Yo yo yo, I'm DeeJay Idieeet, what up, what up mah phat diggidy dawwwwgssss?" Seriously, I actually couldn't believe someone wrote this stupid character with this sheer level of incompetence. It's almost like a parody it's so ridiculous. Who talks like that? Who talks like that during an apocalypse?

In case you didn't realise because you've never seen a film before, this "DJ" guy is totally disposable and stupidly gets himself killed one scene later. Hooray I guess? Again, what was even the point of this walking cliche of a character?

Cusack and Jackson run from a swarm of zombies and then 1 scene later it's totally silent and they're just having a chill chat in the street. Wtf?

There we get IMO the most stupid scene of the film: Cusack wants to contact his family, so he asks Jackson if he thinks texting them is safe. Bear in mind, both characters have seen that using the phone causes brain damage that instantly turns you into a rabid lunatic. Jackson says that he doesn't know if it's safe in the most laid back manner ever, and Cusack then immediately starts trying it (and fortunately doesn't get zombified).

Again, who would do this? In a real situation Jackson would say something like "Don't do that, it's moronic and not worth the risk."

Finally we have the ending. Where it's abruptly revealed that Cusack is a zombie, and the whole film is in his head. No, I'm not joking! It's not even a clever "ambiguous ending", since the whole movie was about Cusack looking for his family, having the twist that he's basically dead and none of it ever mattered is just ridiculous. Why did we bother watching, then? Why didn't he just die at the beginning of the movie and get it all over with quickly?

In short, the film takes some good ingredients and just flushes them all down the toilet, then takes on an insultingly nonsensical ending just for good measure. Rubbish.

I'll be honest, I was avoiding seeing "Joker".

At first it seemed to me that it was going to be yet another comic book movie in a cinematic landscape saturated to bursting point with bland comic book movies.

Then I was a little fed up with the constant tiresome media spam the film was getting because it was so "controversial". These events conspired to make me feel less than enthusiastic about watching it.

Well, two days ago I changed my mind, put it on and the rest is history.

Joker is a phenomenal film. It's such an intriguing in-depth study of mental illness, social inequity and the inability of people of different social classes to understand each other that I was really quite blown away. It's a movie that has far more in common with classic intelligent cinema than modern day CGI-loaded blockbusters.

Following mentally ill loner Arthur Fleck, the movie chronicles his heart-wrenching descent into sociopathic villainy, catalysed by the decaying and uncaring social environment of Gotham City.

Joaquin Phoenix does a brilliant job here, honestly one of the best acting performances I've ever seen. Arthur can be defined most reliably by one word: "Pain".

Arthur's entire existence is emotional pain. Almost everyone he meets treats him like garbage. Those who do not treat him poorly still cannot even begin to understand his struggle with mental illness.

When he bursts out in sheer frustration to one character, voice cracking, with the line "I don't know why everyone is so rude? I don't know why you are? I don't want anything from you!" it hurts, because we've seen the way Arthur is treated and it's absolutely true.

Yet at the same time, Arthur's point of view is unreliable and inaccurate. We can understand *why* people treat him poorly - because he is creepy and eccentric without realising. This leads to a masterful dramatic situation in which we completely empathise with Arthur's pain but also understand precisely why this pain becomes a perpetual loop.

When Arthur's final singular comfort, his love for his mother, is brutally stripped from him, the end result is one of the most heart-breaking scenes I've seen in a film.

The film's pace is slow but with good reason. I was becoming restless with the misery of the first half of the movie, but the final half (and especially the final act) builds to an enormous climax that justifies every ounce of build up that preceded it.

My favourite scene in the whole movie is perhaps the most iconic - Arthur in his full "Joker" regalia, dancing down the same steps he has struggled to climb up repeatedly throughout the film.

This scene works on so many levels to highlight the most horrifying aspect of the film - Arthur's mental salvation, his total liberation, in the end does not come from positivity. It does not come, as in the case of a "coming of age" movie, from fixing his problems and becoming happy.

No, Arthur's charisma, happiness and total lack of concern in his new persona comes from suicidal ideation and a complete lack of care for anything. His problems finally break his sanity completely, to the point where happiness and sadness don't mean anything to him anymore. The man dancing merrily down the steps has lost his soul, and he's smiling about it.

I won't say anymore about the film for risk of spoiling it for those who have not seen it. But I will end this review by saying that the entire hysterical media response to this movie and how it will "encourage violence" is utter nonsense.

Joker has the complete opposite message: understand the people around you. Show them compassion, even if they seem unworthy of it on the surface. Don't judge others based on their social status or what you see on TV. And above all, realise that your opinion of others is based off your experience and limited knowledge, and isn't necessarily accurate.

Perhaps that's the true reason why mass media outlets dislike this film. Because it encourages developing the virtues the modern reactionary media seems to lack.

A Quiet Place is a really frustrating film to watch. I can understand why people like it, but I can't understand why it gets 9/10 or more review scores because it has so many serious plot holes and contrivances.

On many levels it's well shot, well acted, I love the tense atmosphere and the unusual way the movie encourages silent communication. The soundtrack is also good.

The concept, that the Earth has been overrun by huge creatures that are heavily armoured and attracted to sound, is very creepy. On paper it sounds great.

Unfortunately, the boundlessly idiotic behaviour of the characters throughout the movie and some inexplicable events that really make no sense really damage the film in my opinion.

First of all - almost everything that happens in this film is due to stupid kids. Yes, that classic stalwart of lazy scriptwriting. Just like "War of the Worlds", the kids cannot obey a single command, even under pain of death. They don't do what they're told, they wander off alone for no reason, they constantly get in mortal danger because of it.

At the beginning, the four year old is clearly aware that these terrible beasts exist and he absolutely mustn't make noise. So what does he do? Pick up a spaceship toy that makes tons of noise.

When his Dad tells him he can't have it, because it will literally get everyone killed, the kid seemingly understands. But then the parents just walk off and leave him with the toy (seriously?) and he picks it up and predictably gets himself killed one scene later. What kind of parents would be so dumb, especially when this is an obvious outcome of leaving the kid with the toy?

Later, trumping even this stupidity, the parents decide *to have a child*. Yes, that's right. In this hellish post apocalyptic world where noise = death, they decide to:

• Have sex, risky in itself due to the possible noise.

• Have the wife go through agonising childbirth, which is incredibly noisy and clearly a really stupid thing to risk too.

• Have the wife go through childbirth even though there is literally no medical support available, so any complications could kill her and the baby.

• Finally produce a newborn baby, which will scream and cry non-stop until the aliens finally kill everyone.

Apparently the writers realised how unbelievably stupid this is, since the parents put the baby in a box with an air mask on, in order to muffle the crying.

What if the baby knocks the mask off by accident? What if it knocks the lid on top of the box and makes noise? Is it even feasible to carry around an extremely loud baby anywhere outside the house?

The cherry on top: why the hell, when you have a million important survival tasks on your list, is randomly having a baby right at the top of them? Why not sound-proof the house first, for example?

Then we have the ending. The father character gets slashed by a beast and injured despite making pretty much no noise - yet the creature is waiting for him and attacks immediately. I couldn't make any sense of this scene. Apparently the film just decides it's time for him to die, so the beasts can suddenly see him or something? God knows.

This is followed by the massive logic hole that is the creatures themselves. For example, we hear they are "indestructible to bullets" from a newspaper clipping. But their heads open up when roaring, they have exposed mouths with teeth and their ears have big holes into their brains.

No-one thought to shoot them in the mouth or ear? The military didn't have armour piercing shells? No one thought to gas the creatures to death?

At the end we see they hate loud noises and it hurts them, yet the stupid kid with the hearing aid doesn't seem to understand she can still crank the hearing aid up *without wearing it*. Instead she clutches her head in agony while directly blasting her own ear as well. Why?!

In short, a film that was an "OK" watch, but ultimately I couldn't call it a good film because it has so many illogical and ridiculous things happening. 5/10.

War of the Worlds is a really unusual film in many regards. Overall it is an entertaining movie and I do like it. Some aspects of it, such as the locations, set design, CGI visuals and overall atmosphere are exceptionally well done.

Yet at the same time the film has some rather jarring inconsistencies and issues, especially in the third act, that hamper it from being the classic that it should be.

In this take on HG Wells' alien invasion story, the principle character is Ray Ferrier, played by Tom Cruise. Ferrier is a middle aged American dockworker with a separated wife. When the story opens it's his turn to look after his two kids. We have the.youngest Rachel (Dakota Fanning) and his late teen/20-something son Robbie (Justin Chatwin). A huge alien invasion of Earth occurs, and Ray and his kids must struggle to survive the merciless onslaught.

I quite like the film's take on Ray. He's not a hero, he's just an average, kind of flawed guy. He cares for his kids and is likeable, but he is also quite lazy with looking after them and is a bit irresponsible at the start of the film too, explaining the split from his wife.

Fanning and Chatwin are okay in their portrayal of the kids, but the script is kind of bizarre here (more on that in a moment).

One thing I love about the film, and find really memorable, is the location used for Ray's house. It's really quite perfect - small suburban houses dwarfed by a colossal highway overpass. It's aesthetically interesting and also serves as an interesting metaphor for Ray's vulnerable family life being dwarfed by the towering alien walkers later on.

Speaking of those alien walkers, the giant "tripod" machines are great. The CGI holds up even sixteen years later at the time of this review. They're very menacing and the film does a great job of establishing how ruthless and inhumane the aliens are from the very start.

However, the film starts to run into flaws when it comes to Ray's kids. This might have just been me, but I found it maddening how disobedient they are over the course of the film.

Ray has to tell them, over and over again, multiple times to get in the car. Or not wander off. Or not do something really stupid.

I know Ray is something of a deadbeat Dad and the kids resent that, but there's a literal alien apocalypse happening. Yet even with the grave threat of death, the kids can't seem to do what they're told for five minutes.

It's particularly maddening with Robbie. At the start, Robbie is kind of a tearaway but he's also implied to be a smart student. He looks after his sister and seems set on helping his Dad keep the family safe.

Yet the minute the aliens destroy his house, he seems to have a personality change and spends the rest of the film basically ignoring his sister and Dad and instead whines constantly that he wants to "fight the aliens". This actually comes across as jarringly moronic when it's obvious that the Army is completely powerless and they're getting wiped out.

Even the soldiers tell Robbie he's being an idiot, repeatedly.

At one point Robbie completely abandons his family, putting his sister directly at risk, just so he can follow some tanks over a hill to where they are getting slaughtered by the aliens. Even with Ray physically restraining him, he INSISTS on being allowed to "watch" and wants to "fight".

It's bizarre and doesn't even fit him being "young and angry" or anything, it just makes no sense.

I think they were going for this metaphor of "you have to let your kids grow up" or something but it's very odd and doesn't really fit into the film world in any rational way. Especially since the movie cheaply conjures up a couple trying to drag the sister away at the same time to create a sort of false tension.

That actually brings us to the ending, which is a bit of a cheap shot again. It comes completely out of nowhere actually more so than any other ending I can think of. I remember seeing this movie at the cinema years ago and being sort of astonished that it just ended so abruptly.

Additionally it features Robbie returning alive (somehow) from a battle which resulted in the military guys he tagged along with getting absolutely annihilated.

It feels implausible and silly and I think the film might have actually been better if Robbie died or at least turned up missing a leg or something. Instead he pays no price for his stupidity and it leaves the message of the film feeling muddled.

The aliens themselves are destroyed by microbes in much the same way they were in HG Wells' original story. I don't mind this so much since it makes sense that they might be very advanced in some ways and basic in others. Yet it also doesn't really make sense that when we do see the aliens, they act like curious children.

These guys built massive towering death machines, they shouldn't find bicycles curious!

Anyway if this all sounds very negative, it's just to balance out why I can't give the film a 8 or 9 star rating. It's just frustrating enough to take the movie down a few notches, but it's still a good performance by Cruise and very entertaining for the first hour.

I'm usually the first to cringe at awful teen-slasher horror cliches, or cheesy plot elements in horror movies. Films like Netflix's The Open House are everything wrong with the horror genre. In general, I can't stand dumb horror movies.

Why, then, am I for some insane reason giving Final Destination an 8/10 score? I mean, it's your average dumb teen horror film right?

Well, right *and* wrong.

Somehow Final Destination is able to take some cheesy overacting, all the tired old teen horror cliches, all the same bland teen horror archetypes and blend them all into a surprisingly interesting and entertaining movie that feels like it's greater than the sum of it's parts. It does this in a way that feels similar to "The Cabin in the Woods".

A good part of why the movie manages to elevate it's material above the norm is the tone.

The film doesn't shy away from more adult content - swearing, gore, genuinely disturbing scenes...yet at the same time the acting is kind of melodramatic and the script plays everything over-the-top. Foreboding is layered on so thick that it actually becomes weirdly comical and makes the film better than it would be if everything was played straight and serious.

"Have fun, Alex. You have your *WHOLE LIFE AHEAD OF YOU*." Says the father character to our protagonist in his opening scene, voice inexplicably dripping with sinister, menacing dread. It's cheesy and makes no sense, but having such a lack of subtlety in the foreshadowing is weirdly refreshing. It feels like the film is good-naturedly laughing at it's own premise and it's a joke the audience can laugh along with.

Another stand-out that highlights the strength the movie has dabbling in the absurd is the creepy mortician character, played really well by Tony Todd. Todd's performance is so outrageously, ridiculously hammy that somehow he owns it and becomes very entertaining. He comes out of nowhere and is not so much weird as "bizarrely diabolical. The script offers absolutely no explanation as to why he speaks and acts in such an ominous manner and that makes it all the better.

Another pleasant surprise is that the characters are written well enough to be likeable. Yes, they are cheesy stock characters, but they have some heart and intrigue to them. Even the obnoxious stock "jock" character becomes humbled over the course of the film and begins to become sympathetic, something which most horror films wouldn't bother with. The loss of the protagonist's best friend is actually pretty affecting, since the scene featuring his speech on death is surprisingly eloquent and heartfelt.

Finally the film shows unusual inventiveness with it's premise - that Death is stalking the survivors of a terrible accident and actively conspiring to kill them. Not only is it a creepy concept, but scenes where our protagonist goes out of his way to obsessively "Death-proof" his entire life are very entertaining and novel. Again, the film also subverts the usual "budget horror" dross by offering some surprisingly sincere commentary about the inevitability of death and how unfair life can be.

Perhaps the only element I didn't like was the "FBI investigators suspect the main character" cliche. It's the one stock scenario the film doesn't manage to turn into black comedy or play off of, instead it feels like an unnecessary distraction from the over-the-top horror. Our protagonist also doesn't really do anything to justify the extreme suspicion they show towards him, so it comes across as a bit irritating.

In summary; you're sitting around on a slow Saturday night with a pizza and some friends. You want something cheesy enough to laugh at but good enough to actually be genuinely entertaining. Final Destination is *that* movie. And who knows, it might just surprise you!

The Open House feels like the horror film you would get if an AI studied human horror films and tried to make one.

The basic premise is this: a woman and her son travel to a big house in the middle of nowhere and stay there. Spooky things start happening.

This itself wouldn't be too bad, but the actual result due to the writing and execution is an incredibly meaningless checklist of generic cliches, lazy jump scares and stock characters wrapped up in a giant blanket of red herrings.

Perhaps the most fundamental problem with the film is that it doesn't understand Chekhov's Gun - the idea that something purposely introduced into the story should come back in a meaningful way. The best example is Logan (the teen character) and his ability to run fast. The film keeps making a massive deal of how he's an excellent runner, almost "Olympic standard".

In any sane, good movie, this would follow the rule of Chekhov's Gun, and Logan would later use his running ability in some useful way. Like outrunning the murderer, or sprinting to get help.

But in this film...no. Him being a good runner is irrelevant. It's never brought up in a meaningful way, it's just some random dialogue the characters keep harping on about for absolutely no reason! Beyond bizarre.

And this continues. There are tons of things that the film inexplicably makes a big deal of, that turn out to mean...absolutely nothing.

Why does the camera focus on a huge pile of wood blocking a mysterious hallway in the basement? No idea.

Why does Logan keep staring into the trees with a horrified look on his face? No reason.

Why did the father character get run over at the start of the movie, and was it deliberate? Never explained.

This even extends to the main villain: who is he and why is he even doing anything he does isn't explained.

In a good film, like The Thing, ambiguity like this can be used to create a deliberate sense of unease and dread. It can even leave you thinking about hints in the movie for years to come. But in this movie there are no hints and there is no meaning...it's just meaningless and incredibly dumb. The killer kills people because he's a killer in a horror movie. That's it.

Added insult to the injury of the meaninglessness of the film is the fact that it expends tons of energy *pretending* that something is going on with pointless red herrings. Everything from creepy neighbours to people panicking in the house and leaving without explanation.

People materialise in the road and disappear, and the killer can move around completely silently despite being 8 foot tall and wearing massive boots.

There's no supernatural element to the story and no reason for any of this - again, what? Why on Earth would you write the story this way, and then explain absolutely nothing?

Good horror films have logical reasons for why stuff is happening, regardless of whether it's supernatural or not. Heck, good MOVIES in general follow this rule.

But The Open House is not a logical film, and this makes it a completely lazy waste of the viewer's time.

Darren Aronofsky has a very particular talent for structuring films in which characters seem to be pitted against not only the flaws of their own nature, but the crushing weight of reality itself. My Score: 8/10.

My analysis of the film below (contains spoilers):

Ageing wrestler Randy "The Ram" Robinson (Mickey Rourke) is still pulling wrestling gigs even in his late middle age. He needs the cash, but he also loves his fans and the wrestling scene and that seems to be his main drive. Physically he looks pretty good for his age, but it's clear that he's unable to take the beatings like he used to, and his physique is maintained with a vast cocktail of illegal drugs and a punishing physical regimen. His personal life is sad, hollow and empty, and he spends his evenings visiting a sleazy strip club. Usually he tries to get a dance from his favourite girl, Cassidy (Marisa Tomei).

Cassidy is in many ways a mirror of Randy. An older stripper, she's stuck in a no-future job where she is essentially a piece of meat for a crowd that's not particularly bothered about her outside of her ability to entertain them. Her story is strong and interesting in it's own right, perhaps the only flaw is the casting of Marisa Tomei.

Not because of her acting - she's a good actress and does well in the part. But she's a gorgeous woman and doesn't really fit the bill for a washed up stripper! I'm sure pretty much any young man in his prime would be happy getting a dance from her, so it's kind of weird to see characters telling her she looks unattractive.

Much like in Requiem For A Dream, the film is about characters who are fundamentally doomed due to their own flaws (or inability to face up to these flaws), coupled with a harsh and brutal world that makes no exceptions for them. In fact, the environment around the characters appears to actively conspire to drive them even further into despair. As strange as it might sound, the two movies feel to me like they're set in the same universe thanks to the similar themes and direction.

What The Wrestler does differently to that film is that it uses an ambiguous ending to poses a question to the viewer about the principle character, rather than giving you a straight answer. Is he a hero? Is he brave? Is he selfless? Or is he stupid and selfish? Is he all of these things?

Randy carries the movie as a complicated and interesting character. Most obviously, he is a man trapped in the past; from his choice of crusty old videogames to his nostalgia for upbeat 80's rock that clashes completely with his downbeat place in this present world.

I would further describe him as a man with a massive heart and a strong sense of pride, but also a naivety and devastating lack of common sense about him. In a way, his flaw is that he loves his fans too much, he loves Cassidy too much, and he doesn't think enough. To quote The Matrix, he uses "every muscle except for the one that counts".

Randy is a great guy in many ways, but he's also, quite frankly, a meathead. In the 80's (which we don't see) presumably this didn't matter; he was able to goof and joke around, spend large amounts of money and be a Good-Times-Guy. When The Wrestler starts, we see this Good-Times-Guy without the good times, and it's harsh and depressing. It's this sort of cheerful but unthinking demeanour that partially lands Randy in such a sad and desperate situation.

In one of Cassidy's first scenes she extols Randy's virtues, comparing his suffering for his fans in the ring to the suffering of Jesus. This is actually an apt comparison, though she makes it in jest.

As I mentioned previously, Aronofsky twists a cruel reality into victimising the characters directly. The "hardcore match" in which Randy is brutally smashed with barbed wire and blunt objects almost feels like a re-run of the disturbing sex party from Requiem, in terms of the amount Randy is physically violated for a baying and desensitised crowd. The frenzied shouts of "USE HIS LEG!" very much reminded me of "FEED ME, SARA!"

Similarly, Randy's boss at his day job is an incredibly obnoxious and unreasonable man. He's everything Randy isn't; cruel, petty, vindictive, lazy and calculating. Even Randy's customers belittle and abuse him, driving him further to the precipice. In fact the world seems so cruel that it starts to break the realism of the film, but as with Requiem, this is used deliberately by Aronofsky to give us a surreal, nightmarish exaggeration of reality. The incredibly bleak and uncompromising world of the movie makes the film more compelling still rather than worse.

On the other hand, Randy also victimises himself when the world isn't doing it for him. His nostalgia and lust to regain his past popularity can be extremely self-destructive and idiotic. His limp attempt to relive his 80's glory days with some casual sex and a snort of cocaine ends with him spectacularly crashing, permanently, out of his daughter's life. Serving as perhaps the most heartbreaking scene of the film, Randy seems powerless to rein himself in from plunging right over the cliff the audience saw coming 20 minutes ago. It's like watching a train wreck.

The ending, however, is perhaps the most interesting climax of his character. Cassidy offers him her love, but Randy refuses to give up his one last big moment in the ring, announcing the world doesn't care about him. Before making his (potentially fatal due to a heart condition) final leap from the ropes, Randy looks for Cassidy and sees she has gone.

Is it her fault for not being there for him? Is that why he leaps? Or is it his fault that she left, given his stubborn and pig-headed fixation on his last match? Was the world against him, or was he against himself?

All in all, a good film that raises many questions about the human spirit. I continue to rate Aronofsky highly, and I recommend this movie.

Stephen Moffat has long been a writer capable of creating brilliant individual self-contained episodes, but prone to completely over-indulging in nonsense and meaningless plots when trusted to run a show or series of episodes.

This hasn't stopped him being given control over several iconic British literary properties, all of which he has arguably run into the ground with his hand-wavy, disjointed style of writing series arcs and ignoring large plot holes. Unfortunately, Dracula follows the pattern and becomes his latest blood-spattered victim.

First we had Jekyll and Hyde, which Moffat brought into the 21st century and had a big plot about a weird shady medical facility. The series promptly went off the rails and was cancelled.

Then we had Sherlock, which started strong but then started to decline heavily in quality as Moffat continued to make Sherlock more and more unrealistically powerful. Once again, we were dragged into the 21st century and had a plot about a weird shady medical facility (the "Hound" episode) and then the series started going off the rails...

Now with Dracula, we see a very familiar pattern; in the third episode, we are dragged into the 21st century, we have a weird shady medical facility plot, and the show promptly goes off the rails. Stephen please, stop it...!

The first episode starts very strong, largely because it sits close to Bram Stoker's fantastic story. Dracula is played very well by Claes Bang and I think he is the one piece of glue that stops the show spiralling completely, along with a strong performance by Dolly Wells as Sister Agatha.

However, when Jonathan was ambiguously killed off (only to be fake-teased to be alive 2 episodes later) the show started to lose me.

It seemed like a needlessly sadistic end to what was essentially the main character in the original, not to mention that his invitation of Dracula into the convent went against his characterisation as a brave and empathic person...whether he was undead now or not.

The boat episode was better, playing off on Agatha versus Dracula nicely, with good supporting characters and more of that Gothic horror goodness that we had with the old castle setting.

The ending however, where Moffat grabs us by the lapels and stubbornly starts dragging us towards his beloved 21st Century plot lines...that was where I felt the series jumped the shark.

Episode 3 dials the campy humour up so high that it features a net-surfing, emailing, Emoji-using Dracula swiping people on Tinder. It's not scary, it's just silly. At no point does Dracula seem to be 500 years old, because he talks like an American teenager at this point and is too busy taking #swagyolo Instagram selfies to actually be terrifying.

The characters introduced in Ep3 are also what jaded aged adults seem to think millenials are like; every young person bar one or two is arrogant, air-headed, sex-obsessed and obnoxious. I cringed as a younger person.

Chief among them is the adapted character of Lucy, a shallow party girl who Dracula takes a liking to for her "fearlessness".

After a whole episode of wacky hijinks and "LOLFUNNY TRENDY DRAC!!11" modern silliness, we are suddenly treated to young Lucy being burned alive (well, semi-alive) in an oven and coming out as a charred corpse.

She walks around, disfigured, crying and screaming in horrible agony...moments after scenes where we're meant to laugh. What is the tone of this series even supposed to be?

Then we get the bizarre twist that Dracula apparently isn't really that bad and is an alright guy (despite killing babies, murdering nuns and turning people into zombie slaves). He just didn't want to die. Or something. CUT TO CREDITS END SHOW. Sigh.

Once you dive below the flashy veneer, there are too many plot holes to count, another Moffat trademark. Lucy was distraught over her burned body, but she's a vampire...why can't she just drink some blood and regenerate her beauty?

What was the whole point of the medical facility? Was it just an obligatory Moffat checkmark in his "21st century story" list?

Why was the medical building having mercenaries made such a big deal? Dracula even bangs on about them, but they have no purpose. How do you even keep a private army on payroll with no discernible goal?

Why did Dracula need to be invited into places if the whole vampire mythos was just rubbish connected to his psychology?

I could go on but I won't. In short, some good atmosphere, a heavy budget and good acting can't save Dracula from Moffat's teeth sinking into it's neck.

5/10 for the writing, really.

Opinions differ on the older Bond movies. Groundbreaking for their time, in retrospect they arguably seem curiously formulaic and dated, now that "super spy" and "evil genius" tropes are more established.

By refreshing the formula and taking a huge step away from the campy, cheesy world of the oldest Bonds, Casino Royale is, in my mind, the best Bond film ever made.

The first strong suit in the movie's favour is that it distances itself from any campiness as much as possible. Bond no longer gets exploding pens, laser watches or novelty sex toys hiding lethal gas capsules (okay I made that last one up). Instead he simply gets his brain, a gun and a license to use it.

The comedic one-liners are also mercifully toned back; he gets a few, but don't expect a big grin and a wink-to-camera every time he shoots someone.

Daniel Craig's performance in this film is also excellent, in addition to the character being written in a more complex and intriguing way.

He brings a raw physicality and brutality to the role of Bond with his muscular physique, a kind of blunt edge with a gentlemanly exterior. A man who is unashamedly a killer and has some emotional damage, but is nonetheless a brave hero like the Bond of old.

This new Bond has some issues, too, which works to make him more likeable and believable. Yes, he's still great at his job, can still gun down a bunch of baddies and he's still ferociously attractive to women...but this all comes at a cost.

Craig's Bond shows genuine vulnerability when he falls in love during the film, and we see that below the cold, almost psychopathic exterior he presents during his working life, there is a man with a large, badly wounded heart underneath. It's actually quite devastating to see the damage losing this woman actually does to him, and it influences his character significantly in the following movies.

Mads Mikkelsen also delivers an absolutely standout performance as the main antagonist, Le Chiffre. In keeping with the more realistic direction of the movie, Le Chiffre is a crooked banker who finances terrorists and makes money from insider trading.

He is a sleazy criminal with a sharp mind, and yet he's also driven by a very understandable dilemma; he needs money urgently, since he owes a large debt to dangerous people.

Le Chiffre is not some villain who owns a massive corporation, laughing as he strokes a cat in a bunker on the moon. He's just a ruthless, violent man in debt to even nastier people. It's a refreshing change. His death, not even by Bond's hand, is even more satisfying.

The movie knows that we don't need a Die-Hard style punch up. It's far more effective simply to see this nasty weasel of a man quickly executed for his own failure.

Perhaps the saddest facet of the movie is that it's sequels did not (in my opinion) seem to understand what made Casino Royale so refreshing and great.

Quantum of Solace squandered some menacing build-up from this movie and was a rather dull affair with a generic outlandish villain again. By the time of Spectre the direction the series was taking had gone full circle, with outrageous action sequences and ridiculously campy over the top plot lines more akin to those in the 60's movies.

If they'd stuck with the more realistic, dark tone set in Casino Royale we could have been in for some really special films with Craig at the helm. Alas, we still have this one.

This is it! The huge battle, the culmination of the war with the White Walkers, the most terrifying, mysterious and evil force in all of Westeros.

The bad guys built up from literally scene one of the first ever episode. The terrible threat that has encroached upon the living from the shadows.

Maybe we'll learn about why the White Walkers are attacking humanity? Perhaps our heroes will face terrible loss of life? Will they even win? What makes the Night King tick? Why is he trying to kill Bran?

The next hour of television is almost masterful in how it totally avoids answering ANY of these questions at all, culminating with the most ridiculous death for the main antagonist of the show that was physically (im)possible to come up with.

Don't get me wrong, the effects used through the episode are spectacular. But that's it. Like an amazing magician levitating only to tell you afterwards he was wearing wires clumsily attached to the ceiling, the show is suddenly revealed to be all smoke and mirrors and zero intellect or substance.

The battle starts with the heroes suiciding their entire cavalry into the enemy line in pitch darkness for no reason ('cos it looks cool). Then we pan back to see that the artillery trebuchets are on the front line, *in front* of the infantry, in possibly the most stupid formation ever committed to film. Unsurprisingly, that doesn't go well.

The dead then literally wash over the defenders like a tsunami and slaughter them. While this all looks very scary and impressive, it's also monumentally stupid when you stop to think about it. Why do they not always attack like this?

How come when it's random extras getting attacked by wights, they attack like a 50 foot high tsunami at 60 miles per hour, but when it's Jon, Brienne or Jaime getting attacked, the wights walk around helplessly slowly like they're rejects from Dawn of the Dead?

And then the cheap "death scares" begin. By this, I mean they show a character we like in a hopeless situation in one shot, and then by simply changing the scene between shots, this is revealed to be a fake out.

First we see Brienne go down, literally covered in 15 wights, screaming like she's dying. Then Jaime limply waves his sword around twice, and suddenly they're all gone. Then Brienne does that for Jaime.

We have Sam rolling around on the floor screaming and crying (why? He's killed a White Walker, he stopped being cowardly like 4 seasons ago guys) while 80 wights attack him. Somehow in the next shot they're all gone.

Perhaps the worst example, we see about 20 wights sprinting full speed directly at Theon and a couple of his men, and they're about to get totally killed by these zombies that are 2 steps away and then in the very next cut back they're absolutely fine and there are no wights to be seen.

You'd be forgiven for forgetting the White Walkers at this point - they're barely even a presence for the entire episode. It makes sense that they'd send their fodder in first, but why for the love of God do they not do *anything*?!

Where are the awesome sword fights between Jon, Brienne or any of the others with a White Walker? We've been waiting all show to see Jon put Longclaw to use but he never does aside from that one episode ages ago.

Why not have Jorah die in an epic duel with a group of White Walkers, taking a few with him, rather than have a random skeleton somehow stab right through his plate armour with a dull knife? It's all so disappointingly mindless.

Finally we come to the climax of the episode. THE NIGHT KING himself appears, for some reason grinning stupidly like a half-wit stable boy. He may as well have "IM MISTOR EVUL" written on his forehead, having totally lost all the subtlety he used to have.

What does he do? Does he cut down all our favourite characters? No (bar one). Does he speak and explain his motives? No, he does very little actually. He just walks, very very very slowly. Then he stops and stands in front of his target for a long time for no reason.

Then he very, very, VERY slowly draws his sword and SLOOOOWLY steps forward to Bran (why was he so quick to kill Theon in 2 seconds and now with Bran he's suddenly a geriatric?)

Only for DEUS EX ARYA to leap 200 feet out of absolute thin air with no setup or explanation, screaming (none of the 100's of bad guys reacted to this) and insta-one-shot him with a silly knife trick. Army of the dead defeated, it's a wrap guys.

Remember when this show was about common sense and consequence? Action and reaction? Yeah, now it's about magical invisible physics-defying action anime girls who can leap 200 feet out of thin air with a knife. And this is explained away with "Well, she's an assassin, soooo..."

Even the world's best assassins cannot leap 200 feet out of thin air silently screaming and kill a guy who is basically the Devil while he is surrounded by hundreds of bodyguards.

They actually had to fit Maisie Williams with some kind of robotic metal stunt rig attached to a vast series of pulleys and sliders in order to get the shot of her jumping like this.

That's because a human actually performing that movement *isn't physically possible*. That's how ridiculous it is. Why in God's name did they think this was a better idea than Jon fighting him (or literally anything else)?

Speaking of Jon, he's safe whimpering behind a rock being burned by a big dragon during all this. And he does nothing else. Because they just had to neuter his character even harder to "subvert" our "expectations" of getting a sensible plot.

It's revealed a few episodes later that dragon's breath makes stone literally explode, to the extent it blows up entire castles and giant walls. And yet here, Jon can hide behind a 2 foot high rock a few steps away from a dragon breathing fire directly AT HIM and he's absolutely fine.

In fact I'm going to finish there. I think the stunning lack of logic discussed by that last paragraph sums up the entirety of Season 8. Utter brainless gibberish, rushed by lazy hacks.

The Force Awakens, as covered in my other review, was a lazy rehash of the original Star Wars movies that didn't even bother with creating a compelling or even logically consistent backstory for it's war among the stars.

Instead it chose to combine inconsistent tone, weak characters and non-existent world building with a heap of nostalgia-baiting and CGI to create a mindless pop culture film hit.

The Last Jedi seems to have looked at The Force Awakens and triumphantly announced "HOLD MY BEER!"

There's more CGI, more glorious explosions, more bland characters, more of Rey walking around with her mouth open and, most of all, more jarringly awful tone inconsistency and terrible humour.

This is immediately apparent in the intro, when we have a previously serious character cracking "UR MOM" jokes with another previously intimidating character, who is now a bumbling idiot.

TLJ is a film that seems fundamentally incapable of understanding tone. It genuinely made me feel uncomfortable watching it.

We have UR MOM jokes followed by really dark scenes of Resistance pilots screaming in horror as their spaceships explode around them and they die.

Perhaps worst of all, we have a scene that shows dozens of young good guys climbing into their spaceships, including a young woman pilot who looks to be in her teens. Then a missile explodes the hangar and *burns them all to death* in a massive fireball.

This is followed IMMEDIATELY by a "funny moment" as a droid bounces off a wall from the explosion and makes silly beeping noises. I genuinely felt uncomfortable watching such a weird, tone-deaf scene that is for some reason trying to make me laugh at silly slapstick while at the same time showing me the tragic deaths of young heroic characters.

It's like if you were watching a Vietnam war documentary and every 3 minutes at the most harrowing points it cuts to Adam Sandler making fart jokes.

The plot is also as weak and incomprehensible as the previous film.

The First Order had literally zero explanation in TFA, and TLJ makes this even worse. General Hux is shown as utterly incompetent and only looks like he's 30 years old, yet for some reason he is in charge and bossing around 60 year old commanders who look far more experienced than he does. Umm, okay. This is like sacking all your generals and getting 18 year olds to run the Army.

In the last movie The First Order were weak and "fledgling", yet somehow had millions of Stormtroopers and a Goddamn planet-sized Deathstar.

In this movie, despite being crippled and having their huge planet base destroyed in the last film, they are somehow even stronger than they ever were and are taking over the entire galaxy. (?!)

This makes about as much sense as saying that after losing World War 2 and surrendering, Germany re-declared war and conquered the USA two days later.

I could go on, I really could, but I won't...because this movie actually doesn't deserve me going into any more depth on it.

All I'll say is that Rey is still Rey (perfect, everyone loves her, beats everyone, walks around with her mouth open, Mary Sue Deluxe Edition) and Luke is treated as a character that needs to be humiliated and killed off in order to allow Miss Perfect to replace him.

Finn is still played for comic relief despite supposedly being a traumatised soldier (again what was the point of that backstory? Why is he the wacky one?) He also still murders other Stormtroopers without a second thought, even taking glee in it.

Perhaps the only thing to add is a brief discussion of the stupid Holdo character. She acts like a villain for 90% of the movie and then is suddenly supposed to be treated as a hero despite being completely obnoxious.

The way she dies, firing her ship into hyperspace straight through dozens of pursuing ships, also raises plot hole so big they ruin the entire film.

Why the hell doesn't Hux just get one of his smaller ships to hyperspace straight through the Resistance ship right at the start of the movie, and kill them all instantly?! He has all movie to just hyperspace right through their ship and yet he never does it. Awful, awful writing.

Okay I'm done. I can't anymore. Terrible film, watch something else.

Imagine you're in an alternate universe. You are watching The Lord of the Rings for the first time ever, having never read the books.

We start in the Shire, but this version of the film doesn't bother to explain what the Shire is. It also doesn't explain who Bilbo or Frodo are, or what Mordor or Sauron are. We're just told there is "some evil guy somewhere" and then the film cuts to someone walking around a lot over some mountains for hours.

The ring isn't mentioned until 10 minutes before the end of the film and someone keeps shouting about how important Rohan is but we don't know what that is either. You finish the film still wondering when the hell they're going to start explaining the actual plot.

The Force Awakens plot feels exactly like that. We start the film with a very basic, confused idea of what is happening and why it is happening and we end the film with the exact same feeling.

On top of that, the film doesn't even bother to make it's very limited backstory make any sense.

The Empire is dead, yay! Oh, but they're replaced by a "fledgling" group known as The First Order. Oh no!

This "fledgling" small group is quickly revealed to have an infinite number of spaceships and stormtroopers, and they've got the resources to turn an *entire planet* into a giant laser gun that can immediately annihilate solar systems.

Wait, excuse me, what? The evil Empire of old, which was apparently much more powerful according to the intro of this movie, barely managed to build one Deathstar spaceship. Even with their resources they didn't manage to hollow out an entire Goddamn planet into a Deathstar. WTF?

Then we have the Republic, a galaxy spanning government...which is destroyed instantly and with no explanation by one shot by said Planet-Deathstar. Yes, you got that right, this massive government that was the result of all the other movies gets instantly killed by blowing up a couple of planets.

They didn't notice the hundreds of thousands of First Order spaceships carrying materials to the planet in the same system being slowly turned into a huge gun. LOL.

This paves the way for the Rebels...oops sorry, the "Resistance"...a poorly funded and unsupported guerrilla group that our plucky heroes will predictably join.

Why are they poorly supported and funded considering they are helping the Republic government that presumably controls dozens of other solar systems? Why is no one else in the entire galaxy outraged by the destruction of a bunch of planets?

Errrr, no idea, let's just ignore that. PEW PEW LASERS UNDERDOG HEROES.

If this all sounds very bare bones and yet very familiar that is because:

• The plot is extremely shallow, self-contradictory and there is absolutely no attempt made to explain anything at any point.

• The movie is a lazy remake that relentlessly plagiarises the original Star Wars movies while pretending it's doing something new.

On top of opening with "Guys it's Star Wars 1 plot again, just go with it, don't use your brains, GIVE US YOUR MONEY!", the plot then introduces all our new characters...and then does nothing of note with them.

We have Finn, a traumatised Stormtrooper. This is an incredibly interesting opening for him - a man forced to serve evil people, do terrible things, and witness death and pain that he is repelled by. What will they do with his character?

Well, they turn him into the dumb comic relief. Again, WTF? The guy who's a traumatised soldier becomes the butt of silly jokes and even starts gleefully mowing down his old Stormtrooper buddies (most of whom are apparently innocent conscripts like him).

The fact that Finn laughs and cheers while murdering his own ex-brothers in arms is never commented on, again showing how little thought when into this film. But to any viewers actually paying attention to the story, it makes him seem like a demented psychopath. It also shows a jarringly inconsistent tone, something which carried over into The Last Jedi and ruined that too.

Then we have Poe Dameron. A hero who would be a solid character, if it wasn't for the fact that we never learn anything about him. He's just "cool generic pilot guy". Again, what's his background? Why is he a good pilot?

Many people say things like "There are background novels that explain these things" Well, I don't care.

This is a movie, it should be able to tell a narrative without the viewer having to spend time reading hastily-written background media designed to plug plot holes. You don't have to read 10 different books to understand The Godfather because the film isn't lazy.

Finally we have Rei. Rei is basically a female Luke Skywalker, even down to dressing the same and living on a desert planet.

In fact she's basically Luke if he was perfect at everything he did first time and had no personality. Like Luke if he was pushed into a generic food blender with some Spam and turned into a tasteless slurry.

Anyway I will end the review there. I won't bother going any further. We have Kylo Ren (bland Darth Vader rip off crossed with a dumb teenager), Snoke (why even bother talking about him when TLJ didn't bother?) and some old faves like Han Solo who are only in the movie to sponge off older fans.

If you're looking for a good Star Wars movie watch the originals. If you're looking for a good movie in general, watch something else. This one is good for effects and explosions and that's about it.

Terminator 1 was a great sci-fi horror flick with some action thrown in. The T-800 was a menacing, unstoppable blunt force killer and Schwarzenegger was perfect for the role.

Then we had Michael Biehn, an underrated actor, delivering a memorable performance as Kyle Reese, and Sarah Connor played iconically by Linda Hamilton.

Terminator 2, for me, was the absolute apex of the series. We had the central cast back again and Edward Furlong put in a good performance as young John Connor. Somehow Michael Edwards' 20 second appearance as Future John Connor was the absolute best in the whole series too, selling the fearsome image of the man John was going to become simply by robotically surveying the battlefield with his scarred and grimly set face.

And who can forget Robert Patrick as the T-1000? He doesn't breathe when he runs, he never blinks, and even when trying to be "friendly" there is something completely insidious about him. The absolute best antagonist in the Terminator franchise.

T2 had themes. Responsible versus irresponsible use of science, whether AI can truly be human, determinism versus free will. It also offered a lot of commentary on how humans are naturally stupid and self destructive ("It is in your nature to destroy yourselves.")

Then T3 came along. Oh dear.

Not only did all of the central core cast of the previous movies, sans Arnie, completely disappear but the film immediately misunderstands what made the previous films great.

The Terminator movies were never about huge explosions or massive action set pieces. Those things happened of course, but they weren't the central attraction of the films. What made them so good was the motif of humans working together to prevent a horrific future brought about by human hubris, greed and arms racing.

T3 by contrast is all explosions, throwaway misplaced comedy and no brain.

The TX is basically "The T-1000 but more better-er" because it can smuggle big guns in it's arms.

Yet it's not better. It's nowhere near as scary as the T-1000 because it acts really stupidly, barely even bothering to disguise itself. The one time it puts on a disguise, it randomly removes it in broad daylight right in front of it's victim for no reason, allowing them to escape.

The T-1000 never needed big plasma guns because it was stealthy and frighteningly intelligent. It understood that people trust police officers and so it disguised as one. It socially manipulated people and abused the authority it's disguise gave it. It never revealed itself in the open unless it was sure it could get away with it.

The T-1000 could be your mother, it could be your father, it might even just be disguising itself as the floor under your chair until it has the opportunity to silently stab you to death. And it would do so efficiently and emotionlessly. Terrifying.

The T-X by contrast seems to have bizarre emotions, weird quirky habits (shoving blood soaked rags in it's mouth?) and it's first transformation isn't played for horror, but for laughs as it enlarges it's boobies. Really?

Nick Stahl as Connor is rather miscast, he is a whiny washout who spends most of the movie ineffectually being useless or whinging (an annoying pattern every movie since seems to have jumped on, totally neutering Connor).

But perhaps the worst crime the movie commits is in clumsily making Judgement Day "inevitable". The film offers no sensible logic for why this is, but the message is clear: Fate is fate, don't even bother to change things. Why even get up in the morning?

Wow, what a stupid message!

Terminator 2 was a very dark film, but it ends on an uplifting note when Sarah comments that "If a Terminator can learn the value of human life, perhaps we can too." The whole theme of T1 and 2 was that by acting sensibly, compassionately and using science responsibly, humans can make a bright future for themselves rather than a terrible one.

Meanwhile the message of T3 is "Just do whatever you want, it's all pre-determined and there's no point to anything." and yet at the same time "We must fight robots for some reason."

T3 established the same tired pattern in all subsequent Terminator movies; increasingly silly twists, rampant CGI, over the top new "better" Terminators that lack all the subtlety and menace of the original T-1000 and weak casting.

I for one hope they just let the "franchise" die now, in my mind nothing after T2 is canon, simple as.

My previous review for 28 Days Later, I gave the film 7/10, commenting that an extremely good first act is damaged by some increasingly wonky scriptwriting as the story goes on.

Unfortunately, 28 Weeks Later takes all the good things from the first film (the atmosphere, the setting, the Rage Virus) but also all the bad things (characters acting stupidly, an incredibly incompetent military, plot contrivances).

And then the movie amplifies both. The result is a visceral and occasionally effective horror film that also suffers from the same severe brain degeneration that the Infected seem to have.

Like it's predecessor, 28 Weeks opens with a *thumping* first act that is really great. We have people in the countryside sheltering themselves from the Infected onslaught, trying to keep a low profile and living a pretty bleak existence with a brave face. I could have watched another 30 minutes of this.

Then the Infected break in and Don (played really effectively by Robert Carlyle, a highlight of the movie) and his wife Alice (Catherine McCormack) are thrown into a chaotic scramble for survival.

The imagery of Don running for his life in broad daylight, terror etched on his face as a swarm of contagious maniacs run after him, all surrounded by rolling green British hills...it's pretty breathtaking. I love this part of the film. It's genuinely disturbing and really unique at the same time.

This actually brings me onto the first thing I find irritating about the film; the "semi-villainous" characterisation of Don.

Don is a likeable family man for the most part and I empathised with him. The weird thing is, after he runs away in the opening, the movie heavily tries to insinuate that he's a dirty coward who was wrong for running away without his wife. I found this really weird.

It's already been established that fighting infected people hand to hand is practically suicidal (one drop of blood in your eye or mouth turns you into one, after all).

Don was completely outnumbered at the house and his wife was trapped in a room past a bunch of Infected, so realistically his only choice was run away or die a pointless agonising death. We even see him bravely fighting off the Infected with a crowbar before he drops it, so it's not like he wasn't trying his best to save everyone in the first place.

Yet the movie tries to sell that he's a selfish coward because he didn't want to get pointlessly mauled to death, which would have resulted in his wife dying afterwards anyway. Bit unfair?

Anyway, the biggest strength of the film from this point on is the "28 Days" formula, while the biggest weakness is the characterisation of the US Military and the bizarre choices the characters make. The sheer silliness of some of the plot contrivances leading to "now there are zombies everywhere, lol" really turned me off the film.

Unlike how the first film unrealistically depicted 90% of the Brit military as deranged psychopaths after a couple of weeks of social collapse, 28 Weeks unrealistically depicts 90% of the US military as completely incompetent cretins.

Some of the things the US army does in this film include:

• Locking an extremely dangerous Rage-infected carrier in a completely unguarded room, with keycard access to this room given to some random civilian guy who fixes boilers and stuff.

• Insisting on killing this carrier even though she could permanently cure Rage if properly experimented on (though they're so inept they don't even manage to kill the person anyway).

• Having a policy whereby if there is an outbreak of Rage again, they will forcibly herd all thousands of civilians into a tiny, cramped basement with many unsecured entrances and extremely poor lighting. Wow.

• Having a policy whereby if a Rage outbreak goes full-blown (which it absolutely will due to said stupid basement plan), the soldiers are ordered to shoot absolutely everything, including each other. Even if it's blatantly obvious people aren't infected, or obvious that shooting them will cause the situation to clearly worsen even further.

• The military also completely fails to actually contain the area they are re-settling in the first place with proper fencing or anything like that, allowing the virus to get to Europe and possibly the whole world. Again, wow.

Finally, the characters are also subject to this brain-rot. Perhaps the most obvious example is Doyle.

He pointlessly sacrifices himself to some guys with short-range mini flamethrowers while pushing a car. He literally has an assault rifle on his back and knew they were there! Why on Earth did he not simply shoot them before pushing the car?

I'll stop there. I think the point's been made. If you want another helping of the good bits of 28 Days Later, this film can deliver, with a good performance by Carlyle to boot. It's just unfortunate that the film ups the bad stuff from the prequel to 11 as well.