Minions

 

No cod moralising, no hollow aspiration, no peril, just intense stupidity that's best watched in a cinema full of kids who guffaw at the merest hint of a wet fart.

 

Jurassic World [3D]

 

The script sounds like every line has been directly lifted from notes sent to the director by the producers and the film is saturated in so much CGI that I began to doubt basic reality.

The child said nowhere near as good as one, much better than three and probably better than two.

Pitch Perfect 2

 

Manages to fuck up every aspect of telling a story.

 

Charlie's Angels: Full Throttle

 

Starts on the wrong side of the line that separates playful gender stereotyping from rampant misogyny and then stays there.

 

San Andreas [D-BOX 3D]

We only watched this because Charlotte lobbied hard that a movie about an earthquake was the perfect opportunity to try the D-BOX seats at the cinema down the road.

D-BOX seats move, shake and vibrate in response to what's happening on screen and whilst they didn't make the 3D any less shit, or the acting any less cardboard, or the FX any less like video game cut scenes, or the storyline any more plausible, or the ending any less painful to endure, they did chuck you about when the earthquakes kick off and that was a lot of fun. Well, for the first thirty minutes, got a bit wearing toward the end.

The Duke Of Burgundy

 

A perfect recreation of the cinema of Jess Franco is given a few delicious twists of perspective in order to examine the subtle differences between love, dependence, control and domination.

Also has a fantastic running joke about piss.

 

Tomorrowland: A World Beyond

A teenager in her twenties gets largely forgotten about in a deeply awkward love story until it's revealed that she's special because her keen mind can conjure up ideas like 'Let's blow it up!'.

Charlotte was left confused as to why all the characters clearly had a Dad, but none appeared to have a Mum.
Answer that Hollywood.

Come Out And Play

Mexican shot for shot reproduction of the superior Who Can Kill A Child? demonstrating that America isn't the only country that feels the need to punt out unecessary remakes.

Tetsuo: The Bullet Man

 

20 minutes of scant story, 50 minutes of hyper-edited, shaky-cam close ups of scrap metal and small explosions. Barely a movie.

 

Wake Wood

 

Takes a string of cheap looking cliches and manages to twist them into a peculiarly effective amalgam of Pet Sematary and The Wicker Man.

 

Mad Max: Fury Road [IMAX 3D]

 

A superbly nuanced dystopia allows the unfettered visual lunacy to tell a far deeper story than you might expect as it casually shreds your retinas.

 

The Game

 

Parenthood is the privilege of being able to observe somebody at first hand as they experience an endless series of firsts.

This was Charlotte's first David Fincher and her face at the end was a remarkable sight indeed.

 

Unfriended [Cybernatural]

 

Another movie set entirely on a laptop screen because what we really need is a subgenre of found footage movies. Let's just stop now, thanks.

 

I, Robot

 

AKA Bride Of Ultron.

These days it's not unusual for Hollywood blockbusters to raise bigger questions, surprisingly though for a film about robots and morality the biggest question here is 'What the fuck is Shia LaBeouf doing in this?'

 

Avengers: Age Of Ultron [IMAX 3D]

Marvel sequel meaning a larger cast have to find reasons to be in the story whilst they try to stop an even bigger thing from falling out of the sky, all freckled with moments so awesome they defy description.

I now fully expect the third one to have a cast of a thousand superheroes appearing in 10 second plot points as they try to stop a planet landing on the planet whilst intermittent shards of light melt my eyeballs.