Hatchet

 

Act 1: Funny slackers. Act 2: Stereotypes in peril. Act 3: everybody gets their shit well and truly fucked up in an orgy of crazed, gunk spouting prosthetics.

King.

 

The Wolverine [3D]

 

Wolverine goes to Japan in order to look bewildered, repeatedly ask what's going on, wake up from a lot of dreams and fight a big robot. Then he goes home again.

 

Would You Rather

 

A film about dilemma and choice that gives you little to no background about everybody involved, crushing dilemma down to mild concern and making choice irrelevant.

Pusher [2012 Remake]

 

A bland, British approximation of a far superior film.

Orbital turn in a decent soundtrack though.

 

The Amazing Spider-Man

 

Apart from a bit that confused me when the Life Of Pi chap turned up and started wittering on about his tiger again, I spent the rest of the time trying to decide if this rendition was better than Raimi's.

I reckon so.

 

Monsters University [3D]

 

Mainly concentrates on forming the dynamic between the furry one and the round one whilst foreshadowing as many events as possible from Monsters Inc.

If I were being nasty I'd say it was an over-inflated DVD extra but it's infused with Pixar's usual high level of charm making it difficult to be nasty.

 

They Live

 

A classic.

The Act Of Killing [Director's Cut]

 

A remarkable and most startling documentary centred on the push and pull of a film-maker investigating the impact of genocide 40 years on, against a genocidal killer wishing to have his guilt absolved.

Absolutely incredible.

 

The World's End

 

Very good but certainly the least of a fine trilogy.

 

Santa Sangre [Live Score]

The Cabinet Of Living Cinema scored this with guitars, drums, little guitars, a viola, a bass, lots of bottles filled with water, plastic bags, childrens toys, an electric drill and a weird string thing they hit with hammers.

This effectively rendered Santa Sangre a silent movie but Jodorowsky is so visually expressive it was never difficult to understand what was going on.

The film itself is possibly the finest psychedelic interpretation of Psycho I will ever see, and the clattering score elevated it to truly epic proportions.

Zidane: A 21st Century Potrait [Live Score]

 

Unbelievably I've now watched this twice, i'm probably at the point where I can now pick Zidane's face out from a crowd.

To be fair I wasn't really watching the film, I was concentrating on Mogwai being typically transcendental as they effortlessly generated gargantuan slabs of guitar scree, elegantly controlled till it got to the point where it felt like you were staring Azathoth full in the face.

Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter

 

There is a good bit when somebody gets a horse thrown at them. The rest is mediocre shit.

 

Strip Mahjong: Battle Royal

A lawyer, a Pop Idol finallist, a society girl and a shop worker (a group that has the whiff of satire about it) are forced to play slow, detailed and utterly incomprehensible hands of Mah-Jong. Then you're put through dreary, uncomfortable scenes of the contestants being forced to strip under duress which occasionally veers in to surrealism due to a sociopathic game-show host. Finally they die and the twist is, there is no satire.

Severance

 

A sort of BBC3 take on the rampaging psychotic eastern europeans popularised by films such as Hostel. Too much Danny Dyer.

 

Pacific Rim

 

The giant robot vs. giant lizard cartoons are ace. The live action but distinctly wooden soap opera that fills the gaps between them is not.

 

Despicable Me 2 [3D]

 

Gets its story points across as neatly and efficiently as possible so as to leave maximum space for funnies. And there were a lot of funnies.

Percy Jackson & The Olympians: The Lightning Thief

Whilst I gawped incredulously at the heroic levels of ineptitude demonstrated by Chris Columbus' hopelessly hamfisted use of special FX work, Charlotte voiced her bafflement at why if the greek myths were actually real all the dead stuff like Medusa and the Minotaur were still very much alive and furthermore why did it all look so fake.

A Field In England

A glorious sprawl of control, dirt and strong psychedelics.

Into The Blue

 

Fucking boring advert selling beautiful people on the basis that they look good in the sun, look good in the water and will kill drug dealers with total impunity.

 

The Hunt [Jagten]

 

A sombre look at the irreparable damage caused by a child's lie when mixed with the ignorant stupidity of adults.