Reviews

Divergent is a pretty movie. The CGI of post-apocalyptic Chicago is very nice, but the plot has too many holes which keep breaking the suspension of disbelief. The underlying premise had potential but is not explored. Instead we spend most of the movie being bored in The Pit and screaming "You Idiot!" at the film's heroine.

First, lets get the comparison to Hunger Games out of the way: Yes. Divergent is a rip-off of Hunger Games, but Hunger Games is itself a rip-off of Battle Royale. At least Hunger Games is entertaining. Divergent is kind of dull.

Divergent is YA fiction. I'm not it's target audience. Perhaps that is why Shailene Woodley's Tris doesn't do it for me. I don't identify with her character, and she does so many stupid things I can't root for her either. I know she can act, but her performance here is flat.

Tris is a whiny teen. Worse, a whiny teen who kept on doing stupid things. When a terrified Tori (Maggie Q) tells her to shut up about being divergent, she doesn't take the hint. When Kate Winslet's Jeanine told her she knew her tests results, instead of bluffing she blurts out 'You know I'm divergent? Wow! I am so dead!' (Not her exact words, but close...) And when she fights, she doesn't fight back and gets K.O.ed.

The movie is filled with moments like this which had me screaming "You idiot!"

The faction system is criticized as unworkable but that's okay because it's a valid premise that hundred year-old oligarchs dreamed up a political system that doesn't work and it takes a while for that to be recognized. But its problems are immediately obvious to the viewer.

Any system which divides people into factions, each with different privileges, is bound to cause envy. There's open tension between the groups. We see a Candor (lawyer) openly accusing Abnegation (cleric politician) of stealing. Erudite's (intelligstia's) campaign to overthrow Abnegation is well known. If it's a perfect society, why do they need Dauntless (paramilitary) to keep the peace or candor (lawyers) to resolve disputes? And what about the large numbers of factionless living like the homeless, instead of moving into the many abandoned buildings around the city? And any American who sees that only one faction has the right to bears arms will raise an eyebrow. And who does the cleaning and chauffeuring?

These problems supposedly are in the source material, but the movies writers should have patched those up.

Too much of the movie is spent in "The Pit" of the Dauntless faction. When we first saw Dauntless they looked like an interesting crowd: happy paramilitaries who jump, leap and somersault and are generally in a good mood. If utopia must have a police force, these would be a good choice. But once we get inside, they're just another soulless army.

Now if Dauntless had been the jumping, leaping, somersaulting Stomp-boys we saw at the beginning, Tris' journey could have made an interesting story.

In boot camp there are five guys who looked so similar I couldn't tell them apart.

The on-screen action is poorly directed. Teenage girls might not pick this up, but the teenage boys raised on first-person shooter games forced to watch this movie with them will: Gun battles consist of standing in the open and shooting. No teamwork or cover. Tris' Mom comes to get her alone: rookie mistake. And when her Dad attacks some bad guys instead of using cover, he walks to them shooting and gets shot himself. That's not a noble death. When you're only five and they're hundreds, fighting by attrition is stupid. And even though her Mom is supposedly a crack ex-Dauntless soldier, she also fights and dies stupid. When Tris flees, she hides with her back to a glass door facing the street. Imagine every gamer in the audience by reflex hitting the imaginary fire button on their cinema seat...

Particularly grating is one action scene where a drugged fellow recruit stumbles towards her shooting... Tris keeps calling for him to stop, and he keeps shooting... and missing at point blank. Eventually she shoots him. But really, she should be dead. This is really bad direction from Neil Burger who bought us the fantastic "Limitless." (What happened, man?)

Most grating of all are the end scenes. While the Dauntless prepare to execute the Abnegation faction Holocaust-style, Tris keeps looking around like a wide-eyed idiot. And then having beaten the Erudites, instead of pushing the advantage, she turns tail and runs. When Jeanine wakes up she'll finish what she started. And if the Dauntless infantry would now refuse that order, why leave now and give the Dauntless leadership the opportunity to reassert control?

It was the biggest of all the plot holes, and it's these which killed this movie.

I liked Theo James as Four, but Shailene Woodley just wasn't right for the role. The film's production poster, emphasizing her butt, is unintentionally comical.

The plot holes could have been fixed, if the movie producers had been brave enough to "diverge" from the book. But for unfathomable reasons the book series is popular. Why mess with a working formula? They made a dumb movie from a dumb book. Sequels are assured. They will make a lot of money out of this. The studios got their wish. The fans got their wish. And the rest of us will watch it anyway, just to see how it ends.

The soundtrack is VH1 weak. Hans Zimmer is "Executive Composer," whatever that means.

The romance is cheesy and not convincing.

The real crime here is with a better director, better screen writers and better casting, this could have been a classic.

I like Kirsten Bell, so decided to see Veronica Mars on the basis of its high IMDb rating. It left me flat.

Based on a 2004-2007 TV series, there have been plenty of TV series which have been adapted to the big screen, tapping into a wider audience, but this one falls flat. The problem is a failure by the movie's creators to properly introduce characters.

Newcomers aren't introduced by seeing characters *do* something - so setting their character. Instead they are introduced by short (very short) voice overs by Veronica, imitating the clichéd PI narrative noir detective novels are famous for. But that doesn't work here, because newcomers are still left at a considerable disadvantage over the show's fans.

Kirsten Bell seems to play the same character as Jeanie on House of Lies.

The only exception where a character is properly introduced to characters is Veronica's father, because not only are we told he lost his job pursuing justice and looked after his little girl, but he's introduced with an establishing scene where he stops a couple of cops from brutalizing a pair of youths. That one scene did what a glib, sarcastic voice over couldn't.

But for all the other characters, those introductions are missing. We're expected to warm to them like old friends, but it's like meeting a person at a party who you're supposed to know, but don't.

The plot is run-of-the-mill TV murder mystery. At that, a dull one. Logan is so smiley, relaxed and unworried you know there's no risk of him going to jail. And because he's Veronica's friend, you know he didn't do it. There's no suspense here. Yet the fans seem to love it. Perhaps that's because they know the characters, and cared about the outcome. It's the difference between a family member being accused of murder, and an unknown stranger on page six being accused of murder.

Moral for film makers: If you don't introduce your characters properly, your whole film can fall flat. With a bit of front up exposition, they could have won over new fans. And while some might say this kick-started movie is for fans, not for newcomers, that overlooks the best way to strengthen a franchise is by bringing on board new fans.

By the IMDb ratings the fans of the show love it, but newcomers are left cold. As a newcomer, I cannot recommend it. It's walk-out-of-the-theater dull, so 1/4 stars. If you are already a fan, by all accounts you'll love it. Good for you.

When I first saw a billboard advertising this movie, I nearly ran off the road. Really. Brad Pitt? Zombies? Epic Poster? How could it not succeed? But this movie tragically misses the mark.

The problem is immensely bad writing and direction.

Take this. The world is gripped by a Zombie epidemic. Brad Pitt is a retired UN super-inspector turned stay-at-home-dad who cooks his family awesome pancakes. Pitt's former boss sends a US military extraction team to rescue Pitt and his whiny family, bringing them to the safety of a naval task force. On his arrival his boss asks Pitt to come back to help. Pitt declines: "No, I told you I was retired."

Implication: "Hey, thanks for the free ride sucker. Now me and my family will sunbathe on the deck of this awesome battleship while you and some other suckers save the world. And we want our dinner at 6 Sharp. No MREs. Kapish?" You want to slap him.

You want to slap him again when he gets soldiers killed because he forgets to put his cellphone on "silent" while creeping pass Zombies. Worse, this is so his whiny wife can call him.

Or leaving his camper van outside a supermarket full of looters, and agonizing it still isn't there when he comes out.

Lots and lots of moments like that.

And stupidities like blowing up a plane in midair because he wants to get off at this stop. Does he walk away? After pulling out a piece of metal he's impaled on, yes, he walks away.

The whole idea of some sort of retired UN super-inspector being the only one who could save the world defies credibility. He drifts around the globe following the most absurd of leads. There's never the slightest sense at all that he's in danger. The cardboard cutouts who accompany him you don't care about. There's something seriously wrong with his family chemistry. Whether it's Skyler White, Betty Draper or Karin Pitt (Sorry, Lane!) here, Hollywood needs to stop giving its leading men such unlikeable spouses.

Bad writing plays a big part in bringing this movie down. I don't know who is to blame, but bringing in Damon "LOST" "Prometheus" "Into Darkness" Lindelof for rewrites hardly seems an answer. The convenient escape ladders which descend out of no where (Yes, I *literally* mean this) are lazy writing.

The direction too is bad. The South Korean Army Base scene is so poorly shot I didn't even know where it was until I read the IMDb comments. The suspense in this movie is non-existent. We know Likable Brad won't die, and don't give a damn about anyone else. I think giving him a close-knit team who save each others asses would have worked far better.

Perhaps as other IMDb reviewers have suggested, maybe Hollywood should stop giving film makers with lemons to their names second, third and tenth chances. Director Marc Forster and Writer David Lindelof, Stand aside. Give someone else a go.

The lack of gore wouldn't have bothered me as it has some, so long as the movie was suspenseful. Which it isn't.

It's a massive disappointment, but I don't know where the blame lies. The movie studios must have played some role in this train wreck. They expected this to be a trilogy. I can't see how.

Two good things: For all its faults, the movie is watchable. It's also popularized the book which I shall now read, though all it has in common is the name and that it's something to do with zombies.

5/10

'Wanted' has an interesting enough premise: An Ancient group of weavers branches out into assassination, and a thousand years later a bored office clerk learns he is one of them.

The actors are competent. The moment Morgan Freeman walks onto the set the movie gets credibility, and Angelina Jolie is always a pleasure to watch.

Other reviewers have praised the over-the-top humor, but this is where 'Wanted' loses me. I liked some of the humor at the start and I can even accept the curved bullets, but I'm less keen about the Matrix-like stunts.

Where 'Wanted' really loses me though is the over-the-top silliness. It becomes so silly and so unreal I couldn't take it seriously. You lose the sense you're watching real people, and it feels like a video game. Cars and people do absurd stunts, and you quickly get a sense no one gets hurt unless the plot calls for it. And the people who do get hurt are jerks or unknowns, so no loss.

I'm intrigued at the 'Gritty Reboots' we are besieged with. 'Wanted' which is not the least bit gritty might explain this. We want a bit of reality in our movies, enough so we can say, well, maybe this *could* really happen? It's the difference between campy old Battlestar Galactica and the gritty reboot with James Edward Olmos.

The 'Wanted' source material is reportedly itself campy so I can't fault the producers on those grounds, but I want characters I can care about and root for. Some reviewers enjoyed 'Wanted', but it feels too much like a video game to me. It's a slick effort with good actors so I feel bad for giving it such a low score, but it couldn't hold my interest. A clever plot twist towards the end is pointless if the audience has already switched off or gone to sleep. 4/10.

After seeing the negative reviews on IMDb I was worried. I'd never read any Jack Reacher books nor did I even know who the character was. It was Tom Cruise playing Tom Cruise, but he's an action star so as far as I was could tell mostly fitted the part. But I was however never really convinced he was a homeless drifter with nothing to lose. He was far too intelligent, eloquent and clean cut for that. I find it hard to believe he spends his life off-the-grid sleeping inside dumpsters.

It's a fairly decent thriller. It is far from the best thriller ever made, but it more than held my attention. Some reviewers would have preferred an unknown to play Reacher instead of Cruise, but I don't think the movie is that strong by itself enough to survive with a lesser known actor. And no, I don't think Liam Neeson would have done it either. He plays over the top characters: Arnie without the puns. Cruise is a better fit than Neeson.

It's not Bourne, and the truth is I'm relieved for that. There are far too many Bourne knock-offs out there these days. I feel like something a little different. It has action, but it's interspersed with some fairly clever plotting. There are some profound little speeches hidden in this film, like the one on what freedom really is. Reacher is an interesting character who I wish they spent more time exploring

Car chases are far too overused these days, but this one was well shot.

The acting was pretty much what you would expect. There are some lines that weren't well delivered: Perhaps what someone would write down, but not the sort of thing they would say out loud. Rosamond Pike was gorgeous to watch, and Werner Hertzog seriously creeped me out.

When the plot was revealed it was quite clever and entirely plausible, though it's unusual to find a movie that doesn't involve world domination. I guess that's a pleasant change.

It kept me entertained. The actors were good and the twists were well received. It could have been better, but it's also better than just watchable. 7 / 10.

There are too many loose threads. Why does Neville (Will Smith) have one-man bio-lab in the basement of his New York Apartment building? He says 1% of the world's population are like him immune. Wouldn't it make sense to go to a secure government lab with other immune scientists guarded by immune soldiers? They could work a lot faster together. He keeps telling the audience he can't leave New York because it is ground zero, but British scientist Krippen (Emma Thomson) said she did 10,009 cancer clinical trials using the virus. Were they all in New York?

This film is based on an excellent book which spawned two other film versions. The most famous of these is "Omega Man" panned for being unfaithful to the book, but Heston's Neville clearly was going mad from loneliness. You could feel his despair. Smith's Neville on the other hand has a sweet dog and they seem pretty happy together.

Things change halfway through when the dog dies. Some viewers are really offended by this: Kill six billion people. Fine. It's just a movie. Kill a dog. OMG l'horreur! It's actually a very touching scene. Now if only the rest of the movie was like this.

But after this it makes even less sense. A girl and boy find him and somehow rescue him from a huge mob of zombies. We don't see how this happens. One moment Alpha zombie has his jaws around Neville's throat. Crash cut to Nevile waking up in his apartment to the smell of bacon and eggs.

Smith doesn't seem right for the role. He's convincing in the physical and military roles he plays, but putting on a white lab coat doesn't turn him a scientist. He's missing that spark of curiosity and geekiness that every scientist has. His humor, singing Bob Marley, classic Will Smith, doesn't work here. His real-life son has a cameo but the dialog isn't convincing: Kids don't talk like that, and it's hard to take a kid in dreadlocks seriously. In another movie they could work well together, but I think they're both miscast here. Some have praised Smith's acting here, but it didn't work for me perhaps because he would be teary one scene and back to his usual carefree self the next.

Too much of what Neville does doesn't make sense. He broadcasts on the radio for other survivors to come to New York to meet him, but when they do he doesn't believe there were any survivors and is angry they cooked some of his bacon without asking. And why broadcast on AM which has limited range. Why not short wave? In some scenes he is mad with loneliness, but on others he's having a great time with his dog and seems as happy as a guy enjoying free time while his girlfriend is out of the house.

Poor vampires. Ever since Anne Rice turned them into teen idols no one can take them seriously any more. Let's face it. If a vampire knocked on your door you wouldn't invite them inside, but you would offer them a Bloody Mary, sit on the porch and have a fascinating chat about their long and no-doubt very interesting life. Compared to your average high school boy, no wonder every girl wants a vampire boyfriend! And so here zombies replace vampires.

The CGI is really bad. The lions look fake, and the zombies look like a video game. Directors everywhere are misusing CGI. Here the apocalyptic scenery is amazing, but the rest really detracts. Hollywood really needs to roll back the CGI. It doesn't impress us any more.

The biggest cop out here is the ending. There are two of these. The original ending was more faithful to the book: Neville realizes the zombies still have some human feelings. But this tested poor with audiences, so they replaced it with an alternate ending where he commits suicide using an incendiary grenade. It explodes burning him and every zombie in a large room, and yet the boy and girl right next him are unharmed and unsinged. It leaves too many lose threads unexplained, like the earlier scene where zombies set a snare trap for him.

The religious themes are annoying: God killed six billion people but still wants to save a few of us. If you're going to take that line, do it like Stephen King did it in "The Stand" and do it all the way. (And to hell with the other reviewer who said he didn't like Smith's character because he was an atheist!)

It would have been fascinating to see how the virus spread, but this isn't really shown. All we see is flashbacks of Smith evacuating his family to a helicopter. Even that doesn't make sense: If they're sealing off the city, why let a few people out anyway? Even if they are Will Smith's family? Especially when one of the tests just showed his wife may be infected?

The movie has too many holes and is unsatisfying, but it has its moments and is watchable. I "enjoy" post-apocalyptic movies so despite its many flaws I don't regret watching it. I just think it could have been done much better.

My recommendation. The book is short. Read that instead. Watch "Contagion": Long and dry but fascinating nevertheless. Watch Stephen King's TV Adaption of "The Stand". If you have watched it check out the other film versions: "The Omega Man" and "The Last Man on Earth". Both have their faults, but it's interesting to compare.

The Original 1978 Battlestar Galactica TV Series has copped a panning compared to the vastly superior 2004 "gritty reboot".

To rate the original series fairly you need to understand not what it is like now, but what it was like then.

In 1978 we had never seen anything like it. We had "Star Wars" the year before, but that was just 2 hours and 15 minutes in a cinema, and it was three years until the next one.

Battlestar Galactica offered us the same thing on TV every week. Girls didn't much care, but boys went crazy. Battles in space, every week! What's not to like?

After an impressive opening the show took a dive. Apparently intent on attracting a family viewing, they de-emphasized war-in-space and started copying other shows. The Dirty Dozen... in space. High Noon... in space. Murder She Wrote... in space.

Adults weren't fooled and didn't watch anyway. Half-way through "The Living Legend" offered some respite, but Kids wondered what happened to their space opera.

Towards the end they switched back to science fiction. We got a string of very good shows such as "War of the Gods", "Experiment on Terra" and "Greetings from Earth". This was good sci-fi and what we'd wanted to watch all along. But by then the ratings had fallen and although still good, not enough to justify the show's huge budget. After just one season the show was axed.

The acting wasn't up to much, but I doubt kids noticed or cared. Lorne Greene made a great Adama; a warmer and more loving fatherly figure than the reboot's Edward James Olmos (awesome, but in a different way). They replayed the same special effects shots every week, but they were spectacular nonetheless. The production design was camp, but in the 70's people wanted mindless escapism. They didn't want the gritty realism we see in today's sci-fi dramas.

One thing teenager boys were heartbroken over was the disappearance of Maren Jensen as Adama's daughter Athena. We never forgave Starbuck for dumping her for Laurette Spang's character of Cassiopea. Why? Why? Why?

As I rate shows on IMDb I realize the futility of a ratings system. It depends on who is watching, and when they were watching it. I'll try anyway:

A kid in 1978: 8 / 10. An adult in 1978: 5 / 10. A kid in 2013: 4 / 10. An adult in 2013: 2 / 10. An adult watching only the better episodes in 2013: 8 / 10.

Unless you're in nostalgia mode and really want to watch everything I recommend you only watch the better episodes: 1-5, 12-13, 15-16, 19-20, 22-24.

This is a "gritty reboot" of Glen Larsen's 1978 series of the same name. It has its flaws, but for the most part is very good and often exceptional.

One of the rules in writing drama is conflict. But they overdid it here. We see this worst in Season Three where everyone is arguing with everyone. No one likes their partners and no one likes each other. With no redeeming features, the audience had no one to root for. Season three aside, most characterizations were good and all were flawed in some way. That's what makes them if not lovable then compelling. Apollo and Starbuck though were too flawed and I never liked them (though I didn't *hate* them either).

You need conflict, but you also need love to bind the characters together. My favorite line is in the second season where Apollo asks his estranged father if he would abandon a search if he was shot down. Replies Adama: "Do you really have to ask that? If it was you, we'd never leave." The writers later forgot this: Conflict needs to be balanced by Love.

Everything is a bit too American military for my taste. "Call the Ball". "CAG". "Marines". Given this supposedly happened thousands of years ago, why is everything so very American? Perhaps it cut down production costs. It might have also broadened the appeal of the series to young guys who don't care much for scifi, but do love the American military. The original Battlestar Galactica invented a new culture with new words for everything. It was accurate, but perhaps risked alienating the mainstream viewers.

I got sick of the cigarette placement.

The Series was written on the fly. That was unfortunate because a lot of major plot developments didn't make sense. Consider the decision to made Chief Tyrol a Cylon sleeper agent. Nice twist, but Cylons don't have babies so we had to throw his wife Callie out an airlock and then have him abandon his son because Callie had an affair. Sweet Callie? No Way! It didn't make sense, and fathers don't abandon sons they have raised. At least not decent ones like Chief Tyrol.

I didn't like the infanticide on the first episode. There are some places a film maker shouldn't go.

There were many on-the-fly story revisions which didn't make sense. Attempts to tidy up the loose ends made them worse. There were many Deus ex Machina plot devices: Anything they couldn't explain was because of God. Some arcs went nowhere. It was a cool that Boomer and the Cylons chased the humans so they could teach them God. But having found them on New Caprica, they enslaved them and didn't teach them religion at all. What was all that about?

In Seasons 2 and 3 there were far too many "filler" episodes where nothing much happened. Here the show started to get pretty boring.

I loved the fact they ended the show after four seasons. They didn't drag it on forever as so many series do. It had a natural ending. The end episode was good, though someone should point out to the producers that if Hera was "Mitochondrial Eve" then every other woman colonist and their bloodlines must have been wiped out. Also in the Epilogue they described her as a young woman found dead with her parents. That means Hera, Athena and Helo didn't live happy ever after. A bummer to end on.

Faults and filler episodes aside, I loved BG and was sad when it was finally over.

The changes on the original series were exceptional. That the Cylons were robots invented by humans which rebelled when they found God was very clever. James Callis' Baltar was brilliant, and playing him as a sympathetic villain was a nice touch. When he started his own cult and started to look like Jesus that was very funny, though out-of-character. Edward James Olmos was a great Adama: His gravelly voice and scarred warrior's face project authority. I'd follow him into battle! Mary MacDonald was a great President: conflicted and overreaching for power, but at heart a good person. To me they were the two stars of the show. The best place to end the final episode was with Bill Adama sitting by Rosalin's grave, telling her where he would build their cabin. That really hit home for me.

Grace Park did a great job in her many roles. There are really too many actors and characters to mention here, but they were all well acted and I liked them all. Even the bad ones. And I've only really scratched the surface: I haven't talked out the stories, production design or the space battles. There is so much good stuff here I can't even describe it all! That should tell you something!

There was criticism of BG for racism. I don't think this is justified. The original series had two black characters in major roles, but the reboot only had one in a minor role. But the reboot introduced many other ethnicities. It's the most multiracial scifi I have ever seen. It would have been good to have left Colonel Tigh black I guess, but Michael Hogan did a brilliant job and he was after all reporting to a Hispanic captain.

I'd give it 7 / 10 because I'm giving it 10 / 10 because it's exceptional, then taking three points off for its many flaws. I add one because that seems too low, then take it off anyway because of the prominent cigarette placement. I recommend BG to any fan of Scifi. It had many faults, but the exceptional parts make it well and truly worth watching.

Everyone expected The Hobbit to be a different movie from LOTR. LOTR is dark and sombre. The Hobbit is a children's book, albeit one that appeals to adults. We were expecting a lighter movie. What we got was a mess.

Jackson has made major changes to the book. That in itself isn't a bad: The LOTR book had weaknesses that Jackson's screenplay fixed, but the Hobbit was already a good "film size" book that didn't need changes. Jackson's rewrites, aimed at stretching a short book into three overly long films, ruined a good story.

An example is the addition of the White Orc whose gang chase the dwarfs everywhere. This boring, 1-dimensional villain gives an excuse for additional fight scenes, but these are emotionally unengaging. You never feel that anything is at stake.

Some have said Jackson had to stick to the source material. The thing is, he didn't. Everything has been rewritten into a fight scene. We have the absurdity at Trollshaws that the dwarfs attack the trolls, but then we wouldn't have Gandalf's iconic line "Dawn take you all, and be stone to you!" So the dwarfs put down their weapons and crawl into sacks to be eaten. LOLWOT? Gandalf's voice throwing is cut from the film, replaced with some unfunny dialog about worms. It doesn't add anything. It's not funny. It's change purely for the sake of change.

It's not like Jackson lightened it up to make it more appealing to kids: There is a lot of violence (e.g. Gandalf stabs the goblin king in the eye then slashes his belly open). Jackson just doesn't show any blood. No blood = kids movie. Got it?

Jackson added other tie-ins to the LOTR to try and pad the story out, but like the unnecessary cameos they will only make you groan. Jackson now even suggests Gandalf orchestrated the dwarf journey as a deliberate precursor to LOTR, as if he had an instinct that Bilbo would find the ring. It really makes no sense.

Dol Guldur was a wonderfully creepy place in the LOTR books, although it never appeared in the Hobbit. Jackson has Radaghast, a supposedly powerful wizard show up, flee in a panic after he sees a ghost. A ghost that can't even swing a sword. It just doesn't make sense. And then there is Radaghast's rabbit sled. Again not in the book. It's not funny. It's just stupid.

Much like George Lucas' flying R2D2, Jackson has changed characters. When Saruman and Gandalf fight in LOTR Jackson said he didn't want anything clichéd like Wizard Lightning. Yet in the Hobbit Gandalf's flash of light suddenly becomes a fireball killing hundreds of goblins at a time. Well gee Gandalf. Why didn't you tell us you could do that?

Jackson's elves have never looked like elves in any movie: More like blonde people with pointy ears, but in LOTR his dwarfs looked like dwarfs. In The Hobbit most of the dwarfs look like humans. Ridiculously Aragon... sorry, Thorin ... is man candy for female cinema-goers. What do you think, ladies? Come for the disembowelments? Stay for the romance? Like the whole Liv Tyler character he wrote into LOTR, it just doesn't work. Jackson needs to do a few romcoms to get it out of his system.

The CGI is very overdone. Characters fall from great heights. They get squashed by rocks. They walk away without a scratch. It feels a lot like a video game. You never feel emotionally invested. If Jackson must do rewrites, he should have killed some of the dwarfs. There are 13 of them after all, and losing a couple would have helped the audience care more about the ones that are left.

In the book the goblins lived in tunnels. In the movie they live in absurdly overdone CGI caverns. Someone needs to tell Jackson sometimes less is more.

How did Jackson, a director with such a good track record, make such a bad movie? Sometimes directors come out with good movies (e.g. George Lucas) and we think they are the hand of god. But then they come out with more movies, and you wonder if there isn't some luck involved or uncredited people in the background who weren't there this time? Jackson's King Kong shows not everything he touches turns to gold. Jackson is obviously overconfident, and the studio was too, but like George Lucas even if Jackson laid a steaming turd it would still make been hugely profitable. We've already hailed Jackson a genius, so he has nothing to prove to us except to make a lot of money. He's also very into video games. This movie feels very much like a video game.

The only good parts in this movie: Smaug's raid at the beginning, and Gollum's riddle scene. For 15 minutes out of 3 hours you will be entertained. The rest is slow, boring and emotionally unengaging; silly without being funny. The CGI is overdone. Being a Middle Earth story many people will see the movie anyway, and most will be disappointed.

Splice has an interesting premise of two biochemists who splice together animal and human DNA, and find themselves having to relate to an otherworldly daughter.

Unfortunately the premise is never really developed nor explored, and abruptly at the end makes an ill-advised turn from sci-fi into horror movie territory. The interesting premise which attracted the sci-fi buffs is discarded for a formula horror ending which, short and poorly-directed, won't satisfy horror movie buffs either. A fundamental problem is that while Dren might look creepy, she is never scary. Uttering her one line in a deep voice hardly cuts it. And she's picking off characters you don't care about.

Suspense is poorly done throughout the movie, even in the horror scenes. There are no surprises, with everything telegraphed 15 minutes before it happens.

Splice suffers from a lack of protagonists. The two biochemists Nicoli and Kast are not well developed characters: They're not villains by any means, but they're not likable either. The end result is you don't care what happens to either of them.

The same can be said about their "daughter" Dren. Although Director Natali seems to try and paint her as a protagonist, it doesn't work. If she was a cute, lovable puppy, you'd root for her. But she's not cute; she's downright homely. And instead of being lovable, she comes across as someone else's spoiled teen daughter. She's hard to warm too, and so the audience never makes a connection. Another director may have found a way to do that and done properly it could have been awesome; Academy-award winning stuff. Unfortunately Natali fails here, and the end result is a movie in which you care about no one.

The same can be said about the few minor characters: The nasty bosses and whiny younger brother are completely lacking in depth. I do credit Natali for casting Nicoli's brother with an actor who _looks_ as if they could be related.

The characters don't act consistently. Nicoli wants to kill Dren, then for no particular reason suddenly he wants to dance with her. Kast loves her like a daughter, then for an unconvincing reason decides to taunt her, then changes her mind a few scenes later. Then Dren kills her cat for an unconvincing reason, and so on. In this movie the characters develop on cue solely so the story can advance, and not the other way around.

Nicoli and Kast's motivation for creating Dren is never convincingly explained. If they were doing it for altruism ('curing cancer') or even curiosity I may have found a way to root for them, but they seemed to be doing it merely for personal glory. The science here isn't Star Trek. What they do in the movie can be done. But there's minimal explanation as to what they are doing, let alone why. Instead we are told using Star Trek pseudoscience nonsense babble. I would have liked a plausible explanation of what they are doing and why.

The acting is ordinary and occasionally stilted: One of Sarah Polley's deliveries made me cringe. You might argue a story like this doesn't need great actors, but look how Jeremy Renner and Rachel Weisz turned the Bourne Legacy into a textbook case of how good actors can save a bad movie. To be fair Brody is an Oscar winner, Polley is apparently a capable actress, and some of the direction and dialog in Splice so bad it could get Meryl Streep nominated for a Raspberry.

Much has been made about the sex scenes. They're not really a big deal, and they just don't make sense. The dialog for the second one is unconvincing, even for this movie.

The good news is that Splice is watchable. In an age when promising movies like 'The Invention of Lying' and 'Seeking a Friend for the End of the World' send me to sleep in the first half-hour, that is worth something indeed. Even if it was ultimately unsatisfying, I did enjoy Splice and it did give me food for thought. If you are a fan of Gothic sci-fi (not to be confused with horror) then by all means check Splice out, but keep your expectations in check.

I just wish Director Natali had taken his time to develop his characters into something more likable and explored the premise instead of tacking on an unsatisfying horror finale. Someone could do an awesome remake of this movie.

Dexter is by day a blood forensics expert for the Miami police department. By night he is a vigilante serial killer who only kills criminals who escape the justice system. Michael C. Hall plays the role brilliantly. The first three seasons were great, only to jump the shark in Season 4 and has been on a downward spiral ever since.

The First Season was great. I know you have to expect gore in a series about a serial killer, but at times it gets a bit much. Despite that, a brilliant season: 9 / 10.

The Second Season toned down the gore, just a little, and ramped up the suspense. Very good: 9 / 10.

The Third Season was poignant with the emotionally-distant Dexter forming and ultimately losing a friendship with a District Attorney who found the fine line between vigilante and criminal a hard one to walk. I found it very moving and the flourish at the end was genius: 9 /10.

Season Four started off with the promising premise of Dexter balancing his family life with his 'hobby'. It introduced the talented John Lithgow, but plot holes emerged as the writers had Dexter taking stupid chances and doing things that just didn't make sense: Like 'Hey, I've managed to corner and drug a dangerous serial-killer who is threatening my family, but I'll leave him in my car and go and pick a fight with those cops over there so I can get arrested and he gets a chance to escape.' That sort of thing.

Writers and the audience need to be able to trust each other: The Audience agrees to suspend belief and in exchange the writers promise to entertain them. When characters act stupidly the audience become alienated: This is known as the "The Idiot in the Attic" Syndrome. Likewise the ending smacked of overconfident writers messing around with their viewers. Once the writers lose the audience's trust, it's hard to get it back. We also got a very boring side-plot of a romance between Batista and LaGuerta. Batista was no longer the lovable oaf, and LaGuerta no longer the series much needed antagonist: 6 / 10.

Season Five bought in a villain everyone should hate: Motivational Speakers! But on the whole it was lame and lacked suspense: 5 / 10.

Season Six was a little better, but still far short of the series original charm: 6 / 10.

If the series didn't jump the shark at the end of Season Four, it surely lost it in Season Six which had the absurd spectacle of a counselor talking Deb into an incestuous relationship with her brother. The producers claim this will be a great twist for Season Seven. I doubt it, and can only hope in a Twilight Zone-like twist that Dexter's writers wake up and find themselves strapped to Dexter's own table.

The First Season of 'Game of Thrones' is some of the best television I've ever seen. It's as compelling as it is moving. The characters are well fleshed out. Even the villains, as you learn to like them before you learn to hate them. Unusually even the children have a rich, well-developed characters. The stories, actors, story telling and art direction are amazing. I applaud HBO for their guts and commitment to quality in making a TV series to such a high standard. It puts movies to shame, and we get to enjoy it for much longer.

The Second Season is a let down. The high-quality production values are still there, but the story grinds to a halt for most of it. Although there is supposed to be a war going on with the Starks winning and the Lannisters losing, you wouldn't know it. Both sides spend nearly all their screen time sitting in camps, talking. That isn't necessarily a bad thing, but the dialog lacks the power of the First Season. The problem is one of pacing: A lot happens in the last two episodes, but nothing much in the first eight.

The story of the Kahlissi and Kahl in the First Season was, to me, touching and epic. When the Kahl finally died I felt I'd spent a lifetime with them. At the end of the First Season as her loyal tribe and knight Jorah knelt before her and the baby dragons, I thought the Second Season was going to be a treat.

Instead they wandered around the desert a bit, then headed to a big city to stand around eating nibblies at parties. I wondered who was minding the dragons. And when her Dothraki tribe was eventually slaughtered and dragons stolen, I though, well, duh. There's no convincing explanation for her sudden blinding obsession with claiming the Iron Throne, or why her fierce Dothraki warriors are so easily defeated. It's sad to see such a promising storyline languish.

When the awesome men of the Night Watch rode north I was expecting some gripping drama. Instead John Snow gets lost and hangs out with a Wildling chick. The Wildling's were a major disappointment: I imagined them fierce and well, wild, like Celtic warriors or the Picts of Robert E. Howard's Conan series. Instead there is nothing wild about the Wildlings at all. They're too clean, well-spoken, well-mannered and despite being separated from the south for 8,000 years haven't even developed an accent.

Some of the characters suffer from the "Idiot in the Attic" Syndrome. After Yoren of the Night's Watch dies so that plucky Arya can escape, she stands there and lets herself get captured. I'm finding Lady Catelyn Stark a little hard to take. She speaks rudely to people whose help she needs, and let's face it: She started this whole war by falsely imprisoning Tyrion Lannister when it was clear to all he had nothing to do with it: 'Who would use their own knife for an assassination?'

Perhaps to keep production costs down or not turn off its female fans, there is very little fighting on screen until the Finale. Yet they replace it with, of all things, infanticide. Yes, I know many Royal Families have been historically vile and throughout history it was common place, but it's still disturbing viewing especially if you are a parent.

The Second Season isn't all bad by any means and those who stick through to the Finale will be rewarded. The entertaining Peter Dinklage's Tyrion Lannister steps into the role as the lead protagonist. The plotting and machinations at King's Landing are still well told. Rob Stark has quickly grown into a man. Bran despite his young age rises to the challenge of ruling Winterfell fairly and justly in his family's absence. His step family of Osha and Hodor are endearing, as is his relationship with Maester Luwin. The Greyjoy's rebellion is tragic to watch. Game of Thrones is not a series that you enjoy because so much of what goes on is so unpleasant, but it will immerse and suck you into another world for an hour a week.

There's enough here to keep you entertained, though the Second Season is not of a standard that will attract new viewers. To be fair, I'm told the problem is with the source material in that the second book on which the Second Season is based is nowhere near the caliber of the first. I only hope with the third series we see Game of Thrones return to it's original high form.

First Season: 10 / 10. Second Season: 7 / 10. Third Season: ?

I had heard a lot of bad things about The Village, capped off by the fact someone blurted out the 'twist ending' to me shortly after it was released . I blame Shyamalan for that as much as the person who did the blurting: People talk, and too many (all!) of Shyamalan's movies depend on a 'twist at the end.'

So when I finally saw The Village I had very low expectations indeed. The good news is: I wasn't disappointed. It was better than expected.

M. Night Shyamalan's master plan seems to be to make each one of his movies half as good as the one before but even when he makes a bad movie (which is often these days), it's hard to notice because the cinematography, the acting, the scenery, the music are so good you don't notice. ('The Happening' however was 'A Bridge too Far'. :-)

As usual, two things bring Shyamalan down: Gaping holes in the plot, and his own cameo performances.

The plot holes are a major problem. I liked the idea that the main character was a blind girl. She was interesting and I thought she was well played, but why send a blind girl into the woods? I get lost in the woods and I'm fully sighted! Too often Shyamalan rushes off and shoots a movie without first filling in the plot holes. The last minute retro-fixes he adds by narration (by no less than his cameo) are unconvincing.

Shyamalan is a lousy actor, and the cameos destroy the suspension of disbelief the audience is trying so hard to maintain by overlooking his glaring plot holes. Besides ego, why does he keep ruining his movies by doing this? The film has good production qualities. William Hurt and Bryce Dallas Howard turn in good performances, but other actors are underused. Sigourney Weaver barely opens her mouth.

Moral dilemmas are poorly explored: There are many, many children in this movie. Surely one of them needed a pediatrician by now? Why does Joaquin Phoenix's character merit an exception when the sick children didn't? Shyamalan has a line of dialog that suggests he was the victim of a crime where as the children died because it was 'their time'. You're kidding me?

When will movie studios understand that mis-marketing a movie is a recipe for disaster? Fight Club was mis-marketed to the WWF crowd, and The Village was mis-marketed as a Horror Film. This attracted and then alienated the wrong audience. There is some suspense, but it's subdued: We never get a sense of fear for the creatures, and even when we meet the guard he's too damned nice too fast. Gosh I like nice people too, but it just wasn't convincing.

The Village is more like an episode of the Twilight Zone. I wasn't bored, so would give it six out of ten. But I'm deducting a point for the plot holes and the cameo. That's a bit harsh, but this is Shyamalan's fourth major movie so he really should know better by now.

Daybreakers starts off with a fresh and interesting premise: The first half is very promising. With a little more work it could have even been epic and rewrote the genre.

The twist is that vampires dominate society, but for the most part they are normal folk. They hold down normal jobs, do office work, sweep the streets and catch trains. But they need blood, and there's a dwindling number of humans left to extract it from. The race is on to find a blood substitute or better yet, a cure. This is an interesting premise and it's well told.

But the second half is as if it was spliced from a completely different movie. Once the vampirism cure is found the movie turns quite silly. Characterisations and the original premise are forgotten about as it degenerates into a gore-fest: Major and minor characters wait their turn in a line to wander in front of the camera and die with more splatter than the last guy. These aren't even good action sequences: we've seen them better done and elsewhere.

There is a sequel on the way. The film makers need to balance their desire to create an intriguing world and bring the viewer into it, with their desire to spray people with red cornflour syrup.

This was Mel Gibson's first movie after his spectacular fall from grace.

The truth is movie stars are people just like us: They're just as prone to extremist views or politics as the rest of us, which they don't think are extremist but are mostly wise enough to hide in public. I quite like Mark Wahlberg movies, but has unsavory personal beliefs he recently revealed in an interview. The less you know about your movie stars, the better. So let's judge them on their movies, and leave their personality disorders to the tabloids.

Edge of Darkness is a conspiracy thriller loosely based on a British TV miniseries. Thomas Craven (Mel Gibson) is a Boston Cop (always a cop!) whose daughter Emma (played by the delicious Bojana Novakovic) is brutally murdered in front of him. At first everyone thinks it's an ex-con who was aiming for him, but Craven (as do we) quickly realize Emma's employer and a Senator are involved (a bit too quickly, really). Helped by a mysterious man (Ray Winstone), Craven sets out to put things right. As Ebert put it: "One cop... on a personal mission... with nothing to lose..."

It's an interesting premise, but it's told in a somewhat uneven way. Although the bad guys realize Craven is on to them, they bump off everyone around him - but only after he talks to them - while he walks around as free as a bird. Only very late in the movie does it occur to them to bump off him instead. A nuclear company poisoning people with radioactivity seems a little obvious, no? The conspiracy plot itself (the company is making dirty bombs for foreigners) is interesting, but this promising thread is left hanging. It's the proverbial McGuffin. We also see and hear too much of the bad guys too early on, so there is no suspense. No suspense. No thriller.

Gibson gives a good performance, showing that despite his extreme beliefs he can act and play a sympathetic on-screen character much like he did in "Signs". The movie is not boring and I had no problems maintaining my interest. The scenes with his daughter were nicely done. I just wish they had stitched up the plot holes and let the suspense unfold naturally: It's rare to see a movie that contains its own spoilers!

The good: Robert Downey Jr. is charming as ever. Scarlett Johannsen is delicious as ever. Chris Evans makes a great Captain America. Mark Ruffalo turned in a good performance as David Banner. Samuel Jackson is usual Bad-ass self. Did I leave anyone out? The CGI is up to today's usual high standard. Oh I nearly forgot: The Thor guy was pretty cool too, though why does a Scandinavian God speak with a British Accent?

The bad: There's no plot. Loki is a 1-dimensional villain. He "wants to be king." He wants people to submit. That's it. That's all there is.

I expected more from Joss Whedon, like the incredible reboot J. J. Abrams was able to deliver Star Trek. Damn it! I don't really care much for Star Trek, but Abrams had me nearly crying at the start of that movie.

Instead with Avengers we get another paint-by-numbers Superhero movie. You *can* make a Superhero movie with Heart! Look at the original Superman, or more recently Dark Knight and even Kick Ass. I want action and plenty of it, but I also want to connect with the characters on screen.

The problem with Avengers is that connection isn't there and there's not a lot happening either. The production values are high, but that's no substitute for a plot. Until the CGI battle at the end, I was a kind of bored.

The biggest lie here is that "House of Lies" pretends to be a show about management consulting, but is really just another soap opera.

If I watch a show about management consultants, I expect it to be about management consultants. Instead we've got a soap opera with everyone shagging everyone, a soap opera about Kaan's kid's gender identity issues, a soap opera about Kaan's dad's Parkinsons, a soap opera that a narcissistic sleep-around Kaan should inexplicably fall in love with a heart-of-gold stripper who decides to enroll in law school and moves across the country to be with her client, a soap opera about Jeannie's engagement, a soap opera about Kaan's ex-wife, a soap opera about workplace politics, nudity, nudity and nudity, and so on.

Everything except management consultancy.

If I want to watch a sitcom or life drama, I'll watch one of those instead. Same goes for the nudity. Now some of these may appeal to some people, but not all in one lump.

Cheadle is great in his role and his associates, despite their many faults, are lovable characters. It was that and the promise of the first episode that kept me watching. The scenes where everything freezes while Cheadle explains something are well done.The boozing, sex and partying scenes can be quite funny but the problem is they've taken over the entire show.

What's sad here is that the series is based on a real-life book about management consultancy. There was plenty of material to work with: you have people under stress working with clients whose careers are on the line. But this material is almost completely ignored for sex, sex and more sex. Some episodes have nothing to do with management consultancy at all. In the few episodes where there is some management consultancy, the business problems they are given are trite and the solutions dull. Instead sex and soap opera dominates. The poster advertisement for the series showing suits and the sharks is misleading: They should have shown Cheadle's butt instead, because that's what most of this show is really about.

This show has a lot of potential and could have been a big draw to the business crowd. Instead it tries to be too many things to too many people and ends up pleasing no one. The first episode is good and the finale was good, but there's too much soap in-between.

"House of Lies" has been renewed for a second season. I hope the producers ditch the soap opera and concentrate on what should be their USP (Unique Selling Point): A show about management consultancy.

SEASON 1: 6/10.

SEASON 2: 8/10. It's back and much better. Management consultancy has all but disappeared, so it's become just another sexy Showtime comedy. Unfortunate, but that's Showtime. The crudity, dildos and bare bums won't be everyone's cup of tea but this time around it's better edited and much more engaging than first season.

First-time Film Maker Troy Duffy had ten years to learn from his mistakes in the original "Boondock Saints." He's incredibly lucky to get a second chance at it, but its a lost opportunity.

There are two good one-liners in the movie. The rest of the dialog is atrocious: "I'm so smart I make smart people feel retarded." The Humour just isn't funny: One of the FBI Agents is called Kuntsler, so they call him "Kunty". If these have you in stitches, then this could be the movie for you.

The story is incoherent. A lot of gangsters get shot, but they're so poorly defined and you can't keep track of who they are or even what it's all about. This was a flaw in the original, and you would have thought in the ten years since Duffy might have thought about it and corrected it. No such luck.

There is no tension. Unlike the first movie, this one is played as a tongue-in-cheek comedy, complete with a stereotypical Mexican for comedy relief. There are a few friendly deaths along the way perhaps to remind us this is "serious business," but they don't register amongst the slapstick.

Apart from the fact he's played by Billy Connelly, there is nothing endearing about the character of Il Duce. His death is paint-by-numbers film making that doesn't carry the gravitas that Rocco's death did in the original. It is as if Duffy tries to imitate the original film without being quite sure how how he - or they - did it first time round.

In the first film despite his hubris and inexperience Duffy was able to turn in a relatively entertaining movie. One of the questions the documentary "Overnight" failed to answer was: Is Duffy a natural-born film maker, or did the original film's financiers parachute in a experienced production team to run the production him? The poor quality of this sequel suggests it was the latter.

Duffy had a good seminal idea for the original film, but that was it. There was so much wasted potential here.

Even casting the twins as sheep farmers at the beginning is lame, when we could have begun with them on the run after ten years dishing out justice - just as they promised they would be doing at the end of the first movie.

Peter Fonda who has a small cameo at the end is extremely good. Julie Benz provides some nice eye candy. Many have criticized her over-the-top accent and cowgirl outfit, but given the cornball tone of the movie what were they expecting? Benz is a capable actress doing what Duffy told her to do.

There's not much to enjoy here: The slow motion gun fights don't have the freshness they had in the original. That one of the twins now looks a bit on the fat side doesn't help. The bad guys running with pistols on a big estate look unconvincing. Apart from one shot with Peter Fonda at the end, the cinematography was pedestrian. Only the most dedicated fans could enjoy this movie. I am a fan of the original, but not this sequel.

An hour in I found myself wishing the movie was about to end. That's never a good sign: 4 / 10.

Suggest you watch "Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels" instead.

I only gave this movie 1 out of 10 because at the beginning a baby is blown away with a shot gun. There is blood and guts everywhere. The narrator says they hate the baby's crying and it's fat face. It's meant to be funny, but it isn't.

It's a shame because the rest of the movie was mostly entertaining and the message - the worship of stupid - was one worth listening too, though in the second half the movie the characters do the very thing they are preaching against.

I would have given it 6 out of 10, but the baby killing reduces that to 1 out of 10.

PS. If you are a sociopath please click 'Not Useful'. ;-)

"Overnight" has been described as the true-life story of a ballsy blue-collar independent film maker taking on a millionaire movie mogul tyrant. Guess which one you end up rooting for?

Troy Duffy was a bartender with no movie experience. He'd never before written a script or even made a short. One day the millionaire head of Miramax Studios, Harvey Weinstein, strolls into Duffy's bar, buys a script off him and offers him $15M to direct the movie with his own choice of cast. "Overnight" Duffy was touted as the new Tarantinto. Stars flock to get drunk and hang out with him, hoping to get a part in the next "Pulp Fiction."

Duffy asked friends Tony Montana and Mark Smith to document his rise to fame with a video camera. What they captured was arrogance the likes of which we've before seen on camera. If "Overnight" was fiction it would be dismissed as too over-the-top to be believable.

"Overnight" does however have flaws, in that there are many unanswered questions: Why did Harvey Weinstein sign an unknown quantity like Duffy? Why did Miramax suddenly drop him? Why do Harvey Weinstein and the actors never tell their side of the story?

Montana and Smith have answered these questions in interviews, but they really should have included them in the documentary:

In Hollywood just because a studio buys your script doesn't mean it's going to be become a movie. Sometimes they buy a script to stop another studio from getting it. Sometimes they buy on name alone. "Boondock Saints" is a great name, and some claim Weinstein hadn't even read the script when he bought it.

It also depends on whether any big name actors show interest. Miramax sent their A-list star Ewan McGregor to meet Duffy in the hope they would hit it off and pair up. Instead McGregor returned disillusioned by Duffy's arrogance, drunkenness and inexperience. Although the documentary glosses over this, it was the turning point and from here it was all over: On top of Duffy's personal attacks, the questionable quality of the script and Miramax's own finances it was then Weinstein decided it was time to bail. Rather than being blacklisted, it seems no one wanted to work with him. But "Overnight" stays well away from this and leaves us scratching our heads. If anything, it looks like Duffy is being discriminated against because the Hollywood elite won't work with a 'First Time Director'. It would have greatly benefited if they explained what actually happened in-film.

"Overnight" does go very easy on Weinstein. Montana and Smith were in no mood to pick a fight with him and gave him an advance screening to let him know they weren't attacking him. Perhaps having seen it he felt there was nothing he needed to add?

As for the actors we see almost nothing of, we assume they didn't sign releases to appear in the documentary. Actors aren't in the habit of criticizing their directors, no matter how deserved that criticism may be. Even Billy Connelly who has spoke about Duffy in public will only say the kindest of things. Montana and Smith said in interviews that the actors weren't impressed by Duffy's begging them to go out drinking with him, when their attitude was "Troy, we're trying to make a movie here." If they can tell us this in interviews, why couldn't they tell us this in the documentary?

Montana and Smith said they decided not to do a "Making Of" documentary, but go too far the other way. We never learn why, despite Duffy having no experience at all, in "Boondock" he was able to turn in a relatively polished film. Is he a natural talent, or did the film's financiers parachute in an experienced production team to run the production for him? The question is never asked nor answered.

Montana and Smith have been accused of being vindictive but given the way Duffy treats them on camera I think you can credit them with showing a lot of restraint. They said they left out many of Duffy's racist, sexist and homophobic rants. They also don't talk of Duffy's attempts to kill their documentary after his movie bombed at the box office and the record label dropped his band for poor sales.

We are told it is bad to take joy in the failure of others, but Duffy makes this difficult. It's not so much his arrogance, but his appalling treatment of everyone - especially his "friends", and that he never admitted how things turned out is his own damned fault.

The sad thing is that apart the film's financiers nobody did well out of the whole "Boondock" experience. Despite being known to Harvey Weinstein, Montana and Smith have been relegated to minor roles in the industry. Duffy's band never took off, and his actors never got their big break. Duffy himself couldn't land another job until he made "Boondock Saints II" ten years later. The sequel made a bit of money off the name, but reaffirmed that Duffy has no real talent. No good came of this, except as a morality play for the rest of us.

There are many Troy Duffys in the world, but few of them are willing to show it on-camera. When Donald Trump does it you know he's hamming it up, but with Troy Duffy you get the real deal. For this rawness and despite its flaws "Overnight" makes compelling viewing. (If Montana and Smith decide to re-release this documentary with the missing material, I'll give them another two stars.)

The coolest thing about "Boondock Saints" is the name. The stylized shoot-outs come a distant second.

It begins with an interesting enough premise for a plot: A pair of Irish twins living in Boston listen to a Church sermon and agree for no particular reason it's a good idea to rid the world of bad men. When a few Russian Mafia threaten a friend, one thing leads to another and the Mafia end up dead in the back alley.

The twins take that as a cue to assassinate all of Boston's gangsters. Here the movie stalls, because we don't know who these gangsters are or what they did. You could drop any of these scenes and it wouldn't make the slightest bit of difference to the story. The stylized shoot-outs are however entertaining, but the movie ends up more like a series of disconnected music videos.

I have to admit the twist at the end made me smile, and Willem Dafoe is fun to watch.

The paper thin plot is nonetheless full of holes: In one scene Billy Connelly as supposedly the world's greatest hit man, the twins and their ex-Mafia friend exchange fire at point blank range. The world's greatest hit man having emptied six pistols without bringing down a single man turns and runs. Everyone else walks away saying 'F' a lot.

"Boondock Saints" has gained cult status, no doubt because of the disconnected music videos. It isn't a great movie or even a good one, but I've seen far worse and it does provide mindless entertainment and a few laughs. For those reasons I found I quite enjoyed it.

"Boondock Saints" was made by a bartender with no prior film experience. If you had to compare it to another in the genre, you would pick "Reservoir Dogs" made by a video store clerk with no prior film experience.

The name of the bartender was Troy Duffy. The name of the video store clerk was Quentin Tarantino. If you're wondering why Tarantino became so big while Duffy has disappeared, check out the documentary "Overnight". It turns out the making of "Boondock Saints" was far more entertaining that the movie itself.

This should have been a great movie. Instead we got a remake of Arnie's "Commando" that takes itself too seriously.

"The Expendables" does have an all-star cast, but many of those are all-too-short cameos. While this adds a novelty value, it also breaks the suspension of disbelief and inevitably leaves you disappointed when those big names never return. I expected Bruce and Arnie parachuting onto the island with them. Instead we never see them again. In a sense, this leaves the audience feeling cheated because that wasn't what the movie promised.

The action is poorly filmed. Yes, it's shaky cam, but it also follows a recent trend in filming fights with disorienting close-ups so you're never sure what is going on. Nor do you care. The characterizations are poorly handled.

There's no attempt to introduce characters, and many of the actors have an air of smugness as if their mere presence on screen is a treat for the audience. I hate to break it to them but while there are some big names here, others are still largely unknown. As many of them sport bald heads it's hard to tell them apart. They could have called this movie "Stallone and a bunch of Bald Guys." The few attempts at humor fall flat. They could have had a lot of fun with the fact most of the actors here are old men, but they take themselves far too seriously for that and run around as if they're 20 year olds.

There's a lot of CGI. Some of it is clearly fake. When Road (Couture) falls into a flame-filled trench one can only think "These CGI flames are making me thirsty." There's a lot of CGI violence like people ripped in half, but it's so clearly fake it didn't bother me.

The plot is unimaginative and predictable. There is zero suspense. The sole twist is unconvincing. So is the idea that Stallone would return for a woman where there was no evident attraction and then leave so quickly at the end when he didn't have to.

I don't blame the actors for this (except for Stallone who directed it), but it does show that while these actors may be big names, much of their on-screen talent comes from the director and the film crews that bring them to life. Compare the flat performances here with what James Cameron did for Arnie in "True Lies," but this movie shows that Sylvester Stallone is no James Cameron. Only credit here I give here is to Mickey Rourke who does try and inject some humanity into his usual d-bag role.

"The Expendables" promises an all-star fun-filled outing, but it's a poorly made movie which doesn't deliver. Yet with a cast like this it literally couldn't fail and earned an undeserved $275M at the box office on its $80M budget. If you wonder why so many bad movies are being made, this is why; they make money regardless. The inevitable sequel will be out August 2012. I hope that Simon West who replaces Stallone as Director does a better job and can make a success of what should be a great franchise.

I had been looking forward to this movie. Many film critics raved about it, and it stars Tilda Swinton who had some role in getting the movie made. Tilda is a great actress and only appears in outstanding movies, right? The subject sounded fascinating: parents desperately try to compensate for the sociopathic behavior of a child who grows up to do something terrible. It is a great crucible for a story, and gives us a chance to peer into the mind of such a person. It's a story that, properly told, should bring tears to any parent's eye.

Sadly this movie was a major disappointment.

It wasn't just bad. It was boring. The first half drags.

Writer/Director Lynne Ramsay has this annoying habit of jumping between different time-lines, but the jumps are unconnected. This is not just confusing, but she kept repeating the same scenes laboring the same points. It became tedious. I think Ramsay is trying to be arty, but art is supposed to convey feeling. Instead this was boring and incoherent.

After dragging through the first half the movie finally progresses, but never lives up to its title. The parents never do "talk about Kevin". Apart from checking his hearing as a toddler, they never seek medical or psychological help, or talk to a social worker. We never see a single teacher who, over ten years, you think might have noticed something. Relatives or friends who might comment on his behavior (and could provide a better narrative than Tilda merely looking stone-faced) are completely absent in this movie. Yes, despite Eva (Tilda's character) being a travel author and adventurer she somehow has no friends. And even when Kevin pours caustic soda in his sister's eye and sticks the family pet down the waste disposal unit the parents still don't seek help. No family is this stupid, particularly when the safety of another sibling is at stake.

Books that sell tend to have solid stories, so movies adapted from them don't have a problem with plot holes. Ramsay instead omitted many of the book's explanations and introduced the plot holes on her own accord:

She has the townspeople vilifying Eva to the point she can't walk down the street without being slapped. But Eva lost her husband and daughter too. I don't think an entire town would be that heartless. If everyone hates her and she is that miserable there, then why doesn't she just move? She goes from being a wealthy author in a huge house to living in a miserable shack with a menial job. Why? There is no explanation. I've assumed for this review that Kevin is a sociopath, but you wouldn't know from the movie because they never go anywhere near these subjects.

Ramsay appears to be squeamish or chose not to sensationalize the violence, because there is very little blood and almost no violence. Those scenes where something does happen are so heavily edited you might not even realize it. The school massacre at the end of the movie is so heavily edited it looks like Kevin is standing in an empty stadium shooting arrows into thin air. At the end she finally does show Kevin's father and sister dead, at which point I wondered why she edited the earlier violence to the point of incoherence.

If you are making a movie about violence, then be prepared to show it. If for whatever reason you choose not to, then at least don't include the violent scenes with the violence cropped out of it. People either look, or they look away. If they look, they look at what is going on. By trying to do neither Ramsay's result simply ends up looking like bad camera-work; like a wildlife documentary not filming the lion but the patch of grass 30 feet to the right of them.

The book apparently gives a lot of background which Ramsay left out. In the book Eva resents baby Kevin for bringing an end to her adventurous lifestyle, but the movie only hints at this. (The truth is this happens to all parents, and we deal with it.) Likewise that baby Kevin's constant crying shows there something is wrong with him. (Again, this affects all parents. Again, we deal with it.) Why doesn't Eva ever talk to her mother, who is supposedly just a phone call away? These sort of errors make me wonder if Ramsay has any children of her own, or consulted parents when she was writing the movie.

Some have praised the acting, but I wouldn't. Tilda, usually a great actress, wears the same stone-faced expression. Ezra Miller looks mean and sneers, but it would be unfair to blame the actors because they are given nothing to work with. I'm not sure if John C. Reilly is necessarily miscast as Eva's husband, but there is no chemistry between Tilda and he.

Except for the minor role of Kevin's sister, the characters in this movie do so many stupid things it is impossible to empathize with them.

This film is a missed opportunity. It had good source material, a great actress and an intriguing concept. Ramsay should have spent more time on the story and less time choosing out-of-place songs to play over Ms. Swinton's driving scenes.

This movie's fatal shortcoming isn't that it is bad, because even bad movies can be entertaining. It's problem is that it is boring. Special credit to film critic Mick LaSalle of San Francisco Chronicle who called this movie for the bore it is. Most other movie critics were taken in by it and praised it as art.