Feast of Film

The toy-driven cartoon of the 1980s, Transformers makes it to the big screen with an earth-shattering force. I haven't been wowed this much in years, and Optimus and pals are the key to the mayhem. The plot: "Before time began, there was... the cube. We know not where it comes from, only that it holds the power to create worlds and fill them... with life. That is how our race was born. For a time we had lived in harmony, but like all great power, some wanted it for good..." Thus narrateth Optimus Prime (voiced by Peter Cullen - from the original TV series). It turns out that teenager Sam Witwicky's ( Shia LeBeouf ) grandfather strayed across the cube in the Arctic and had the coordinates scratched in Transformer code on his spectacles. Sam's now trying to sell them on eBay so that he can afford to buy a car (who turns out to be the Autobot Bumblebee). Skipping on a bit, the Transformers also surf the web and eBay and it's a race between the Autobots and Dece

The History Boys was meant to be a British school version of Dead Poets Society , except its Robin Williams character doesn't quite create the same magic, being a fat, old paedophile. The plot: Director Nicholas Hytner and writer Alan Bennett introduce us to a group of clearly gifted boys at a lower class British secondary school in the 1980s. The students of the 'special' class have all qualified to sit for admission to Oxford or Cambridge. The Principal, thirsting for success, hires a young gun teacher to teach them how to pass the exam. This flies in the face of the established academic staff, particularly the fat, old paedophile, who believes in knowledge and education for their own sake. The central plot revolves around the struggle between the new and old methods of teaching and goal setting - do you want to know the facts on the test paper or do you want to be a well-rounded human being? The sadness of the loss of innocence that the students face when being taugh