Reviews

The fifth and final of Christopher Lee's Fu-Manchu outings – a planned sixth film was cancelled due to its overwhelmingly poor critical and commercial reception - and the second to be directed by schlockmeister Jess Franco. Played as a parody, 'Castle' might actually have been quite fun. Fu-Manchu is essentially reduced to a poor knock-off of a Blofeld (though I'm not sure he was ever much else). Lee actually brings his A-game here, having phoned it in previously in the series, lifting the ludicrous dialogue to the point where it's almost palatable, but everything else about the film seems to be mocking itself without knowing it. The production design is so camp it makes The Ipcress File look like The Spy Who Came In From The Cold. The action and violence is again tepid and clumsy (lest we forgot this is a Jess Franco film) and the plot manages to be confusing in spite of being threadbare. There are some babes thrown in, but this is a PG movie so, again, Franco fans expecting anything resembling titillation will be thoroughly disappointed. Unlike its predecessor, which is by far the more insipid and dreary of the two, 'Castle' has a handful of things going for it. One is Jess Franco in a supporting role, wearing a fez and dubbed to sound like… I don't really know. The score is totally derivative but actually rather nice. The wacky production design and multi-coloured fluorescent lighting add a lot of hammy fun. The attempt at seamless in-scene cutting between the various, disparate filming locations is endlessly amusing. Some of the dialogue is hilariously quotable, and played to the hilt by everyone involved. Frankly, though, the two high points of the show are the sizeable inserts from A Night To Remember and Campbell's Kingdom. While definitely a cut above its predecessor in some ways, I'm still struggling to give this any kind of recommendation.

The two-dozen or so existing reviews for this movie neglect to specifically address its most likely audience; the committed Jess Franco fan.

(Yes, I suppose there may be some fans of the late, great Christopher Lee so dedicated as to want to watch it too, for whom this review will hopefully suffice.)

So what does a Jess Franco fan look for in a movie? Simple. Gore, sex and nudity, terrible acting, threadbare plot, ludicrous dialogue, and generally inept film-making in every department (pretty much in that order).

Okay, so the acting is embarrassingly bad. I believe it's testament to what a good bloke Christopher Lee was that he continued making (awful) films with Franco because they were friends, but even he is woeful here. This is obviously not helped by the poor attempt on the part of the make-up department to make him look Chinese. If you've ever seen the early seasons of the original Hawaii Five-O, you'll know what I mean.

The plot, beyond being simply terrible, is utterly confusing. There's some scheme by the titular miscreant to use women as a means of killing his enemies (whose status as such is never actually established), by having them bitten by a snake whose poison bizarrely doesn't affect them but will kill anyone they kiss. Of course. But it doesn't stop there. There's some baffling sub-plot involving some pre-Indiana Jones archaeologist / adventurer / good guy which I honestly cannot explain.

The dialogue, while not exactly Shakespeare, is not nearly as wince- inducing as it needs to be in order to actually be amusing, unlike many Franco films ("She sucked the semen and the life right out of him" from Erotikill being one of my all-time favourite bits of dialogue), and the film-making here is far less offensively poor than most (later) Jess Franco efforts. Sadly, this actually serves as a disappointment to those of us who came to the show hoping for wobbly, out-of-focus shots of pubic triangles and bad dubbing. That's always been part of the fun.

The real con here, though, is the near total absence of any titillation. The snake poison / kiss of death plot would've been a perfect excuse for Franco to stuff the film with boobs and crass sexy bits, but there's only one instance I caught of partial nudity (though by the end I was barely watching) and a wholly unsatisfying one at that. Similarly there is literally noting in the way of badly executed gore.

The Jess Franco of a mere five years later would have made a totally different film - a film his fans would have wanted to see. Given how bafflingly stupid the, err, story is here, nobody would have questioned the random, curtly inserted sex of later Franco movies, and he'd have replaced the multiple PG deaths in this movie with some needlessly excessive and gory ones.

Unless you're an obsessive completest and/or a die hard fan of Franco or Lee, give a miss.

Scratch that - I AM an obsessive completest AND a die hard fan of Franco, and I still can't find anything to recommend in this mess.

Skip it.

The Devil's Rain is a totally baffling film, somehow both more and less than the sum of its parts. Borgnine, Shatner, Satanism - sounds like a giggle, right? And yet somehow the fact that it's so silly, and clearly so reticent to take itself seriously for most of its running time, means that it doesn't really fall into the so-bad- it's-good category, yet it's so far short of actually being good at the same time as not really being all that bad.

Confused? You will be. Leaving aesthetic appreciation aside, the plot of The Devil's Rain is a total muddle. There are huge plot gaps, in which the audience is presumably expected to make leaps to connect one scene to the next, or to try and establish context which is missing more often than not. I genuinely wonder if there isn't a stash of deleted scenes out there which, if cut back in, would actually help the continuity of the film. Instead, what we're left with is a series of moments - some fun, some dumb, some hilariously badly executed - which only really add up to a coherent movie experience if you're really, really paying attention. The likelihood is that you won't be, given the overall sub-par writing, hammy acting (notable Shatnerisms abound) and direction which clearly has no idea of the tone it's going for.

Approach this film with curiosity and you'll have some harmless fun. You'll chuckle at the sight of Ernie Borgnine dressed and made up like a goat. You'll cringe at Shatner's pseudo-pensive-horizon- staring delivery of the ludicrous dialogue. And you'll love the pre Incredible Melting Man melting men. But I'm pretty sure you won't know - or care - what the hell (pun intended) is going on.

Bullhead is an extremely frustrating film. It sports an incredible performance by Matthias Schoenaerts as a lonely Belgian farmer struggling to cope with an emotionally isolated existence and haunted by an insurmountably troubled past. To say any more would be a total spoiler. As a piece of character drama, this is seriously affecting stuff, made all the more distressing by a truly world- class performance. This would have been enough for a terrific movie.

However, the waters are muddied by various other superfluous plot strands; an investigation into the use of steroids in beef, local gangsters killing cops, low-rent hoodlums selling stolen tyres, a gay police informant who also happens to be a long-lost childhood friend, and a slightly implausible love interest. While any of these ideas may have borne fruit in their own movie, the result here is definitely less than the sum of its parts, not least because the aptly sombre tone of the main story is compromised by the intrusion of these other events.

Michaël R. Roskam is definitely a director to watch, and I suspect Bullhead will become an interesting curiosity to visit in the context of a great director taking his first steps. Ultimately, the weakness here is in the writing. Roskam's next movie was 'The Drop' (with Matthias Schoenaerts again awesome in a supporting role), which was adapted from a short story by Dennis Lehane and, for my money, is an infinitely superior movie, largely because it doesn't suffer from the same cluttered over-plotting. Like Anton Corbijn , tone and emotion are clearly Roskam's forté and I for one am excited to see what he delivers next.

Technical merits for the blu ray are first rate, and the 'making of' piece is watchable, if nothing special.

Suspiria is one of the undisputed classics of horror cinema, and certainly one of the very best horror movies ever to come out of Europe. Argento will probably always be a divisive figure. For all of his talents as a stylist, all of his movies (as much as I love them) are let down by tired pacing, ludicrous plots, hackneyed dialogue and pathetic characterisations. In short, if you're looking for cerebral, rather than purely visceral, look elsewhere.

The main reason Suspiria was and still is able to stand out from the rest of Argento's oeuvre is that, for the first time, his focus was on the supernatural, rather than on some implausible and clumsily conceived murder mystery. The dialogue is still hammy and the characters – especially the woeful lead, Jessica Harper, who has about as much charisma as my grandmother's socks – are all pretty slender (pun intended), but the plot actually moves along well and the supernatural undercurrent gives Argento completely free reign to indulge his visualistic flair like never before (or since). Subtle it is not, but it sure is effective. The colour palette is gorgeous and the production design (note the height of the door handles) is eerily effective in setting the demented fairy-tale-gone-wrong tone. The death set pieces are among the best Argento devised (I cannot look at razor wire without wincing), their strength, as with all Argento deaths, being the fact that they're so connectible to the type of pain we can all imagine and we all dread. And, of course, there's the now-classic Goblin score which, however bombastically it is sometimes deployed, takes the tension up ten-fold.

We can only hope that the long-circulated rumours of a remake remain unfounded.

I despair, I really do... Admittedly, I am not exactly the target audience for movies like this. I can't really get past the fact that I'm watching a bunch of men in their 40s dressed up in plastic costumes.

But this.... this atrocity embodies everything that's wrong with mainstream cinema. Why bother writing compelling characters for me to care about when you can simply tell me how to feel with flighty cinematography and saccharine music? Why leave anything to the imagination when you can hammer me with hyperbolic dialogue? Why worry about anything when you have a $225 million budget and can dazzle us mindless zombies with two and a half hours of CGI?

It's a travesty. I can generally accept movies for what they are, but Man of Steel has the feel of a movie that thinks it's genuinely moving, profound, important, and this is what is most insulting about watching it. Films like this have zero respect for their audience's intelligence.

Utter, utter piff.

Roman Polanksi once said that "people like Godard are like little kids playing at being revolutionaries", noting that he had actually grown up surrounded by the realities of communism. As a general rule I would always try to avoid a filmmaker's personal tastes, opinions and politics but, as La Chinoise is essentially a political statement, it's impossible not to let the Godard's politics affect my opinion of it. Sadly, Polanski's comment sums this film up perfectly.

There is no plot. What we are subjected to amounts to little more than a series of vignettes of utterly bourgeois adolescents rambling their tin- pot political philosophies from the comfort of their upper middle class apartments. Was this supposed to be ironic? Or are we supposed to buy into the ideas of these vacuous kids? It fails on both levels. All I wanted to do was give all of them a good slap across the chops and tell them to grow up.

Am I missing the point? Do I just not get it? Perhaps, and I'm fine with that. I truly love some of Godard's films; Vivra Sa Vie, Pierrot Le Fou, Le Mepris. The difference is that all of these films had something or someone for me to care about. The one thing that might have saved La Chinoise for me would have been for all the characters to catch bubonic plague and die horribly. That's would have cheered me up.

Stylistically the film has Godard written all over it but, by the time this film came out (in 1967), these flairs were already wearing a little thin, especially when they're essentially there to veil an utterly feckless piece of propaganda. The only point of vague interest here is the slightly eerie way in which this film precipitated the riots of May 1968. This alone, however, is not worth the 85 minutes of your life you will wish you could have back if you decide to sit through this twaddle.

The current iteration of this film on DVD in the UK proudly claims on the cover that this is "Hostel meets Seven". They may just as well have written that it's "The Social Network meets Weekend at Bernie's" - it's about a student and involves dead bodies. I mention this up front in the hope of sparing those of lesser cynicism than I from being totally misled about the movie.

In Nightwatch, a truly inspired set up and a fantastic opening 20 minutes is quickly squandered and we're left with a murder mystery by numbers. Our protagonist, Martin, takes a job as a night watchman in a morgue. His first night on the job, where he's shown around by the outgoing guard, is truly brilliant and could have made a fantastic short. From here we're led into a convoluted story about a series of high-profile murders and their contrived connection to Martin and his friends. There's a huge red herring which is so blatantly telegraphed early on that you're too irritated to care how it turns out. What actually transpires is so hackneyed, far reached and fatally full of plot holes that it makes the red herring seem plausible by comparison.

There are a few nasty set pieces, some genuine suspense and a couple of good chuckles, being this is essentially a routine affair. The characterisations are thin at best, the plot is ludicrous and the denouement is frankly insulting to even the most simple-minded viewer.

Pity. This could've been great. Watch it for the opening 20 minutes, but don't expect much beyond that.

Nothing But A Man is one of the great hidden gems of American independent cinema. It tells the simple story of a man and woman in love, trying to endure the hardships of life as a "coloured" in Mississippi in the early '60s. Told with restraint, compassion and lovely observation, the film is also beautifully acted and gloriously shot.

The film's ultimate power is to show you that racism is not just about blatant verbal or physical abuse. The cuts that run the deepest have to do with the role to which black people were expected to succumb in order to avoid being considered "trouble". The film is infused with quiet outrage but also with an overwhelming sense of dignity. Under all of this, is lovely and very human relationship which acts as the heart and soul of the film.

Ivan Dixon manages to balance all of this impeccably in the lead role, making it impossible not to identify with him, even when we don't like him. Abbey Lincoln is simply adorable as his wife, who brings a different kind of quiet pathos to the story. Look out for a very early appearance by the great Yaphet Kotto, as well as supporting roles from Julius Harris and Gloria Foster.

My hopes were high for this movie, maybe too high. Being a huge fan of Brian de Palma (at least as far as 1996), I still love his film and still consider it the best of the bunch. John Woo's offering is perhaps his worst film (absurd plot developments involving removable faces, terrible casting, tiresome action sequences) and, even factoring in the high-octane focus of Missions 3 and 4, still seems totally out-of-place. The third film was a huge surprise; tremendous fun and a more evidently tongue-in-cheek approach to the necessarily ridiculous plot. It also featured Phil Hoffman as one of the most quietly bad-ass villains of recent years.

Ghost Protocol is closest in tone to the third film, but the balance of gravity and levity JJ Abrams brought to the proceedings has eluded Brad Bird's grasp. The main problem for me is the cast. In Abrams' film, Hoffman anchored everything so that everyone else could just have fun. Even Laurence Fishburn seemed to be winking in a "we really don't want you to take any of this too seriously" way.

In Bird's film, the usually dependable Jeremy Renner seems to think he's not allowed to have any fun at all and appears to be taking his role far more seriously than it demands, making it painful viewing. Renner is a great actor, so I'm tempted to blame Bird's direction. Simon Pegg simply doesn't work. Ironically, they've toned down the jokes and given him a more substantial purpose in the story, which seems like a total waste of Pegg and an otherwise credible character. The bad guys here are all totally forgettable, to the point where I really can't come up with anything more substantive to say about them. The same goes for the dialogue and plot; some Russians, some codes, some camaraderie....

The action sequences are pretty fun but, by the time the bullets start flying, you simply won't care enough about the characters or their dilemma to really enjoy the show. By the time we hit the two-hour mark, I was just willing it all to end. I was then made to endure a totally unnecessary, tacked-on ending.

Essentially, the problem boils down to the fact that the film can't seem to decide how seriously it wants to be taken. If it were just balls-to-the- wall fun, fine. If it could muster a fraction of the tone of, say, the Bourne movies (which it clearly tries to emulate), I would happily let myself take it seriously. Sadly, it falls short of its own apparent expectations. And mine.

I have struggled through a good dozen of Herzog's early films and am not too proud to admit that I simply do not get it. Detractors accuse his films of being slow and pretentious (a word I hate). I adore Tarkovsky, Bergman, Antonioni, Kieslowski - all of whom suffer the same slings and arrows from would-be cineastes - but I just can't get into Herzog at all. I certainly enjoyed some his films more than others ; The Enigma of Kasper Hauser, Nosferatu The Vampyre and, in particular, Woyzeck all have their moments for me.

Heart of Glass is best known as the outcome of Herzog's most radical experiment; having most of the cast perform under hypnosis. Accused to this day of gimmickry, Herzog insists that this was done for the sake of "stylisation not manipulation" in order to add a trance-like aura to the characters' increasing insanity. Factoring in the fact that almost everyone in the film was a non-actor, what do you think the outcome was? Let me save you the suspense. The outcome, as far as I'm concerned, was that we get to watch 90 minutes of people in what appears to be a stoned, stupefied coma. This is confounded by the fact that the dialogue - if it can be so called - seems to be written in some trite haiku style. For the most part, nobody talks to anybody else, they simply recite this flowery, contrived poetry at each other. Half the time, the actors are not even looking at each other! At the risk of sounding incredibly shallow, most of the cast could also be contenders for the title of Ugliest Person Alive.

Don't get me wrong, I like a film to be challenging, but there's a line and Herzog not only crossed it, he set fire to it and threw it out the window. There's nothing challenging about an old man in a chair randomly and unconvincingly cackling; or a naked, bald-headed woman holding a goose (yes, a goose) and staring into space; or two half-cooked men slowly pouring beer over each other; or a man sitting perfectly still looking at a hand of playing cards while madness ensues around him. This is considered half-arsed film-making if we're talking about people like Jess Franco, but somehow Herzog gets away with it.

I'd love to sit down and watch this again with someone who likes it so I can ask them to point out what I'm missing.

The most painful thing about this film is that, after 90 minutes of genuine suffering, there is very little payoff. Okay, I get it, Herzog is making a point about faith, despair, hopelessness and the fragility of humanity (the heart of glass). He could have done this just as effectively in ten minutes, this being about the collective total of the film's screen time which I would like to see again, as it contains some lovely cinematography (which has nothing to do with the rest of the film).

This notwithstanding, the only reason I could recommend this film to anybody is for the sheer, baffling pointlessness and stupidity of it. Honesty, you really do have to see it to believe it.

Walter Hill's second feature as director is truly is relic of its time. Being a huge fan of '70s American cinema, I mean that as a compliment. Having already written screenplays for John Huston and Sam Peckinpah (whose influence creeps through here and is wildly evident in The Long Riders), Hill largely and deliberately ditches substance for style. The characters are kept pretty thin – the antihero, the obsessed cop, the girl in the middle – and the plot does little more than justify the chases and shootouts. Many people felt that this detracted from the movie, but surely that would be to miss the point of a film which, after all, is called The Driver.

Ryan O'Neal is surprisingly dark and aloof in the title role. His dialogue is wisely kept to a minimum, keeping the character as mysterious and unpredictable as a great anti-hero should be. Bruce Dern chews the scenery as the maniacal cop out to snare the driver, while Isabelle Adjani (in what was only her second English language film, after Polanski's The Tenant), does her best to look indomitable, as well as looking absurdly hot.

The rest of the movie is owned by the cars. The chase sequences are intense and briskly paced and the tone of the film is suitably cool and detached – none of the characters even have names. Okay, so we never get to know the driver and are offered nothing to which we can relate but he's a total badass and can drive like nobody's business. Surely that's why we're watching.

Blaxploitation copped a lot of grief. White people called it subversive, a lot of black folks considered it self-abusive. Those who loved it, and still do, took it on its own terms, as simple, trashy fun.

Sadly, it's fun that is sorely missing from this lame Jim Brown vehicle. Brown plays the titular ex-Marine and all-round bad-ass whose father is murdered by some Latin American gangsters. Whatever Slaughter actually does for a living is obviously not so important that he can't drop it in a heartbeat to and work for some CIA-esque law agency who are trying to shut the gangsters down. With all the money and equipment they have at their disposal, they haven't been able to do this, so they recruit Slaughter to do it for them because... well, presumably, for some reason, they think he can. Sound silly? It is.

Unlike many of the lighter Blaxploitation films, there are no winks to the audience here. No, the film-makers seem to actually want us to take them seriously. This is the film's downfall.

Jim Brown is charismatic enough, though he's no Richard Roundtree or Fred Williamson. Stella Stevens genuinely shines as his "love" interest and a young Rip Torn is positively loony (and totally out-of-place) as the goon-turned-boss out to get Slaughter. The rest is padding. The action sequences are barely worth watching and the script is not a patch on the films it clearly tries to emulate.

All things considered, Slaughter is really one for die-hard Blaxploitation fans and/or completists. All others proceed with caution.

An interesting cast and fairly bomb-proof premise are squandered in Ken Annakin's Battle of the Bulge. Henry Fonda is the purer than water ex- cop who, miraculously, is the only person in the entire US Army who predicts an offensive move by the weakened Germans. Naturally, he's right, and the rest of the US Military Intelligence community has egg on their face, presumably. Robert Shaw is on typically badass form as an uber-Nazi spearheading the offensive, and there's fun support from Charles Bronson, Telly Savalas and a pre-Hawaii Five-0 James MacArthur.

Can't go wrong with this set-up, right? Then how does the film mange to feel overlong, boring and uninteresting? Simply put, this is war-film- making by numbers. The characters are all but paper thin, the exposition is textbook (and too long), even the score is like a parody of itself. Worst of all, the action sequences are particularly wet. I know we're a few years of The Wild Bunch here, but something really bothers me about seeing men being riddled with bullets and simply falling over with a groan - not a bullet hole or a drop of blood in sight. I know what defenders of the film are thinking right now and the answer is yes, I'm perfectly capable of using my imagination but, by that token, why bother watching a film at all? I might as well stare at a blank piece of paper and imagine a decent war movie.

After nearly three hours, I wish I had....

It is a bit of an oddity that this criminally under-exposed film remains under the radar. With an Oscar-winning actor as Executive Producer and appearances from the likes of Noam Chomsky, Mos Def and Snoop Dogg, it surprises me that the film never managed to generate any real publicity.

On the surface, the film concerns itself with the case of Mumia Abu Jamal, a former Black Panther, activist and journalist who was convicted of murdering a Philadelphia cop and sentenced to death. Detractors of the film have remarked on the information the movie chooses to omit, and some felt cheated out of a clearer understanding of the crime itself. The truth seems to be that there is no clear picture of the crime itself, but this is not the point of the movie.

The film is engaging from the start, with an impressive ability to convincingly create the world in which Mumia grew up. Philadelphia in the '60s and '70s was, by all accounts, a pretty horrifying place to be if you were black. The film makes a concentrated reference to the MOVE atrocities (look it up) in order to support the idea that justice had hugely different definitions depending on the colour of your skin. This might sound like leftist propaganda but then again, if you're not a minority, it's always easy to dismiss and belittle the idea of racial injustice.

The movie's real strength is in the questions it raises about the trial and subsequent conviction of Mumia, following the murder he supposedly committed. The case seems to be full of holes and contradictions and we are forced to consider the strong possibility that another man committed the murder. Given the political connotations of the case and the public anger surrounding it, is it unimaginable that a police force would be more concerned with closing it quickly than with getting it right? Is it inconceivable that an opportunity was seen and seized to remove an educated and "troublesome" black man from general circulation? Is it inconceivable that the trial itself was a farce cultivated to ensure the jurors' return of a guilty verdict in order to appease white public outcry?

I too felt frustrated that the film did not attempt to get to the truth at the heart of the case but, again, I do not believe that to be the point of film. Mumia's guilt or innocence is almost of secondary importance to his right to a fair trial, a right which, it seems, he has been denied for over thirty years now.

To paraphrase Chomsky, if we do not believe in true, fair and equal justice for all, we do not believe in justice at all. This film is not perfect, but it raises universal questions about justice and equality and this makes it essential viewing.

The fact that this is hailed as a "masterpiece" and "one of cinema's greatest achievements" is truly astonishing. Along with Herzorg's "Heart of Glass", Pasolini's "Gospel" is one of the truly abhorrent works of world cinema. I spend my life defending "art-house" cinema against its detractors who claim that it's pretentious and self-indulgent. This is truly one of those films which gives all of world cinema / art-house cinema a bad name.

Where to start...? Needless to say, one cannot really lay any blame on the screenplay. Here we have one of the most fascination, stirring, important, enduring and influential stories of all time, without which we would have no Man with No Name, no Star Wars, no Harry Potter. I can honestly say I've seen pre-school productions of the passion which moved me more than this. In fact, the most astonishing thing about this film is that it manages to make you not care about Jesus' life or death at all.

The acting is staggeringly bad. The guy who plays Jesus looks the part, but he has one facial expression with which to communicate the entire range of Jesus' experience. One facial expression for the whole movie. Seriously, this guy makes Steven Seagal look like Laurence freaking Olivier. In spite of his oak-like demeanour, Pasolini's Christ manages to come off as angry and intolerant, rather than divine. He shouts, he condemns, he dictates. This is hardly surprising, given Pasolini's radially political sensibilities, but did he have to make Jesus look like a jerk just to appease his own malcontented frustrations?

The actors playing the disciples, admittedly, have greater range, though not by much. Typically, their expressions range from confused to bemused. What's worse, they look like a bunch of Italian rent boys; all designer stubble and greasy hair. One of them has more wax in his hair than Elvis, which is fascinating given that the film is set 2000 years ago.

This brings me to one of my biggest problems with this film; the countless anachronisms. Costume design is all over the place - no two people look like they come form the same period or region. The music used ranges from traditional Congolese songs to Negro-spirituals to European Baroque choral music. Many critics lauded this "eclectic" use of costume and music. For me, hearing Odetta singing "Motherless Child" while I'm looking a Jesus clearly in his mother's arms while she wears Byzantine-era clothing is plain stupidity. Frankly, it's also a bit of an insult to the song, which is about black children who were taken from their parents as infants to be slaves. Is Pasolini comparing the plight of the Jews to the plight of early slaves in America? Frankly, based on the evidence so far, that would be giving him way too much credit.

I am also confused as to the presence of a female angel, since none are ever mentioned in the book of Matthew or any other book. This wouldn't bother me per se, were it not for the fact that, this glaring error notwithstanding, Pasolini deliberately stuck to the gospel verbatim, even going as far as to use no dialogue aside from that found in the book of Matthew. For this, the film suffers even more. I hardly think Matthew was worried about the book's validity as a screenplay when he was writing it, so this pious insistence on sticking to his words is absurd, and totally out of keep with the other "stylistic" choices the film makes, namely the rampant anachronisms.

Continuity and sound-dubbing are hilariously bad; one of my favourite moments is when we see a man playing with his baby. The baby looks annoyed and grumpy, yet the image is complimented with the classic baby- giggling effect you get in diaper commercials. When Jesus is a baby, Mary is played by a girl who can't have been more than 15 years old. When Jesus is an adult - some 30ish years later - Mary is played by Pasolini's mother, who was almost 70 years old at the time. Are we supposed overlook the fact that Mary has bizarrely aged 55 years? If so, why? What is Pasolini's point in using his own mother as the mother of Christ? Surely an atheist, Marxist homosexual would have no desire to compare himself to Christ... Frankly, I don't care enough to think about it.

The camera operator was clearly either drunk or a child. On at least two occasions he pans to an empty space before clumsily fumbling up or down toward the person or thing he was supposed to be filming. One has to wonder, why on earth didn't Pasolini simply do another take? Was he in a hurry? I can only deduce that he was, as the whole film is made in such a slap-dash way, it's as if he simply didn't care what ended up on the screen. And there we are again, not caring. Pasolini has managed to make me completely indifferent to what is supposed to be the most moving story ever told.

Put simply, this film is an abomination. An insult to cinema and an insult to anybody who has two-braincells to rub together. Avoid!

Let's be honest, Cheech & Chong weren't exactly artists, but some of their earlier movies were a lot of fun. This was their 4th or 5th movie, and it's basically a tired rehash of the same stoner jokes they were knocking out in Up In Smoke. Having said that, it is still fun to a certain audience; the same audience who like Beavis & Butthead or Jay & Silent Bob really.

It's not just the infantile humour, it's that age old story of 'loser makes good' that we all find so satisfying over and over again. While C&C don't really achieve anything in any of their movies, they do have fun not achieving it.

In this movie they end up in Amsterdam, where they are mistaken for Burt Reynolds and Dolly Parton (obviously). You can pretty much imagine the rest of the movie as is. It's stupid, it's childish, it's juvenile - and that's exactly the point.

Having recently revisited my old Van Damme collection (my wife has developed a bit of a crush on JC), I have made my way through all the classics (Bloodsport, AWOL, Kickboxer, Death Warrant, Universal Soldier etc) and hugely enjoyed revelling in the guilty pleasure of watching a short, white Belgian dude kick the living snot out of everyone else on the screen. Why else would anyone go to see a Van Damme picture?

The last film I came to was Nowhere to Run. Having not seen it in a good ten years, and remembering it as slow-paced, indulgent and severely lacking in arse-kicking, I was not really expecting to be at all impressed. It's funny, looking through most of the reviews here, that two groups of people have clearly emerged. The first group, the Van Damme fans, are all complaining that this is not your average VD film and bitching about how they were cheated into watching a serious drama.

The other group are all up in arms at the fact that anyone would make a serious drama and cast Van Damme in it. I have a name for this group, but I doubt IMDb would publish it. Let's just call them w*nkers. Why the w*nkers, who clearly have an abundant dislike for the Muscles from Brussells, would go to see a film with his name above the title is beyond me. Cinesnobs have no place at a Van Damme show. I'll leave it at that.

The reason I felt compelled to write this review is that I am, admittedly, a bit of a Cinesnob, but I'm also happy to take a film for what it is. I like James Bond, I like Sonny Chiba, I like blaxploitation and I also fricking like Van Damme movies! What I did not expect, was for "a serious drama starring Van Damme" (trying saying that out loud without snickering) to be so Damme good! (Get it?)

The story is pretty simple, JC is an escaped con who happens upon a sleepy little town which is about to be pulverised by a nihilistic land developer (not surprisingly, a British one, played with appropriate menace by Joss Ackland). He befriends a little boy (not in the Michael Jackson way, though the boy in question is, ironically, Macaulay Culkin's younger brother, Kieran) and consequently gets rather chummy with the boy's mother. Happily, she is both widowed and incredibly hot. As if her being a still distraught widow weren't enough, she is also being harassed to a rather unreasonable degree by Ted Levine, who is hilarious and brilliant and the land developer's chief henchman. Cue Van Damme.

Sounds like the ideal recipe for another typical action flick, so I am willing to forgive those VD fans who felt cheated. What we actually end up with is a genuinely moving, well paced and hugely enjoyable action drama. It may sound unthinkable, but JC actually pulls his character off perfectly. Sam is mistrusting, awkward but ultimately striving to be a decent person. Director Mark Harmon made a very savvy decision in keeping JC's dialogue to a minimum, leaving him the task of creating a believable character with his face and body language alone. Don't believe the naysayers, JC delivers a truly surprising performance.

Rosanna Arquette also handles her role well, even if the character is flying dangerously close to stereotype. Her performance grounds the whole story, and we both care for her plight and admire her determination (the men in the audience will also admire her perfectly formed semi-naked body). The two kids were bound to be annoying, but they're certainly nowhere close to being as bad as they could have been.

The real star of this film is the consistently beautiful cinematography by the relatively unknown David Gribble. With scenery like this, you'd be hard pressed to go wrong with the external stuff, but the interiors are equally well shot.

The big let down, both in terms of cinematography and the film as a whole, is the truly lame action. There are only a handful of action sequences in the whole show, but they're easily the dullest moments in the film. When you have a good story, solid characters and a really well-cast group of fine actors, do you really need to throw in a bunch of crappy fights? Sadly, if you're selling this as a Van Damme picture, the answer is yes. So they had the courage to put JC in a serious role and give him the chance to prove that he can actually act, but they didn't have the balls to actually sell the film on this basis. The trailer says "Van Damme, as you've never seen him before" and then just gives us a bunch of poor action clips. Is it any wonder that nobody who actually bothered to see this film liked it?

If it weren't bad enough that the action scenes are badly shot and clumsily edited, they're also punctuated by really poor one-liners from JC ("Strike 3, you're out!" and "Au revoir, f**ker" are among the worst). One gets the feeling that there were differences in the opinions of the director and the star and the opinions of the producers and studio folk. Presumably, someone thought they had found a happy balance. Someone was wrong, and the film really suffers as a consequence.

If you can overlook this, and you're not watching the film either to complain that it's not a solid action flick or to complain that Van Damme is in a drama, you'll probably find yourself surprisingly impressed with the film.

If the title hasn't already sold you, I doubt I'll be able to convince you that this film is worth a look.

The plot is a slightly tweaked and thinly veiled rip off of 'Halloween', but this movie doesn't take itself anywhere near as seriously as John Carpenter's classic shocker, and this is perhaps its saving grace.

Like all good horror movies of the period, 'The Slumber Party Massacre' aims to provide us with two things; mild titillation though its utterly shameless use of female nudity and cheap thrills though its corny murder moments. While the latter is hardly on a par with many slashers, it is a bit of fun. Some of the murders are quite inventive, if a little sparing on the gore.

As far as the nudity goes, the premise dictates a fairly abundant use of boobs and thighs. While some may consider this sexist, it is important to note that the director is actually a woman. Stick that in your feminist pipe and choke on it!

Happilly, not only is the film graced with some deliciously and flagrantly gratuitous breast exposure, but the owners of said breasts are uniformly gorgeous. Movies like 'The Mutilator' (which contained not just ugly but fully-clothed ugly women) could learn a lot from this masterpiece of schlock!

This is not to everyone's taste but, if you've read this far with a smile on your face, I'm pretty sure it's the film for you.

Having eagerly awaited the release of this movie, I had perhaps set my expectations a little too high. I consider both 'Pi' and 'Requiem for a Dream' to be brilliant works of cinema, and I had read many glowing reviews for 'The Fountain' before seeing it, so it did have a lot to live up to.

This is a three tiered story, concerning questions of love, death, the meaning of life and the idea of immortality. We are presented with three irrevocably intertwined tales - one set in 16th Century Spain; the second set in modern, urban America; the final set in the future. That's a lot to fit into 92 minutes, I thought to myself, but if anyone can do it, Aronofsky can.

Don't get me wrong, the film succeeds on many levels, not least a visual one. The effects and the cinematography deserve a great deal of praise, but this is not the kind of film to value style over substance.

As far as the substance goes, it's hit or miss. The main (modern) story is deeply moving, thanks largely to two fine performances. We feel every bit of Hugh Jackman's anger and frustration at the world as he tries to find a way to save his dying wife, played devastatingly by Rachel Weisz.

Unfortunately, neither the dialogue or the performances during the 16th Century scenes, which see Jackman play a warrior sent on a mission to find the key to eternal life by Weisz' queen, are good enough to carry the weight of the premise. This is heavy stuff, and it is handled a little clumsily by all concerned and, consequently, never hits the mark.

The future segment sees Jackman sporting a Buddhist skinhead and talking to a tree. Sounds a bit silly you may think. Unfortunately, despite Jackman's best efforts, it is. It really is.

In the end, while the film poses some pretty heavy questions about the nature of man, and manages to deliver some very moving moments, it never really comes close to the greatness it strives for. Much as it pains me to say it, it really is a bit of a turkey.

See it for the stunning visuals and for the fine performances of Jackman and Weisz in the central story (try to overlook the others), but don't set your heart on being blown away. Let's just hope Aronofsky's next film will be a return to form.

Let's be honest. No one with a modicum of common sense would approach a movie like this and expect it be any good, in the strictest sense of the word. There are, however, at least two things which one expects to see in a cheesy slasher flick. The first is some serious gore, the second is boobies. Unlike most of the films in the Friday 13th series, this pathetic entry fails to deliver the goods on both counts.

The plot is hilarious. It seems that, in spite of the savage murders that occurred at Camp Crystal Lake both last year and the year before (as well as the murders fifteen years earlier), yet another group of unsuspecting and apparently mindless teenagers go to the camp for a bit of fun and frivolity. In a huge twist, Jason returns from the dead - again - and starts killing them.

As always, the first seven minutes of the film is just a replay of the last seven minutes of Part 2. One can't help but think that they were trying desperately to bump up the lousy running time, and they still couldn't make it to 90 minutes. If you think that's a rip off, keep watching.

The only interesting thing about this film is that this is where Jason pioneered the iconic "killer in a hockey mask" look, having opted for a hessian sack over his head in the second instalment of the series. This is mildly diverting for about 30 seconds but is a long way from saving this turkey.

The murders are all pretty tame here compared to the first two movies. Most of the violence happens off screen as the scenes all cut away just as the blade (or weapon of choice) is about to hit. We get to see the bodies afterwards, but there's nothing even remotely shocking about most of the shots here. The one exception is a body sliced almost in half (from the groin up), delicately balanced on a roof support beam. Personally, I couldn't help thinking what a lot of effort it must have been for Jason to lift the body up there and balance it just right, but by this point I was seriously bored.

The real tragedy of this schlock-fest is that, despite the presence of some fairly hot (in an 80s way) teenage girls, none of them get their baps out. Correct me if I'm wrong, but I'm pretty sure this is a flagrant violation of horror movie etiquette not to mention the fact that we had all come to expect some boob from this series as if by right! Ultimately, for me, this proved to be the last straw.

This is a movie for die hard Jason fans only as it is easily the weakest in the series. If you've seen any of the Friday 13th, you'll know just how great a compliment that is.

George Lazenby seems to split Bond fans down the middle - they either love him or loath him. Personally, I'm somewhere in between, but I do consider OHMSS one of the most important Bond moments and, in many ways, one of the best films.

The most striking difference about this film is the tone, underpinned by the unthinkable notion that James Bond could fall in love. Despite Lazenby shortcomings as an actor, the relationship between Bond and Diana Rigg's Tracey is completely believable, and this is what gives the films its clout, even today.

The set-up is nothing new. Blofeld plots to brain-wash and hypnotise a group of conveniently sexy young women and use them to spread a virus for which only he has the cure. It's all very well until the hypnotism scenes, which ripped off the laughably bad ending from The Ipcress File (on which Peter Hunt, OHMSS's director, was the editor).

Location wise, the film-makers struck gold in Switzerland. Consequently, this film is graced with some of the best ski-chase sequences of the series and some beautiful cinematography too.

Some of the fights are a bit clumsy, and the editing seems particularly cack-handed in places. Ironically the director, Peter Hunt, had been the editor on four of the previous Bonds. The editor replacing him was John Glen, who went on to direct five Bond films which were among the best as far as action goes.

This is really only a small gripe though, as this film is not about the action but about character. Not until 'Casino Royale', nearly 30 years on, would we see a Bond this vulnerable again. Shame really, especially given that they subsequently followed this film with the light and largely pointless 'Diamond Are Forver'.

Whatever you may think of Lazenby, this film is an essential part of the Bond saga and, for my money, a genuinely moving piece of dramatic cinema as well.

Bond meets Blaxploitation is one of the all-time great entries. Based half-heartedly on Fleming's novel of the same name, 'Live & Let Die' sees Bond travel to Harlem and the Caribbean to stop kingpin Mr Big from bringing a lifetime's supply of heroin to the US.

Largely considered to be among the best of the Bond movies, this baby has some classic moments; the speed-boat chase across the swamps of Louisiana, the bus chase in San Monique, Baron Samedi striking fear into the heart of man, Sheriff JW Pepper spitting and sweating all over the place, Jane Seymour looking utterly divine and Yaphet Kotto lending huge gravity in what is possibly the best incarnation of a Bond baddie.

George Martin's score was a departure from the Barry scores that preceded it, but it works nicely in the context of the film, alongside Roger Moore's new Bond.

There's a reason that some of the Bond films have outlasted others. This film is rightly considered one of them. If you haven't seen it, stop wasting time reading this and go watch it to discover those reasons for yourself.

There's not a great deal to be said about this film that hasn't been said on these boards before. With the blood, sweat and tears pour out in OHMSS, we were introduced to a new, grittier kind of Bond. I don't know who decided that it didn't work, but clearly someone did. 'Diamonds Are Forver' was the follow up, and is cemented at the very bottom of most Bond lists.

Sean Connery looks like he couldn't care less what's going on in this film. It seemed to be a case of take the money and.. stroll. The plot is all but non-existent but still manages to confuse and bore. The action is timid and dull, the locations are far from inspired and Charles Gray is nothing short of pathetic in the role of Bond's nemesis, Blofeld, who seems to have gone from uber-villain to uber-camp cabaret act. Seriously, he's about as fearsome as my grandmother.

It is important to bear in mind that Blofeld murdered Bond's wife at the end of the last film. In spite of this, Bond seems to consider him a mere annoyance in this movie, rather than the object of blind rage, as you might expect. Their confrontation is more akin to Austin Powers vs Dr Evil than it is to Bond vs Blofeld from the previous films. The performances of Connery and Gray in these scenes may as well have been shot on different days, there is that little tension between them.

Thinking about it, there is really nothing at all memorable about this tripe. Even John Barry's score felt mediocre after OHMSS. This film is a disgrace to the franchise and to Connery's career. The only small redemption is that Connery's used the whopping fee he earned for this to make 'The Offence' with Sidney Lumet. Ignore 'Diamonds' and watch that. You'll thank me later.

After a series of increasingly camp Moore-Bond movies, the tone of 'A View to a Kill' was surprisingly dark. There's a lot of fun in here, but I can remember being really gripped the very first time I saw this movie.

Our baddie here is an entrepreneur called Max Zorin, played with huge finesse by the great Christopher Walken. Zorin, as it turns out, intends to wipe out Silicone Valley by flooding it and only one man can stop him. Okay, so the set up is fairly standard. The pre-title sequence explains Bond's involvement and provides a pleasant piece of action set in Alaska (almost ruined by a stupid and notable unfunny bit of 'surfing', complete with a cheesy Beach Boys cue).

Sadly, Roger Moore looks more like he should be waiting in line at the post office than facing off against bad guys. He's pushing 60 years old here, and it really shows. If you can get past that, there are some fantastic action sequences, including a nail-biting escape from a huge fire in San Franciso's City Hall, a tremendous fire engine chase and a fierce punch-up on top of the Golden Gate Bridge.

Patrick Macnee appears here for a bit of an in-joke, playing Bond's undercover ally, and some amusing dialogue ensues between them. The Bond-girl is sadly forgettable, especially when you place her next to Grace Jones as a highly original henchman. The real winner here is Christopher Walken, who literally chews the film to pieces and has some of the best bad-guy lines ever. "Intuitive improvisation is the secret of genius", he sniggers malevolently.

The obligatory inclusion of Q proved a tad too much here, as he appears only to introduce his latest creation - a radio controlled cat, designed for surveillance, which serves no purpose in the movie other than to try and extract a cheap giggle from the audience.

Alas, it's easy to forgive the few minor gripes as this movie is largely a winner. Certainly not one of the greats, but at least of one the best Bond movies of the period.