Seeking a Friend for the End of the World (2012)

If you had just three weeks to live, what would you do? Try and see long-lost friends and relatives before the time came? Make an effort to re-connect with an old love? Finally get round to reading War and Peace? Travel as much as you could? Go on a crime spree? With an asteroid called Matilda hurtling towards the planet, that's the very conundrum facing Dodge Petersen (Steve Carell). Within moments of the car radio telling them that a last-ditch attempt to stop Matilda has failed, Dodge watches on as his wife Linda (Nancy Carell) gets out of the car and runs away from him and their life together. It's probably for the best anyway: she was having an affair and he only married her because he was scared of dying alone. Some people try and flee, as his wife did. Others join orgies and parties and some get things over with and take their own lives. Dodge reacts altogether differently, carrying on his humdrum life as normal. He goes to work, checks his empty letterbox and tries to tell his cleaning lady that with the apocalypse approaching, she doesn't have to come to work anymore. She thinks he's trying to fire her, so he relents and lets her carry on.

Dodge's friends aren't interested in business as usual, not in the slightest. Warren (Rob Corddry) and Diane (Connie Britton) invite him to a dinner party and try and set him up with their enthusiastic friend Karen (Melanie Lynskey), reasoning that no-one should die alone. They've hit the nail on the head - he doesn't want to die alone, but other than that, he doesn't know what he wants. He does know however that he's not interested in Karen or Diane's sexual advances, nor does he fancy taking heroin. So, he leaves the party and goes home. As he reminisces about Olivia, his old high school sweetheart, he sees his neighbour Penny (Keira Knightley) crying outside his window. She's missed the last flight back to England to see her family so he consoles her and invites her in. She falls asleep on his sofa and the next morning, gives him a pile of letters that the postman had wrongly delivered to her apartment over the years. They've never spoken before despite being neighbours for a long time so she has no idea that the man she assumed was his "roommate's boyfriend" was in fact his wife's lover. After trying to kill himself, Dodge reads the letters and finds one from Olivia where she tells him that she's divorced with a son and that he was the love of her life. Filled with a renewed sense of purpose and with a crowd of looters approaching their apartment block, he rescues Penny and tells her that if she helps him track down Olivia, he will hook her up with his friend who has a private plane that can take her back home to Surrey.

Thus begins the movie proper and from this point onwards it's a strange romantic drama-cum-black comedy-cum-apocalyptic science fiction film. Some parts work really well. For example, Dodge maintaining the semblance of a normal life as the sky falls around him (literally); the dinner party at Warren and Diane's; almost joining in an orgy at a diner and attending a mass baptism at a beach. It's just a pity that so many scenes fall flat on their face. Dodge's attempt to commit suicide was either supposed to be poignant or funny and it couldn't decide which. Dodge and Penny's encounter with an unusually vigilant policeman sees the film swerve completely off course and delivers easily the most boring and frustrating five minutes of the film. Their meeting with survivalists had promise but it was completely lacking any satirical edge and just felt like it had been shoehorned in. The only joke had at their expense came when they walked in on one of them on the toilet. Martin Sheen's character likewise feels tacked on and doesn't serve much purpose other than to provide a plot device. Finally, the ending. I can see some people really liking it, but I didn't really. I won't spoil it but of the three main ways I thought it could have ended as I was watching it - abrupt black comedy, tearful reunion and unhappy resolution - they picked the weakest of the three. After it finishes I wondered if there was an alternate ending but there is not.

Strange and unholy mash-up it might be but fortunately, there is glue holding the whole ramshackle structure together and it is the performances of Carell and Knightley. He deadpans his way through the film, his occasional outbursts of emotion and playful flirting making for a confidently understated performance. She is full of spunky energy, another excellent performance to add to the already long list. Together they make a likeable and believable pairing, often providing the only high points in scenes that otherwise drag along under the weight of their own superfluousness.

Seeking a Friend for the End of the World is a bit of a strange film and has as many hits as it does misses. It would all come unstuck were it not for Steve Carell and Keira Knightley. She in particular is superb and without their winning performances, the whole thing would come crashing down.

6 out of 10.

Underworld 3: Rise of the Lycans (2009)

I didn't have particularly high hopes going into the third film on the back of the spectacularly terrible second. Maybe that helped lower my expectations as I actually quite enjoyed this one!

The challenge with a film like Underworld 3: Rise of the Lycans, where the audience already know how it will end (with Viktor killing Sonja, Lucian escaping from his grasp and the war between the vampires and the werewolves starting), is to ensure that it's still interesting enough. It helps that the credits start to roll in the eighty-third minute but that's not the only positive: the incomprehensible and convoluted plot of the second film has been ditched in favour of a much simpler narrative.

When Lucian (Michael Sheen), the first werewolf able to control his powers and re-assume human form at will, is born, vampire elder Viktor (Bill Nighy) ignores his instincts to kill the "abomination" and spares his life. Instead, Lucian is used as the template for a new breed of werewolves - lycans. No longer cursed to live as rabid beasts for all eternity, they are used as slaves by the vampires. Provided with a source of cheap labour during the night and watchdogs during the day, the vampires are able to concentrate on fighting the werewolves. Viktor's daughter, Sonja (Rhona Mitra), is restless and unwilling to sit in court as her father urges. She prefers to spend her time hunting werewolves with the Death Dealers. When she falls in love with Lucian, it's only a matter of time before things unravel and a vengeful Viktor kills his daughter, starting the war that will rumble on for centuries to come.

With Kate Beckinsale's role reduced to that of narrator, the role of female lead falls on the shoulders of fellow British actress Rhona Mitra. A capable actress, she does a perfectly satisfactory job and she and Michael Sheen go together nicely. Speaking of Sheen, he does a very good job and his role as Lucian is probably the best and most memorable of the entire film. Now six years older than when he first played the role, he is much more convincing as the werewolf leader. Bill Nighy is slightly less hammy than he was in the previous films and Steven Mackintosh and Kevin Grevioux return as vampire historian Andreas Tanis and werewolf Raze, respectively. Also, look out for Spartacus and Lord of the Rings actor Craig Parker in a small role.

With the awful acting and silly plots of the preceding two films done away with, Underworld 3: Rise of the Lycans is actually the best of the bunch. It's nothing exceptional but by god, at least it's competently made! Director Patrick Tatopoulos belies his history in special effects by not being overly reliant on them and instead delivering a solid piece of work. Another bonus is the removal of guns from the film. Crossbows replace them to a certain extent but most of the fighting is hand-to-hand combat and the film is much better for it.

It won't win any awards and it can't escape the feeling of familiarity that comes with expanding on an already well-defined story but the simplified plot, uniformly competent acting and bloody battle scenes combine to make the third film the pick of the bunch.

6 out of 10.

American Pie: Reunion (2012)

I was just too young to have been caught up in the craze that surrounded American Pie when it was first released in 1999 and I didn't see it until about 2002 but it was still the defining teen comedy of my generation. It's strange to think that kids who weren't even born when the first one was released will be sneaking into cinemas to watch the fourth one. Given that it's been nine years since the last one (not counting the spinoffs), is there appetite for another slice of pie?

The five friends have had differing fortunes since the last time they were all together. Jim (Jason Biggs) and Michelle (Alyson Hannigan) have a two-year-old son. Kevin (Thomas Ian Nicholas) is working from home as an architect and is henpecked by his wife Ellie (Charlene Amoia). Stifler (Sean William Scott) is a temp, working in an office as an assistant for the boss (Vik Sahay). Oz (Chris Klein) is a D-list celebrity: a presenter of a sports show, a former contestant on Celebrity-Dance Off and in a relationship with supermodel Mia (Katrina Bowden). Finch (Eddie Kay Thomas) has apparently disappeared and turns up with tales of his trips around the world on the back of his motorbike. Heather (Mena Suvari) is a doctor and dating a surgeon (Jay Harrington). The only thing we learn about Vicky (Tara Reid) is that she's single and been living in New York.

It's not just the gang and their former love interests that return. Jim's Dad (Eugene Levy), now a widower, has a prominent role. Stifler's Mom (Jennifer Coolidge) is a supporting character and Nadia (Shannon Elizabeth), Jessica (Natasha Lyonne), The Sherminator (Chris Owen) and even the MILF guys (John Cho and Justin Isfeld) all have cameos. New characters include Kara (Ali Cobrin), Jim's newly-turned eighteen-year-old neighbour whom he used to babysit for; her boyfriend, A.J. (Chuck Hittinger) and Selena (Dania Ramirez), one of Michelle's friends from Band Camp.

After reuniting for their high school reunion, the guys quickly discovered that things didn't turn out as they'd all hoped. Jim and Michelle have found their sex life suffer after having a child; Kevin is unhappy at being stuck at home all day; Stifler, stuck in a job he hates, misses high school; Oz, looking for commitment, wants his girlfriend to settle down with him and Finch, far from being the urbane traveller he wants people to think he is, is in fact an assistant manager of a stationery shop. Depressed that their lives didn't turn out as they hoped, they begin to look elsewhere. Kara throws herself at Jim and Oz and Kevin are drawn back towards Heather and Vicky.

So, with all the old gang back together, is the magic still there? Was the film worth making? Just about. The chemistry between Oz and Heather is genuine but Kevin and Vicky seem forced together and Kara's interest in Jim is just silly. Mia is the only genuinely funny new character and Katrina Bowden plays her very well. The biggest laughs come from Stifler and Jim's Dad, particularly when the latter meets Stifler's Mom. There is a general feeling of nostalgia and a relatable sense of familiarity to the characters' worries but the old magic isn't quite there. After a promising opening, the film resorts to Stifler shitting in A.J.'s beer cooler and the scene where the guys have to sneak a topless Kara back into her bedroom is a bit of a misfire.

The film's decent enough and certainly worth a watch if you're a fan of the films but there's nothing new or outstanding here.

6 out of 10.

Don't Go in the House (1980)

"In a steel room built for revenge, they die burning... in chains." As taglines go, that's one of the best I've ever heard. Brilliant use of ellipses too. Don't Go in the House is one of the most infamous and vilified of all of the Video Nasties. First released on video in May 1982, the film was added to the list of films that were to be prosecuted by the Director of Public Prosecution on 4 July 1983. Ultimately, the film was not prosecuted and it was removed from the list on 2 March 1984. It was passed with 3 minutes and 7 seconds of cuts in 1987 and was only passed fully uncut in December 2011!

The synopsis is quite simple. Donny Kohler (Dan Grimaldi) lives alone at home with his mother, a spiteful and domineering woman who browbeats and abuses him and used to punish him for being evil and wicked by holding his forearms over a lit stove on the oven. The character of Donny is clearly influenced by Psycho's Norman Bates and the comparisons don't end there: the house they live in is a towering old house, miles away from the neighbours and when his mother dies, Donny, like Norman, starts hearing voices and goes mad. Unlike Norman, he didn't love his mother, he hated and feared her. Neither does he kill her, she dies of apparent natural causes while he is at work. Finally, the voices in his head are his own subconscious telling him to extract his revenge, urging him to vicariously kill his mother through innocent women. His method of killing is not the machete or the axe or the butcher's knife but the very instrument that his mother used to torture him with - fire. Having developed some kind of pyromania, he works at a local incinerator and that is where the movie opens.

Donny is at work when an accident happens and a colleague catches fire. Instead of rushing to the man's aid, he is transfixed and watches him writhe around in agony until he is rescued by other workers who chastise Donny for not acting. Dejected, Donny returns home to find his abusive mother dead. At first he refuses to believe it but when it dawns on him that she has in fact died, he celebrates, dancing around the house, smoking, playing music loudly and teasing his mother's dead body. Then, voices in his head start talking to him, urging him to seek revenge for the despicable way his mother treated him. The next day, Donny does not go in to work. Instead, he starts lining the walls of one of the rooms in the house with steel panels. His colleague Bobby (Robert Osth), concerned about him, calls him up to check on him but Donny insists he is fine. That night, he sets out into town and does some shopping. His eyes casting, uninterested, over a collection of knives and guns, they fall on a fire suit. His next step: find a victim.

The unfortunate woman turns out to be the pretty florist, Kathy (Johanna Brushay). Her shop is closed but he tells her he just wants something for his mother who is sick. She relents and lets him in, selling him a bouquet. It's here that Donny's personality comes to the fore. Any traditional serial killer would have knocked the woman unconscious when she opened the door and dragged her into his truck when no-one was looking. But Donny isn't a real serial killer, he's a pathetic character really and he pays for his flowers before leaving. It's almost by accident that he manages to abduct her. In his truck outside, he has his head in his hands, perhaps lamenting his cowardice or struggling to decide what to do next. The woman emerges from her shop only to miss her bus and be heckled by three men. Donny offers her a ride and she gets in. Managing to bring her back to his house, he invites her in. Once again, it's not his charm or his brute force that brings her inside but his whiny, needling persistence and insistence that his sick mother would love to meet her. Perhaps pitying him, Kathy follows him inside the house. He makes a song and dance about looking for his mother before pretending to telephone the doctor and ask him to come over. Exasperated, she insists that he let her call a taxi and he finally makes his move, knocking her unconscious with a metal ornament.

This brings us to the film's most infamous scene - the burning scene. It is in fact the only scene in the entire film in which we see Donny burning one of his victims and when the film was released theatrically in the UK in 1980, the scene was completely missing. It was present in copies of the film that were distributed to video retailers and was released by them (knowingly or unknowingly) uncut on video in May of 1982. This is what prompted its inclusion on the list of video nasties and it was only by removing the scene almost entirely that the film was passed in 1987. Completely naked, Kathy comes round in Donny's killing room. The room, fully clad from top to bottom in steel is completely empty except for the hook in the ceiling from which Kathy now hangs, steel chains around her wrists and ankles. Donny sits in the next room, gently rocking backwards and forwards as he looks at a large box and thinks of how his mother used to punish him. Getting out of his chair, he opens the box as Kathy continues to struggle. The door bursts open and Donny, wearing the fire suit, steps into the room. Entirely covered by the suit and with only a dark, emotionless panel on the hood through which he can see, he strikes a terrifying figure. Opening a can of petrol, he pours the contents onto her, setting it down and picking up his flamethrower. She begs as he points the nozzle straight down the camera, flicking the pilot light on. She pleads again but he ignores her, spraying her with fire and setting the petrol alight. She burns alive as he stands transfixed, watching her die painfully. The effects themselves are surprisingly good considering the film's age and very limited budget. The image of Kathy on fire was apparently achieved through the use of a camera with a prism. A flame was set up on one side and the actress on another and the camera was aligned so that the two images met through the viewfinder. The special effects were done by noted makeup artist Tom Brumberger, who would go on to become personal makeup artist and hair stylist to Olympia Dukakis, the Academy Award winning actress and cousin of one-time Democratic Party presidential nominee Michael Dukakis. The only close-up of the scene, on Kathy's burning hands and the charred bodies that feature throughout the film are very well done. The scene itself is not only shocking and quite harrowing, it also marks the high-water mark for the film.

Donny's next move it to abduct another hapless woman, although all we see of her after she gets into his car is a smoking corpse hanging in his steel room. The film then emphasises Donny's utter ineptitude as he attempts to abduct a third woman from a shop. You'd have thought he'd get better at it but the best he can do is to hang around the till as she pays and hopefully ask her if she'd like a lift and he is rebuffed by both her and the cashier. Returning home, Donny begins to descend deeper into madness. He has dressed his victims in some of his mother's clothes, propping them up in chairs in one of the upstairs rooms. He is plagued by them, hearing them laugh at him when his back is turned. His mother, who he imagines shouting at him from her room remains in the chair where she died. Plagued by dreams of fire and corpses on a beach dragging him into a grave and by hallucinations of his mother's corpse, he visits Father Gerritty (Ralph D. Bowman), to whom he confesses about his mother's torture of him. He apologises to his mother's decaying corpse before calling Bobby to see if he wants to hang out. Bobby proposes they go out to a club with a couple of girls he met and the film now takes a strange turn.

Self-conscious about his clothes, Donny goes shopping. The scene where he buys a new ensemble from a slightly camp salesman is both baffling and hilarious. Dressed up, Donny goes to the club where Bobby introduces him to Farrah (Nikki Collins). Farrah tries to get him to dance with her but her refuses. When she grabs him, pulling his arms across a candle on the table like his mother used to do over the stove, he snaps and smashes the candle over her head before fleeing the scene, getting into a fight with Farrah's brother and managing to pick up two drunk girls. They go back to his house while Bobby, concerned for his friend, visits Father Gerritty for help, setting up the film's climax.

Despite its (undeserved) reputation as a sleazy, misogynistic little film, Don't Go in the House actually has quite a bit going for it. Despite its budget, the film looks pretty good. The cinematographer, Oliver Wood, would go on to become one of the top directors of photography in Hollywood. Making his name on the TV series Miami Vice, he would serve as DP on films including Die Hard 2, Face/Off, Mighty Joe Young, the remake of Freaky Friday and all three of the Matt Damon Bourne films. His most recent film, Safe House, opened in cinemas only a couple of months ago. The editor, Jane Kurson, would go on to edit films like Beetlejuice, Hot Shots! and Monster. Finally, composer Richard Einhorn, who worked on other horror films such as The Prowler and Dead of Winter, would go on to become an influential modern composer. As for the husband and wife team of writer/director Joseph Ellison and writer Ellen Hammill, they would go on to make one more film six years later - a drama called Joey. The collective talents of the crew clearly rub off on the film. Unexpectedly for a film where fire is the main theme, the film is often bathed in cool blues and greens and the director manages to tease some quite effective jumps out of the audience. As for the allegations that the film is misogynistic, those claims are simply groundless. Donny kills women not because he hates them but because he is trying to kill his mother, to take revenge for the horrible things she did to him. In a way, the film is a warning about child abuse, as the final scene illustrates.

All in all, Don't Go in the House is an interesting little horror film. Frequently overlooked and not without its flaws - the shopping scene and Donny's trip to the disco are quite strange inclusions, as is his friendship with Bobby, which seems very out of place. Nonetheless, the film is certainly worth watching. It's intriguing, influential and recommended viewing for fans of slasher and exploitation films, if only for the burning scene.

6 out of 10.

The Bone Collector (1999)

A few days ago I was talking to some friends about Morgan Freeman and we started trying to think of some lesser known films he's been in. I wondered out loud, saying "The Bone Collector?". "Ah yes!" said one of my friends, "he plays a disabled cop doesn't he?" "That's the one, with Angelina Jolie", I replied. "Hang on", said our other friend, "he wasn't in that." "Yes he was!" we replied in tandem. "No, it was Denzel Washington!" he said and we both fell silent. "No, it was definitely Morgan Freeman..." I began but I instantly began to doubt myself. "There's only one way to settle this", I said, marching off to get my copy.

He was right and we were wrong. Ah well, can't get them all right. Anyway, it's been about 8 or 9 years since I saw The Bone Collector for the first and only time and I decided the time was ripe to re-watch it. The story's pretty simple: Denzel Washington plays Lincoln Rhyme, a disabled former New York City homicide detective and prolific author who was injured in an accident in the line of duty and is now confined to his bed. Paralysed below the neck he uses his one working finger to operate his custom-made computer and is assisted by his nurse, Thelma (Queen Latifah) and his technician, Richard (Leland Orser). When his friend and former colleague Detective Paulie Sellitto (Ed O'Neill) comes to him for help with a case he initially refuses but is drawn in by both the circumstances and the talents of the first officer on the scene, rookie cop Amelia Donaghy (Angelina Jolie). The grisly murders keep stacking up, as do the baffling clues. Together, Lincoln and Amelia must solve the clues and find the killer before it's too late.

Standard police thriller fare then. Stylistically it's quite unusual, blending Rear Window with Seven and throwing in a bit of The Crow for good measure. Unfortunately, it manages to capture neither Hitchcock's legendary suspense or flair and none of Seven's gritty realism or interesting story. The references to The Crow are more bizarre than anything else - for some reason Lincoln has a peregrine falcon watching over him.

It starts off with a flashback to Lincoln's accident (although the use of slow-mo does detract from it somewhat) and the abduction of a couple by a mysterious taxi driver. When we first meet Lincoln, he's unhappy and frustrated. He's suffering from seizures which will eventually leave him in a vegetative state and he wants his doctor friend, Barry Lehman (John Benjamin Hickey) to help him commit suicide. Across town Amelia is out on patrol when she is called over to a railway line where a kid has found a dead body, that of the abducted man from earlier. After stopping an oncoming train and photographing and recovering the clues before the rain can destroy them, the big guns turn up. Detectives Sellitto and Solomon (Mike McGlone) are impressed but Captain Howard Cheney (Michael Rooker) is not. Sellitto and Solomon take the case to Lincoln who is about to dismiss them when he has a seizure. When he has recovered, he looks over the file and his attention is drawn to the victim's finger, which had the flesh stripped off it and the clues, which seem to indicate a love of all things old.

Amelia, meanwhile, is in her first training class in preparation for her switch to Youth Services and a cushy desk job. Lincoln asks for her by name and she is summoned to his apartment where the investigation is beginning. Together they put together the clues and are led to the next murder victim: the man's wife. Lincoln rejects the help of the rest of the forensics department and the medical examiners and sends in Amelia alone, relaying instructions to her as she describes what she sees. When he asks her to sever the dead woman's hands is gets too much and she refuses to help him anymore. While Solomon visits her apartment to convince her to come back and help them save the next victim, Lincoln checks out her background and discovers that her father was a cop and that she was the one who found his body after he shot himself.

Another piece of bone and other clues at the crime scene lead them to a third victim. By now, Lincoln's methods have drawn the ire of Captain Cheney who takes control of the case away from Lincoln and threatens Amelia. He succeeds in only bungling things up so she continues to help Lincoln. When he gets techie Eddie Ortiz (Luis Guzman) to do a search for other murders involving removed flesh that exposes bone, they get several matches. Piecing together scraps of paper found at each crime scene they find a logo for an old publishing company. Amelia investigates further at an old book shop and finds a book called The Bone Collector, a book of true crime which features pictures of crime scenes exactly like the ones they've been finding. The next murders will be at the river and they arrive in time to save a little girl but not her grandpa. The final clue points Amelia to a police officer and she realises that his target is none other than Lincoln.

Aside from my earlier criticisms, The Bone Collector is just too clichéd and formulaic. The characters are all pretty much your run of the mill stock characters but the acting is top-notch. I'll gloss over the schmaltzy ending (it involves a reunion with a long-lost relative) which leaves you with this sickly taste in your mouth and focus instead on Amelia. Angelina Jolie does a fine job but her character's underlying issues (father's death, inability to commit to her fuck buddy, her being traumatised at the second crime scene) are all completely washed over. Solomon turns up and tells her that Lincoln thinks there's a third victim and she instantly goes from moping around her apartment, drinking by herself to getting dressed and going back to work. If you're going to include all the backstory crap at least make sure it has a decent resolution! Furthermore, the idea that a rookie cop would suddenly take over investigating crime scenes and cataloguing evidence from the forensics team is just silly. Finally, the complete lack of any suspense. I don't know what it is in particular but there's a sense of resolution about the film from the very beginning. We know what's going to happen and no amount of time spent pouring over clues from 1910s New York or walking around dank and dreary crime scenes is going to change that. I've probably come across as more critical than I actually am. Despite its flaws it's a decent, well-acted film and it breezes through its surprising run time of one hour fifty-seven.

All in all, The Bone Collector is a bit disappointing, but it's well acted and worth a watch.

6 out of 10.

The Iron Lady (2011)

"OK, I've got to thank everybody in England that let me come and... trample all over their history." - Meryl Streep, when accepting the Golden Globe for Best Actress in a Motion Picture Drama.

For a biopic about one of the most partisan and controversial politicians in British history, The Iron Lady is strangely... apolitical. I'm not a fan of Margaret Thatcher. I don't think she's the devil incarnate or the worst Prime Minister in history and I do accept that she did some good, but the overwhelming majority of the decisions she took were terrible ones that ruined lives. Of course, you might not hold that view. You might think she's the best Prime Minister since Churchill (as she is referred to during the film), but if you come into this film expecting to see her decisions and thought-making process really scrutinised, you'll leave disappointed. If you expect to see a film that details the reasons for the polarised opinions of her premiership, you'll leave disappointed. If you expect to see a film of any real substance, you'll leave disappointed. In trying not to annoy anyone, writer Abi Morgan and director Phyllida Lloyd have made a film that will annoy everyone.

For the first half-hour or forty minutes, the film almost never leaves Thatcher's house. The 84-year-old former Prime Minister is shown buying a pint of milk and a paper from the corner shop and taking them back home to eat breakfast with her husband, Denis (Jim Broadbent), whom she chastises for putting too much butter on his toast and complains to about the price of milk. Thatcher's assistant walks in and Denis vanishes just as she tells an empty chair to eat its egg. Her husband is dead and she is hallucinating. The film is set in 2009, shortly before the unveiling of her official portrait in 10 Downing Street and portrays a sad, lonely woman struggling to cope with the loss of her husband and the oncoming dementia.

Streep is magnificent, absolutely brilliant and utterly convincing as Thatcher, both as the ambitious and power-hungry young woman and as the frail and lonely old woman (the even younger Thatcher played by young actress Alexandra Roach). She effortlessly conveys Thatcher's hubris and hunger for power and easily evokes sympathy for the confused old woman pining for her beloved husband and desperate to see her son Mark, now living half a world away in South Africa. It's such a pity that the rest of the film can't live up to Streep's performance. Thatcher is trapped inside her house and the film is trapped inside the confines of Morgan and Lloyd's limited ambitions.

When we finally leave Thatcher's house, we're taken along a frustratingly erratic and brief look at her political career - from her beginnings as a grocer's daughter inspired by her father's passionate oratory, to a stuffy dinner with local Conservatives looking for a prospective candidate, to Denis' proposal and a holiday with her children Carol and Mark to her first day in the House of Commons, a dispatch-box clash with the Labour Shadow Minister, her decision to run for the leadership of her party, clashes with Ministers over the budget, the Brighton Bombing, her decision to go to war over the Falkland Islands and the decisions that cost her her colleagues' support - the poll tax and the European Union - to her final day in office.

The glimpses of the past are brief and do nothing more than tell us what happened. For example, Thatcher and her then-Chancellor Sir Geoffrey Howe (Anthony Stewart Head) are confronted by Michael Heseltine (Richard E. Grant) and other Cabinet members over their newly-leaked budget. The "wets" are concerned that she is cutting public spending too quickly and urge her and Howe to slow their plans. Thatcher replies, "Yes, the medicine is harsh, but the patient requires it." What medicine? Why does the patient require it? Why was the response to her policies so visceral? These questions, and many more, are never answered, or even asked. Her decision to close hundreds of mines is all but glossed over: she says they must be closed, and we see stock footage of the Miners' Strike and then protesters attack her car. In a way it's an appropriate metaphor for her Premiership: barrelling along and sweeping aside ordinary people as she goes inexorably onwards. The tens of thousands of people who were put out of a job by the pit closures go unmentioned, as does the devastation on local communities. What of her mass privatisation of nationalised industries? Barely mentioned. Former Conservative Prime Minister and then-elder statesman Harold Macmillan derided Thatcher for "selling off the family silver" but apparently we needed more scenes of her imagining her dead husband so that never gets a mention. Neither does her legacy of greed, deregulation and neo-liberalism that would cause a massive financial crisis 25 years later.

The mass unemployment, the gap between rich and poor growing inexorably, the devastating blows struck against British industry that are still being felt to this very day, her savage deflationary policies that cost real people their lives and livelihoods are all cast aside. When one Minister questions the fairness of the Poll Tax, she gives him a lecture on social responsibility and tells him to shut up. It is that, and her bullying and humiliation of her closest ally, Howe, which leads to her downfall. The film implies that but for her colleagues' cowardice, she could have pressed on with the Poll Tax, which was apparently as necessary as the "medicine" she gave to the economy at the start of her Premiership. Brief clips from the Poll Tax Riots are shown, but again, the underlying reasons are completely ignored. It's incredibly frustrating.

As the film draws to a close, Thatcher packs up her dead husband's clothes and banishes the memory of him. As he walks away, she calls after the hallucination, tears streaming down her cheeks. It's a touching moment, but by this point the scenes between her and Denis had been so over-done that they'd lost almost all their impact. Then, the film ends. It's a truly unsatisfying ending to a wasteful and pointless film.

Watch The Iron Lady for another tour de force from Meryl Streep. Once again, she does not play the character, she lives the character, but that's all it really is: a hollow film supported entirely by Streep. Take her performance away and you'd have nothing more than a second-rate biopic that goes through the motions, piles on the fanciful imaginings of an elderly widow, throws you some flashbacks and some facts and says "make up your own mind".

6 out of 10.

Mission: Impossible I - IV

Having seen Mission: Impossible IV - Ghost Protocol at the cinema today, I thought it would be a good idea to review and compare all four films at the same time. I haven't in fact seen the first three since I saw them for the first time. I saw M:I on video in about 2000; I saw M:I-2 in about 2002 and I saw M:I-3 when it came out in the cinemas in 2006.

Mission: Impossible

I can't believe this film is almost 16 years old! It certainly shows its age: the depiction of the internet is very old fashioned. The plot is quite silly, full of holes and double-crosses. What it does have is two absolutely fabulous set-pieces: The first features Tom Cruise's master-spy, Ethan Hunt, being lowered into a computer room to steal data before the analyst can get back from the toilet. It's a scene that spawned a thousand parodies and it's thrilling stuff watching Hunt dangle as the analyst walks back into the room only a few feet below him, catching a droplet of sweat before it can hit the floor and trigger the alarm and the knife falling perfectly onto the table. It's the highlight of the film and it's very, very well done. The second is a fantastic chase scene between a helicopter and a high-speed train and also has the best laugh of the film: a fainting train attendant.

Jon Voight hams it up and Jean Reno is his usual sullen French self. It's preposterous nonsense, but very good nonsense with lots of thrills and explosions.

8 out of 10.

Mission: Impossible II

The weakest of the series. John Woo ruins another film with his pointless and infuriating slow-mo: Tom Cruise and Thandie Newton see each other across a room, cue the slow-mo; Tom Cruise and Thandie Newton's cars spin out of control, cue the slow-mo; Tom Cruise fights bad guys, cue the slow-mo; and, most inexplicably of all, Thandie Newton drives away from Tom Cruise, cue the slow-mo on Tom Cruise, who is stood perfectly still!

The plot's your usual thriller fare: bad guy (Dougray Scott) steals MacGuffin, good guys must take it back. In this case, the MacGuffin is a deadly virus and his motivation is money. It's very, very dull and to be perfectly honest, things go downhill from the spectacular opening scene where Ethan climbs a cliff face with his bare hands and no safety equipment or harness. Even the final fight scene, which is quite well choreographed, is almost ruined by Woo's convulsive and spasmodic direction. Perhaps the most bizarre scene is the one in which Luther Stickell (Ving Rhames) is in a van that's blown up, and emerges from it with his eyebrows singed and his clothes covered in smoke.

An almost laborious effort. No amount of gun-fights and explosions can save it. Oh, and Tom Cruise's hair looks really silly when it flops around all over the place.

6 out of 10.

Mission: Impossible III

Ah, now this is more like it! A welcome return to form for the series. It's not ground-breaking or original: Philip Seymour Hoffman's bad guy seeks the Rabbit's Foot, a mysterious MacGuffin which will.. err... well, we're never quite told what. It could be some kind of "anti-god", which can apparently devastate entire continents. So, it's a virus? Well no, because it destroys buildings too.

But never mind that, because it's a thrilling ride! From a helicopter duel amidst wind turbines in Germany, to a kidnapping in the Vatican City, to a spectacular, explosive rescue on the Chesapeake Bay Bridge-Tunnel and on to a roof-top raid and ferocious finish in the crowded streets of Shanghai, it's a non-stop thrill-ride full of amazing stunts and fantastic fight scenes. Philip Seymour Hoffman is excellent and even the romance between Ethan and his wife-to-be Jules (Michelle Monaghan) is handled nicely. J. J. Abrams transfers over his considerable skills from small-screen action fare (Alias, one of my favourite TV series) to the silver screen in what was his first film as a director.

A cracking action film that more than makes up for Woo's tepid effort. Slight criticisms would be that it's perhaps 10 minutes too long and the ending is a bit silly.

8 out of 10.

Mission: Impossible IV - Ghost Protocol

The best of the series? Quite possibly! Following a catastrophic failure in Moscow, Ethan and the entire Impossible Missions Force are disavowed by the President. Their new, secret mission: stop Kurt Hendricks (Michael Nyqvist), a Swedish/Russian renegade physicist, from plunging the world into nuclear war. Once again, the plot's utterly ridiculous, but Brad Bird's first live-action film following his massive success directing animated features is a complete success. Simon Pegg's return is a welcome one, as is his larger role. It's a pity that it had to come at the expense of Ving Rhames, but Luther does have a cameo at the end to keep up his record of being in all four films.

As the race against time to stop Hendricks moves from Russia to Dubai, the film really excels. The tallest building in the world, the Burj Khalifa hotel makes for a fantastic second act. Ethan must climb up the building (didn't see that one coming!) and Agent Carter (Paula Patton) gets into a furious fist-fight with French assassin Sabine Moreau (Lea Seydoux, whom I recognised, but couldn't quite place - it turns out she's in Midnight in Paris and plays one of Monsieur LaPadite's daughters in Inglourious Basterds). From there, it's a foot and car chase through a sandstorm before they're whisked off to India for the final showdown. It's a roller-coaster ride from one set-piece to another. It might be the longest of the series (2 hours and 13 minutes), but it certainly doesn't feel like it.

Another great entry in the series. Go and see it!

8 out of 10.