This Is The End

 

Like being sat in the pub next to a group of people who are obviously good friends, way too loud and having a great time in each other's company.

 

Resolution

 

A decently acted buddy relationship gets you past the cheap feel given off by a first timer giving it his best shot and eventually leads to something close to genuinely unique.

 

The Conjuring

 

Gave my nerves two options: get jangled or get shredded. There was never a third option.

World War Z [3D]

 

Attempts to tell a tale of zombie apocalypse on a global scale. Accordingly the trappings of zombie cinema; FX work, carnage and peril are all impressively amplified to suit. Unfortunately the cliche, idiocy and lazy plotting often found in zombie cinema is also amplified, which is less impressive.

 

Man Of Steel [IMAX 3D]

A more mature Snyder makes Superman exciting once more, mostly through use of his peerless, visual bombast as well as sound design that left me feeling like my head had lost an argument with a hammer.

 

Now You See Me

 

Less of a film, more a dizzying rush of enthusiasm that over-eggs everything in an attempt to compensate for the way it consistently undermines itself.

 

Byzantium

 

Not only brings some much needed squalor back to vampires, but also freely rips the piss out of modern attempts to romanticise their plight. Way better than a film starring Gemma Arterton has any right to be.

 

Jack Ketchum's The Girl Next Door

 

A surprisingly good stab at depicting the terrible atrocity described in Ketchum's novel that falls short of the sense-blasting hideousness it could've been thanks to the usual cheap film triumvirate of crap acting, shit cinematography and utterly bollocks directing.

Fear(s) Of The Dark [Peur(s) du noir]

 

Five absolutely brilliant monochromatic animated horror tales, and one dull monologue backed by abstract geometries, all inexplicably edited into each other.

 

The Stone Roses: Made Of Stone

 

With The Stone Roses as his canvas, finely honed montage skills as his brush and an infectious rapture as his paint, Meadows creates another masterpiece.

 

Basket Case 3: The Progeny

Consistently manic from the off, the third entry in the series plays for laughs more than shocks although there's still plenty of face chewing going on.

The Beast [La Bête]

A hymn to bestiality that starts off refined, elegant and gentle but culminates in some poor lady slurping messily on a giant wolf's spunk cannon.

Apologies, I probably should have put a spoiler warning in there, or at the very least a warning that I was going to use the words 'spunk cannon'.