THE HOLE

Ah look, a documentary about Reaper's favourite erogenous zone! Actually no, thankfully we'll never have to see that, this is a alleged "kids" movie by slightly twisted "Gremlins" director Joe Dante. I say alleged because if you showed this to an average child it will probably scar them irreversibly and reduce them to a twitching whimpering mess. I dont know which genius producer in Hollywood suddenly pulled his thumb out of his hole and said "you know what we f**king need? A creepy, english language surrealist hybrid of Cellar Dweller and  Ringu, except for f**king kids!" but fair play to him as he obviously hates children. A single mum and her two sons (a) generic mardy teen knobhead and (b) younger, bowler-haircutted mccauly culkin clone who incidentally acts his big brother off the screen, move to a new house with a mysterious heavily bolted trapdoor in the cellar and some chirpy jailbait next door. So the door gets opened, and next thing they are up to their pubeless groins in ghost children and homicidal clown dolls.


The brothers have a pleasingly violent relationship, there's a minimum of cheese, there's some creepy moments and thankfully a lack of CGI. It has a real 80's feel. I liked it, but it loses its way in the last 20 minutes and the end is just...weak. Don't show it to your kids unless you want to spend years paying for therapy because they start screaming every time you drive past McDonalds.

MACHETE - or, "meh"chete.

This is what happens when the internet turns into some kind of giant, free focus group for eager to please filmakers. Ok, the fake Grindhouse trailer looked quite a laugh but constructing an entire movie around a series of OTT moneyshots...? No. Just...no. Tell you what, check out the red band trailer that was released about a month ago. That's all you need to see. There's nothing else in the movie, and the remaining eighty-odd minutes are just Rodriguez killing time between the trailer spots, treading water and basically just pulling his pud. And with the outrageous eye candy onscreen, who can blame him for using his camera as a penis and the audience as a massive oily frantic hand? Jessica Alba...just ridiculously fit, useless character saddled with fist-bitingly bad dialogue...Michelle Rodrigeuz, looking honed toned and ready to be boned, and as always looking never more than 24 hours away from a fairly decent moustache, Linsay Lohan, who's famous or something, and a bevvy of other lovely ladies with their boobs and arses out. This is A GOOD THING.

There's loads of washed up eighties action fodder in here as well but apart from a nifty double shotgun decapitation IT'S ALL IN THE RED BAND TRAILER. I felt the same about 300, saw the ad and thought, hmm, looks cool and ended up sitting through filler while waiting for bits I'd already seen. A trailer shouldnt be a whore giving up all the good stuff. For the rest of it, well any kind of criticism is pretty subjective as it's meant to be crap, sort of. I just find it strange that it takes a modern film-maker 20-30 mill to make a film that looks like it was shot with a budget of the square root of f**k all. Maybe all the money went towards Alba, Rodriguez, De Niro, Segal etc's trailers and personal masseuses....and as for Danny Trejo as scrotum-faced Machete...good bad guy, mediocre good guy with zero screen presence and forgettable lines. The action that isnt in the trailer is meh and it just isnt as much fun as it promised. I cant believe I'm giving a movie with an intestinal abseiling scene a thumbs down but there you go. Isnt life strange?

NIGHTMARE ON ELM STREET - Burnt Fondler Vengeance

I have no objection to remakes. It doesnt seem that long since the last 1st gen episode Freddy vs Jason, but if someone wants to randomly restart the franchise with new ideas and new tech, why not? I don't care. Its acceptable for Superheroes to get an occasional "refresh", why not stripy jumper wearing child molesters? I'll tell you why not...BECAUSE THIS IS W**K. I was never a massive fan of the original or indeed Wes Craven, but he's come up with a few cracking concepts in his time even if the delivery has frequently been a bit of a shambles. The sort-of classic original had some gory kills, a strange trippy feel and the second scariest dermatologically-challenged glove-wearing child-toucher ever. But it does look dated now, which means in my mind a rework is fully justified. It's been 26 years! But by hell what a feeble-minded dead-on-arrival fraud we have here.

 I'm actually struggling to assemble my dislike for this abhorrence into coherence...What we have here is a real clusterf**k of a spasticated script, high school students (who all look at least 25 years old) screaming and frowning a lot, loud noises masquerading as scares, Freddy now repackaged as a decomposing alien shortarse, lame versions of the originals setpieces....cheap, dumb, boring, childish, predictable, illogical, repetitive, repetitive, repetitive....After the rubbish Friday the 13th, Halloween and Texas Chainsaw Massacre reboots here's another greasy turd for the turd-pile. I suppose it'll be Hellraiser next. Get your wellies on.

One, Two Freddy's coming for you, 
Three, Four, better lock your door, 
Five, Six, grab your crucifix, 
Seven, Eight, gonna stay up late, 
Nine, Ten THIS SUCKS FARTS FROM DEAD CHIMPS

REPO MEN - THE LUNG GOODBYE

Organs....arent they weird? A motley crew of ugly blobs, shiny tubes and purple squishy bits which somehow come together to form a balanced organic mechanism which allows us to process food, create other humans and write rubbish on the internet. Youve got your alpha-organs like your brain, heart, lungs and knob, then a secondary lot like er, kidneys and spleen and bladders, and then useless lumps of meat like appendix, the Bez of the human body, which should be surgically removed from babies at birth along with tonsils, wisdom teeth, earlobes and foreskins. Optimised babies...the way forward. Like little human jpgs. "What are you banging on about now" you're probably shouting. "Stop talking about babies and organs" Well I will, but this whole review is going to have more organs stuffed into it than your missus on her last girly holiday in faliraki, so get used to it.

Colon then, who told Jude Law he was leading man material? Listen, he's a perfectly competent actor, And very suited to support roles like in Gattaca and Sherlock Holmes but with his shop-window-mannequin good looks, strange warlock's hairline and general oestrogenal aura he's not "ovary" suited to action man status.In this filum he plays a organ repossesion officer in the near future. Along with boss-eyed shambler Forrest Whittaker he spends his day tracking down miscreants who havent been keeping up on the financal installments on their new stomach, kidneys etc. When they catch the gut burglars they dont serve them with a stern letter with shouty red ink on it, no they whip out their scapels and get repo-ing.

If you've seen The Meaning of Life there was a sketch where this exact scenario is played out so there it is...it's a cross between an obscure sketch on Monthy Pythons least well known movie and a sci-fi chase em up like Minority Report. The first third is enjoyable - The lads go about their jobs, spill a lot of blood and look like they enjoy their work. The middle bit is dull, lots of running about as one of them ends up skint and packing a borrowed organ. The last third goes completely mental, throws in hardcore violence, a love scene that redefines "penetration", a brilliantly casual throat stabbing and even throws in a Total Recall type narrative spasm. It's very strange overall and the casual observer will hate it but if you have a bit of undemanding geek dna you'll probably sort of like it. I did...and if Repo Men was a woman I wouldnt think twice about "donating" her my "organ". Hmm.

Incidentally its got nothing to do with cult 80s movie Repo Man, which starred Emilio Estevez. Where's he now?

INTERESTING FACTS ABOUT ORGANS
The SKIN is the biggest organ in the human body, especially if you are a fat f**ker
The LIVER is the second largest, unless you are IRISH
A dried LUNG makes a handy "storage facility" for wasps while you are harvesting their JAM
Licking a live bull's VAS DEFERENS reputedly endows one with great VIRILITY
If your LOWER INTESTINE was removed from your body, unravelled and stretched out along the entire length of  a tennis court you would die from TRAUMA and MASSIVE BLOOD LOSS
WOMEN blink twice as much as men. This is why they have trouble following complicated MOVIES as they miss many SUBTLE PLOT POINTS and VISUAL CUES
Your EYES never grow. But your NOSE and EARS do until you die.
CONGENITAL MICROPENIS is the medical term given to those cursed with a tiny KNOB

Thats enough for now. But come back soon for some more medical titbits from your Dr Gii-bag.

Burning Bright - HELLO KITTY

So you've gone down to the kitchen at 3am to get a sandwich. You shouldnt be eating f**king carbs at this hour anyway but there are more pressing matters.You turn on the light and what's in front of you, turning your bowels to freezing water? No, not a midget burglar masturbating into your italian cheese pasta, but a feckin great...tiger.

Is that scary? I'm not sure and thats probably one of the problems that Burning Bright has. Being trapped in your house during a storm with a massive hungry carnivore would probably be mildly fatal and generally unenjoyable but it's not really the stuff nightmares are made of. So this tiger, who - according to Meat "Remaining Men Together" Loaf - is a bollix of a tiger who once ate a horse, gets purchased by some cracker with deluded ideas about creating a safari in his back garden. A mighty storm descends and a tidy young lass and her young brother - who has a touch of the screaming rainmans and the regulation hollywood child bowler haircut - get locked into their house with the stripy malevolent feline. Technically, It's actually all done really well considering such a odd premise, but there's no real sense of menace and it's all very tame.

 The tiger growls a bit, eats through some doors and flails at our heroes in a dodgy after-effectsy way but meh. At least the house is massive, so we get a lot of running from room to room. Who'd get sick of that eh.

"Jeez you got a big pussy! Jeez you got a big pussy!"
"Why'd you say that twice?"
"I didnt! AAAAAAGH HELP A MASSIVE TIGER HAS GOT MY LEG"

FROZEN - "you ah nat sending me to da coolah"

Have you ever been snowboarding? You have? You liked it? You enjoyed snow jetting up your bleeding nostrils, shattering your arse again and again, wiping out an elderly woman skier at 50mph and constantly having middle class french people look at you like you'd fallen out of a dogs bottom? Or was that just me. Seems like a lot of hassle just for a few facebook pics. Frozen details the trials and tribulations of three young americans who gets trapped on a ski lift after hours on the side of a mountain. It starts to freeze. Help is not on the way. And they can hear howling...Surprisingly decent, tight little thriller this, from the director of the not-very-good Hatchet. It's as big a step for him as a film maker as The Descent was for Neil Marshall after the enjoyable but messy and amateurish Dog Soldiers.

Bones pop through clothing, skin freezes to metal, frostbite starts to rot flesh...it's surprisingly bleak and very cleverly constructed. I give it a shaking, frostbitten thumbs up. Incidentally, you know the best way to cure hypothermia is to climb into a sleeping bag with a naked woman? Thats a scientific fact. There's no -real- evidence for it...but it is scientific fact. I just feel sorry for the poor naked woman who is having a giant fat nude freezing beardy man being shoved into her sleeping bag.Why is he fat? Why has he got a beard? Has he got hypothermia because he's nude, or did that happen afterwards? Only Reaper knows, and after he went off to the toilet with Stringer Bell he hasnt been seen.

Please send Reaper back to us Mr Bell.

Please

:(

Piranha 3d - FISH AND TITS

I always thought that if 3d had any future whatsoever it would be in the veiny, stretchy, fourth-wall-defying world of porn. Piranha does its best to gnaw the peripherals off this notion with such clumsy 3d that the veritable boobalanche that rolls over the viewer will just leave you with squinty-eyed nipple-fatigue. Is it just me? I can barely remember Kelly Brook's prolonged nudey submarine lesbecian frolicing. But it definitely happened. Yes. So....plot, there's some kind of random underwater seismic activity and a plural of prehistoric bastardfish are released into an american lake-resort teeming with horny teenaged fish food and some past-it Proper Actors.

Lots of screaming, wince-inducing but hilarious fish-related injuries and gore....the 3d is employed poorly and purely for novelty "check out the floaty severed penis" type shots...still, quite enjoyed it overall. It marks a semi-return to form for director Alexandre Aja after the badly fumbled Mirrors, but it's not in the same league as his excellent and f**ked up The Hills Have Eyes remake and the even more f**ked up Haute Tension.

If you love carnivorous fish and women whose clothes keep falling off, and who doesnt, then you could do a lot worse, but I'd wait till it's on dvd ...just so you can express your appreciation of Kelly Brook's tits performance in that special way.

By the way that pic above? Doesn't happen in the movie. Weird.

THE EXPENDABLES - Grumpy old men

Age....it gets to us all. Look at Reaper...once possessed of Samson-like flowing locks of curled knicker-dampening masculinity...now his head a fallow field of wispiness and lost dreams, punctuated by the occasional boil. Watching The Expendables is an uneasy experience for those of us of the VHS generation...once strapping young bucks eagerly scanning the shelves of the local "video store" for the latest "18" rated Arnie/Stallone/Van Damme...now in decline, flab-fringed baggy-eyed kidults watching pirated hd screeners on our vast plasma screens while frantically ramming a kamagra down our urethra as our leatherfaced f**k buddy screams racist abuse at our malfunctional ugly genitals. I don't want to speculate about his genitals, but Sly looks quite frighteningly muscular for a 64 year old man, god knows what unholy cocktail of steroids and surgery is responsible but Arnie, a mere 63, looks quite frail in comparison when he wanders on for his 30 seconds or so of glory. I have to admit I was quite impressed with Stallone's Rambo reboot, just for its sheer blood-drenched audacity, so was quite looking forward to this much-hyped testosterone bath.

In truth, this fan-ad made the Expendables look like a lot more fun than it actually is....it's very 80's and refreshingly not trying to be any way self-referencial but its also very stupid and doesnt make the most of the gathered titans of mancinema. For a start, Arnie and Bruce Willis are in it for a matter of seconds. Glorified cameos. There's still plenty of macho to go around mind.... Let's just list the cast or I'll sure I'll forget someone. The cast IS the film here, the story is a load of bollix.

Stallone: The leader of The Expendables, and the moral core of this group of withered mercs. Shoots people.

Statham: uses his full range of facial expressions (1) and dramatic range (whispery staring hard man all the way to shouty stabby hard man) as Stallone's knife-happy cohort and bromantic interest. Most of the movie is Sly and Statham, the latter probably gets the best action sequences.

Dolph Lundgren: Has been languishing in direct-to-dvd limbo for decades now...malevolent golem-like bruiser here.

Jet Li: Still can't speak english properly. Seems to be here for comic relief, as he's quite small. And everyone else is massive, innit.

Some Wrestler guys: Don't know who they are. One of them has a massive automated shotgun which is quite impressive.

Mickey Rourke: The Expendables Armourer. Stays at home, delivers some raspy monologues and has a knife-related rivalry with Statham.

Arnie: As mentioned, shows up, delivers about 4 lines of dialogue, then wanders off.

Bruce Willis: Shows up for one scene, gives Stallone his mission, then disappears. Could have used more of Bruce, he's probably got more screen presence than any two or three Expendables combined.

There's bone-crunching hand-to-hand action, some iffy cg blood, a high body count and a pretty anticlimatic final battle. It's only really a minor skirmish, just another day in the office for the lads. The end would hint this is an attempt to get a new franchise off the ground, but while it's mildly entertaining watching these lumbering man-mountains assert their flagging virility it's not vintage stuff or even particularly memorable. Or maybe that's just the alzheimer's kicking in.

EVEN WORSE THAN USUAL

Just a quickie today luv, now get your knickers off.

2001 MANIACS - FIELD OF SCREAMS
Awful, awful, shot-on-video sequel to a not very good remake of a terrible 60's thing. Acting that isnt even inert enough to be called wooden, its actively irritating. A gang of useless cannon fodder shooting a ropey reality show run into the southern cannibal/maniac/ghost people. I think its supposed to be a comedy, and there's nothing worse than an attempted horror comedy with no laughs, no budget and strangely almost no proper gore. It actually looks like it was shot in less time than it takes to watch, which probably violates some obscure scientific principal. There are some women with their tops off and some half-hearted lesbecian action but if you are that desperate for nudey action just go here and type "lesbian boob woman". Aggh...just did that, hope you like em with some meat on their bones man.

HEADER
You might be thinking this when you hear the term "Header" but no! If youre some redneck maniac with handy access to some power tools and a grudge you'll have a different definition, namely that of drilling a hole in some poor feckers head and having sex with their brain. That's right...actual brain-f**king. All the criticisms from the movie above, except even worse, with additional cranial rape.Whats the point? Turned it off after about 30 minutes as I felt the filmakers were not only raping my brain, but writing rude messages on its facebook wall and trying to give it a wedgie. Leave my brain alone! I cant believe this is the third movie in as many months I've seen where people are getting killed by penises.

AFTERLIFE
Not be confused with the orrible Aftermath, but also set in a funeral home with all kind of post-mortem machinations. Wednesday Adams has a fight with her wetend of a boyfriend (the guy from Drag me To Hell, looks like a deranged child's drawing of Keanu Reeves) and gets involved in a car accident, wakes up in a funeral home where she finds Liam Neeson telling her that she is in fact dead. Is she dead? Or is it some kind of mental mindgame? She spends large parts of the movie naked, which will have everyone's inner paedo rubbing their grubby palms together as she still looks about 14 and in fact resembles a big nude fetus in a ginger wig and makeup. A million miles from being a classic, but compared to the previous 2 sense offenders it's David f**king Lean. At least it's got things like a proper score, cinematography, direction, editing etc. The end is really going to wind people up as well as its ambiguous to say the least.

Until the Light Takes Us - Stabby metal weirdos and their burny ways

Do you remember Anvil! The Story of Anvil? Well this is nothing like that. It's a way overlong documentary about Norwegian Black Metal...just what we've all been crying out for. Now, metal in general's pretty far down the foodchain when it comes to social credibility - dont get me wrong, quite partial to a shouty blast of Dillenger Escape Plan myself from time to time - but even among the vaguely geeky, soap-dodging echelons of "the scene" the black metallers are like that kid in class who ate worms and smelt like athlete's foot. Just check out an Immortal video on youtube and witness the unholy and hilarious depths which this sub-genre plumbs. The story in UTLTU isnt funny at all though. It concerns a small clique of black metal musicians in Norway in the early 90's and their frankly bizarre descent into church burnings and homicide. Some of the interviews with the guilty parties are quite candid and provide a vaguely interesting insight into what happens when boredom and low self esteem meet bad music and f**ked up nazi/pagan ideology. The documentary is lacking elsewhere though, and would work a hell of a lot better at 50 minutes long without all the hilariously bad performance art rubbish and tuneless fisher-price keyboard soundtrack.

A Serbian Film - It's sodomy o'clock baby

Well...the world cup's over. As the screams and self-flagellation of the english/french/italians fade away, its time to reflect. And... it wasnt very good. But a bad World Cup is like a bad blow job...it's still pretty goddamn good. So ditch your vuvezela, take your penis out of your cat's mouth and read the words. Which I am typing...here.

Oh dear! Well THAT was remarkably unpleasant. I am currently restraining the urge to scrub my monitor and hard drive with bleach...and maybe my eyes and soul as well. Only kidding...it's not that bad. But it's not nice either...basically, you know you are in cinematic freefall when one of the LEAST offensive kills in a movie is someone getting skullf**ked to death via their eye socket (possible opportunity for an ad campaign for specsavers here?) Serbian Film isnt a non-stop bloodbath - there are 4 or 5 scenes that are staggeringly grim - but the overall tone is just bleak, grimy and explicitly sleazy. If youve seen the trailer you know what to expect.

Retired caveman-looking porn star Milosh has two things going for him...(a) a lovely family and (b) a legendary willy. Some sick f**k producer appears out of nowhere and offers him a fortune to de-retire and appear in some conceptual porno epic which needs his supercharged penis. After a few unpleasant early on-set experiences milosh has had enough and walks...needless to say, thats not the end for him, and milosh spends most of the second half of the movie nude and up to his eyeballs in horse viagra killing or f**king pretty much anything the film crew shove in front of him. There are no happy endings here...for anyone. Very harsh...but all executed very well indeed, it's not some amateurish cheapo gore-flick made by and for 14 year old idiots, but it's an actual, serious movie...which just happens to have horrendous scenes of machete sex decapitation, baby rape(!!) and a final coda which is so unbelievably mean-spirited that I actually started laughing in shock.
Not a chance in hell this is going to get through the censors either, so if you're really that curious to see the current holder of extreme cinema's equivalent of the Jules Rimet trophy then you know where to look, you sicko.

PS Ive just realised this is the second movie I've seen in the past month or so involving people being killed by erections (other peoples obviously) I don't know if this is a reflection of a growing cinematic trend or my own viewing habits. Let's just pray Toy Story 3 doesnt go down this particular phallocidal route.

COMING SOON!

Why aren't you watching the World Cup fatty? Ah never mind, pull up a chair, stick some bees in your ears and crack open a warm beer, it'll be just like South Africa, without the endemic rape petty crime. I'll have to leave you there though, because I AM watching the world cup so let's just have a quick look at some exciting movies about to drop. You've probably heard about a couple of these already...if not...then you probably never will!

A SERBIAN FILM
This looks....a tad pretty f**kin messed up. Advance word is that it's genuinely excessive...jaw-dropping trailer, makes even Master Gi-Bag a bit hesitant about seeing the full filum...



More Bold Balkans! LIFE AND DEATH OF A PORNO GANG



So our friends in Europe are still pushing the limits, whats going on in Japan?

GOTHIC & LOLITA
By the perpetrators of Machine Girl and Tokyo Gore Police, why not indulge in some cheapo CG, meatheaded humour and fine engrish, after all "this is the only movie that  blows stresses and blues of your boring life!" I'll take your word for that lads. All your base, etc.



and eh..the rest....

PREDATORS
They surely cant f**k this up again can they? What's that wet-end from King Kong doing in here? And bloody Morpheus as well! Fingers crossed eh?



SPLICE
What the...there's that guy from King Kong again, this time looking like an unattractive emo chick. Looks like Species by way of David Cronenberg...there are dodgy versions of it out there lurking in the dark corners of the interweb, but they arent decent quality, otherwise you'd be reading a review of it now. Or possibly doing something more productive.




CENTURION
I reckon this one is just about to hit the internet equivalent of that dodgy stall in Blackrock Market that sells 3 dvds in a blank case for a fiver so expect a review fairly soon. It's Neil Marshall, even when he's bad he's good so hopes are high here. Cant be worse than Valhalla f**kin Rising anyway



Thats all for now, I hear the in-no-way-annoying siren drone of the vuvuzela so I'll post again when I actually have something to say. ANYONE BUT FRANCE

PS I watched Alice in Wonderland, and as I expected it was a tedious, overlong and narcissictic Burton-by-the-numbers load of emo wank. I wasnt surprised. And I bet you're not surprised that I'm not surprised. Has Tim Burton done anything decent since Sleepy Hollow?

Here's some more films...mostly pretty bad ones!

Right, well...I'm ill. Very ill indeed. It feels like beelzebub himself has ejaculated broken glass down my throat and my entire body feels like its got toothache so lets pass that general feeling of unhealthiness onto you gentle reader. No clever wordy foreplay, lets get your mental underpants off and onto the rough and unlubricated penetrating reviews.

BIRDEMIC - SHOCK AND TERROR

F**k me. So this is what it's come to. A "movie" (and I use that word with grave reservations) which has gained significant internet buzz simply because it's so bad it doesn't really deserve to be described as a serious piece of work at all. Look at the trailer. This has really annoyed me to be honest, its obviously a calculated attempt to deliberately make a truly bad movie. It's utterly without worth, but of course in our sensation-craving tinternet culture an extreme of whatever variety can be passed off as a virtue. Don't buy in to this horsec*ck of swill, I watched this entire f**kin thing and i'm genuinely offended by its laziness and cynicism. Just...no. Believe it or not, its actually F**KING BORING watching something that looks like it was made by special needs teenagers with a stolen camera for 100 minutes, really really boring. F**k off Birdemic. Non-actors being attacked by animated gifs, yeah maybe that's worth 5 hilarious minutes on youtube but this?

Everyone involved is in the wrong industry. Genuine Bad Movies should be accidental, like babies. Mongy, harelipped babies perhaps, but inspiring a vague uncomfortable affection nonetheless. Watch The Room or Troll 2 or Deadly Spawn if you really do want to see a bona fide bad movie classic. Will writer-director James Nyugen have the bird seed to make a sequel? Who knows, but I reckon if you attached a camera to a chicken and made it film James Nyugen for a couple of days the resulting movie wouldnt be much worse than this contrived avian abortion.

SOMEONE'S KNOCKING AT THE DOOR

Have you heard the one about the grotesque fat rapey man with the 15 inch penis? No, its not one of lovely David Brennan's home videos on youtube ("I swear, someone stole them from my usb drive") It's the antagonist of this genitally fixated basement-quality horror endurance test. A bunch of terrible acting drug-happy medical students being raped to death by the aforementioned excessively-willied bad man forms the basis for this delightful little tale.

Eh....thats it really....the students are an unspeakable bunch of nob-ends and every moment where they are not being horribly murdered seems endless. So we've got awful, bad-improv acting, an ending that seems very similar to Reeker/Campfire Tales, detestable characters and face-palm dialogue, but it also has interesting weird sound editing/effects, and an agreeable grimy feel to it, and has VERNON F**KIN WELLS IN IT so...

Well I can't really recommend it because it's clearly complete and utter rubbish, but at the same time its also mental and wilfully warped, so well...go on then, just so you can go in to work the next day and tell people you just watched a terrible horror movie starring a penicidal serial killer, you'll be even more popular than before! (Have a wash as well, people are starting to talk)

THE GIRL WHO PLAYED WITH FIRE/ THE GIRL WHO KICKED THE HORNET'S NEST

The sequels to Steig Larsen's Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, but apparently despite having the same actors, shot back-to-back on a much lower budget intended to go straight to swedish TV. Didn't really notice a massive quality dip myself as I can't remember the original that well. And I only saw it a couple of months ago. THE GIRL WHO PLAYED WITH FIRE kicks off a year or so after the events of the original, dead-eyed goth hacker Lisbeth and froglike journo Micke get involved with deformed evil russian spies and James Bond-like unstoppable giant henchmen. It's not bad, it's pretty tight, some gratuitious lesbionic sex, bursts of graphic violence....quite enjoyed it.


The third one, THE GIRL WHO KICKED THE HORNET'S NEST is a f**king two hour courtroom-based bore-gy that finally drops all the plot pieces onto the table while the viewer stares at them and goes "WHAT, IS THAT IT? THAT'S IT?" I'm convinced these books/movies are only so massively popular because of chubby introspective females that see Lisbeth as a fascinating totem of aggressive feminine independence, and an equal number of socially-challenged geeky men who fantasise about showing Lisbeth the hetro-light (shining on their sweaty glans no doubt) when in actuality she's merely a borderline autistic computer nerd good with violence and useless at small talk. That's just not enough for me. But she does have a nice bottom. And she's far more interesting than the rest of the tedious lineup of zero-dimensional script fodder. Watch the one that isn't cack, skip the other, you'll be no worse off.

THE WOLFMAN

An American Werewolf in London is one of the greatest horror movies of the past 30 years. Big words. But I honestly think its a work of pure enduring class that still looms over the manwolf genre nearly 30 years later...there are quite a few movies that aspire to horror-comedy, more and more nowadays, as its easier to be mediocre at both than excel at either (exhibit A: Zombieland) but John Landis' 1981 masterpiece is actually properly scary, genuinely funny, clever and ultimately sad and melancholic. With awesome Rick Baker effects. And Nurse Jenny Agutter. Yes. I showed my little brother the transformation scene when he was about 5 and it made him cry. That's abuse, to be honest. It covers these disparate bases better than any other film I've ever seen and The Wolfman is one movie that, well let's not get carried away here because its nowhere near as good, but it uses AWIL as much as a reference as it does its alleged source material, the Lon Chaney original.

Really, its a bit AWIL meets Sleepy Hollow, with surprising amounts of carnage and gore. It's a bit camp, it's a bit messy, the transformation ratio is about 60% simian, 40% vulpine which makes the lycanthropic antagonist a bit unintentionally humorous, the movie also bears the hallmarks of being edited and post-produced by committee...but I enjoyed it. After the raft of awful straight to video shite I've endured of late it was pretty feckin decent. Well after Birdemic I think David Brennan dancing in his underpants miming "I'm Every Woman" for an hour and a half would be pretty feckin decent. And a turn-on, to be honest.

VALHALLA RISING

Look at that cover! F**king look at it! Quite possibly the most blatant bit of false advertising imaginable. Heres the synopsis, its sounds cool and I'm going to tell you why the actual film is not cool in the slightest, but actually w**k. Hard as nails, mute and optically challenged slave fighter from muddy viking-era scotland kills a few people in a grisly fashion to gain his freedom and then joins Christian warriors on a crusade to Jerusalem, except they take a wrong turn somewhere and end up in Canada(?) where they come up against the local unfriendly natives. Again look at that cover. Sounds good right? Vikings versus savage apocalypto-style natives, cant go wrong can you? Turns out you can ...YOU CAN GO VERY WRONG INDEED. While the cover would suggest a gory and action packed 300-style sword-and-axe filled epic romp, instead we have a handful of bearded men stumbling around in the mud for 80 minutes. It is the very opposite of "epic". The first 20 minutes are quite promising... very graphic violence, stunning cinematography, you'll be thinking "what was he on about, this is cool!" Alas, the movie then slowly, slowly morphs into a self-indulgent, surreal and painfully slow endurance test. It still looks great, but if I want to see something that just looks good I've got a mirror. Unbelievably anti-climatic ending as well, and probably deliberately so. There's a real whiff of anti-audience hostility here, or maybe its just a boring and pretentious wasted opportunity? Ultimately  I'd describe it as Terrence Malick's down-syndrome brother doing an arty remake of The Thirteenth Warrior, except much, much worse than that sounds.

I watched this film so you didnt have to. What a load of film-school c*ckwash. Instead of a rating, I've actually painstakingly recreated a far more accurate dvd cover for your education. Probably wouldnt shift as many units as the one above, but at least its not a shameless bit of blatant marketing misdirection.

I LIKE...FILUMS

Right I've a few to get  through here, and surprisingly these are a fine bunch of movies, I'm going to be nice and complimentary to them and their creators, so shut your f**king facehole and let me get on with it.

KICK ASS
Entertaining and surprisingly violent black comedy about mentally unstable vigilantes and mobsters  kicking off. Kickass himself is a curly haired demi-nerd with an drearily unremarkable homelife and a rep as a bit of a gay, which ironically endears him to his love interest, who's apparently just come out of the closet as an bereft fag hag. After a few ill-fated encounters with low-level bad lads where KA gets a good shoe-ing he becomes a massive t'internet sensation, attracting the attention of  both the local evil crime lord and Big Daddy and Hit-Girl, who do what he does...just a lot better and with added dismemberment and heavy weapons.

There's a few things I don't like about this movie...the mildly annoying soundtrack with its focus-group-derived songs, the jetpack moment (which brought back deeply repressed and traumatic memories of Robocop 3...MAKE IT STOP) but it's funny, never boring, Hit-Girl has some awesome gun-kata-esque moves and I'm giving it two thumbs up. Until some hollywood bell-end decides to get their thumb out of their arsehole and bring Marshall Law to the big screen this is probably the best mildly-subversive black comedy superhero beat em up type thing you are gonna get. Anyway if the Daily Mail dont like it, that should be recommendation enough.  Christopher Tookey...you appalling c**t!

SOLOMON KANE
How bad was Van Helsing? That's right, it was so bad that if you got got close enough to the screen you could actually feel it trying to suck your balls. Superficially this looks a little similar to the untrained eye, but if you can bother training your eyes to be a little less retarded, then you will see this has got a lot more going for it. Even though the main guy does actually resemble a stunted version of Hugh Jackman.

 I had never heard of Solomon Kane before, it's a character written by Robert E Howard, who created Conan, was mates with HP Lovecraft and ended up eating a bullet after a life of prolonged depression. Solomon Kane is a cursed ex-pirate/buccaneer/murderer type who battles demonic forces in muddy 17th century Somerset (!!!!!) Takes itself very seriously but looks great, some good action scenes (forget about the xbox-type demon at the end though) and I'll always have time for a hero with a wurzel accent.

SPARTACUS: BLOOD AND SAND: THE REST OF IT
By Jupiter's c**k!! So its finally ended, and I have to say with it the finest saturday-morning-hungover-illegal-download-watching ever. Mad, mental and the rest, but finally came out triumphant after gravely inauspicious beginnings. The first couple of episodes are just a hazy, vaguely cringeworthy memory, and this crude and ballsy festival of ultraviolence, back-stabbing bastardly behaviour and nudey men and women finished up as a compulsive, shocking and ridiculously addictive alternative to whatever shite you are currently watching. A second season seemed inevitable, but now indefinitely delayed as apparently the actor playing Spartacus has got The Cancer!  :(  Bad tidings...kick its ass man, kick its f**king ass and get back on screen knobbing ludicrously attractive slave women and mangling Romans in ludicrously graphic ways.

IP Man 2
I liked Ip Man 1. It was a stylish turn-of-the-century beat-em-up about Bruce Lee's teacher and his early life and struggle against Evil Imperialistic Japanese Invaders. IPM2 is actually more of the same, except Ip has relocated to Hong Kong, wheres he's now pitted against Evil Imperialistic Brit Invaders. As before, Donnie Yen plays Ip Man as a genuinely nice laid-back bloke who just happens to have the ability to reduce your face and limbs to strawberry jam in a matter of nanoseconds. This time Donnie faces off against some the local Hong Kong masters and primarily a pantomime end-of-level baddie in the form of a cartoonishly evil "western" world champion boxer. The english speaking actors are so ropy it drags the film down from the level of the first, but its still well worth a look. Great fight scenes, especially the one between Ip and the procession of auld fellas on the table.

The Book Of Eli
Denzel Washington. Post-apocalyptic western. Guns. Swords. Bibles. Good post-pub undemanding stuff, but think a movie version of the late great David Gemmell's Jerusalem Man would cover very similar ground (but much more interestingly)

I've also got Alice In Wonderland, but I'm not really arsed watching another "quirky" burton/depp/elfman threeway so f**k off and watch it yourself.

THE PACIFIC - first 8 episodes

 If you are a man then you know that Band of Brothers is quite possibly the greatest TV series ever filmed. If you don't think that, well just pull on your tampon string for a bit and allow me a moment of internet-based reverence... It even had Ross from friends in it, playing an absolute arse, and still managed to turn in 10 hours of pure cinematic-quality war-gold. It's inevitable that The Pacific is going to held up to this ludicrously high standard, and after the first 8 hours...reign in your expectations a wee bit men. It's good, very good...but...not truly great. At least...not yet.

Bad points? The first 4 episodes are just disappointing. Early on...some night-based combat where you can see F**K ALL. It  rains. A lot. They get bad bladders and worse feet. An entire episode where the soldiers go on leave. They have a few drinks and get some sugar from the local lasses. All well and good but this is about WAR. Watching soldiers courting and enjoying a bit of craic is like watching a porno where after some minor foreplay the fluffer and the stud wander off set for some mixed bean salad while the boobenomically enhanced star who had previously been tentatively gobbling crank has a quick game of Fruit Mystery on her lube-flecked iphone. BoB managed to build character and develop relationships without ever leaving the theatre of combat. But when The Pacific finally hits its strides around episode 5 it throws its cast into a hellish combat-based cement mixer that makes most of BoB look like a rather genteel pensioners' disagreement about lawn-bowling.

The ferocious and little-known battle for Pelieu is where things start to get really nasty. The body count is immense, the marine vs japanese warfare is truly medieval at times. And each episode just gets better and better, leading up to a seemingly restrained episode 8, which concentrates on an almost forgotten earlier character...and ends up by throwing him into a jaw-dropping 10-15 minute abbatoir-like battle sequence based on the landings on Iwo Jima. The final two episodes will deal with the biggest battle of the entire pacific war at Okinawa...it looks incredible. If only it hadnt started off so comparitively weakly - but perhaps it was the escalating scale of the war in the pacific itself that gave it that particular narrative direction...so if you start watching it, don't bail after the first few episodes, it gets infinitely better, and you can flick pebbles into my exposed brain and roast me with a flamethrower if that aint so.

Clash of the Titans - Pegas-arse

What a load of Tit(an)s! I still have fond memories of the 1981 original - Jim Morrison and a robot owl beating up on some of the late great Ray Harryhausen's offspring, not his children, that would be abuse - but I imagine it probably hasnt dated well, and I'm in no rush to find out. Some things are best left in the past, like hirsute porn and that girl you fancied in college. That's right...she got real old. So...the beefcake from avatar spurred on by unimpressive gods played by proper actors who clearly need a new kitchen/agent take on a mob of CGI'd endangered species who have for blatant box-office reasons been shoehorned into clumsy 3d for the easily pleased masses.

Medusa's quite hot....dont know about stone, but certainly capable of inducing some form of rigidity into manly viewers. It might be worth a watch on dvd if you are feeling charitable and bored, but after being irreversibly corrupted by Spartacus:Blood Agus Sand, when I see armoured men legging it around with large bladed weapons I'm expecting excessive gore and oiled breasts so it all seems a bit floaty and almost Harry "pay to watch me learn to act" Potter to me. In fairness, it's not aspiring to be high art, its just throwaway fire-and-forget fodder, but rent it on dvd if you must. Just not worth braving the sticky floors and gibbering termites infesting your local fleapit for.

Human Centipede : When good surgery goes bad

The Human Centipede - Sequence One

Alright let's get the synopsis out of the way. It's so out there that even typing it makes me worry about my tenuous grip on reality. Far Beyond Mental german surgeon gets his hands on a couple of annoying american girls and a shouty jap and uses them to create his dream project...an apparently 100% medically accurate(!) and rather invasive procedure involving the three of them being skin-grafted together arse-to-mouth to create a, well, human centipede.

Alright so. Strange thing is, as soon as your brain stops screaming and you just watch the movie, its actually quite an enjoyable mad b-grade thriller. In fact it's very similar to Stephen Kings Misery, if you just exchange James Caan for a screaming japanese man with two women hanging out of his hole. The acting's brutal of course but it all looks good, it's actually not gratuitously graphic and it's so defiantly bizarre that I'm actually going to recommend it.