Looper (2012)

Hype can be a dangerous thing. The posters and trailers for Looper were covered in lashings of quotes about how brilliant it is and studded with stars in clusters of four and five. One critic's hyperbolic review even suggested that it was "the new Matrix". With a build-up like that, how could the film possibly disappoint me!

In hindsight, perhaps it was always going to disappoint me. That's not to say that the film's bad, it's certainly not. It's good. But that's all it is: good.

Joe (Joseph-Gordon-Levitt) is an eponymous Looper: an assassin hired by criminals living in the future to kill people they send back in time and then dispose of their bodies. He lives in Kansas in 2044. They live in 2074 when time travel has been invented and, according to his boss Abe (Jeff Daniels), who has moved permanently from the future to run the looper operation, it is apparently advantageous to know Mandarin. Loopers are paid in silver bars strapped to the people that are sent back in time for them to kill, except for when they are released from their service and gold bars are strapped to their future selves. After killing themselves, they have a few decades to live as they please before their future self is abducted and sent back in time for their past self to kill. Failure to kill your future self is punishable by death and is brutally enforced. Everything's going fine until a mysterious figure in the future called "the Rainman" decides to start having all of the loopers kill themselves off. After Joe fails to kill his future self (Bruce Willis), the two go on the run from Abe's goons whilst trying to solve the mystery of who the Rainmaker is and why he is shutting the looper programme down.

The film, to its credit, doesn't get into complex metaphysical discussions of the inner workings of time travel and give us a conversation we've already seen and had many times before. In a scene in a diner, Future Joe tells Present Joe that it makes his head hurt and the younger man drops the subject. It also presents an interesting argument: that if your future self came back in time and told you to change your actions, you'd probably carry on and do what you thought was right anyway. Still, for pleasing moments like those, there are some very dumb ones as well. Particularly, the fact that in the future time travel has been banned and is operated only by crime lords who use it to dispose of their victims. Joe gives us some reason about people in the future being "chipped" and the film brushes it off, but it's not a satisfying explanation and makes you really wonder what's going on with these gangs that possess incredibly complex and illegal technology like time travel, but haven't mastered the art of surgically removing tracking chips or throwing bodies in the ocean à la Dexter Morgan. Furthermore, requiring loopers to kill themselves presents myriad problems and results in both Joe and a looper friend of his (Paul Dano) failing to kill themselves. The much simpler idea of loopers at the end of their contract receiving a pile of gold bars and their future self being sent to a different looper to be killed apparently went over the heads of the criminals from the future.

After the two Joes meet, the younger man fails to kill himself. They later meet in a diner and Future Joe tells Present Joe that someone called "the Rainmaker" is killing off the loopers and he's going to find out who he is and kill him as a child. After the diner they're meeting at is attacked by Abe's men, Present Joe nearly gets caught and ends up hiding at a farm owned by Sara (Emily Blunt), who lives with her young son, Cid (Pierce Gagnon).

Some parts of the film may feel superfluous but turn out to play a necessary part in the film, namely Joe's stripper friend and lover Suzie (Piper Perabo) and the mutation that affects one tenth of the world's population and gives them the power to make small objects like coins and cigarette lighters levitate. Both of these feel like pointless plot additions when they come up but don't pass them off as such. Instead, there are plenty of other pointless characters - Kid Blue (Noah Segan), an incompetent employee of Abe who more than outstays his welcome and Future Joe's wife (Xu Qing), who serves only to highlight that the film has serious problems with plot holes. Additionally, the main problem is that the film pretty much comes to a grinding halt just over half way through. When Present Joe arrives at Sara's farm, he decides to hide there while Future Joe does his thing and spends most of the rest of the film hiding and talking to Sara and her son and, quite frankly, it's a bit boring.

In contrast with a fantastic first act full of action, great visuals and effective storytelling, the second act sees the film going round in circles, like Present Joe lost in Sara's corn field. It apes The Terminator as Future Joe tries to change the world and Present Joe hides out with a woman and develops feelings for her. If you've seen that film, you should be able to see the "twist" that arrives in this one. When the third act rolls around, director Rian Johnson throws in a couple of shootouts and tries to cobble things together but the damage has already been done. The resolution is different but still feels unsatisfying. I'd like to see if there's an alternate ending provided with the DVD release.

Plot holes, logical inconsistencies and a rambling middle section detract from interesting ideas and good performances. Jeff Bridges in particular is very good and Joseph Gordon-Levitt does a decent Bruce Willis impression. It's just a pity the two share so little screen time after their meeting in the diner.

It's not the new Matrix but it's better than both of that film's sequels put together. An infuriating case of what might have been.

7 out of 10.

Haywire (2011)

I'd never really heard of Gina Carano before she was cast in Haywire. She's quite a famous mixed martial artist and I reasoned that her skills in the ring should translate well into an action film. Director Steven Soderbergh, perhaps conscious of her lack of acting experience, surrounded her with A-list talent: Ewan McGregor, Michael Douglas, Channing Tatum, Michael Fassbender, Antonio Banderas and Bill Paxton.

The story's simple enough: covert operative Mallory Kane (Gina Caruso) works for Kenneth (Ewan McGregor) and his private company. US government official Coblenz (Michael Douglas) and his Spanish contact Rodrigo (Antonio Banderas) hire them to rescue a man being held captive in Barcelona. She and Aaron (Channing Tatum) do so and she is sent to Dublin on another mission with Paul (Michael Fassbender). When the man she rescued turns up dead, she is framed for his murder and must go on the run, seeking to clear her name, protect her father (Bill Paxton) and take revenge on those who blah, blah, blah. It's your typical action movie plot and it's not too taxing.

The film opens in a diner. Mallory meets Aaron and beats the shit out of him, with the assistance of some bystander called Scott (Michael Angarano). They flee in his car and she then proceeds to tell him what's happened to her and how she was framed for murder. The film unfolds mostly through flashbacks: the initial mission in Barcelona, her trip to Dublin with Paul, how she worked out Kenneth had set her up and her return to the United States where she anticipated meeting Kenneth in the diner they just left. She and Scott are eventually captured by the police but manage to escape as Kenneth's men attempt to ambush them. She sends Scott on his way and makes her way to her father's house for the final showdown with those who betrayed her.

This film utterly baffled me. It has an ass-kicking martial artist beating people up, a stellar cast and a simple premise and yet it still managed to be mind-numbingly boring. It doesn't help that the soundtrack is awful. It completely kills the atmosphere as it alternates between total silence for long stretches and loud, thoroughly inappropriate music during others. As Mallory and Paul get ready to go to a party, they do so in total silence. Soderbergh was clearly trying to build some tension here. Sexual? Dramatic? Either way, it comes off as stilted and awkward. When Mallory's being chased through the streets of Dublin, nothing happens as she just wanders around for several minutes in complete silence. She finally starts running and this peppy, upbeat jingle starts playing. I burst out laughing at the sheer ridiculousness of it. The ten minutes she spends aimlessly running around and jumping across rooftops to avoid the Irish police are completely infuriating. Soderbergh obviously blew the budget on the A-listers so he can't afford to have more than two SWAT police on screen at any one time and it's clearly always the same two. We're almost an hour into the film at this point and there have been three fight scenes, one of them in Barcelona that laughably finished when she threw a flimsy metal platter at the guy's back. The other two, against Aaron and Paul, weren't bad but they suffer for being mostly in silence, but for Carano's loud grunts of "oosh" every time she hits someone. It brings to mind professional wrestlers making loud noises to cover up the fact that they aren't really hitting each other and it just cheapens everything. Soderbergh went for toned down and naturalistic, hoping for something akin to the Bourne films. Well, Bourne it ain't. The three fight scenes aside, the first hour is surprisingly free of action. She spends more time hanging around her apartment and at a party in a nice dress than she does doing anything else and it only serves to make the film drag.

Ultimately, she escapes from the police in Dublin by putting her hood up. No, I'm not joking. Fleeing to London, she makes her way to New York and the diner where she runs into Scott. All caught up on the backstory, the film plods onwards. Unfortunately, it doesn't get much better. They're caught by the police when they have the most laughable collision with a deer I've ever seen in my life. I won't spoil it because it's so bad it really has to be seen to be believed. Mallory escapes from the police and Kenneth's goons and heads to New Mexico to protect her father from her former employer. It should get interesting but it doesn't. It's still painfully boring. There's half an hour left but instead of cramming it full of action to make up for the action-free first hour, Ewan McGregor spends half of it talking to Bill Paxton about god only knows what, Michael Douglas, who spends most of the film sat behind a desk, speaks to practically every other character on the phone and the final fight between Kenneth and Mallory lasts half as long as his infuriatingly dull exposition detailing why she was set up.

The only reason to watch this film is if you're a fan of Ms. Carano. She's nice to look at and does all her own stunts but her fight scenes are surprisingly dull and she can't really do much else. She methodically reads her lines like they're in front of her on a teleprompter and her facial expressions were clearly prompted by Soderbergh calling out things to her from off-camera. Watch for the moment in the diner when she suddenly becomes resolved. With such an array of acting talent at his disposal and Carano's ass-kicking skills clearly evident, why Soderbergh chooses to waste both is a complete mystery. Fassbender's in the film for ten minutes, Banderas fifteen and Paxton and Tatum get about the same. Ewan McGregor, normally dependable, is obviously going through the motions. It doesn't help that his antagonist is called "Kenneth". Perhaps if Soderbergh hadn't spent so much money bringing the supporting cast in to try and paper over Carano's limitations as an actress, he could have afforded to stage some more action scenes which would have actually shown off her talents!

Recommended only for the chronically sleep-deprived, this film will have you yawning your head off and counting the seconds until the credits roll. Boring, boring, boring.

2 out of 10.

Battleship (2012)

Meet our plucky hero. He doesn't always get on with his family, he's a bit of a bum, struggling to find his place in the world and he doesn't have a job. Despite all this, he has a gorgeous supermodel for a girlfriend. When aliens land on planet Earth, he and his friends are all that stand between us and them, our last line of defence, humanity's only hope. No, I'm not reviewing Transformers 3, this is Battleship, the film based on the board game of the same name.

Alex Hopper (Taylor Kitsch) is the eponymous hero, impressed into the U.S. Navy in 2005 by his elder brother Stone (Alexander Skarsgard), after he is arrested trying to impress the beautiful Samantha (Brooklyn Decker), who just happens to be the daughter of Admiral Terrence Shane (Liam Neeson). Meanwhile, NASA has begun transmitting signals from Hawaii to an Earth-like planet in a habitable zone orbiting a nearby star. Seven years later, Alex is a lieutenant with an attitude problem and Stone has command of his own ship. As the brothers prepare to take part in that year's RIMPAC at Pearl Harbour under Admiral Shane, scientist Cal Zapata (Hamish Linklater) and his assistant Danny (Christopher McGahan) intercept a strange signal. I'm not saying it's aliens. But it's aliens.

Four alien ships crash down into the pacific ocean near Hawaii and three destroyers close in and investigate. One of the alien ships erects a force field and the three others engage the destroyers. Two of the destroyers are sunk, killing Stone. After several officers are killed on Alex's ship, he assumes command. Meanwhile, Admiral Shane and the rest of the fleet are trapped outside the force field; Samantha, an army physiotherapist, is hiking with double amputee Mick Canales (Gregory D. Gadson) and the aliens land on Hawaii and commandeer the NASA transmitters to summon reinforcements from their home planet. Alex bands together with friends from his ship and survivors from the others, including gunner Cora Raikes (Rihanna), Japanese Captain Nagata (Tadanobu Asano) and crewmen Walter Lynch (John Tiu) and Jimmy Ord (Jesse Plemons).

As night falls, Alex and his ship literally play Battleship by judging the position of the alien ships based on readings from buoys, sinking two of them. On the island, Cal flees from the aliens and runs into Samantha and Mick. Together, they resolve to destroy the facility and stop more aliens from arriving. When the sun rises, Alex and his crew destroy the third alien ship, leaving only the force field and the ship guarding it. With their destroyer badly damaged, they decide to re-activate the battleship USS Missouri for the final showdown.

Films that give actors top billing and then kill them off quickly or feature them in barely more than cameos annoy me. Battleship does it twice. Alexander Skarsgard is killed off after forty-five minutes and Liam Neeson gets barely ten minutes on screen. Instead, the painfully wooden Taylor Kitsch leads the proceedings, "supported" by the dreadful Rhianna, who should clearly stick to her day job. I had expected supermodel Brooklyn Decker to be almost as woeful as Rosie Huntington-Whiteley was in Transformers 3 but she's actually not bad.

Dreadful acting aside, the film takes forever to get going. Fifteen minutes is wasted on a pointless scene showing how Alex and Samantha met back in 2005 and another in the present day as the brothers play a football game against a Japanese team in the build-up to the naval exercises. After that, it's another fifteen minutes of Alex being an asshole and getting himself into trouble before the aliens even appear on the radar. When they finally land, battle is not joined for about ten minutes as we have to endure a standoff as everyone looks through their binoculars and wonders what to do. Of course, it's the humans who fire first. What better way to welcome some intergalactic visitors than to fire a warning shot at them! After sinking two of the destroyers, the alien ships launch "shredders", giant spinning balls that bounce along the ground and destroy the air base on Hawaii. If they look familiar, it's because they bear a striking resemblance to the flaming balls that the Trojans attack the Greeks with in Wolfgang Petersen's Troy. The film as a whole is basically Transformers at sea but other influences are clearly visible, from Independence Day to Pearl Harbour and even The Final Countdown. Whilst Battleship compares poorly to all those films, it is at least better than Transformers 3. It may struggle with pacing and take ages to get going but mercifully it clocks in at twenty-three minutes shorter than T3.

Some ruthless editing and better casting would have helped but even that wouldn't have covered up for the lack of ideas and poor script. When they're reduced to actually playing Battleship, you know they're struggling for ideas to fill the time. When the USS Missouri is re-activated, that does at least present some nice footage of the venerable old battleship. Alex's crew are assisted by World War Two veterans who currently look after the ship in its current capacity as a floating museum but when you put the visual to one side it leaves a rather baffling question: why not recruit more recent veterans instead? Having octogenarians crew the ship is a silly idea. The Missouri was re-activated in the 1980s and served during the First Gulf War so the old men would not be familiar with the upgrades installed some forty years after they last crewed her. But hey, why let a silly thing like common sense get in the way of some good old-fashioned American flag-waving? Speaking of common sense, the moment when the forty-five thousand ton battleship turns at a right-angle because Taylor Kitsch drops the anchor is one of the most egregious examples of the laws of physics being shit on in a Hollywood blockbuster since the whole of Armageddon.

Acting, pacing, the script and moments of sheer idiocy aside, there's still very little to recommend here. There are some fancy explosions but when most of them are preceded by someone saying "boom" or "welcome to Earth, motherf...." (yes, it's cut off, a la Die Hard 4), the enjoyment is quickly sapped. Still, at least the aliens are cool, right? No, I'm afraid not. They spend most of their time clonking around in giant suits and even though they regularly punch characters with enough force to break bones, our heroes just get back up and carry on fighting. As for what they look like without their helmets on, think of the vampires from I Am Legend with toothpicks on their chins. Oh and they have the same sensitivity to light too.

"It's better than Transformers 3" is really the only positive thing I can think of to say about this film. When blockbusters are getting so bad that the only good thing you can say about them is "well, at least it's not the worst one I've ever seen", you know that standards are slipping. Poorly acted, badly written, with plotting and pacing problems aplenty, Battleship is a dismal, boring film. That's two hours and eleven minutes of my life gone that I'm never getting back.

In summary: Battleship is battleshit.

3 out of 10.

Tropic Thunder (2008)

I first started watching this film last night but only managed to watch the first thirty-five minutes before dozing off. I gave up and finished it today. When I fell asleep I hadn't laughed and I didn't laugh at all today either.

When director Damien Cockburn (Steve Coogan and yes, his name is the funniest thing about his character) is handed control of Tropic Thunder, an adaptation of the autobiography of the same name by Vietnam veteran John "Four Leaf" Tayback (Nick Nolte), he has to deal with the massive egos of his leading actors. Tugg Speedman (Ben Stiller, who also co-wrote and directed the film) is a washed-up action movie star with an inflated opinion of himself. In what could have been a good role, Stiller gurns and shouts his way through the film and his character grates more than almost any other. Robert Downey Jr. plays the only decent character, multiple-award winning Australian method actor Kurt Lazarus, who undergoes pigmentation surgery to play a black character. The utterly offensive aspects of this aside, Downey Jr. is the best thing about the film. He delivers the film's best lines (both of them) and he's a good parody of method actors. Alpa Chino (Brandon T. Jackson) is a rapper-turned-actor with a line of energy drinks to sell. His character gets old after five minutes. Finally, Jeff Portnoy (Jack Black) is the only character that can make Tugg Speedman seem bearable. A "comedy" "star" and the most obnoxious and unlikeable character I've seen in years, Portnoy is an overweight drug addict and incredibly unpleasant. Ben Stiller's character may be annoying but Portnoy is absolutely unbearable. The stars prove impossible to deal with so Cockburn drops them into the middle of the jungle to make the film guerrilla-style. He's promptly killed by a landmine and the actors have to travel through the Vietnam jungle, debating about whether they're still on set and Cockburn faked his death or if they're lost in the jungle and the people firing at them are real drug-producing guerrillas (they are).

Maybe Stiller should have spent less time thinking up outlandish characters, ridiculous scenarios and silly films-within-the-film and more time writing jokes. The first thirty-five laugh-free minutes dragged on but the subsequent hour and twenty-six minutes were almost unbearable. Tropic Thunder is a parody of big studio excess but it ends up becoming what it tries to lampoon. A big-budget production filmed over several months in Hawaii, the film is an utter failure. It doesn't work as an action film because there isn't enough action and what few gunfights and explosions there are aren't enjoyable because they're either painfully and unintentionally fake or they're played for laughs and they just don't succeed. It doesn't work as a satire because the characters are so bad and the endless ramblings and wanderings in the jungle quickly turn tedious. It doesn't even work as a comedy because it's not fucking funny! As I said, Robert Downey Jr. is the best thing about this film. Tom Cruise, though good and unrecognisable as studio head Les Grossman, doesn't have anything to work with. He swears a lot and has tantrums. Hilarious. Matthew McConaughey as Speedman's agent is probably the best of the supporting cast that also includes Jay Baruchel as Kevin Sandusky, a young actor also trapped in the jungle with the divas and the spectacularly awful Danny McBride as Cody Underwood, the film's weapons expert.

It's been a long time since I saw a comedy film that didn't make me laugh once. Painfully unfunny, dreadfully bad and chock-full of characters that make you want to tear your face off with a rake, Tropic Thunder is one to avoid. If you're that determined to see Robert Downey Jr. in blackface, you can probably find his scenes on Youtube. Otherwise, avoid this film like the fucking plague. This film will take two hours of your precious life and give you nothing but bad memories in return.

2 out of 10.

The Raid: Redemption (2011)

Just like with Piranha 3DD, I never expected to actually see this film at the cinema. Unlike with Piranha 3DD, this film succeeded in blowing my mind. I first heard about The Raid: Redemption late last year and I assumed that I'd have to watch it on DVD, that it would have almost no chance of getting a theatrical release. So, to my surprise and pleasure, I heard a few months ago that it was indeed going to be released into cinemas.

An Indonesian action film made by a Welsh director, The Raid: Redemption is one of the more unlikely films released this year. It's also one of the most memorable action films I've seen in years. The story is very simple: a SWAT team twenty strong including rookie Rama (Iko Uwais) and Sergeant Jaka (Joe Taslim), joined by Lieutenant Wahyu (Pierre Gruno), storm a thirty-story block of flats occupied and run by notorious crime boss and drug baron Tama Riyadi (Ray Sahetapy). Supporting Tama are the residents of the building, his own private army and his right-hand men, Andi (Donny Alamsyah) and "Mad Dog" (Yayan Ruhian). The cops sneak in, hoping to surprise Tama but it's only a matter of time before the shit hits the fan and the action explodes off the screen.

What it lacks in intricate plot or detailed characterisation it more than makes up for in constant, pulse-pounding, overwhelming action. It's a barrage of wall-to-wall gunfights, fist fights, knife fights and fights with just about every other weapon imaginable. Massive credit must go to Iko Uwais and Yayan Ruhian, who not only star in the film but also choreograph the dazzling fight scenes. The fighting style used in the film is the Indonesian martial art Pencak Silat and at times the fights between the characters resemble dances more than anything else, so intricate and spectacular are they. Director Gareth Jones' brutal confrontations in the narrow corridors of the building draw favourable comparisons with the infamous hammer scene in Oldboy. In fact, his handling of all the fight scenes shows someone with a serious talent at work here.

In the final third, some secrets about the characters are revealed and it's set up for a sequel but the developments aren't taxing and are fairly easy to see coming. That's not to say they detract from the film. Not at all. In fact, I don't think anything could detract from the action scenes, spectacular as they are.

The Raid: Redemption is absolutely outstanding, an instant action movie classic. Go and see it while it's still in cinemas, you won't be disappointed!

9 out of 10.

The Avengers/Avengers Assemble (2012)

First of all, it's not really necessary to have seen any of the preceding Marvel Cinematic Universe films before you see The Avengers. You might feel left out at some of the in-jokes, but this isn't The Lord of the Rings we're talking about here and the plots from the films haven't exactly been taxing. Still, for those of you who may be going into this blind, allow me to offer a brief summary of the five films you may have missed: meet Tony Stark (Iron Man), Bruce Banner (Hulk), Steve Rogers (Captain America), Thor and Natasha Romanoff (Black Widow). Together, they are The Avengers. Not that they know it yet. Oh, and Thor's evil step-brother Loki. He's after the Tesseract, the MacGuffin of the series. That's pretty much it.

The plot for The Avengers is slightly more taxing: said superheroes must join together, put their differences aside and stop Loki from getting his hands on the Tesseract. Well, I said slightly more taxing. To be fair though, the main draw of the films thus far has not been their superb storylines but their action scenes and The Avengers is no exception. The story revolves around Loki's quest to steal the Tesseract from S.H.I.E.L.D. and use it to dominate the Earth. After Loki (Tom Hiddleston) arrives on Earth through a portal opened by the Tessseract, he pinches it and takes Dr. Erik Selvig (Stellan Skarsgard) and Clint Barton a.k.a. Hawkeye (Jeremy Renner) as hostages despite the best efforts of Nick Fury (Samuel L. Jackson), Maria Hill (Cobie Smulders) and Phil Coulson (Clark Gregg). In response, Fury activates The Avengers Initiative. Fury recruits Rogers (Chris Evans), Coulson recruits Stark (Robert Downey Jr.) and Romanoff (Scarlett Johansson) recruits Banner (Mark Ruffalo). They're reluctant but eventually agree. Thor (Chris Hemsworth) then shows up and, after sparring with Stark and Rogers, joins them too.

The action revolves around two main set-pieces: a battle in mid-air on the Avengers' flying aircraft carrier (yes, a flying aircraft carrier) and a final showdown in New York City. As usual, they're spectacular and Joss Whedon's flair shows through. He also deftly balances the film between leads; both ensuring that they all get roughly equal screen time and also making sure that Robert Downey Jr. both gets all the best lines and doesn't overwhelm the other characters. This is after all his film and his franchise. Without him delivering the success of Iron Man, we wouldn't be here some four films later.

Ultimately, this film is a balancing act: between leads, between action and exposition and between fucking awesome action and over-the-top silliness (The Expendables, I'm looking at you). Credit to Joss Whedon for pulling it off, like I knew he would. It's big, it's loud, it's funny, it's everything you'd expect it to be.

8 out of 10.

21 Jump Street (2012)

This Reviewer has never seen the original 80s TV series of the same name. In fact, I wasn't even aware of its existence until a few days before I went to the preview screening. Armed with the flimsy knowledge that a) it existed and b) Johnny Depp was in it, I really had no idea what to expect. If you're in a similar situation and you're concerned that there will be too many in-jokes or that you won't be able to keep up with what's going on, don't be. For the similarly uninitiated, picture a high school comedy-cum-buddy cop film made jointly by Judd Apatow and John Hughes.

Geeky Morton Schmidt (Jonah Hill) and jockish Greg Jenko (Channing Tatum) are the typical odd couple. Enemies in high school they become best friends at police academy as they realise that their only hope of graduating is with the help of the other. After graduation, their utter ineptitude sees them sent back to high school as part of the undercover "21 Jump Street" programme. Their mission: posing as students they must infiltrate the school's dealers and find out who is supplying them with the new drug HST. Oh, and they can't get expelled or sleep with a student or teacher. The movie's fifteen minutes old and you already know that they're going to end up taking the drug and doing at least one of the two forbidden acts.

When it began, I thought I'd accidentally walked into a screening of Superbad. Jonah Hill's geeky and awkward character tries to ask the hot girl if she wants to go to the prom with him and all I could think about was her morphing into Jules asking him to use McLovin's fake ID to get booze for her party. 21 Jump Street starts pretty slowly, introducing Morton and Greg, going from high school to police academy and their first arrest. It doesn't start badly and their botched drug bust is fairly funny but it's not until they go back to high school that it finds its rhythm and the laughs start coming. They're occasionally a bit hit-and-miss and the film meanders off on tangents that go on a bit too long but the hits are more frequent and more memorable so as to compensate for the misses.

Perhaps the best part of 21 Jump Street is the pairing of Jonah Hill and Channing Tatum. I couldn't think of a more unlikely buddy cop pairing if I tried, but somehow it works. They play off each other really well and Tatum even comes off as the more likeable as Hill's character drifts off into arrogance and self-aggrandisement towards the end of the film. Of course, when they arrive back at high school they get their identities mixed up so Morton ends up playing the stellar athlete and Greg the science geek. Their teachers, Rob Riggle's gym teacher, Chris Parnell's drama teacher and Ellie Kemper's chemistry teacher are hysterical and slightly underused but the best supporting roles come from Dave Franco (younger brother of James) and Brie Larson (Envie Adams in Scott Pilgrim vs. the World) as two of the popular kids. Here's where the John Hughes influence comes in. Unlike back in Morton and Greg's day, the jocks and the sports stars are not the most popular kids, the environmental activists are. It's a welcome change from the tired old stereotypes. In fact, when Greg accidentally commits a hate crime on their first day, no-one bats an eyelid that a student is both gay and black. Roles within the social hierarchy are reversed as Morton suddenly becomes one of the most popular kids in school and Greg finds himself hanging out with the science geeks. Then come the Breakfast Club-style lessons about fitting in, being yourself and the value of friendship. It meshes surprisingly well with the Superbad-style toilet humour (N.B. I mean that literally, there's probably the best gross-out toilet scene since American Pie on the half-hour mark) to round out what could otherwise have been a standard teen comedy.

Given that I had absolutely no idea what to expect, I was very pleasantly surprised with 21 Jump Street. It's very, very funny and if you go into it looking for just that, you'll have a blast. I still randomly burst out laughing when I think about Korean Jesus.

8 out of 10.

In Time (2011)

Sometimes, I watch a film even though I know it will be rubbish. You've done it too, I'm sure. We all have. I've seen the mediocre romantic comedy Bride Wars three times for goodness sake! Why? It's not bad, it's comfortingly average and sometimes that's just what we're looking for. In that spirit, I decided to watch In Time. I'd read the reviews but still I was drawn to it, like a moth to a shit-stained light bulb.

The story's pretty similar to Logan's Run. The year is 2161 and thanks to genetic modifications, people stop ageing at 25. Instead, on their 25th birthday, a bar code on their arm is activated and begins counting down from 1 year. Time has become the new currency, paying for everything from coffee to travel through the "time zones", barriers that separate the ghetto-like Dayton from the futuristic and serene paradise of New Greenwich. Time can be gained by working or by betting, stealing or fighting with other people. When your time runs out, you die instantly. Will Salas (Justin Timberlake) lives in Dayton with his mother Rachel (Olivia Wilde). When his mother's time runs out and he saves 105 year-old Henry Hamilton (Matt Bomer) from the vigilante gang the Minutemen and their leader Fortis (Alex Pettyfer), Henry gives Will his remaining 116 years and dies, telling him that he is tired of living. Unburdened by ties to Dayton, Will travels to New Greenwich and gambles with the uber-wealthy Philippe Weis (Vincent Kartheiser), besting him and earning an invitation to a party at his house. There, he meets his daughter, Sylvia (Amanda Seyfried), and is confronted by the Timekeepers (Collins Pennie and Cillian Murphy) who suspect him of murdering Henry. He takes Sylvia hostage and goes on the run.

From then on, it's standard action film fare: car chases, gun fights and romantic interludes between Will and Sylvia. Unfortunately, the film suffers from two major flaws: it's very badly written and both Timberlake and Seyfried are awful. Timberlake struggles when given minor supporting roles where he's playing himself (The Social Network, Bad Teacher) and I don't know what possessed the makers of this film to think he could carry it. He can't. He wonders around absent-mindedly, talking like he's reading his script for the first time. As for Seyfried, she has a permanent glassy-eyed, vacant look on her face. A lump of plywood would have been more convincing as the bored and frustrated spoilt little rich girl yearning for excitement and freedom. About the only time she does anything is when she sprints (not runs, sprints) in her tottering six-inch high heels. I'm really frustrated with her. She's a very good young actress but in her last two roles, this and Red Riding Hood, she looks like she doesn't give a shit, like she's just there for the paycheck. The idea itself isn't bad but it's badly executed. Given a re-write and with a competent leading man and a leading woman who looks like she actually wants to be there, this could have been an intriguing science fiction film.

A wasted opportunity. Don't spend an hour and fifty minutes of your life on it.

3 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.