Cannibal! The Musical [Alferd Packer: The Musical]

Starting point for Trey Parker and Matt Stone that shows bright glimmers of future glories.

Seul contre tous [I Stand Alone]

Insistent bleakness that constantly seeks out a lower low at every opportunity.

Gu [Bewitched]

An unhinged blend of thai travelogue, black magic instructional video and a deranged catalogue of gooey spells that all ends with a tiny toy bat crawling out of an old lady's melted face.

Could easily lose all of its travelogue shit and what's left would still be king as fuck.

Pin

Struggles to rise above dull. Not surprising given it's best attempt to inject a bit of excitement/menace into proceedings was a life size dummy slowly bouncing off the furniture in a remote control electric wheelchair.

Dead & Buried

An attempt to ressurect (ahem) the zombie movies of the 30s and 40s, almost succeeds but despite the best efforts of a fake Fred Ward and a fake Christopher Lloyd the whole thing dribbles to a climax that at best illicits a shrug.

Nekromantik

Cheap shock tactics that try to pass comment on film censorship, upset authority and make viewers screw up their face in disgust. Focuses most of its effort on that last one.

Deadpool

Puerile, smart, funny and violent. Just how I like 'em.

Triple 9

Cinematic style in constant argument with an insistent naturalistic tone leaves mediocre fizzle where there should be emotional punches.

The Human Centipede 3 [Final Sequence]

Amps up the shitting, fucking and death to such abhorrently tasteless levels it made me so nauseuous I had to pause the film and go get some air.

I can't remember the last time a film did that, which I suppose is something to be applauded, unfortunately the only thing in this deeply offensive, shambolic, formless afterbirth of a movie.

Goosebumps [3D]

Great kids adventure full of all the right horror movie references. The teenager lost her shit over the ventriloquists dummy which proves the film's inherent creepiness and also that I should never show her Dead Of Night or she may go catatonic with fright.

The Girl Who Knew Too Much [La ragazza che sapeva troppo/Evil Eye]

A light romantic caper that Bava clearly didn't want to make so instead he furiously nods at both Hitchcock and Agatha Christie, jams in plenty of sinister moments of his own and in the process accidentally sketches out the outline of Giallo's more whacky tropes.

Ride Along

Ice Cube looks constantly pissed off, presumably because casting him in it is the only joke in the entire movie, and Kevin Hart is consistently more irritating than that weird upper case G in the title.

The Revenant

If in the next series of 'I'm A Celebrity In A Jungle, Why Are You Watching?' they forced contestants to slowly drag themselves through snow to get to the part where they eat unusual parts of animals, then they'd be part way to being just like The Revenant. Throw in a bit of half-hearted mysticism and some mutterings along the lines of 'Ooh, weren't white folk naughty to those Indians' and they'd be almost all the way there. Make the whole thing an example of empty technical virtuosity and they'd have nailed it.

Nightmares In A Damaged Brain [Nightmare/Blood Splash]

A combination of brutal death and graphic sex wreathed in a constant aspiration to not be the grubby piece of sleaze that it most enjoyably is.

The Hateful Eight

Eight films in and Tarantino has begun poaching from himself, specifically Reservoir Dogs. Unfortunately he doesn't steal the thing that makes his debut stand out as unique in his ouvre, the economic use of screen time and snappy pacing.