THE DILEMMA- Review

Whenever Vince Vaughn seems to be having fun, you know it's going to hurt.

On Monday, we saw that a romantic comedy can be salvaged from mediocrity or outright awfulness by good casting. Today, we see how a romantic comedy that features Jennifer Connelly and Winona Ryder, directed by Ron Howard, can be utterly fucked up by becoming Vince Vaughn-centric.

The Dilemma has a simple plot, or it should, anyway. Ronny is a reformed gambling addict who looks up to his best friend Nick and his wife Geneva. Ronny and Nick are in business together, and they're on the cusp of selling a new engine design to Dodge when Ronny catches Geneva in an affair with another man. His dilemma is in whether or not he should spill the beans to Nick as their deadline with Dodge approaches.

For the sake of full disclosure, let's put the cards on the table early on. I hated The Dilemma. Just about every bit of its stultifying 111 minute running time was offensive to my eyes, ears, brain and face. Even as a self-proclaimed Vince Vaughn detractor, I went in wanting to like this. Even though I'd heard negative reviews, I had heard enough positive things to pique my curiosity about seeing it.

Let's list those positive things then, as seen from where I sat in the cinema. The best thing about The Dilemma is Channing Tatum. Yes, that's Step Up and Dear John star Channing Tatum. That should tell you all you need to know, but to be completely fair to Tatum and to the film, his character was the only one to hit my deprived funny bone all the way through, and he did a fine job of it. Of course, the representation of his character is just one of the many problems of the larger film, but I'd go so far as to say that this is actually his best role, and his best performance.

On the whole though, this is a film about Vince Vaughn. It's not just a principled dislike of Vaughn that makes that a bad thing in this case. He's just the person with the least to like about him, in all of this. His character, Ronny, is in a situation that might at least provoke sympathy, and get viewers asking how they would react in his situation. The problem is that the answer to that question is always going to be "Not like that". He fills that huge running time with a cavalcade of dickery and supposedly good-intentioned slapstick. And worst of all, just so you can tell we're supposed to like him, the characters all take the time out to appreciate how hard all of this has been for him, as though his feelings would be most damaged by the explosion of someone else's marriage.

Who's there to appreciate how hard the events have this film have been for me? Hm? Certainly not Kevin James, who finally joins my shit-list just a little later than he figured on everyone else's. I didn't mind him in Paul Blart- Mall Cop and I missed Grown Ups entirely. Certainly not Winona Ryder and Jennifer Connelly, neither of whom have anything to do as they watch from the sidelines and appear to be monstrous and submissive, respectively. And certainly not Ron Howard, who really, really ought to know better by now.

It's not just the unintentionally funny token appearance of his brother Clint, more famously seen in the movies of Uwe Boll than in anything Ron has to offer. It's the way that this entire film feels like a product fixated upon the white heterosexual male who most often goes to the movies, quantified by box office spreadsheets and charts, rather than a film by an actual human being, least of all Ron Howard. It's hideously white, souped up by manful discussion of cars and sports and other cool stuff that's cool, and it has an ugly passive-agressive homophobic streak. All of this without ever forging an emotional connection. Or even raising a laugh that doesn't involve Channing Tatum.

The Dilemma is a baggy and self-indulgent stinker that's over-directed, over-developed and overdone. And in amongst all of that, most of the jokes fail to land, making it an excruciating watch, especially in the first hour. I'd like to think that it's not just an ingrained hatred of Vince Vaughn that led me to this conclusion, but it's more than enough reason on its own to hate this fucking movie. I never walk out of films at the cinema, but this one drove me close to the edge. Perhaps that surprisingly funny turn by Channing Tatum was calculated to coincide with my endurance breaking, because there's no latching onto anything else in this shite.

The Dilemma is now playing in cinemas nationwide.
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If you've seen The Dilemma, why not share your comments below?

I'm Mark the mad prophet, and until next time, don't watch anything I wouldn't watch.

The Mad Prophet's Bottom 10 Films of 2010

Happy New Year! Out with the old, in with the new, and whatnot! We'll miss 2010, as we're thrust into the cold light of 2011. As we leave behind cinema like Inception and The Social Network and squint at the uncertain future to be had in a whole year's worth of upcoming movies. As we slowly and sickeningly realise that we're once again in a year that has a new Transformers film scheduled for release.

But you know, 2010 wasn't all great. If I compile a bottom 10 list, for instance, there still wouldn't be enough room for some of the really rubbish stuff. I'd have to give dishonourable mentions to such joyless films as From Paris With Love and Wall Street- Money Never Sleeps and Takers just because I couldn't fit them into the ten spaces available.

What would that look like, that bottom 10? Seeing as how we're waiting around for the final 10 favourites, let's pinch our noses and have a gander...

10. The Last Airbender (dir. M. Night Shyamalan)

"So low/high on the list?", I hear you cry in dismay? There was a point where I at least conceded the thrill of the special effects and the cinematography by Lord of the Rings DP Andrew Lesnie was enough to elevate this one out of the pits of the year. However, I can't discount how shit the story and everything else about it was, no matter how much I like the source material. A wasted opportunity of cataclysmic awfulness- go and watch the season of the animated series that this film is based on instead.

9. Shank (dir. Mo Ali)

Only in compiling this list did I realise that I forgot to review this film on here, but I did cover it for Den of Geek. In a world where nobody uses an S where a Z will do, this comes as a cross between Mad Max and Ken Korda's magnum opus Speeding on the Needlebliss, from The Adam and Joe Show. The thing reeks of inexperience in a way that I can't forgive. It shares its name with an apparently much better film from 2009, which sucks because it's already confused enough without being confused with something else.

8. Little Fockers (dir. Paul Weitz)

One of two late entries on the list, Little Fockers marks the boiling point for the complete combustion of Robert DeNiro's career. It's lazy, it sets up jokes that go nowhere, and it also has jokes with set-ups that are entirely too obvious, and most depressingly, it's DeNiro's second film on the trot that co-stars Jessica Alba. It has a disjointed narrative, in which there is no development of characters, and neither are there any laughs to be had. Who cares if the actors had fun making it? I had no bloody fun watching it.

7. Life as We Know It (dir. Greg Berlanti)

Filmed on location on planet Earth, Life as We Know It is a thing of perverse contrivance, which has nothing even close to the romantic feelings it's supposed to evoke. Katherine Heigl continues to be such a hateful presence that she crushes every leading man she's paired with underfoot in mushy displays of obnoxious behaviour and self-importance. Poor Josh Duhamel, is what I'd say if he were any better. Predictable, inscrutable, and once again, capital-P Perverse.

6. A Nightmare On Elm Street (dir. Samuel Bayer)

What is it about brown and green colour-grading that's so popular in shit American horror movies these days? Is it that watching through the fug of what looks like shit and snot is meant to distance us as viewers from just how excruciatingly bad Platinum Dunes remakes like A Nightmare On Elm Street actually are. This is the second year running that Michael Bay's horror-raping production company has made something unworthy enough for the bottom 10, and in 2011, we're promised a remake of The Birds. Yes, Hitchcock's The Birds. In that much at least, I'm very scared, but nothing else is frightening in movies like this.

5. Valentine's Day (dir. Garry Marshall)

The existence of this one is probably least surprising of all the films on this list- the world was yearning for that film that crossed Short Cuts with one of those 15-word crossword magazine tie-breakers that starts "Love is..." This vomit-worthy ensemble piece has more loose threads than a particularly unhinged jumper, and yet nothing to really grab onto. There are some starring here who know better, and had better work in 2010, but it doesn't change how I had to sit through a whole two hours of this.

4. Jonah Hex (dir. Jimmy Hayward)

This should be the subject of an episode of CSI at some point. Where did it go wrong? Which pillock cast Megan Fox? What was up with that prosthetic that stifled Josh Brolin so? Why was John Malkovich so rubbish? And was it really, as I suspected, directed by the horse who played Clint Eastwood's steed in the Dollars trilogy? The studio cattle brand might be all over its arse and it feels like watching the subject of a cold case investigation and wondering what happened to this Western along the way that mussed it up to be so crap.

3. Old Dogs (dir. Walt Becker)

For American audiences, this was one of the worst films of 2009, and it finally made a plop into UK cinemas in March. The worst out of this travesty is clearly John Travolta- at least Robin Williams redeemed himself later in the year with World's Greatest Dad, but Travolta only had the similarly execrable From Paris With Love. Together, they shared a screen in the most anti-Disney film imaginable, full of corporate back-and-forth, lame and occasionally racist jokes, and Seth Green being embraced by a gorilla.

2. Gulliver's Travels (dir. Rob Letterman)

The other late entry on the list is one I really wanted to put at #1/#150, but seeing as how it's failing massively at the box office anyway, it almost feels like it isn't doing enough harm. It harmed me though, filled as it was with outright offensive awfulness. It becomes ironic because of it's utterly un-ironic approach to depicting some little people who all gratefully accept whatever mass-culture detritus Jack Black has to give them, and now all of us "little people" aren't bothering to take this crap. Well, except me and a few others, who now share a sacred bond, and a shared suffering.

1. Vampires Suck (dir. Jason Friedberg and Aaron Seltzer)

Cheap, nasty and not as funny as just watching the Twilight movies it's supposed to be spoofing. Because it was cheap, it made its money back, meaning they're bound to turn out another lame spoof in 2011 despite their careers being thought dead before this latest atrocity. Because it was nasty, I'm appalled that they're going to be allowed to do it again. And because of all of the above, it's such a ringer for the title "Worst of 2010" that I'm almost tempted to disqualify it on the grounds of not being a film. I'm too angry for that, so let's put it up on this fridge of shit, where everyone can see it. FUCK THIS MOVIE.

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Tomorrow should bring the video special counting down my top 10 films of 2010, and we'll wrap up the New Year Bank Holiday weekend on Monday with a look forward to this year.

I'm Mark the mad prophet, and until next time, don't watch anything I wouldn't watch.

GULLIVER'S TRAVELS- Review

It's as bad as it looks. And worse.

Huh.

Sometimes I just...

Right, let's start with story, shall we? Theoretically, the story of Gulliver's Travels, created by Jonathan Swift to subtly satirise government and politics so as to avoid being executed for his views, is a travelogue by Lemuel Gulliver. Gulliver is shipwrecked in a country where the inhabitants are 1/12 of his height, and variously travels to several other weird and wonderful places as the narrative progresses and Swift's critiques of the established order are embellished.

In Gulliver's Travels, a film from the makers of Shrek and Monsters vs. Aliens, the tale is modernised to centre around Jack Black as the now more implausibly named Lemuel Gulliver, an dislikeable bumbag who is never going to get out of the rut of employment he's nestled into at the New York Tribune. After resorting to shameless measures with the travel editor to bag a writing assignment in the Bermuda Triangle, Gulliver winds up shipwrecked in Lilliput. And that's where any manner of faithfulness to the text ends.

I'm only putting the gloves on for the advertising. To go into a rant about how it's stupidly over-exposed in trailers and adverts, like The A-Team before it, belies how apt the advertising actually was. It was crude, it looked terrible, and I for one wanted nothing more than for it to fuck off and die every time it assaulted my eyes and brain. That's pretty much how Gulliver's Travels, the movie, turns out. Some honest fellow in 20th Century Fox's marketing department deserves a quicker death than his cohorts in this enterprise. 

Gulliver's Travels is bad. And I mean, really bad. That salient point is the only way I can quickly get across my thoughts and feelings on this utter train-wreck of a motion picture. It is without wit, without irony, without innovation and without thought or feeling for anyone silly enough to pay cash money to see it. More notably however, it's without laughs. The kids in the screening I caught will testify to that. I'm not making this up- many of them laughed at the trailers before the film, for coming attractions like Gnomeo and Juliet and Yogi Bear, and at the Ice Age short that played before the main feature. For the entire duration of the main attraction, the whole cinema was deathly silent. You'll have more fun reading about Jonathan Swift's descent into madness on Wikipedia is than watching this film.

But what's wrong with it specifically? Well, simply put, it's Gulliver's Travels a la Dreamworks. I have been harsh on Dreamworks in the past, but I am speaking literally here- one of the screenwriters worked on the first two Shrek films and the director is Rob Letterman, who made a decent job of last year's Monsters vs. Aliens. But think of everything that comes with a bad Dreamworks film. Inane pop culture references, repurposed but no less blatant product placement, unfunny jokes that aim no higher than the shins of the lowest common denominator, and most annoyingly in this case, Jack Black.

As a rule, I generally like Jack Black, no matter how much of a pounding he took in my estimation after A Clockwork Orange style consumption of that Orange advert for this film before each and every one of the 40 films I've seen in the cinema since August. The trouble is, his repetitive schtick can get sort of irksome, especially when you cast him as a character as flagrantly abominable as this film's rendition of Gulliver. People say he plays himself, but I can't quite believe the image of Jack Black in films is anything close to the man himself. Because otherwise no one would be able to stand working with him.

Towering over the cast of Liliputians as he does, there's a fair argument to be made that Black is acting in a different film to them, added in afterwards through the magic of green screens. Supporting players like Billy Connolly and Jason Segel and Emily Blunt and Catherine Tate and... well, most of the little people are better than films like this. Only James Corden seems on the same wavelength as Black, with the consequence that you actually root for Chris O'Dowd as the film's villain as he calls out Gulliver's every action for the bullshit that it really is.

It's even more of a wasted opportunity when you consider that there are no prominent grown-up adaptations of Swift's novel, which contains more invention and intelligence than anyone bothered with on this version. Nothing about it shows an understanding of the potential of the source material. Too often, themes of corruption and war are glossed over by the need for apparently box-ticking sequences involving Jack Black playing Guitar Hero with little people, or pretending that Star Wars is the story of his life (and even that idea has been done elsewhere), or fighting a Transformer, or having a fucking song and dance number.

And so its lack of irony actually becomes something quite interesting. Look at that supporting cast again- they're all English, except for Jason Segel who makes a good stab at an English accent. Along with his rambunctious nature and ego issues, Black's Gulliver brings with him the worst parts of American culture. To get political for a moment in a vain effort to reclaim the original text's perspective, is it possible that with David Cameron installed in government with the aid of News International, Murdoch subsidiary 20th Century Fox sees Britain as an island of little people who gratefully take what we're spoon-fed via cultural imperialism? As a commentary on hegemony, it could be quite fascinating. However, it's supposed to be Night At The Museum, and it's actually a big pile of shite.

If this version of Gulliver's Travels hadn't been made, someone would have made it up as a joke. Indeed, I know many people who were initially confused by the Orange adverts for this film, believing it to be a joke trailer in the vein of the company's previous campaigns about Danny Glover's Dial Hard or Sean Astin's Lord of the Ringtones. The trouble is, it does exist, and it's hard to find anything funny about this film's existence. Gulliver's Travels is rotten- plain and simple. It is assembly line fodder of the most outright stupid kind, and nothing brings me more cheer at the end of 2010 than to see this film failing to make bank. Keep up the good work by staying at home, away from its awfulness, and 2011 will look a lot brighter.

Gulliver's Travels is now showing in 2D and 3D, at cinemas nationwide.
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If you've seen Gulliver's Travels, why not share your comments below? If you're wondering where this places on my bottom 10 list, rest assured it's on there- come back soon to find out what the other 9 are...

I'm Mark the mad prophet, and until next time, don't watch anything I wouldn't watch.

Being Of Unsound Mind- LIFE AS WE KNOW IT Review

"WAAAAAAH." (attribute needed)

Katherine Heigl hasn't done herself any favours with her acting career. After lambasting the writers who made her a star with Knocked Up, she's gone on to become typecast in romcoms as an anal, shrewish single woman who's dependent on finding a man for happiness. Guess what? Life as We Know It is another Heigl film about an anal, shrewish single woman, the dickhead with whom she's forced into an uneasy emotional entente, and her insane late friends.

We meet Holly and Masser on a disastrous first date- there's no way in a million years that they should ever be together, but they're in a romantic comedy, so I guess we'll see how that pans out. Their only real connection to one another is that they're mutually friends with blissful new parents Peter and Alison, who die in a car accident and orphan their one-year-old daughter Sophie. Funny, right? Well, the wacky part is this- they bequeathed the custody of Sophie to their two hateful buddies, together. Uh ohhhh!

The plot is a matter of absurd, nay, perverse contrivance. It's duly noted that the death of both parents was an unlikely event, but if you bother to make a will that could control the fate of your only begotten child, do you really choose two people who hate each other, to say nothing of their utter lack of parenting skills or their constant surprise at the smell of baby shit? Hell, I'd say Peter and Alison tempted fate, and fate gives them the horns around half an hour in by way of traffic smiting. What follows thereafter is an hour and a half of Katherine Heigl and Josh Duhamel being astonished by nappies and bickering.

If it doesn't sound like a recipe for hilarity, that's because it's not. It's the most cloying and tenuous film I've seen since Remember Me, and it's oddly selfish in the way it goes about it too. You'd think that it would be very selfless of two grieving acquaintances to accept responsibility over a child's upbringing in real life, but not in this film. Mostly because neither of our romantic leads can shut the hell up about how this has affected them. If we had one of them dutifully committing to put the child first and the other being selfish to the point of an inevitable epiphany, it might have been watchable. But no, all Heigl and Duhamel can muster is bickering dialogue and self-important claptrap.

It's an important realisation when you can see Heigl turning people on screen with her into the same empty character she's been recycling for the last four films or so. Josh Duhamel, that army guy from Transformers, seems like a pretty open and charismatic screen presence elsewhere, but as Masser, he's as repressed as Heigl's Holly. This is one of those films where no one is savvy to anything recognisable as human behaviour, keeping back simple admissions for the sake of building to one of a million weak punchlines. Sarah Burns' somewhat overplayed social worker becomes one of the few bright spots when she points out that they're being cagey for nothing- their troubles are nothing compared to the "tranny hookers" she normally supervises.

There's maybe one reason why parents would hand their child over to these two- because they'd make a good looking couple. Not a good couple, just an ostensibly pretty one. This in contrast to the stereotypical neighbours we see here, and that's another place where the film just alienated me completely- it's trying to win us over with gags about gay adoption, overbearing matriarchs and in one throwaway instance, bipolar disorder. None of those gags hit the mark, and nor does anything else the screenwriters throw at us- the film is just singularly unfunny, unaccomplished and unworthy.

Life As We Know It might as well take place on another planet, except for how it keeps its head firmly buried in the romantic comedy play-book. The only real difference, aside from the unorthodox and ornery premise, is how long it takes to get there. This has the bizarre effect of making a mawkish movie feel sterile all the same. We get the Other Guy, and the Wacky Best Friend, and the Dash To The Fucking Airport, but over a tortuous two hours. At least Heigl's other 2010 outing, Killers, was reasonably short. As for this, it's life, Jim, but definitely not as we know it.

Life as We Know It is now showing in selected cinemas nationwide.
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If you've seen Life as We Know It, why not share your comments below? If you think I've been harsh on this, it's because I'm crying on the inside. You can cheer me up by befriending Christina Hendricks. Just tell her that she and I have to be together, then die suddenly. Surely this logic cannot fail.

I'm Mark the mad prophet, and until next time, don't watch anything I wouldn't watch.

The Quickening- VAMPIRES SUCK

UPDATE: You can read my more discursive and rational review of this film on Den of Geek.

Masters of un-funny Aaron Seltzer and Jason Friedberg set their sights on Twilight with Vampires Suck, their latest so-called comedy. Becca Crane moves to the sleepy town of Sporks and finds herself torn between two men- sparkling vampire Edward, whose commitment issues stem from his bloodsucking family trying to eat his prospective girlfriends, and his dogged rival for her affections, Jacob. Hilarity ensues on a rollercoaster through pop-culture and teenage vampire relationships.

Oh, I should probably mention at this point in the review that Vampires Suck is utter dog shit. Surprise!

In all honesty, there's a more full review that I wrote for Den of Geek coming online in the next few days. I'll link to that review then, because there's no different way to phrase how crap this film is. Here are some pictures, with a brief explanation of my position. It's a piss-take of this...

... from the guys who gave you this...

... and this...

... and it looks like this.

Does any of that look or sound appealing to you? It's the film that finally made me abandon my work ethic with reviews and go for picture-based lols over actual analysis and opinion. Why? Because they didn't bother to make any effort making this distended YouTube video that's somehow making it into cinemas come Friday. Why the Mormon-bashing fuck would I bother to write a thousand words telling you why it's comfortably the worst film of 2010? It's such a ringer for that position that it's not even worth the cyberspace this post is taking up. Friedberg and Seltzer have somehow made a spoof that's less funny than actually watching Twilight or New Moon. Jings!

It's a film that almost defies reasonable analysis, like monkeys throwing their faeces at psychologists trying to find Rorschach patterns in the splatter. Once again, for the cheap seats, DO NOT GO AND SEE VAMPIRES SUCK. For the love of sweet Buddy Christ, enough is enough. If you do see Vampires Suck, don't bother coming and telling me, because this is what you'll get...

2007- I just saw Epic Movie. Yes, that is blood.

For Den of Geek, I'll force myself to be reasonable. For my own blog, where I'm allowed to vent about shit that made me physically sick, this is what you get. Fuck this movie.

Vampires Suck is infecting cinemas from Friday. Don't you dare go and see it.

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If you've seen Vampires Suck, I refer you to the previous graphic. Don't worry- tomorrow we'll have a totally rational review of one of the five best films of 2010 so far. I just need to calm down.

I'm Mark the mad prophet, and until next time, don't watch anything I wouldn't watch.

Wrongoloids

As something of a regular disclaimer, it's only my opinion here- others are available. As ever, mild spoilers may occur in the process of reviewing, but never so far as to spoil any major plot developments.

Who knew a comedy about suicide bombers could actually be sweet and rather poignant? Some still don't know it, hence the usual brigade out to slap about Four Lions for being morally reprehensible in the like. Of course they've completely overlooked the latest Michael Bay mandated remake monstrosity A Nightmare on Elm Street in the process. Have no fear (not a likely proposition in the latter), I will be covering both.
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So, there's a remake of A Nightmare on Elm Street. You know the story, or at least what remains of it here- some teens have the same dreams as each other, and dying in dreams means dying in reality. Worse luck for them, as a vengeful gribbly called Freddy Krueger is out and about. There's an effort to install some new plot twists here, from the fairly interesting idea of micro-naps brought on by intense sleep deprivation, to the heinous twist on Freddie's origins that makes for yet another cynically stupid horror remake with Michael Bay's production company Platinum Dunes footing the bill.

This is the first feature film by music video director Samuel Bayer, a name which in this context sounds like a pseudonym for the cinematic Voldemort himself, but I'm assured he only produced it. So Bayer had this to say after his film got the moderately successful US opening weekend he needed to carry on in the business.

"Look, I’m gonna catch a lot of heat for this, but some of these fans on the web should just get up, stretch, breathe, go outside and get some fresh air, maybe get a girlfriend and just get a life. They should see the movie and make up their own minds.”

Essentially, he says fuck you very much for paying to see my shit movie. OK, so pre-release, the film wasn't exactly endearing itself to me, and even though I eventually saw it without paying, I realised I should actually see it because he made one good point. People should be able to make up their own minds.

One scene in this sums up my reaction- remember the quicksand stairs from the 1984 Wes Craven original? That scene is replicated on a landing here, which gives the effect of our miserable young heroine wading through shit. That scene is the distilled essence of 2010's A Nightmare on Elm Street, for two key reasons.

1. It's part of a greatest hits package of the original film, replicating memorable scenes with a massively dulled effect.
2. Watching the film is like wading through shit.

It is not only unspeakably awful, but it's boring too. It actually lends itself to awful rhetoric from critics, because it's so easy to feel sleepy while watching it. Guessing that's why they changed the tagline from "Don't Fall Asleep" to "Never Sleep Again" fairly late in the marketing campaign. Not that it heightens the terror even one jot, it's just incredibly boring. The sound design is as ever catered towards a quick jump scare, but still serves as an alarm clock for anyone who's drifting off from the sheer dullness of the proceedings.

Take a moment's silence for Jackie Earle Haley, who really deserved better than this. He's a good choice to play Freddy and he's clearly a fan of the character, but he has nothing to do here. And worse, he has to deal with the terrible swap-out they do on Freddy's origins. Apparently a child murderer wasn't bad enough, so they make him a paedophile instead, something that Haley is forced to trot out by leering over our growed-up lead emos before he eviscerates them. With last year's Friday the 13th, that's two horror remakes in a row from the Arch Bay-stard that have distilled any threat and menace in a monster down to sex. So sex is sexy. Monsters are not. Are you scared yet?


Were it not my duty to entertain in some way as I expect you to read through all this, I could sum up this remake succinctly. A Nightmare on Elm Street is bad. I don't hold the original up as the untouchable horror classic that others have, but this is really just eye-wateringly and arse-clenchingly bad. You could expect no more or less from Platinum Dunes, but Bayer takes an immutably scary idea in the form of Freddy Krueger and rehashes it without innovation or even any real horror. The script operates in syllogism and the acting is, with Jackie Earle Haley excepted, fucking awful. You will not care for these characters, you care only for when this 90 minute shitfest will stop dragging and you can go and watch something else instead.

A Nightmare on Elm Street is now playing in cinemas nationwide.


Altogether less damaging and more wholesome is Four Lions, which comes into selected cinemas after a troubled journey. Writer and director Chris Morris well-known for courting controversy through the really quite brilliant Channel 4 series Brass Eye, and thus it's taken a while to get the funding for this one. It's all about a motley crew of suicide bombers, determined to make an indelible mark on a culture that they despise. Or at least two of them are, the other two being slightly less aware of what they're letting themselves in for. With division in the ranks, they look for a target that will put them down in history on their way to the Rubber Dinghy Rapids they expect in paradise.

I don't really think this film is wrong or bad, obviously. Come on, it's a film where the key conflict in the film occurs over a Facebook application starring animated puffins. It was never going to do any real damage. Thus the anticipated harsh reaction from the British Muslim community doesn't seem to have materialised.

Instead, there have been calls to ban the film from the families of 7/7 victims. Understandably, a film that makes this topic funny will be a sore point, but with deepest sympathies, the solution is just not to watch it if it may be upsetting. For anyone else, there's actually a rather bittersweet undercurrent to the satire, but Morris never shies away from making some incisive gags about extremism.


Our leonine quartet are too stupid to actually orchestrate the large scale panic they misguidedly hope for, making the film somewhat poignant. These four are still real people- two of whom haven't quite grasped that the end result of their mission will involve their deaths and another of whom has a loving family. If you were made to root for terrorists, it'd be obscene, but Morris quite delicately sends up one of the most terrible facts of modern religion without ever mocking human tragedy.

Mel Brooks once said that he mocked Hitler in The Producers because fear loses its power if you're able to laugh at it. While Morris hasn't gone down that road, he actually goes some way towards a character study of suicide bombers rather than an outright farce. It does err closer to farce than to the satire of Morris' earlier works, and at times that's jarring with the more human element. Our anti-heroes are not traditional caricatures.

I wouldn't say it's not the kind of comedy you laugh at, because there are a lot of fantastic jokes in Four Lions. It was just altogether different from the film I expected, and that's not necessarily a bad thing. It's obviously been meticulously researched and I don't believe there's anything malicious about it at all. Morris fans may be surprised, but there's still much to admire about this uproarious yet tactful comedy.

Four Lions is now playing in selected cinemas- seek it out!
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If you have seen A Nightmare on Elm Street and Four Lions and want to comment on the films or my reviews, or simply need help with your strong urge to strap a bomb to yourself and find the Platinum Dunes HQ, why not comment below?

I'm Mark the mad prophet, and until next time, don't watch anything I wouldn't watch.

Adventures in Babyshitting

Douglas Adams famously posited the number 42 as the answer to the meaning of life, the universe and everything. Regrettably, there's nothing so profound in the two films the 42nd Mad Prophet review post covers. Instead, we have two fairly lamentable family films, with the downright awesome Jackie Chan having another jab at the English language market in The Spy Next Door and Seth Green being embraced by a gorilla in Old Dogs. As something of a regular disclaimer, it's only my opinion here- others are available. As ever, mild spoilers may occur in the process of reviewing, but never so far as to spoil any major plot developments.
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Although you'd never know it from the advertising, there's more of a story to Old Dogs than just Seth Green serenading a gorilla after it grabs him and cradles him like a baby. Robin Williams and John Travolta play two life-long friends, Dan and Charlie, who are about to enter into a huge sports-marketing deal with some Japanese businessmen. A chance meeting with an old flame of Dan's throws up the surprise revelation that he once fathered two twins, Zach and Emily. With their political activist mother about to spend two weeks in jail, the impractical bachelors have to babysit the twins, learning about family along the way. Yes, I actually gagged typing that last bit.

Even though it's the hackneyed family-centric hi-jinks that Disney's live-action arm is known for when there isn't a Pirates of the Caribbean film on screens, it's baffling to think this came out of the House of Mouse. Besides being homophobic, xenophobic, ageist and generally not funny, it's about a corporate back-and-forth! You know, for kids! There is little that approaches any recognisable level of entertainment value, with the exception of that Green-gorilla gag, which you've seen a million times if you've seen any trailers or posters, and a nice cameo from Justin Long. He plays a creepy and intense Scoutmaster, and I'm not really doing him justice to describe it that way. He provides welcome titters in the wasteland that is Old Dogs, and acquits himself fairly well.

The rest of the cast? Well, they can do better. The most galling thing is that they all know they can do better. Robin Williams was in Good Will Hunting and Jumanji, exhibiting a great versatility for different target audiences- here he's spray-tanned to the extent that he's mistaken for an Asian guy. Matt Dillon was one of the better parts of the racial tensions potboiler Crash- here he's the less funny foil to Long's psychotic outdoors man. John Travolta... no, fuck him. I'm not a fan, and he's one of the only actors working who I genuinely think needs to stop. The last halfway passable performance he gave was voicing the title character in Bolt, not to mention the fact that he's largely to blame for Battlefield Earth. So between this and From Paris With Love, fuck John Travolta!

Put simply, Old Dogs is garbage. Director Walt Becker seems to be daring reviewers to make the obvious "get it put down" pun with the title, but as I'm showing more ingenuity than anyone in that film, here is a short list of other bits of dog rhetoric that can be attributed this film.

1. It's less fun than rabies.
2. It leaves the taste of balls in your mouth.
3. An old, blind, deaf specimen that's loping around cinemas pissing on the carpet and smiling dopily at the audience as it does.

And I could go on. But this is not worth your time, not worth your money, barely even worth its existence. It doesn't quite count as one of the five 2010 films worse than Valentine's Day that would have me stop going to the cinema, but it comes very damn close.
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Elsewhere, Jackie Chan once again capably demonstrates why he's the best action/comedy star in the world in The Spy Next Door, a demonstration that in no part has anything to do with the lamentable script. But here's the story anyway- Chan plays special agent Bob Ho, who retires from his life of international espionage in order to try and build a normal life with his neigbour and girlfriend, Gillian. As is par for the course in these films, she has three children- Farren, Ian and Nora- who don't like Bob much. Bob's left holding the kids while Gillian's away, but Ian's inadvertent download of a deadly computer program puts all of them in danger.

Have you noticed how, when Jackie Chan is surrounded by dumb Americans in a film, he usually inflicts hilarious violence upon them and gets on with whatever he's doing? Doesn't happen in real life, as evidenced by the utter fail on show from this film's actors, writers and director. But besides all of this, Chan is excellent. He's Jackie fucking Chan, of course he's excellent. Chan has much better comic timing than he seems to be given credit for, and one of the films I'd really love to see in my lifetime would be a Jackie Chan silent comedy. He already has the right sensibilities for it in all of his work, and Hollywood would finally learn how to utilise that talent. In the meantime, my head movies aren't real, and we just have to make do with The Spy Next Door.

Now, I've never hit a kid. I suspect utterly drubbing the work of a child actor would have a similarly upsetting effect if said child read said drubbing, but my word, this film has the worst child actors I can remember seeing in a film. Emo girl is whiny, adorable kid is adorable, and nerdy kid is nebbish until Bob transforms him into... the Fonz? When the hell was this script written?! I'd assumed sometime after the success of The Pacifier, to which this film owes a debt that the Vin Diesel film really didn't warrant. The adult cast don't fare any better than the kids, particularly Katherine Boecher and Lazytown creator Magnús Scheving, who both adopt Russian accents that are sub-Ensign Chekov. Also, Billy Ray Cyrus and George Lopez are in need of a firm kick. Yknow, just for being Billy Ray Cyrus and George Lopez. Chan outshines every single one of them, and very much makes the whole thing worthwhile.

God love Jackie Chan, he keeps making bad films whenever he forays into the English language these days. That makes his part in The Spy Next Door all the more exceptional, drawing laughs out of a mirthless script like blood from a stone. At 55 years old, he's still at the top of his game in the martial-arts stakes, and he really gets comedy too. His next is a remake of The Karate Kid, starring Will Smith's kid. I can but dream of a Jackie Chan silent comedy, because it's the kind of thing that would just complete my life. In the meantime, don't go and see this one unless you're a big fan of Chan or your kids want to know how not to act.
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If you've seen Old Dogs, may God have mercy on your soul. But if you're similarly enthused by Jackie Chan even in spite of his utter misuse by Hollywood, why not share your comments below? If you wanna know what's next up, I imagine it'll be a much-delayed review of Green Zone in the run-up to the anticipated tantric explosion that'll come after I see Kick-Ass on Friday.

I'm Mark the mad prophet, and until next time, don't watch anything I wouldn't watch.

Travolting

Films like The Exorcist and The Evil Dead have been appalling and entertaining audiences for decades, and in cinemas this week are two films that are similarly revolting, albeit in entirely different ways- the harrowing awards darling, Precious, and a big dumb Travolta vehicle, From Paris With Love.

As something of a regular disclaimer, it's only my opinion here- others are available. As ever, mild spoilers may occur in the process of reviewing, but never so far as to spoil any major plot developments.
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Taken director Pierre Morel collaborates with Luc Besson once again to bring us From Paris With Love, which matches James Reece, a US ambassador's assistant who's complicit with the CIA, with a brash twatbag of an American spy called Charlie Wax. Reece has to keep an eye on Wax's methods while carrying a vase full of coke and trying to stop the bad guys. Who are the bad guys? Why, terrorists, of course! Terrorists who plan to do very bad things to America, a country it's entirely easy to stop caring about when their top man in this film is played by John Travolta.

John Travolta isn't funny. Hell, I'm pretty sure he's barely capable of actually acting these days, but "John Travolta isn't funny" is a much more potent synopsis of From Paris With Love. To expand on his not being funny, you'll find he's once again in Taking of Pelham 123 mode, saying "motherfucker" as much as he can, because someone somewhere obviously thinks that's funny. It's not, and the in-jokes about the Royale with cheese are pretty soul-destroying too. It's like he's constantly nostalgic for times when he was in better films than this, or Old Dogs, or Battlefield Earth. He must be REALLY missing Quentin Tarantino.

Jonathan Rhys Meyers is as obscured by Travolta's hammy acting and sheer volume as many of his recent co-stars have been. But he gamely trundles from shootout to shootout, and is embroiled in the most token love-interest story you'll see in an action film this year. This isn't dumb fun, it's just dumb, and hateful to boot. For instance, one typically bullet-riddled scene has a shootout with a gang of Asian bodyguards in an apartment block, with a nervous Reece following a wave of destruction left by Travolta's accomplished douchebag, Wax. "How many more of them?", Rhys Meyers enquires. "By the last census, around a billion", Travolta replies. Doesn't a little bit of joking about racial cleansing go a long way?
Wax is seen in one scene to leave litter on a park bench even though there's a bin not two feet away. The shot lingers even after Wax has gone out of it, and for a moment I wondered if it was a clever admonition of American wastefulness. In fact, between this and Taken, I have to wonder if Morel isn't actually executing some massive feat of irony and parodying American action cinema in his films by centring them around Americans and making them as xenophobic as possible without incurring charges of racial hatred. I'd actually be intrigued if I could stomach another viewing of this tripe. Any intended irony fails here because Taken was at least entertaining in its daftness, but this is just dumb and hateful, as opposed to just dumb fun.

Then I turned my Media student head off, because From Paris With Love doesn't warrant deserve such consideration. And even if it did, it's not entertaining enough to carry any undercurrent of satire. There's nothing so clever in this crass and xenophobic effort from Morel, and the character of Charlie Wax is simply revolting. Travolting, if you will. Not funny, not entertaining, but at least it's brief. And for the latter at least, merci, Pierre Morel. Now go away.
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A much more subdued film than that is Lee Daniels' Oscar darling, Precious, and sadly its unwieldy full title, (take what you've got already and add Based on the novel Push by Sapphire) gives you a fair idea of the film itself. In Harlem, 1987, an obese and illiterate black girl called Claireece "Precious" Jones is pregnant with her second child by her own father. Her spiteful mother resents her husband's preference for her daughter and constantly abuses her, both verbally and physically. When Precious is drummed out of her old school, she goes to an alternative one where she's brought into contact with the caring Ms. Rain and has the chance to turn her life around.

Early on, the film put me in mind of an episode of Doctor Who from a few years ago, where John Simm's Master snarks about how our fugitive heroes- David Tennant, Freema Agyeman and John Barrowman- are "ticking every demographic box, so well done on that." In tackling issues of race, family, young pregnancy and poverty in a coming-of-age tale, it ostensibly seems like Lee Daniels and screenwriter Geoffrey Fletcher were very much on the awards season campaign trail. It's certainly gotten a lot of recognition thus far, with Mo'Nique one of the few absolute locks for an acting win this Sunday at the Academy Awards. I don't disagree that it's worthy of recognition for its performances, but I think it's curious that Mo'Nique and Gabourey Sidibe are the ones who have been marked out as the best.
Mo'Nique is certainly quite good in it, but her character felt like it was drawn in broad strokes to me, and I never really felt Precious' mother was anything but a one-dimensional character, even towards the end of the film. She's too well-performed to be something out of panto, but she's not vile enough to appear as anything more than a particularly riled guest on Jerry Springer. That's not the actress' fault, as she copes rather well with what I feel was a weak script. Elsewhere, Gabourey Sidibe doesn't make the strongest debut here, but then she's not an actress- again, it's not her failing but Hollywood's that there aren't trained actresses working of the build required for Precious. Both are capable with what could easily descend into melodramatic caricatures, but I felt the really great performances came from Paula Patton and Mariah Carey.

Yes, that Mariah Carey. I understand the lack of awards recognition there, as she's only in it for a bit and she's also Mariah Carey, but she makes a surprisingly strong impression in the screentime she has. Patton is instantly endearing as Ms. Rain, and I really felt she elevated each scene she was in. That might seem somewhat incongruous with my criticisms of Sidibe and Mo'Nique, but in the scenes where those two were together I was always very aware I was watching performances rather than people, and there's none of the realism in that stuff that a film like this requires to work. And that's true of a fair bit of Precious. It's not mawkish, but it is cloying, really striving to evoke a reaction from its audience rather than letting it occur naturally. It's all the more jolting when the film lapses into loud and bright fantasy sequences- as bad as her life is, it's as if Daniels felt the audience needed those breaks from bleakness more than Precious.

Even with its overriding bleakness and desperate tugging at your heartstrings, Precious isn't a bad film, but it's not enjoyable either. Is it worthy of Best Picture? I think not, but there have certainly been worse films nominated in previous years. Aside from The Blind Side, which I haven't seen yet but suspect may be worse, I'd say it's the weakest of the ten nominated this year. Oscar glory isn't the only reason you ever go to see anything though, and the film remains an honourable but overwrought endeavour to bring important social issues to greater public awareness. Think Slumdog Millionaire with a more ambiguous ending, or Juno with a fuckton more misery. I don't see why anyone would want to see a film this depressing, but that's not to say that you shouldn't see it, full stop. The extent of performance on show left me feeling unaffected by the bleak stuff. If for whatever reason you want to see a film that Oprah Winfrey heartily endorses, make it The Princess and the Frog.
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If you've stomached either From Paris with Love or Precious, why not share your comments below? For me, a viewing of Tim Burton's Alice In Wonderland by Disney is imminent, so that review and some awards-speak will be up as the weekend goes on.

I'm Mark the mad prophet, and until next time, don't watch anything I wouldn't watch.

My Bloody Quarantine

I've still got legs! And with my limbs intact, I really can't ignore the fact that I have to review Valentine's Day, giving even more thought to two hours of my life that would have been more pleasurably spent slamming my head in a car door while the massive cast took it in turns to cut the all the webs between my fingers and toes with scissors. Cringing? That's nothing to actually watching the film.

The sole reason this gets a post of its own is because it is literally tainted. I have also seen From Paris with Love, which... SPOILER ALERT... was pants, but not so pants as to deserve the fate of being "the one I reviewed alongside Valentine's Day." Yes folks, this is the blog's first ever conscious quarantine of a film review.

***WARNING***
THE FOLLOWING REVIEW CONTAINS EXTREME PREJUDICE TOWARDS AWFUL SHIT.
IF YOU OR ANYONE YOU KNOW HAVE BEEN AFFECTED BY AWFUL SHIT, PLEASE PROCEED WITH CAUTION.

Sigh. OK, here goes. If I were to take a run at what this film's about, I could sum it up by saying it follows a number of tumultuous relationships and unlikable people on one Valentine's Day in LA. More operatively, very famous actors playing unlikable people. The traditional, but largely unconscious format of these reviews usually sets aside a paragraph to talk about the cast and their performances, so I'll take a run at that now. Deep breath...

Ashton Kutcher is irksome and twee, Jennifer Garner is a downright stupid character played by a usually enjoyable actress, Patrick Dempsey succeeds only for being a smarmy fuck finally cast in the thankless role of "Smarmy Fuck #2", Queen Latifah is still pointing out that she's a larger lady for anyone who hasn't noticed, Jamie Foxx continues to bend over and take an arse-fucking to his career in the name of a paycheck, Jessica Biel's character spends the whole film voicing problems with commercialised love that really should've been considered by the writers, Anne Hathaway is winsome but underused, Topher Grace builds in annoyance on the foundation of the less than sterling performance he gave in Spider-Man 3, Taylors Swift and Lautner are just abominable, Hector Elizondo is bewildered and Shirley Maclaine sort of deceives him and then dresses up as a Quality Street at the end, and finally, Jessica Alba, Bradley Cooper and Julia Roberts are all pointless addendums to a horrifying running time.

Yes, this film runs for 125 minutes and covers no more ground than a dead baby turtle. Cringing again? A dead baby turtle would hardly be more abhorrent than this film. In the same way as (500) Days of Summer was a terrific romantic comedy but not a great date movie, I literally cannot imagine a worse date movie that this. No other film in recent memory tries so tepidly to quantify love with dialogue that sounds like it comes from the trailer narration of a Jennifer Aniston film rather than anything else. The odd thing is that this film came out on the weekend of February 14th, and another Garry Marshall-directed film was re-released for the day, Pretty Woman. Valentine's Day has, unbelievably, become a huge hit in the States, but it's almost like they were hedging their bets by counter-programming against their own awful piece of celluloid crap.

Some will call me bitter- that's the stock excuse against people who call Valentine's Day the crass and commercialised greeting-card-company funding drive that it actually is. No, sorry, this is just a bad film. The mooted sequel, New Year's Eve may be doubly terrible, but it won't be certainly won't be better than this. If Valentine's Day is about love, then it's not about watching Valentine's Day, and given how that's the one day of the year when you're presumably supposed to watch this awful shit in years to come, they've failed on every single level. Even by the measure of people who like it, and I presume those who contributed to the Memorable Quotes page on IMDB do, there is not a single funny line in the thing. It's a film about a bunch of attractive actors tricking you into an auditorium to steal your money and worse, what feels like a year of your life. It is just abysmal- it's not the worst film I've ever seen, but it's down there.

To end on a sensitive note- February 14th isn't just one day of the year where you should be romantic with your loved one. You should show your appreciation all year round, signify your feelings with every loving caress. And most importantly, the time not to watch Valentine's Day with them is all year round. Avoid this film like genital warts.

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Righto, everyone to the radiation showers if you read through all of that, and then back here later in the week for the review of From Paris With Love, which will likely be paired off with either Precious or The Crazies, and then there'll be a look at Disney's Tim Burton's Alice In Wonderland by Disney at the weekend. If you've seen Valentine's Day, please do get in touch with the comments below. We have to stick together here- we didn't die, so we can presumably survive anything. Be strong, everyone. Jesus loves you.

I'm Mark the mad prophet, and until next time, don't watch it. Really, I know I did, but don't go and see it. Don't!

2009- The Worst of the Worst, The Most Hated and Cursed

For every bit of positivity on the blog, there's a whole chunk o' rant. As I've said before, I'm not here to hector or browbeat you, these are simply my opinions. That people turn around and say I think too much about these films is ludicrous- unless you're living in some bizarro dimension where everyone thinks too much and there's no enjoyment of anything anymore, then you're just advocating entropy. I'm suggesting that certain films that make a lot of money really properly shouldn't be, because no one will try any harder than that in film making. And in any case, I'm not that bad- I'm the guy who enjoyed G.I. Joe: Rise of Cobra! Even though it's really bloody silly!

My point is, I try to see and review as many films as possible in cinemas. Mostly in the hope that some of you will be entertained or interested, but also so you don't have to see the really bad ones, provided you take any stock in my opinion. So for a handy catch-up, these are the top 10 worst films of 2009. It wasn't a bad year for films by any stretch of the imagination, but every year has at least a little dreck. Here goes, then!

10. Final Destination 4

A horror sequel?! But Mark, they're always brilliant! It's exactly the same as Final Destination 3, except a little worse because we've already seen Final Destination 3. Cinema-goers could have it presented in eye-popping 3D, but as we've discussed, that's a gimmick, and one that won't carry over to DVD and blu-ray. That means Final Destination 4 is little more than a piss-poor retread of its predecessors, and you know you've gone wrong when its infuriatingly plain characters take 45 minutes to catch up with the audience.

9. Fast and Furious

Yes, another four-quel, and I think this one in particular can go and four-quel itself. I might have liked it more if I hadn't seen the trailer, which shows three of the only good five minutes of stuff in the whole thing. Vin Diesel and Paul Walker indulge in a bit of massively premature nostalgia for the first film, and then generally spend an hour and a half doing car porn. This film would have been a million times better (read as: funnier) if it had been made in 2039 rather than 2009, when Diesel and Walker would be old and fat, but still kicking it old-style. But then rubbish films always end up better in my head.

8. 17 Again

Zac Efron was in another film this year, Me and Orson Welles, that came very close indeed to being in my top ten of the year. That film rests just outside that list, but he also made this one, which is at the heart of this list. It's a comedy devoid of laughs and another spin on the body-swap/body-aging subset of film that really just needs to die. Leslie Mann and Thomas Lennon can really do better on this, and the worst thing is, so can Efron, at least if Me and Orson Welles is anything to go by. Not funny, not entertaining, just bleh.

7. Surrogates

It was the sum of every other film like it ever made, but equal to less than its parts. Bruce Willis appearing only to collect a salary is one of the saddest sights in the world, especially given the general quality of his films. I could barely stay awake watching this utterly pedestrian sci-fi actioner. It comes from serial offenders Michael Brancato and John Ferris, who also spewed Terminator Salvation at us in 2009, so I really should have known better. Daft, derivative and er... deniable. I literally deny its entertainment value.

6. Sorority Row

A horror remake?! But Mark, they're always brilliant! You're getting the idea, but this is the second worst of its type from 2009. The plot was more nonsensical than most of the films on the list when it was The House on Sorority Row, so in the time it's had to distill since 1983, it's actually got worse. The only real value of films like this is in the occasional funny death of a vacuous and boring character, but unlike Final Destination 4, it even takes long to get to that order of business. It fails on almost every level and we're only at number 6. Oh dear...

5. The Firm

Remaking a Gary Oldman film without Gary Oldman was always going to be a foolish endeavour. But you can't help but think that something's been lost in translation, as director Nick Love has much more affection for this most pointless and stupid facet of football than is palatable. He does try to drown that out with a torrent of utterly irrelevant 80s music which doesn't so much inform the setting as chase your ears inside out into your skull. Une filme de chav.

4. Knowing

Aliens! There you go, I think I'll have a cup of tea now. Maybe go and catch up with some Christmas telly on iPlayer and... what? What do you mean, why aliens? Is it not enough to just fling in aliens as the explanation anymore? Fair enough, I'll elaborate a little more- Nicolas Cage continued his rise as the best comedy actor working today by making this po-faced nugget of garbage about a sequence of numbers marking out a calendar for disaster. The only missing numbers were the release date of this film.

3. Friday the 13th

A horror remake?! No, not just a horror remake. A horror remake, courtesy of Michael Bay. One of the few films on the list released at a time when the bloggy reviews weren't frequent enough for this to warrant coverage, so here it is in a nutshell. The trademark Bay impatience and pornographic sensibility come to the fore in this condensed version of the first three Jason Voorhees films, with the hockey-masked killer's menace largely being reduced to voyeurism over holidaying teens. By-the-numbers and er... rubbish- don't forget that Bay was responsible for this too, just because certain bigger droppings were left closer to your vicinity in 2009.

2. Couples' Retreat

It almost doesn't feel worth mentioning this, because in a few years' time, this will be dated beyond the possibility of enjoyment anyway, on account of its shameful product placement. It won't even have much nostalgia value, as no one can call the 2000s' situated culture particularly memorable anyway. More than that, it's the most stultifying comedy I've seen in a long time. That's right, Vince Vaughn has topped (bottomed?) Fred Claus.

1. Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen

If you have read this blog for more than a week, there was probably no tension whatsoever about the build-up to my least favourite film of the year. Michael Bay's travesty of a blockbuster is possibly the worst film I have ever seen- I'm really finding it hard to think of a film I hated more. Indeed, I find it very difficult to have enmity for a film, full-stop, but this swollen, leery and offensive mess just invites disdain. I think I'm actually building up an immunity in my readers by thrashing it so much, so I'll leave it to speak for itself, because it is just awful. I recently rewatched it to make sure I wasn't being awfully unfair to it, and I found whole new dimensions of crappiness. I refer you to my original review, in which I said this--

I actually caught myself enjoying the film for the first 45 minutes or so. There's an interesting diplomatic set-up with the Autobots and the US Government, and Sam's comic-relief parents are used sparingly and with slightly better effect than in Transformers.

I realise now that I was actually trying to salvage some positivity from this debacle, because upon my second viewing, I hated the opening too. And everything else. My hatred was amplified by about a million Griffins on the BNP-o-meter upon putting myself through that ordeal once again. Damn this film. DAMN IT.

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So there you are, that's all the negativity about last year's cinema in one manageable bloggy thing. The best is yet to come. Literally, the list of the best films of last year is forthcoming, in one form of another. The special project I've been alluding to for the last few weeks is a video montage counting down the top 10, but it hasn't really come together as I'd hoped. Works well enough as a compilation though, so might post it sans narration and do some text to accompany it.

Until next year, don't watch anything I wouldn't watch!