Feast of Film

Adam Sandler without the smutty jokes and crude humour - and funnier for it. Yes, he did it to an extent in Click , but with Bedtime Stories he has the 'Walt Disney' shingle and produces a very enjoyable movie that you can take children to see without fear. The plot: Skeeter Bronson (Sandler) is the son of wonderfully imaginative but no-so-financially astute hotel owner Marty Bronson ( Jonathan Pryce ), who is forced to sell his hotel to ruthless hotelier Barry Nottingham ( Richard Griffiths ). He does, however, manage to extract a promise that if Skeeter applied himself he would be given the chance to run the hotel one day. Needless to say, Nottingham reneges on the deal and Skeeter is relegated to maintenance of the massive hotel that is built on the site. However, one day Skeeter's school principal sister Wendy ( Courteney Cox ) tells him that her school is being shut down and that she needs him to babysit his niece and nephew while she goes to Arizona to look for a ne...

The above image shows an audience member who just happens to resemble the lead actor, whose vitals signs are measured, as are all other viewers, so that medical assistance can be rushed to them as the film methodically sends them into a manic state of eco-insanity. Keanu Reeves stars in two sorts of films: Good and Crap. This is the latter and should not be allowed to draw on the good name of the original , directed by Robert Wise . The plot: Mysterious glowing spheres land around Earth, the largest of which touches down in Central Park, New York, lit up like a '70's area disco globe. The US government rounds up a team of scientists ahead of its landing, one of whom is Helen Benson ( Jennifer Connelly ). Out of the Central Park sphere - now surrounded by military and police, who are emphasised to be incredibly poorly coordinated (despite the previously demonstrated massive coordination effort to assemble the science team) emerges Klaatu. He approaches Helen and is - like the ...

Dr Jones, there's no way down from this ledge. I should have known that it was a bad idea to see this film, but my wife's little brother wasn't interested in The Hulk or Sex in the City (thank heaven). George Lucas should never again be let near a motion picture. I'd love to be a fly on the wall in the Lucas household for a few days, just to listen in on the conversation and figure out if George & co. really speak in the same ridiculous, turgid dialogue the way his characters do. The plot: It is the late 1950s and Indy (Harrison Ford), still wearing the same gear, made it through World War II working for the OSS (war-time equivalent of the CIA - except effective). He is kidnapped by an evil Stalinist Soviet version of Boris's Natasha (Cate Blanchet), whose dozens of commandos somehow break into one of the US's most secret installations with amazing ease. This base (where we saw the Ark stored at the end of the first film) is not underground, but rather in...

Homer does it again, this time in a big way when he pollutes Springfield 's water supply, causing the EPA to encase the towen in a gigantic dome. The Simpsons family escape from the angry mob, but return to save the town. Sound like it could have been done in a 30-minute episode? I think Matt Groening , James L. Brooks and David Silverman could have done more with this movie. The plot: See above. In summary: While the plot and characters are as thin as a Kate Moss on coke, the graphics did get a bit of a boost, which is the least they could have done. Homer says it at the beginning, "I can't believe we're paying to watch something we could see on TV for free! If you ask me, everyone in this theater is a big sucker! Especially, you!" The Casablanca comparison: Honestly, I would have thought that they would have given me something to hang this on, but there's just not enough in The Simpsons Movie to do anything with. The rating: 5 out of 10. Simpsons fan...

Bruce Willis shows why he is the last great action hero in this probably last iteration of the Die Hard series. Don't expect any computer generated graphics here. The plot: Detective John McClane is assigned to pick up computer hacker Matthew Farrell ( Justin Long , of PC vs Mac ad fame). Just as he arrives someone tries to kill Farrell, and thus ensues a cyber attack on the US by an angry ex-NSA computer expert. Naturally, it's up to McClane and sidekick Farrell to save the day. The film spans significant amounts of territory over its rollercoaster ride, rather than the rather restricted locales of the previous Die Hards, but the action is as intense as ever. The familiar plot aspects, motives and so on are all there. The only thing absent is McClane's usual rivalry with local or federal authorities - for once, all the cops are on the same side. The summary: Director Len Wiseman delivers an action-packed Die Hard movie that harks back to the original and provides an ...

Kate Winslet , Cameron Diaz , Jack Black and Jude Law form an interesting and at times delightful ensemble in this light romantic comedy.  The plot: Amanda Wood (Diaz) is an overworked, emotionless Hollywood trailer guru (she owns a company that makes the trailers for movies). After breaking up with her boyfriend ( Edward Burns ), she decides at the spur of the moment to take a vacation - she goes onto a web site that specialises in house swaps. There she sees and decides on a small cottage in the Cotswolds owned by Iris (Kate Winslet), a marriage columnist with The Telegraph . Iris is aching to get away for a while after the man she has been in love with for 3 years announces that he is marrying someone else; she jumps at the change to swap with Amanda and jet out to sunny LA. After spending 6 hours in the Cotswolds in Iris's cottage, around 1AM, Amanda decides it is a huge mistake and decides to head home just about the time that a drunk Graham (Jude Law) starts knocking on th...

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...

The last ride of the Italian Stallion seems more of an attempt to recapture the thrill of his first run around the track. While it doesn't succeed, it was worth it just to make this the last volume of the series. The plot: Rocky (Sylvester Stallone) is 60, running a restaurant named after his late wife Adrian, and stuck in the past. He visits Adrian's grave so regularly that he keeps a folding chair in the tree near her headstone. The old neighbourhood has run down, the store where she used to work is empty and the ice rink where they first skated and kissed has been demolished. Then along comes a TV show that runs a computer simulation that claims that the young Rocky would beat the crap out of the current champ, now more than 30 years his junior. The current champ (can't remember his name and won't bother to look it up) isn't impressed by this and his manager convinces him to agree to an exhibition fight with Rocky in order to boost his image. Apparently he is s...

Not so wild, but worth $7.60. The plot: Four 40-something friends hit the road to recover a bit of adventure in their unexciting lives. Doug Madsen ( Tim Allen ), Woody Stevens ( John Travolta ), Bobby Davis ( Martin Lawrence ) and Dudley Frank ( William H. Macy ) are bored, crashing, hen-pecked or geeky (respectively) and decide to head of on a week-long road trip on their bikes - hogs. They fancy themselves to be bikers and in their 'Wild Hogs' jackets (sown by Doug's wife, Kelly ( Jill Hennessey )) they ride off on adventure. There are a couple of minor incidents involving camping, a gay motorcycle cop and skinny-dipping. But the real trouble starts when the Wild Hogs decide to stop in and get a drink at a real biker bar run by the Del Fuegos, whose leader, Jack ( Ray Liotta ), takes an instant dislike to them. After a bit of an altercation that results in the biker bar being blown up, the Del Fuegos set their sites on the Hogs, who stop in the inoffensive and ill-prote...

The latest in the Bond line-up, Casino Royale is yet another of the prequels that are set in today's world. While I'm generally not a fan of rewriting a character to make him seem brand new - see for example the attempt to set up Ben Affleck as Jack Ryan in the film of Tom Clancy's novel Sum of All Fears - this attempt succeeds masterfully in allowing Daniel Craig to re-engineer Bond as much closer to that Fleming character seen so fleetingly in Sean Connery's original performance as Bond in Dr. No . This film certainly shouldn't be confused with the 1967 comedy starring David Niven. Daniel Crag crafts a nasty yet vulnerable Bond - almost a sheep in wolf's clothing, perhaps more like a ram. The plot: Fresh out on the streets, Bond is out to make a name for himself. Apparently it takes 2 kills to get the much revered '00' - and we see Bond rack his 2 up in the first few minutes. The rest of the film substantially increased the body count - if they had...

Sandra Bullock and Keanu Reeves star in this enchanting romance across time, but not too much time. The plot: We begin as Kate Forster (Bullock) is just moving out of the lake house, an interesting glass house built on the shore of a lake north of Chicago. The film then cuts to Alex Wyler (Reeves), who is moving in. On checking the mailbox he finds a welcome note from Kate with the usual request to forward mail to her new address. She also apologises for the paw prints on the decking and floor. What paw prints, Alex wonders, just before a dog runs past him right in the middle of staining the decking leading up the house - thus are set the paw prints. How did she know? Alex writes to Kate asking her this and through a bit of to and fro, and seeing the mailbox magically raise and lower its flag by itself, they figure out what is going on. You see, Kate lived in the lake house after Alex, not before. They are corresponding across time - between 2004 and 2006. Needless to say, they fall...

The most implausible plot I have seen in a long time - and that includes Sci-Fi. Flightplan is a Jodie Foster vehicle, which is not normally a bad thing for a film to aspire to, but they usually at least have a decent plot line. It should be noted that the previous Foster effort I reviewed - Inside Man - was stronger in plot but still provided a fairly thin Foster character. The plot: Kyle Pratt (Foster) is travelling home to the US with her daughter after her husband mysterious dies by falling from the roof of their apartment building (suicide is implied). Kyle is some sort of aircraft engineer, specialising in the engines, but works for an incredibly stingy company (they stick her in economy class). She boards the newest passenger megajumbojet - an A474 (think Airbus A380 but bigger) - for the trip home. It's a plane so big your child could get lost. Needless to say she goes to sleep and wakes up to find that her daughter is missing. What follows is a frantic search of the pla...

A Wachowski brothers film (written, not directed), this is based on the DC Comics character, but infused with modern political commentary. "V" ( Hugo Weaving ) is the brave terrorist fighting against an authoritarian British Government led by Chancellor Adam Sutler (played rather nastily by John Hurt - who to those 'too young to remember' played Winston Smith in the 1984 film version of George Orwell's 1984 , starring alongside Richard Burton). The plot: Young woman Evey Hammond ( Natalie Portman ) is out to see a friend one night and gets caught by some 'finger men', who seem to be an English version of Hitler's SA, but without the brown shirts. They're just thugs and want to rape her - enter "V", who saves her and brings her to a roof-top to watch him blow up a government building. The story then begins of V's plan to undermine and bring down the '1984'-like government. He is acting out the infamous gunpowder plot of 16...

This well-directed ( Richard Donner ), gritty, action thriller stars Bruce Willis and Mos Def as a cop and a petty crim turned witness who have to survive a journey of 16 Blocks from the lock-up to the court house. The plot: Jack Mosley (Willis) is an aging, usually drunken and decrepit cop just trying to make it to the end of his life. One day, because the assigned cop is stuck elsewhere, his lieutenant makes him take a last job - for overtime: he has to get small-time and somewhat simple crook Eddie Bunker (Def) 16 blocks to testify to a grand jury. The trip is obviously not going to be as simple as it sounds, but could have been so much easier if Mosley just hadn't decided to stop and buy that bottle of booze. Coming out of the liquor shop he sees and shoots a guy trying to kill Bunker. Then all hell breaks loose as he and Bunker flee a torrent of lead from corrupt cops trying to stop the testimony that will unravel their decades of crime. In summary: This film isn't exac...

New actors: Brandon Routh (Superman), Kate Bosworth (Lois Lane), Kevin Spacey (Lex Luthor) and Frank Langella (Perry White). Same story, very same story. The plot: Well, um, Superman returns. Okay, it's a bit more complicated than that, but not much. It has been five years since astronomers found what they believed were the remains of Krypton - Kalel's home planet. So he set off to see if anyone is still there. Turns out it was a wild goose chase, but the Man of Steel forgot the first rule before you set of on a long jounery - tell someone where you're going. He left Lois Lane wondering where the hell he had gone. She had a child and moved on and met another guy who could fly (a plane) - Perry White's nephew Richard. Lex Luthor is released on parole from a double life sentence in prison because Superman didn't show up at the parole board hearing? What sort of country is this that even considers parole for a psychopath on a double life sentence? Is it some alte...

Adam Sandler has hit his eighth straight No. 1 weekend opening in the US with Click . Sandler's formula is hard to fault - nice guy who's rough around the edges with gorgeous wife or girlfriend has an adventure and learns that family matters most. If we define this plotline as the 'Sandler genre', then Click is its ultimate form. The adventure is lots of fun, the family moments are heartwarming, funny and at times emotionally very touching (with Henry Winkler as his father, it's hard not to get teary - the Fonz got old), and gorgeous wife - Kate Beckinsale . The plot: Adam Sandler plays Michael Newman, married to Donna (Beckinsale), with 2 children - Ben and Samantha. He's focused on advancing his career (to better provide for his family) and sees pretty much everything else as a distraction and wants a simple way to control his complex life. In walks Morty ( Christopher Walken ), who Michael finds working away in the 'Beyond' section of a Bed, Bath ...

Not your conventional romantic comedy, both Vince Vaughan and Jennifer Aniston give The Break-Up a stirring sense of reality amongst all the humour. The plot: Brooke (Aniston) and Gary (Vaughan) are a couple wildly in love. The only problem is that he has a chip on his shoulder and increasingly takes the relationship for granted. Eventually, they have a fight that causes her to break up with him in what becomes an increasingly bitter battle. This isn't helped by neither of them wanting to move out of their shared condo. There is a bit more to the plot, but not much. Suffice it to say that the ending isn't conventional for a romantic comedy. In summary: For a romantic comedy, there isn't much romance (maybe the first 5 minutes). The comedy is very good and can be quite painful at times. The ending is clearly where Vaughan (Producer and Co-writer) has tried to stand this film out from the crowd, though I don't see this as its strength. The characters develop very well a...

Dan Brown's much read (though not by me) book comes to the big screen . Big stars (Hanks, McKellen, Prochnow, Reno, Tautou); big name director (Howard) and screenwriter (Goldsman); controversey (the descedants of Jesus and the Catholic Church); big budget - how could anything go wrong? In a way, this could be seen as Hollywood's response to Mel Gibson's hugely successful Passion of the Christ . The secular Hollywood producers take on the devoutly religious Gibson with a 'bible' of their own. I'll leave that in the air for consideration, as the film itself is rather pedestrian and does make efforts to distance the Church itself from the actions of its constituent shadowy parts. The plot: Robert Langdon (Tom Hanks) is a professor of religious symbolism currently in Paris to promote his book on the feminine representations in religion. Summoned to the Louvre to see the gruesome self-defaced corpse of a curator, Langdon joins forces with French cryptologist, Sophie...

One's tempted to say Tom cruises through another movie, but clearly he has made every effort in this third instalment of the Mission Impossible film franchise to make sure we understand that he suffered, really suffered for us. The plot: Ethan Hunt (Tom Cruise) has retired from active field duty with the Impossible Mission Force (IMF) - he now trains agents. He has found a beautiful woman (who looks oddly like Katie Holmes) and is settling down to a life of domesticity. The movie opens with his engagement party where we find out that his cover story is that he works at the Motor Vehicle Department studying traffic patterns and can lip read. But just when Ethan thinks he's out, they drag him back in. One of his bosses tells him that his star pupil has been kidnapped and the information she has is so important that they want to rescue her - normally killed or captured IMF agents are "disavowed". His paternal instincts kick in and he assembles a team to rescue her. I...