Psycho Santa

 

Eye-gougingly atrocious tat by a director who probably feels his greatest achievement is filming a naked lady in the shower when actually his greatest achievement is convincing himself that pissing his life away on this bollocks was a worthwhile endeavour.

 

The Hobbit: The Battle Of The Five Armies [IMAX 3D]

The elf/dwarf/love thing is still weak, fortunately the orgy of beheading that contains it is pretty fucking cool and goes on for ages.

Penguins Of Madagascar [3D]

The funniest part of the Madagascar series gets concentrated to a manic level of hilarity then sprinkled with extraneous additional characters to give every penguin their own plot point.

Monty Python And The Holy Grail

 

Charlotte's desire to watch the masters at their finest represents a clear step forward in her film watching, and her response that it would have been better if it were all a cartoon is a clear two steps backward.

 

Funny Games

 

In which Haneke makes his trademark chilling devastation all the more harrowing by quietly kicking in the fourth wall and making you responsible for what happens.

 

The Hunger Games: Mockingjay - Part 1

 

A series of new character introductions, old character re-introductions and motifs established for maximum emotional resonance in part two where, presumably, the story will actually start.

Wither

 

A perfunctory Nordic Evil Dead clone.

 

Dolls

 

Saves its meagre budget for the last third when the jerky, stop-motion titular menace finally appears on screen and shit properly kicks off.

 

The Drop

 

Subdued to the point of insouciance as stereotypes drag themselves down well worn ruts toward inevitability.

 

The Meat Grinder [Cheuuat gaawn chim]

 

Confused jumble of plot twists about a noodle seller whose main ingredient is whomever most recently pissed her off. Some of the ickier gore moments did turn the stomach but this was more likely due to my foolish decision to try and eat a bowl of noodles of my own whilst watching.

 

Black Rock

 

More terrible shit centred on idiots running about an island whilst yelling and screaming.

 

Interstellar [IMAX]

 

Nolan plays fast with physics in order to generate grand spectacle. It is grand though, so fair play.

 

Blue Is The Warmest Colour [La vie d'Adèle]

 

A remarkable film of extreme contradiction in that it's as naturalistic as it is cinematic, as simple as it is deep and as happy as it is sad.

Across The River [Oltre il guado]

 

An unsuccessful attempt to turn a really good location into a really good film.

 

Nightcrawler

 

Horror movie that isn't a horror movie (but is actually a horror movie).