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.

Red Riding Hood (2011)

Catherine Hardwicke's adaptation of the classic fairy tale is a lot like her preceding film, Twilight: it's a load of tween nonsense. I don't know how, but she took a dark, gothic fairy tale about a wolf who eats people and stalks a girl in a red hood and turned it into boring, bland, clichéd rubbish.

The film begins as it means to go on: Red Riding Hood, here named Valerie (Amanda Seyfried), is spying on some shirtless lumberjacks in the middle of a forest. It's very badly lit, with ridiculous soft focus shafts of light falling through the trees, which for some reason, all have toothpicks coming out of them. The toothpick-trees are only half as wooden as Seyfried and Shiloh Fernandez, who plays Peter, the lumberjack Valerie is "in love with". They have no chemistry. At all. They spend the entire film looking at each other like they've just met. Apparently the two had met before they made the film and didn't like each other and Seyfried only took the role after Hardwicke persuaded her. It shows.

Valerie might be "in love with" Peter, but she's engaged to another man, Henry (Max Irons, Jeremy's son). Oh, what will Valerie do? What will Peter do? "If you love her", Valerie's mother (Virginia Madsen) says to Peter, "You'll let her go", I finished for her. Silly, clichéd dialogue aside, we quickly move onto the action. Valerie is told her sister has been killed by a werewolf and we're shown her dead body, which hardly has a scratch on it. She's been mauled to death by a giant fucking werewolf and she looks like she tripped over something. Brilliant, we won't even get some gory deaths to make up for the rest of the film. A band of villagers decide to kill the wolf, setting off straight away so as to ambush it during the day because apparently werewolves burst into flames in sunlight. Just how obsessed with vampires is Hardwicke? Anyway, they set off straight away, and get to its cave in the middle of the night. That makes complete sense. Henry's father is killed and the rest of them come back with it's head just as Gary Oldman turns up.

If everyone else in the film is as wooden as the toothpick-trees, Oldman's as hammy as the pigs they sacrifice to try and appease the wolf. He plays the mad Father Solomon, a man with silver fingernails (remember that) who rants about the wolf and the red moon until the wolf turns up. And it's awful. It's all CGI and it's neither convincing nor scary. It kills some people and telepathically tells Valerie to come away with it. I'm sure someone could have made a good film here. Give any aspiring director the job and tell them that if they make it anything like Twilight you'll stick them inside Father Solomon's giant metal elephant and you'd end up with a better, darker film than this.

Anyway, for the next hour or so the wolf kills people very cleanly and people are accused and suspected of being the wolf. Then, Solomon decides to duel it. Unfortunately, he duels like a little girl and the wolf bites his arm off. The wolf tells Valerie to come with it, she refuses and goes to her grandma's house. Once there, she finds that her grandma (Julie Christie) is dead and her father (Billy Burke) is revealed as the werewolf, like anyone cares. He shares some boring dialogue with Valerie until Peter attacks him with the world's smallest axe and Valerie stabs him in the chest with Solomon's severed arm, killing him with the SILVER FUCKING FINGERNAILS. I'd say it's an anti-climactic end to the film, but that would imply that the film had been building towards something. Either way, it's the stupidest death since Mr. Big swallowed a bullet of compressed air and floated away like a balloon in Octopussy. During the fight with Valerie's father, Henry was bitten, meaning he will become a werewolf, but not before he and Valerie have sex and make werebabies. "If Amanda Seyfried goes topless, would that be enough to save this film?", I mused to myself as the couple started kissing. It wouldn't have been, even if she had done.

Skip Red Riding Hood and watch The Company of Wolves or An American Werewolf in London instead. Gary Oldman's ham can't save this rubbish, although it does at least trundle along despite its runtime of one hour and forty minutes. If it dragged, it would have gotten even fewer points.

3 out of 10.

Adventureland (2009)

This is the only film I've seen at the cinema where I've come in late and missed the first few minutes. I was going to see it with a friend and were delayed getting there and missed the first three or four minutes. Annoyed, I swore I would never do the same thing again, and so far I have not. Four years later, I finally got around to watching it again, from the start, uninterrupted! Here's the review.

Adventureland is a romantic comedy set in 1980s Pennsylvania. James Brennan (Jesse Eisenberg) desperately wants to join his best friend on holiday in Europe before they set off for university together. Unfortunately, his dad's demotion means his parents can't afford to pay for the trip and faced with no other option, he gets a job at Adventureland, the local lame amusement park. There, he encounters an eclectic range of characters: pipe-smoking Joel (Martin Starr), his ex-best friend Tommy Frigo (Matt Bush), smooth-talking repairman Mike Connell (Ryan Reynolds), the enticing Lisa P. (Margarita Levieva), eccentric assistant manager Bobby (Bill Hader) and his wife, manager Paulette (Kristen Wiig) and the beautiful, enchanting Em (Kristen Stewart).

After Em saves James from being stabbed by an understandably irate customer, he falls for her and the two begin a very awkward, stop-start relationship, punctuated by uncomfortable encounters with her father (Josh Pais) and stepmother (the excellent Mary Birdsong), Em's relationship with the unhappily married Mike and Lisa P.'s suspicious interest in James.

Adventureland's strengths are in its performances. It's not the funniest comedy I've ever seen. In fact, I didn't laugh out loud more than two or three times, but Eisenberg is his usual winning self, Stewart is confident in her role, self-assured and at the same time vulnerable and the various supporting characters are well-played. If you're only familiar with Kristen Stewart through her Twilight roles (I'm not, having only seen the first one quite a while ago), you probably already have an opinion of her. If it's a negative one, put that to one side and watch her in this film. If you think she can't act, that she only has "one facial expression" or if you hold any of the other criticisms that have been levelled at her, watch this film. It's also an excellent retro piece, full of classic 80s music (notably Falco's "Rock Me Amadeus", which is played ad nauseum on the theme park's speakers and always reminds me of the excellent "Dr. Zaius" parody in The Simpsons) and various news clips of President Reagan.

The film's ending split my friend and I. He disliked it, saying it was too predictable. I disagreed, saying that their relationship ended appropriately. Either way, if you're looking for a good, well-acted film and nostalgic for either young love or the 1980s, watch Adventureland.

8 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.

30 Minutes or Less (2011)

I loved Zombieland. LOVED it. It's not only one of my favourite zombie comedies of all time, it's one of my favourite FILMS of all time. To say that I was looking forward to Ruben Fleischer and Jesse Eisenberg's second film together is an understatement. I saw the trailer and I was convinced that it would be great.

Then I saw it. What can I say? Well, at least it was short. It has pretty much no other redeeming qualities (except for Bianca Kajlich getting her boobs out). Somehow, a story about a pizza delivery guy having a bomb strapped to his chest and being made to rob a bank is boring. Really boring. Thank god it was only 83 minutes long. Nick (Jesse Eisenberg) and his "best friend" Chet (Aziz Ansari) have no chemistry at all, the bad guys (Danny McBride and Nick Swardson) aren't scary or even funny, they're just one-dimensional and silly. The film has no rhythm, the "jokes" fall flat and no-one looks like they want to be there, Eisenberg least of all. I can see why.

Zombieland was a smart, hilarious, well-acted film with brilliant, razor-sharp wit. This god-awful mess is apparently based on a true story: in 2003, a pizza delivery man in Pennsylvania was killed by a bomb that was strapped to his chest as he attempted to rob a bank. Neither story is funny.

3 out of 10.

Apollo 18 (2011)

"Found-footage" horror films have become a sub-genre of their own. They're nothing new, of course. The original found-footage horror was 1980's Cannibal Holocaust and the most infamous is 1999's The Blair Witch Project. It wasn't until 2007, however, that the genre really took off with Paranormal Activity, Diary of the Dead and REC being unleashed onto an unsuspecting audience. They were soon followed by Cloverfield, Quarantine, REC 2, Paranormal Activity 2 and 3, The Last Exorcism and Troll Hunter as well as countless others; some brilliant, others utter bollocks. Now, the genre moves into outer space with Spanish director Gonzalo Lopez-Gallego's first English-language production.

The story goes that after Apollo 17, the final public mission to the Moon, the US Department of Defence instigated another, secret mission, Apollo 18. So far, so conspiracy nonsense. After landing on the Moon, the pair of astronauts down on the lunar surface discover a Soviet lander and things start getting weird - their communications go down and something attacks their rover and, hilariously, their flag. Clocking in at only one hour and twenty-six minutes, and with ten minutes (!) of credits, the story is over in about an hour and a quarter. And thank goodness for that!

Nothing happens. For long, yawning, vacuous stretches of time, absolutely nothing happens. If this was intended as a metaphor for the vastness of the universe and the isolation and loneliness that astronauts can face in the great emptiness of space, then I doff my hat to the director. But I doubt it. After what seems like an eternity, something finally happens and they discover the Soviet lander. Make a note of that scene for it's the only one that made me jump, although I knew it was coming. Then, nothing happens. There's some stuff about rocks and suddenly one of the astronauts has an alien spider in his suit. Apparently the alien spiders hide themselves as rocks, in a plot twist that's as dumb as a bag of them. More things fail to happen, then they finally decide to leave. That's about it.

If you want an exercise in how to make a seventy-six minute film with about fourteen minutes of interesting footage or you want a lesson in how not to build tension and create atmosphere, watch Apollo 18. A good idea for a promising little horror film was unfortunately wasted.

4 out of 10.

Stake Land (2010)

It would be easy to draw comparisons between Stake Land and Zombieland. Aside from the similar titles, they feature a pair of travellers, an experienced killer and a young buck, as they travel across a post-apocalyptic United States of America to get where they're going to. Along the way, they are reminded of the recently departed and the society that has crumbled in the face of an undead onslaught and joined on their journey by other travellers. That's where the similarities end. Zombieland is a comedy, and a damn good one at that and Stake Land is a horror-drama, a post-apocalyptic film much more in the vein of The Road. It's bleak, with wonderful cinematography that highlights the beautiful scenic backdrop and it's suspenseful, with co-writer and director Jim Mickle displaying a certain flair that has prompted me to want to check out his previous effort, 2006's Mulberry Street.

The story begins with a man only known as Mister (played by co-writer Nick Damici) saving young Martin (Connor Paolo) from the same fate that befell his family. It's an excellent opening scene and it both nicely sets up the story and also gives us a good look at the vampires. They're unlike almost any other vampires I've seen on film - sort of a cross between zombies and feral vampires. They retain almost none of their humanity, behaving as fiercely (and stupidly) as savage animals. Taking Martin under his wing, the pair travel north from bayou land towards "New Eden" - the supposed safe haven in Canada, where it's too cold for the "reptilian" vampires to survive. Along the way they pick up a nun (Kelly McGillis), a pregnant woman (Danielle Harris) and an ex-marine (Sean Nelson).

The enemies they face are not just undead - the film delivers a prescient analysis of fundamentalist Christians, some of whom have coalesced into a group known as "The Brotherhood", which sees the vampires as a blessing from their god, and who assisted in the collapse of society and the destruction of the large cities. The weakest part of the film derives from this, as The Brotherhood attack a fortress village by dropping vampires out of helicopters. It's ridiculous and drags the film off-kilter somewhat. It's soon back on track when the group, their numbers dropping one at a time, head closer to the Canadian border and The Brotherhood stalks them, determined to sacrifice them to the vampires.

Aside from the opening, other stand-out scenes include an attack by car-hopping vampires, a nerve-jangling chase through a corn field and an encounter with a recently-turned young girl. The best parts are not the fight scenes, however, but the interludes. It's well acted and well-scripted. In many ways, it's a lot like Monsters. While I didn't care for that film, finding it far too slow and very boring, Stake Land was much more effective at building up my interest as we followed the characters on their journey.

Aside from the helicopter attack and the final fight scene, which feels tacked-on and unnecessary, Stake Land is an excellent film. Belying its low budget, it's well written and acted, including strong performances from Damici as the mysterious "Mister" and Danielle Harris, who is as good as always. The make-up on the vampires is very good and Jeff Grace's score effectively adds to the suspense and desolation that the director conjures. One of the best original vampire films I've seen in quite a few years.

8 out of 10.

The House Bunny (2008)

I didn't exactly go into this film with high hopes. I decided to watch it mostly because I wanted to see Emma Stone in it and I'm a fan of Anna Faris. "It can't be that bad", I thought to myself as I settled down to watch it.

It really is. Anna Faris has been in plenty of awful films - Scary Movie 2, Scary Movie 3 and Scary Movie 4 to name just three - but she's always been the best thing about them. She has a natural comic talent and she always gives it her all, no matter how terrible the film and how lazy and uninterested the other actors are. She tries really, really hard and gives a great performance as Shelley Darlington, the wannabe Playboy Playmate who wakes up one morning to find her life has been turned upside down as she has been evicted from the Playboy Mansion. Shelley, homeless and with nowhere to go, stumbles upon the girls of the Zeta Alpha Zeta sorority. They're awkward, unstylish and generally offensive caricatures of anyone who isn't Little Miss Popular or Little Miss Slut.

The main problem with the film is that it just isn't funny. There are plenty of comedies that aren't funny but are completely watchable because of an interesting storyline or loveable characters. This isn't one of them. It's boring, full of ridiculous caricatures and so absolutely bloody awful I found myself counting down the minutes until the damn thing had finished. I tried to disengage my brain, but even if I'd performed a frontal lobotomy on myself I still would have found it spectacularly awful. Throw in a few decent jokes and turn the film's message from one of "be the best hot girl you can be" into one of "be yourself, whether your beauty is on the outside or the inside" and you'd have an average comedy. Instead, you have this sexist piece of garbage. That it was written by Kirsten Smith and Karen McCullah Lutz, the screenwriting pair behind 10 Things I Hate About You and Legally Blonde, is unbelievable.

Anna Faris gives this film absolutely everything she has and Emma Stone does the best she can with what she's provided with. Take away Faris' energetic performance and I'd give it a single point. As it is, she earns two points all by herself.

3 out of 10.

Final Destination 5 (2011)

I was under the impression that The Final Destination was to be the last film in the franchise. How naive of me. The first four films in the series made over half a billion dollars from a combined budget of just one hundred and seventy-three million dollars. Why on Earth would they stop after just four films!

The problem facing the series is the same problem that the makers of Friday the 13th faced - you can only make so many films about Jason going around killing people before even the hardcore fans become disillusioned. What did they do after three films of stalk-kill-repeat ad nauseum? They killed Jason. Then they had a copy-cat Jason. Then they had zombie Jason. Then they had Jason vs Carrie and so on. But how can the Final Destination films do anything like that? The killer is death. Not a physical manifestation of death that the characters can challenge to a chess game but the disembodied, immaterial, "force" of death. Well, for a start, they can change the characters. Instead of a film full of teenagers, the characters are adults with jobs, spouses and career ambitions. Is that enough to stop the series from becoming stale and boring?

Yes. The characters are more fleshed out, more sympathetic, more... interesting. The cheap laughs are gone but the death scenes are better than ever. I don't think I'll ever be able to watch gymnastics at the Olympics again and I've always had the idea that at some point I'll get laser eye surgery. Yeah, not so much now. As with the rest of the films in the series, it begins with a premonition of a catastrophe, and this catastrophe is the best since the motorway pile-up of Final Destination 2. It's utterly brilliant and totally believable, a marvel of CGI and expertly directed. I haven't seen it in 3D, but from what I've read, the 3D actually enhances the effect, rather than being an annoying after-thought. The death scenes, as mentioned, are better than ever with some innovative twists and downright shocking ways for the characters to come to a sticky end. The demise of a particularly odious character during an acupuncture session provides perhaps the best thrill of all.

Tony Todd's return as William Bludworth is a welcome one and with him having signed up for Final Destination parts 6 and 7, it will be interesting to see if the creators take the series in a different direction or if they waste the opportunity. The ending is an excellent way to link the film to the preceding instalments and create new avenues for the series to explore.

In conclusion, Final Destination 5 is a much better film than I had anticipated. It's formulaic, but a spectacular disaster scene, effective characterisation and fresh and bloody deaths combine to make a worthy entry in the series.

7 out of 10.

Superbad (2007)

Having completely forgotten about this blog for 2 days short of 2 years, now is as good a time as any to start it up again. Having recently graduated from university and with the economy in the toilet (thanks, Dave), it seems that a lot of my time will be devoted to watching films. With that in mind, here's my first review. Well, it's more of a double review, actually. When I first began this blog, I wrote a review of Superbad, but didn't publish it for whatever reason. Having recently watched Superbad for the second time a short while ago, I thought it would be interesting to publish my initial review alongside what I think of it having seen it again.

Here's my initial review:

A few days ago I settled down to watch Superbad. Having heard nothing but good things about it, and having enjoyed two of Judd Apatow's other films (The 40-Year-Old Virgin and Knocked Up) I figured it would be a good way to ease myself in to the world of blog reviews.

The film stars Michael Cera and Jonah Hill as Evan and Seth, two best friends in their final year of High School. With both of them about to graduate and go to different universities, they decide to try and lose their virginity with their respective crushes: Becca and Jules. Their plan revolves around getting their friend Fogell (played by Christopher Mintz-Plasse) to use his new fake I.D. buy all the alcohol for the party at Jules' house, and get the two girls drunk enough to sleep with them. However, when Fogell reveals his fake I.D. lists him as a 25-year-old Hawaiian named "McLovin", things start going downhill. When Fogell appears to be busted by the police and Evan and Seth enlist the help of an ex-con to secure the booze, things hit rock bottom.

As it turns out, I didn't enjoy it as much as I thought I would. Not once did I have to stop the film because I was laughing too much. In fact, I didn't really laugh that much at all. The funniest part of the film is probably the moment the stain on Seth's jeans is revealed to have originated from a rather "intimate" dance he had with a drunk girl earlier on.

Yes, McLovin is a classic character and Christopher Mintz-Plasse was superb, but the trailers for Superbad seemed to be nothing but McLovin clips. Having seen the trailer ad nauseum when it was on TV back in 2007, the film suffered from that classic problem of "putting the funniest bits in the trailer". McLovin being interrupted in bed with a girl? Seen it. McLovin revealing his fake I.D. lists his name as just McLovin? Seen it. McLovin saying "I am McLovin"? Seen it. McLovin tackling someone in a kitchen? Seen it.

That feeling of familiarity carries on throughout most of the film. Guys desperate to lose their virginity before they all go off to college? Where have we seen that before?

Resemblances to American Pie aside, the film was a fairly easy watch. The first hour or so seemed to breeze by. McLovin is a brilliant character; Cera and Hill have real chemistry as the two leads and Seth Rogen is his usual brash self. However, once the trio reunited and got to the party, it began to drag. Apatow and co-writer Evan Goldberg don't seem to quite know how to end the film and it meanders to a very predictable conclusion.

7 out of 10.

And here are my thoughts from almost two years later, having seen it recently for a second time:

I enjoyed it much more than the first time I watched it. Yes, the same feeling of familiarity with other films was there, but I laughed more and the ending is better than I gave it credit for. Rather than having the trio lose their virginities, the film has a much more authentic ending: they don't. Mintz-Plasse is superb and Cera and Hill have great chemistry. Emma Stone also shines out as not only very sharp and funny but one of the most beautiful young actresses in Hollywood today and it's tantamount to her considerable talent that she has gone on to give such good performances in a wide variety of films.

Yes, it's familiar and yes, it meanders at the end but it's warm, realistic, very funny and features some marvellous performances from four fantastic young actors.

8 out of 10.