Post Tenebras Lux

 

A muddled attempt at being arty that just about works as a video gallery of film photography but fails as a film.

 

Texas Chainsaw 3D [2D]

 

Hideous nonsense about a girl who inherits Leatherface. Consistently ridiculous.

 

Dust Devil - The Final Cut

 

A good take on the serial killer tale unfortunately laden down with cod mysticism and a constant overbearing voiceover explaining what's happening and why it's mystical.

La planète sauvage [Fantastic Planet]

 

A mesmerisingly weird animation about how if we continue to domesticise wild animals they'll find where we go in our dreams and destroy us. That or it's about how everybody should live together in harmonious peace. Or it's about drugs. Probably all three.

 

The Birds

 

A stodgier than usual Hitchcock sprinkled with intermittent episodes of birds acting like absolute bastards. The springboard for a huge swathe of horror cinema.

 

The Cat Returns [Neko no ongaeshi]

 

A young girl has an adventure in a kingdom of cats, a place which has a lot more forced marriage and on-the-spot execution than I was expecting.

When asked why she liked this one, Charlotte responded with "because it has subtitles", which made me feel parentally proud until I realised that there's every chance she's got subtitles confused with cats.

Gravity [IMAX 3D]

 

Near enough flawless.

I left grip marks in anything I could get ahold of.

 

Straightheads [Closure]

 

Dana Scully and Danny Fackin' Dyer attempt to illustrate a complex moral justification for rape all the while failing to realise that there is no moral justification for rape, it's an abhorrent act. Fools.

 

Thor: The Dark World

 

SCENE: A gaggle of idiots sit around a big shiny table.

 

IDIOT 1: We're thinking of doing a new Marvel movie but need to come up with some representation of purely destructive evil.

 

IDIOT 2: How about a big CGI cloud of flashing lights that swirls around a lot?

 

IDIOT 3: Yeah, and then we can get the actors to grimace whilst arching their back and the computer guys will make it look like it's flowing INTO THEIR FACE.

 

IDIOT 1: This is reason alone to make this movie.

 

Everybody continues to discuss ways of hurling distressing quantities of money at pointless cinema-suffocating tosh. Fade to black.

Hansel & Gretel: Witch Hunters

 

Could've been a halfway decent family adventure if it were shorn of its clumsy swearing, thuggish violence and ludicrous cartoon gore.

 

Goblin

 

A host of shitty actors get menaced by a phantom that looks eerily like a man under a blanket before somebody stabs it with a magic spear, I shit you not, a magic fucking spear.

No idea what that thing on the poster is, it never made an appearance in the film.

 

The Debt

 

By the time I managed to come to terms with the fact that not only were Jessica Chastain and Helen Mirren meant to be the same person, but also an Israeli person, I felt unable to give a shit as to why this should be.

 

Take Shelter

 

Two hours of trying to decide if Michael Shannon is insane. "But of course he is, it's Michael Shannon!", ah but IS HE?, and repeat.