Terms and Conditions
Only one entry will be accepted per person.
Entrants must be UK residents and aged 18 or over.
The judge's decision is final and no correspondence will be entered into.
Friday, 18 May 2012
Sunday, 13 May 2012
The Dictator (15/R, 83 mins)
Director: Larry Charles
★ ★ ★ ☆ ☆
With the moc-doc shenanigans of Borat and Bruno having run their natural course, Sacha Baron Cohen here turns to straight narrative comedy with limited success. Cohen gives an uneven performance as the dictator of the title, General Aladeen of the North African Republic of Wadiya, who is suspected of developing WMDs and travels to America facing UN sanctions. There he’s set up and cut loose in the city, and forced to work in a health food store run by Anna Faris while trying to get his identity back. It’s not the most sophisticated setup ever but the stunning bad taste means there are a fair few vulgar laughs to be had. But it’s sloppily constructed and as likely to provoke gasps for its sheer outrageousness as anything, with a dearth of genuinely clever jokes as it races to the next envelope-pushing situation. The many heinous things Aladeen does as an untouchable despot raise chuckles, but it’s simply not sustained, and its satirical pops are obvious and small scale. It’s not unfunny, it’s just not funny enough.
Director: Larry Charles
★ ★ ★ ☆ ☆
With the moc-doc shenanigans of Borat and Bruno having run their natural course, Sacha Baron Cohen here turns to straight narrative comedy with limited success. Cohen gives an uneven performance as the dictator of the title, General Aladeen of the North African Republic of Wadiya, who is suspected of developing WMDs and travels to America facing UN sanctions. There he’s set up and cut loose in the city, and forced to work in a health food store run by Anna Faris while trying to get his identity back. It’s not the most sophisticated setup ever but the stunning bad taste means there are a fair few vulgar laughs to be had. But it’s sloppily constructed and as likely to provoke gasps for its sheer outrageousness as anything, with a dearth of genuinely clever jokes as it races to the next envelope-pushing situation. The many heinous things Aladeen does as an untouchable despot raise chuckles, but it’s simply not sustained, and its satirical pops are obvious and small scale. It’s not unfunny, it’s just not funny enough.Wednesday, 9 May 2012
How I Spent My Summer Vacation (15, 96 mins)
Director: Adrian Grunberg
★ ★ ★ ☆ ☆
Ever more shunned by Hollywood, Mel Gibson’s latest didn’t even get a cinema release in the States. That’s a slap in the face for what’s actually a fairly decent action comedy that starts with Gibson’s unnamed thief on the run from the police and forced to jump the border wall into Mexico where he ends up in a bizarre prison cum village. The early stages take a while to manoeuvre, setting up the villains who run the prison and the gangsters and corrupt cops who’re after Gibson and the money he stole, but the action heats up in a second half that also gets a bit bogged down in plot convolutions and too many side players. Gibson’s character is well suited to his style, a tough and colourful wise-ass anti-hero who knows how to play the angles to his advantage. So it’s a shame he’s in, or possibly beyond, the last chance saloon because on form like this, it’s clear why he used to be a star.
Director: Adrian Grunberg
★ ★ ★ ☆ ☆
Ever more shunned by Hollywood, Mel Gibson’s latest didn’t even get a cinema release in the States. That’s a slap in the face for what’s actually a fairly decent action comedy that starts with Gibson’s unnamed thief on the run from the police and forced to jump the border wall into Mexico where he ends up in a bizarre prison cum village. The early stages take a while to manoeuvre, setting up the villains who run the prison and the gangsters and corrupt cops who’re after Gibson and the money he stole, but the action heats up in a second half that also gets a bit bogged down in plot convolutions and too many side players. Gibson’s character is well suited to his style, a tough and colourful wise-ass anti-hero who knows how to play the angles to his advantage. So it’s a shame he’s in, or possibly beyond, the last chance saloon because on form like this, it’s clear why he used to be a star.Dark Shadows (12A/PG-13, 113 mins)
Director: Tim Burton
★ ☆ ☆ ☆ ☆
Dark Shadows was a daytime soap opera that ran on American television from 1966 to 1971. But it was a soap with a difference, one populated with vampires, werewolves and witches, that achieved something of a cult status.
Now Johnny Depp and director Tim Burton reteam for what feels like the 257th time to bring it to the big screen, and the hope was it wouldn’t be just another in their conveyor belt of kooky fantasies that favour lavish production design and silly accents over a well told story.
While it’s undeniable that Burton has entered the most financially lucrative period of his career (Alice in Wonderland made a stupid amount of money), it’s coincided with him churning out his most vacuous and incoherent films. And, sadly, Dark Shadows is no different.
In a prologue set in 18th century Maine that recalls Coppola’s Dracula, we learn that the Collins family moved from England to America where they became rich through their fishing empire, and built the town of Collinsport. But when Barnabas Collins (Depp) spurned the advances of a witch named Angelique (Eva Green), she cursed him to be a vampire and buried him alive.
Now, in 1972, the Collins family still live in their sprawling mansion, Collinwood, Michelle Pfeiffer and Helena Bonham Carter among them, but their stock has dwindled because Angelique now runs the fishing industry in Collinsport. Meanwhile Barnabas is accidentally exhumed, and returns to Collinwood vowing to restore the family fortune.
As has so often been the case with Burton recently, glorious production values and a moderately spooky atmosphere can only take you so far. The makeup is splendid, and Depp does one of his patented English voices, his olde speake and confusion at modern ways the only source of amusement.
But everything else about Dark Shadows is nothing like funny enough, just half-baked ideas and an arid space in between the fish-out-of-time gags, and it’s an absolute dog’s dinner when it comes to coherence and consistency. None of the sorely underdeveloped characters serve the story, flitting in and out at random, Pfeiffer in particular disappearing for long stretches only to turn up when required.
It’s quite simply a badly directed mess, with flat, lazy performances, and reversals and relationships that are pulled from out of nowhere. There’s no threat, no build up of tensions, and Angelique is the only person in the entire debacle with clear motivations and goals. At some point everyone involved just threw up their hands and decided they’d just make a gothic sketch show instead. Except, you know, without the laughs.
Absent of narrative or memorable characters, it’s a series of barely connected skits with no plot to speak of, made without a jot of care or attention, but with an eye only on how the promise of Depp and some supernatural chuckles can grab enough unsuspecting punters in before audiences start to smell what they're being shovelled. The ropey special effects are just the final nail in the coffin.
If you want to see what Depp and Burton are really capable of together, revisit Edward Scissorhands and Ed Wood. This is simply not good enough.
Director: Tim Burton
★ ☆ ☆ ☆ ☆
Dark Shadows was a daytime soap opera that ran on American television from 1966 to 1971. But it was a soap with a difference, one populated with vampires, werewolves and witches, that achieved something of a cult status.
Now Johnny Depp and director Tim Burton reteam for what feels like the 257th time to bring it to the big screen, and the hope was it wouldn’t be just another in their conveyor belt of kooky fantasies that favour lavish production design and silly accents over a well told story.
In a prologue set in 18th century Maine that recalls Coppola’s Dracula, we learn that the Collins family moved from England to America where they became rich through their fishing empire, and built the town of Collinsport. But when Barnabas Collins (Depp) spurned the advances of a witch named Angelique (Eva Green), she cursed him to be a vampire and buried him alive.
Now, in 1972, the Collins family still live in their sprawling mansion, Collinwood, Michelle Pfeiffer and Helena Bonham Carter among them, but their stock has dwindled because Angelique now runs the fishing industry in Collinsport. Meanwhile Barnabas is accidentally exhumed, and returns to Collinwood vowing to restore the family fortune.
But everything else about Dark Shadows is nothing like funny enough, just half-baked ideas and an arid space in between the fish-out-of-time gags, and it’s an absolute dog’s dinner when it comes to coherence and consistency. None of the sorely underdeveloped characters serve the story, flitting in and out at random, Pfeiffer in particular disappearing for long stretches only to turn up when required.
It’s quite simply a badly directed mess, with flat, lazy performances, and reversals and relationships that are pulled from out of nowhere. There’s no threat, no build up of tensions, and Angelique is the only person in the entire debacle with clear motivations and goals. At some point everyone involved just threw up their hands and decided they’d just make a gothic sketch show instead. Except, you know, without the laughs.
If you want to see what Depp and Burton are really capable of together, revisit Edward Scissorhands and Ed Wood. This is simply not good enough.
Monday, 7 May 2012
Monday, 30 April 2012
Safe (15/R, 94 mins)
Director: Boaz Yakin
★ ★ ★ ★ ☆
In China, a young girl named Mei is discovered to be something of a maths expert. When the Triads cotton on to this, they take her to the States to use her brain to store the valuable information they’d rather not trust to a computer.
But they're in the middle of a turf war with their Russian counterparts in New York, and they'll stop at nothing to get their hands on Mei who is in possession of a code for a safe containing millions.
Meanwhile we meet Luke Wright (Jason Statham), a hard-as nails ex-cop getting by as a cage fighter. But he didn’t go down in the round he was supposed to and so the Russians killed his wife and he’s down on his luck and contemplating suicide when he saves Mei from the Russians.
Though it’s quite an extended setup before we get to the action, it puts Luke in a situation where the only way is up for him, as well as adding a much needed element of humanity to his classical protector role, with Statham at his least monolithic and most sympathetic.
But the reason anyone buys a ticket to something like this is to see Statham taking names, and though what follows is done with little grace, it’s muscular and pounding and unapologetic in its scale.
You know where you stand with a Jason Statham movie, and throwing him into a mix of gangsters and corrupt cops offers plenty of opportunity for ferocious action and fluidly orchestrated car chases. At times it seems it’s one man against the entire city, and the body count is enormous.
It does tail off a bit in the final stretch when it starts trying to provide too much plot, and a lot of stuff is either wrapped up too neatly or left hanging. But until then, as Luke dispatches unholy retribution by fist and gun, the wrath of the righteous is immensely satisfying.
Director: Boaz Yakin
★ ★ ★ ★ ☆
In China, a young girl named Mei is discovered to be something of a maths expert. When the Triads cotton on to this, they take her to the States to use her brain to store the valuable information they’d rather not trust to a computer.
But they're in the middle of a turf war with their Russian counterparts in New York, and they'll stop at nothing to get their hands on Mei who is in possession of a code for a safe containing millions.
Meanwhile we meet Luke Wright (Jason Statham), a hard-as nails ex-cop getting by as a cage fighter. But he didn’t go down in the round he was supposed to and so the Russians killed his wife and he’s down on his luck and contemplating suicide when he saves Mei from the Russians.
But the reason anyone buys a ticket to something like this is to see Statham taking names, and though what follows is done with little grace, it’s muscular and pounding and unapologetic in its scale.
You know where you stand with a Jason Statham movie, and throwing him into a mix of gangsters and corrupt cops offers plenty of opportunity for ferocious action and fluidly orchestrated car chases. At times it seems it’s one man against the entire city, and the body count is enormous.
It does tail off a bit in the final stretch when it starts trying to provide too much plot, and a lot of stuff is either wrapped up too neatly or left hanging. But until then, as Luke dispatches unholy retribution by fist and gun, the wrath of the righteous is immensely satisfying.
Sunday, 22 April 2012
Avengers Assemble (12A/PG-13, 142 mins)
Director: Joss Whedon
★ ★ ★ ★ ★
And so the most extended trailer in film history finally delivers on its years of build-up. We’ve been teased by The Avengers since Iron Man four years ago, since the first appearance of Nick Fury, agent of S.H.I.E.L.D. (Samuel L. Jackson), who skulked about telling the likes of Iron Man’s alter ego Tony Stark that they were part of something bigger.
Through The Incredible Hulk and Thor, the seeds of the Avengers Initiative were sown, which would aim to bring together such disparate Marvel heroes as Robert Downey Jr.’s Iron Man, Chris Hemsworth’s Thor and new addition Mark Ruffalo as Bruce Banner to fight evil on a grand scale.
Last year’s Captain America (which starred Chris Evans as the First Avenger) was the most blatant piece of the jigsaw yet, a workmanlike effort that seemed little more than the first part of this. But never mind that, and never mind that its UK title has been changed to the IKEA-friendly Avengers Assemble, and instead revel in the indecent levels of entertainment provided by the first blockbuster of the summer season.
Once plans for The Avengers were announced, hope quickly grew that the unprecedented project would be in safe hands with Joss Whedon who, just like Star Trek’s J.J. Abrams, doesn’t have a whole lot of movie experience – Serenity is his only other feature - but has created some of the most innovative and definitive television of the last two decades.
So you’ve got a promising director, a marquee cast and a few hundred million to spend, but there ought to be a substantial threat to justify getting these guys together. You don’t need to be steeped in the Marvel universe to follow events here, but it really helps to have seen Thor, primarily because Thor’s brother Loki (Tom Hiddleston) is once again the bad guy.
There’s also a strong connection to Captain America, since the shiny blue cube that was that film’s MacGuffin resurfaces here. Loki steals it from S.H.I.E.L.D. with the intention of using its unlimited power to open a portal to space to allow his alien hordes to come to earth and aid his quest for world domination.
It was also during Thor that we caught a fleeting glimpse of archery ace Hawkeye (Jeremy Renner), and Loki wastes no time turning him and Stellan Skarsgård’s Dr Selvig (also introduced in Thor) bad in order to help him with his scheme.
That this massive collection of actors, characters and story threads comes together as something that is not only not unwieldy but truly cohesive is thanks to Whedon’s miraculous screenplay that manages to be simultaneously exciting, funny and spectacular while rooting everything in the characters.
Their interaction and initial mistrust is at its core, giving a chance for all the major players to square up against each other before they can team up. This provides almost as many joys as the main event, when they finally get to form The Avengers and take on Loki and his minions.
Everyone shines, unlike the X-Men where perhaps some characters get sidelined. Even the relatively dull (based on his first outing) Captain America comes to the fore, while mere puny humans Hawkeye and Black Widow (Scarlett Johansson – cast your mind back to Iron Man 2) are also allowed to give their all in the action stakes.
The midpoint peak would be enough for most movies, but that’s only a taster for a final third that takes the breath away at every turn, providing a city-based assault that on the surface doesn’t look a lot unlike last year’s Transformers: Dark of the Moon. Yet it terms of quality, this is simply in a different league, a fitting culmination to the years of setup that’s more enjoyable than any superhero movie to date.
Several big laughs that are as good as anything most comedies can muster are just a bonus. Some of Tony Stark’s one-liners, especially when he’s making fun of his teammates, are priceless, and his rapport with Pepper Potts (Gwyneth Paltrow) erases most memories of the disappointing Iron Man 2. And who knew the Hulk was so funny? It’s the best Iron Man film to date, and the best Hulk film by a big green mile.
The Batman may still have the edge when it comes to depth and darkness, and when the Dark Knight rises in a couple of months he may well steal his crown back as the ultimate avenger. But rarely, whether comic book or not, have the movies been this much fun.
Director: Joss Whedon
★ ★ ★ ★ ★
And so the most extended trailer in film history finally delivers on its years of build-up. We’ve been teased by The Avengers since Iron Man four years ago, since the first appearance of Nick Fury, agent of S.H.I.E.L.D. (Samuel L. Jackson), who skulked about telling the likes of Iron Man’s alter ego Tony Stark that they were part of something bigger.
Through The Incredible Hulk and Thor, the seeds of the Avengers Initiative were sown, which would aim to bring together such disparate Marvel heroes as Robert Downey Jr.’s Iron Man, Chris Hemsworth’s Thor and new addition Mark Ruffalo as Bruce Banner to fight evil on a grand scale.
Last year’s Captain America (which starred Chris Evans as the First Avenger) was the most blatant piece of the jigsaw yet, a workmanlike effort that seemed little more than the first part of this. But never mind that, and never mind that its UK title has been changed to the IKEA-friendly Avengers Assemble, and instead revel in the indecent levels of entertainment provided by the first blockbuster of the summer season.
Once plans for The Avengers were announced, hope quickly grew that the unprecedented project would be in safe hands with Joss Whedon who, just like Star Trek’s J.J. Abrams, doesn’t have a whole lot of movie experience – Serenity is his only other feature - but has created some of the most innovative and definitive television of the last two decades.
So you’ve got a promising director, a marquee cast and a few hundred million to spend, but there ought to be a substantial threat to justify getting these guys together. You don’t need to be steeped in the Marvel universe to follow events here, but it really helps to have seen Thor, primarily because Thor’s brother Loki (Tom Hiddleston) is once again the bad guy.
There’s also a strong connection to Captain America, since the shiny blue cube that was that film’s MacGuffin resurfaces here. Loki steals it from S.H.I.E.L.D. with the intention of using its unlimited power to open a portal to space to allow his alien hordes to come to earth and aid his quest for world domination.It was also during Thor that we caught a fleeting glimpse of archery ace Hawkeye (Jeremy Renner), and Loki wastes no time turning him and Stellan Skarsgård’s Dr Selvig (also introduced in Thor) bad in order to help him with his scheme.
That this massive collection of actors, characters and story threads comes together as something that is not only not unwieldy but truly cohesive is thanks to Whedon’s miraculous screenplay that manages to be simultaneously exciting, funny and spectacular while rooting everything in the characters.
Their interaction and initial mistrust is at its core, giving a chance for all the major players to square up against each other before they can team up. This provides almost as many joys as the main event, when they finally get to form The Avengers and take on Loki and his minions.
Everyone shines, unlike the X-Men where perhaps some characters get sidelined. Even the relatively dull (based on his first outing) Captain America comes to the fore, while mere puny humans Hawkeye and Black Widow (Scarlett Johansson – cast your mind back to Iron Man 2) are also allowed to give their all in the action stakes.
Several big laughs that are as good as anything most comedies can muster are just a bonus. Some of Tony Stark’s one-liners, especially when he’s making fun of his teammates, are priceless, and his rapport with Pepper Potts (Gwyneth Paltrow) erases most memories of the disappointing Iron Man 2. And who knew the Hulk was so funny? It’s the best Iron Man film to date, and the best Hulk film by a big green mile.
The Batman may still have the edge when it comes to depth and darkness, and when the Dark Knight rises in a couple of months he may well steal his crown back as the ultimate avenger. But rarely, whether comic book or not, have the movies been this much fun.
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