Sherlock Holmes

In which Guy Ritchie demonstrates the kind of film he can make when he's not holding himself back by writing his own scripts.
Bloody marvellous.

Pirates Of The Carribean: At World's End

Complex web of betrayals and doublecrossing that pushes the pirate thing just about as far as it can go.

My Name Is Bruce

I was unable to decide whether this pitiful remake of Three Amigos was the sorry sight of a man sending a love letter to himself, or just a tragic cry for help.
I was able to decide that it was a big heap of piss.

Avatar [IMAX 3D]

Nothing less than incredible.

Where The Wild Things Are

I really wanted to like this, but unfortunately it features a total shitehawk of a child romping through what appears to be an unusual hybrid of an episode of Ally Mcbeal and a very brown version of 'In The Night Garden', so it's balls.
In its defence, however, the Wild Things are a technical marvel.

The Box

The shat out result of a director trying really, really hard to make something that's as good as his first film.
Unfortunately it's not as good as his first film.

Strip Nude For Your Killer [Nude per l'assassino]

Nasty piece of sleaze that features a heavy emphasis on absurd combinations of naked women and brutal stabbings perpetrated by somebody in a motorcycle helmet.
Loved it, obviously.

The Haunting

The original Paranormal Activity.
A masterpiece of the lost art of subtlety, and suitably chilling along with it.

Le Donk & Scor-Zay-Zee

Typically excellent Shane Meadows fare.
Despite it's whimsical running time and puddle deep plot, it is pushed into excellence by the manner in which it was filmed and some truly incredible rapping from the eponymous Scor-Zay-Zee.
Why isn't there a fucking soundtrack ? Warp are obviously idiots.

Paranormal Activity

The offspring that would be produced were The Blair Witch Project to have frantic sexual relations with The Amityville Horror whilst BBC's Ghostwatch stood close by having a wank.

The Grudge 3

The Grudge series gets mouth raped by americans who are after a quick buck.
The only redeeming quality to this film is that were I to meet the director I'd be able to take pleasure in breaking his teeth. Twat.

My Bloody Valentine

Compendium of pickaxe murders that I really wish I'd seen in 3D.
Damn it.

The Men Who Stare At Goats

Has an idealist free spirited air about it that makes you think that the person who wrote it has at some point taken a large amount of hallucinogenic drugs, probably in a desert.

The Bourne Ultimatum

I felt duty bound to watch this since I've seen the first two.
This one is comprised of 70% sudden sharp zooms on buildings and/or people with appropriate swooshing noises, 25% shaky, motion-sickness inducing action sequences which make you wish somebody would buy Paul Greengrass a tripod for Christmas and 5% utter greatness.

Mesrine: Public Enemy No. 1 [L'ennemi public n°1]

Second part of the biopic about a bungling criminal whose ineptitude is only exceeded by the police force pursuing him, thus by default making him Public Enemy No. 1.
The story in this one still skitters about like a baby giraffe on an ice rink but it's far more entertaining than the first due to it's focus on Cassel running around shooting guns (and usually missing), escaping from prisons (by waving guns around) and crashing cars (whilst attempting to escape).

2012

Some of the most impressive FX I've ever seen fail to hide the fact that Roland Emmerich is a cock gargling moron who really shouldn't attempt to make intelligent, emotionally rich films and should maybe pursue a more suitable alternative career.
Maybe as a paperweight, or a doorstop.
Prick.

The Uninvited [4 Inyong shiktak/A Table For 4]

Korean film that isn't the ghost story that it presents itself to be.
Slowly reveals a complication of plot strands that completely absorb and as an added bonus contains some of the finest one shot deaths ever committed to film.
The biggest mystery, though, is who sent it to me?

The Punisher

The Punisher is not a difficult concept to fuck up, but in this everybody tries their best to do just that.

Godzilla [Gojira]

Despite it's age, watching a giant lizard wade through a sea of fire that was once Tokyo is an impressive speactacle.
And despite it's legacy there's not an ounce of kitsch on it.

9

Fantastic little nonsensical adventure.
The CG is lush.

The Imaginarium Of Doctor Parnassus

Breathtakingly glorious.

Jennifer's Body

I had read that this was a feminist horror movie (a quite preposterous notion), but it's not. It's a horror movie made by women (who are probably fed up that everything they do is seen as a pro-feminist stance), and that's a very different thing.

Love Is The Devil: Study For A Portrait Of Francis Bacon

Pretentious, incoherent twaddle that attempts to document the relationship between Francis Bacon and George Dyer.
Except it doesn't because it spends all it's time desperately trying to be a film equivalent of a Bacon painting and failing catastrophically.
Total bollocks.

Cherry, Harry & Raquel!

Should really have been titled Drugs, Tits & Nasty Bloody Death!
Not Meyer's best.

Death Proof

Tarantino surprised me by making a fairly excellent 70 min Grindhouse pastiche.
He then quickly let me down by making a far, far shittier second movie and clumsily bolting it onto the end. What a nob.

The Ruins

What starts out looking like a shitty teens in peril movie, slowly blossoms into a brilliant hour and a half of slow, drawn out nastiness with a modicum of wit about itself.
Written by the same bloke who wrote A Simple Plan, it's best watched knowing as little as possible about what's going to happen, for there are some genuinely neat moments of realisation in here.

Fantastic Mr. Fox

A children's film refracted through the prism of cynical, oh so clever, american indie film making.
The end result felt like somebody had held a bitter sixth form film student, with no friends, at gunpoint and forced him to remake Bagpuss.
But then what do I know, the child loved it ("equally as good as Bolt", apparently).

Untraceable

(Saw + Internet) x Total Idiocy = Fail

Destricted

Art masquerading as porn. Or porn masquerading as art.
Or possibly just an excuse to get hard willes onto the shelves of HMV.

Up [3D]

Has joy written through it like a stick of rock.

Zombieland

Fluctuates wildy between crazy frat-boy comedy and the inevitable pathos that comes from setting your film in a world where everybody has died, but haven't quite realised it yet.
Add to this a startling paucity of zombies, given the title, and you end up with a big brown plasticine ball of disappointment.

Death Race

Certainly shit, just couldn't decide which type; Fabulous shit, incredibly shit or just total fucking shit.
Actually, that's a lie, I did decide.
Option 3.

Equilibrium

A visually sumptuous, often overlooked gem. Compares favourably to modern takes on dystopia by demonstrating a willingness to stop and investigate some of the deeper notions that are raised, not always successfully, but a nod in the right direction is better than the braindead fuckwittery we currently put up with.

Grotesque [Gurotesuku]

Due to this being the first film banned by the BBFC in quite some time, I watched it simply because a finger wagging moron in a suit told me I couldn't.
It's nothing more than a modern update of the infamous Guinea Pig series i.e. a tissue paper plot propping up a huge amount of torture, sexual humiliation and dismemberment. The end result being that the part of me that enjoys watching a film mainly tutted and rolled its eyes a lot whilst the part of me that enjoys extreme imagery sat back and gawked in admiration.

Surrogates

The director of Terminator 3 contines to demonstrate an uncanny knack for taking an idea that could be shaped into a deep, absorbing, intelligent concept and instead pissing it up a wall.

Shutter [2008 Remake]

An american studio gets a japanese director to remake a thai horror film, and guess what ? It's crap!
I will of course now hunt out the original.

Cloudy With A Chance Of Meatballs

Scores points for trying really hard, but it's just not enough.

Torso [I corpi presentano tracce di violenza carnale/Bodies Bear Traces Of Carnal Violence]

Despite being a flimsy whodunnit stretched around a series of girls in short skirts being brutally murdered and sawn into pieces, Torso has an undeniable charm that is difficult to explain.

Embodiment Of Evil [Encarnação do Demônio]

Sequel to a pair of 1960s, z-grade, brazilian nasties (with the same director) in which the villain of the series is released into the world 40 years on as an old man who, whilst being hounded by the black and white ghosts of past victims, has to contend with the difficulties of favela life in modern Brazil as he continues his quest to conceive a perfect child by randomly capturing people and torturing them in outrageously insane ways (such as a woman sewn inside a dead pig!) until a beautiful lady walks up to him, takes off her clothes and demands he put his baby inside her. This happens several times.
King.

Gamer

Bloody ridiculous.

Although it did raise some important questions, like "What's the point of Gerard Butler?" and...

No, got it wrong, that's the only question it raised.

Paris, je t'aime

18 directors, including names like Wes Craven, Tom Tykwer, Alfonso Cuarón and the Coens, struggle with the short film format.
In order the 18 films are 1.Slight 2.Sweet 3.Ironic 4.Funny 5.Notional 6.Bizarre 7.Sad 8.Shit 9.Surreal 10.Clever 11.Bollocks 12.Dull 13.Nonsense 14.Total Arse 15.Stupid 16. Excellent 17.Bittersweet 18.Just nice.

Hellevator: The Bottled Fools [Gusha no bindume]

A squalid, brutal version of Con Air set in an elevator.
This would be great if it were a description of the whole film, but it's not, it's only the first 40 mins and the rest of the film doesn't know what to do with itself afterward.
Like watching premature ejaculation.

Tetsuo II: Body Hammer

Brilliant craziness.
Meaning that it's both brilliant and completely off its tits throughout.

Pulse [2006 Remake]

I was curious as to how bad this could actually be.
It contained a destruction of both subtlety and nuance on a par with a child attempting to recreate an artistic masterpiece with orange crayon.
Only if a child were actually to do this you would probably cock your head to one side and say "Well done", whereas this film just gave me the irrepressible urge to force my fist down the director's throat and drag his asshole out though his mouth so he can taste the same shit I had to watch.

The Thing

Oh, the visceral joy of real special effects. Landmark horror cinema.

Dorian Gray

Complete bastard trains up some young fellow into the ultimate complete bastard. There's something about a painting as well.
Great bit of modern Gothic.

Mad Detective [Sun taam]

Above average multiple personality disorder adventure.
The true joy when watching this film is the amount of intelligence credited to the viewer, western cinema still struggles with this concept.

DOA: Dead Or Alive

Lovefilm make a chronic error.
I'm fairly certain that Takashi Miike won't have been within a 1000 miles of this tragic teenage boy wank fantasy shit.
A strongly worded email has been composed and sent.

The Final Destination [3D]

Nothing more than a series of Mouse-Trap style deaths that exploit 3D to the absolute maximum. Although, to its credit, it never pretends to be anything else.

Tokyo!

Misanthropic triptych about Tokyo.
Gondry's is mostly boring with a touch of weirdness, Carax's is darkly comic with a touch of genius and Bong's is wonderfully sweet with a shedload of charm.