Saving Mr. Banks - by Danny

This was a decent movie, as I expected it to be. Good solid family entertainment, from John Lee Hancock, the director of The Blind Side. But it wasn't terribly exciting.

The whole film is more or less a tribute to Mary Poppins, and by the end it makes you think you'd much rather be watching that instead. If you'd never heard of Mary Poppins, then Saving Mr. Banks wouldn't have much interest at all.

There's a bit of light comedy. Emma Thompson as the English author is excessively reserved and proper, and duly shocked by all of the Disney vulgarity. The Americans are correspondingly happy all the time. I'm pretty sure most English people aren't actually like their stereotype, not sure if Americans are or not.

As Walt Disney Tom Hanks looks like Tom Hanks with a moustache and slightly droopy eyes. He is suitably genial, and in fact is much more interesting than P. L. Travers. I'd rather have a bit more Disney back story, and a bit less Travers. Her flashback scenes are all pretty good though, and surprisingly Colin Farrell is actually quite moving as her drunken Australian father, Travers Goff.

Disney is shown drinking only once, and in one scene has a sneaky cigarette too. This aspect of his life has obviously been suppressed as it's a Disney movie, but I have a good theory about that. I think that actually the film is a lot more of a biography of Walt Disney than it appears to be, and the happy-go-lucky Travers Goff is really a metaphor for Mr. Disney himself. Goff is certainly a dreamer, who believes nothing is more important than imagination. He also neglects his family, in a way that I imagine Walt Disney probably did too (but I don't actually know anything about him).

Overall then, enjoyable at the time, but I don't want to watch it again.

Hunger Games: Catching Fire - by Danny

We were going to watch Gravity but I was persuaded to watch the new Hunger Games movie instead. I thought we'd be the oldest people there who didn't have kids, but actually there were plenty of 30 year olds, and the cinema was packed. Afterwards I overheard someone saying how much more mature Hunger Games is than Twilight.

It was actually really good. There's basically three acts. First there's a very long intro where it's established that the Capitol are horrible, and that Katniss is torn between two hot guys (that bit is like Twilight). In the Second Act her and Peeta get dragged back into the Games, and go to practice and meet the rest of the unlucky tribunes/tributes. I like training montages, and for me this was the best part of the film. In the Final Act there's the games themselves. Since there's a revolution brewing the games don't seem quite so important, but it ends well and things are nicely set up for the next instalment - which in standard trilogy marketing will be released in two parts, in 2014 and 2015.

I read all three of the books on the same holiday. The first one is the best, but then it goes downhill, I think as the author couldn't handle the more difficult themes that come up in describing the whole Panem Universe. She should have co-written the sequels with Iain M. Banks.

Stanley Tucci, who plays the flamboyant TV presenter Caesar Flickerman, said in an interview that the film is mostly pulp to get people interested, but the audience do get drawn into the political element through the character of Katniss. She refuses to ever commit to the revolution, and also never seems to make her mind up about the two men in her life. In fact, although I think Jennifer Lawrence is really good, she's so non-committal that sometimes she just appears to be a bit vacant, and you wonder if she actually knows what's going on.

The Games themselves in this film are a bit of a disappointment. Because it's a Quarter Quell they set it up as a sort of Champion of Champions with all the previous winners. But actually, it's no different to the first film . The tribunes/tributes from District 1 and District 2 are professionals (careers) and apparently look forward to the Games, District 3 are tech mad and the rest are mostly quite nice and make up the numbers. Although the Games are billed as a winner takes all, just like the first movie there's multiple survivors. It's hardly There Can be Only One (but neither was Highlander, with four sequels and a spin-off TV series).

In order to avoid having too much humans killing each other there's lots of mechanical threats in the arena, and it's a bit like Cube in a hemisphere. The chief games-maker is played quite ambiguously by Phillip Seymour Hoffman, I'll say no more. Donald Sutherland is President Snow. It's a good cast.

I've a general criticism of the whole franchise. Why would a totalitarian state puts lots of people who hate them and have nothing to lose on TV and film them? You'd think a Hunger Games would be the last thing the Capitol would do. But I suppose that's the conceit of the film, if the Capitol just had Five Year Plans it wouldn't be much fun. And if you are going to have a Games, why have it with kids, who would be rubbish at fighting and probably just cry all the time? That's just depressing. Each district should send their best fighters.

Finally, I enjoyed that the film was in mind-blowing 2D, rather than mind-blowing 3D. It's the way forward. It still looked great, and there's so many distinctive outfits a Hunger Games costume party is inevitable. I'm going to knit myself a cowl.

Thor: The Dark World - Danny's review

This is effectively Thor 2 1/2 , after Joss Whedon made the first Thor movie in 2011 and also Avengers Assemble in 2012. Only one year later Thor is back. This time it's directed by Alan Taylor, who has previously made a lot of good TV.

Although Thor headlines the movie, he's not much of a character. Instead he's easily outshone by a very good cast, especially an incredibly old Anthony Hopkins as the 1000 year old God Odin. He looks about 1000. I thought he'd retired, but he's apparently still going, and unlike the equally old Christopher Lee he actually gets up sometimes to say his lines. When he does stand up it's both intimidating and a bit worrying, as you're afraid he might fall over.

Idris Elba brings some dignity to a very silly costume as some sort of all seeing half-blind man. Christopher Ecclestone fails to bring any dignity to the chief bad guy, a dark elf determined to end the Universe, just because he wants to. A much better villain is Loki, who makes a low-key entrance but becomes increasingly interesting, right up to a silly twist at the very end.

There's a lot of people and a lot going on. Thor: The Dark World is good value for money, and I enjoyed it. I think that might partly because I haven't been to the cinema for a few months, and it was a big exciting spectacle and cost me £11.20, plus an extra 80p for my fourth pair of 3D glasses. I barely noticed the 3D effects at all, not sure if that means they were good or not. The only time it was apparent was during Frigga's funeral scene, which was nicely done but wasted on a character I didn't care about.

The plot is this: the nine realms of the Universe are colliding in a once-every-five-thousand years event called the Convergence. At the same time a villainous dark elf reawakens, and also a magic liquid called the aether is rediscovered. I'm not sure which came first, and what caused what. All of these events are heralded as being hugely significant and important, though I don't think they've ever been mentioned before (or probably since).

The important bit is that it happens to be Thor's illicit Earth-love Natalie Portman who rediscovers this dubious aether, and that gets her swept into the plot. Loki tags along with the good guys (some of which have come straight from The Hobbit), but you know he might turn bad at any point. There's plenty of brooding male angst, and I like it.

Some of it is fun, but I don't feel like this movie connects with me at all. Obviously it's a comic book story, but even knowing that it's a very silly movie. The aether, the Tesseract, the Eternity Stones. It feels like they're just making stuff up. There's enough odd Viking stuff already, without all of that.

But I'll probably watch the next movie too.

Riddick - Jamie's review

"She's got Betty Da-avis eyes"

Riddick, played by Vin Diesel as a nude muscle (as if he had a choice), was introduced as a scary bald alien convict in Pitch Black, a compact science-fiction horror film with some decent twists which became a modest cult hit.

After big budget sequel The Chronicles of Riddick died a death at the box office Vin Diesel was forced to retire Riddick for a while. But VD is nothing if not infectious, and he persuaded series writer and director David Twohy (the talented man who wrote, amongst others, The Fugitive, Waterworld and under-seen Charlie Sheen scifi flick The Arrival) to hash out a new, low-budget Riddick story over the kitchen table.

The result is, unfortunately, underwhelming.

It starts well. Riddick is stranded on a horrid desert planet after being fooled by some necromongers (the baddies in the last film). The opening half hour, which is almost dialogue-free, plays like Wall-e's silent first act translated into testosterone and hate. A broken-legged Riddick battles off alien hyenas, makes friends with a puppy and has a great fight with a swamp-dwelling fish/scorpion thing.

But then Riddick finds a shack with a scanner in it, and deliberately gets it to beam his identity into space, and the film goes to pot. (Incidentally, this bit also reveals that, bizarrely, Riddick's name is Richard B Riddick. I was sure Riddick would just have one name - Riddick. But no. He's not even called something appropriately alien, like Dhgpr Riddick. Instead, he follows the naming conventions of western earthlings from the 21st century. Dick B Riddick. No wonder he wants to track down his race. It's so he can find mum and dad and give them a kicking. They landed him with dicks at both ends of his name. He has to give himself a semantic roasting every time he writes a cheque).

Dick B Riddick scans his amusing name into space to attract bounty hunters, so he can steal one of their ships. When they arrive, it's a let-down. They don't have great characters. It's like Twohy got his kid to write a lazy rip-off of the mercenaries from not even Aliens, but Alien:Resurrection.

In an interesting approach, Twohy has Riddick almost disappear from the screen for the next hour. It's an attempt to get the audience to see Riddick from the grunts' perpsective as a deadly, invisible, unstoppable evil, using his shiny irises to pop up and kill them one by one before vanishing like a pervy-eyed madman.

But being cardboard cut-outs, the bounty hunters are not very interesting to watch. And because I knew from the previous films that Riddick is a good guy, I didn't feel the soldiers' fear. I knew he wasn't a threat to the good ones, even the most annoying, a lesbian played by the star of Battlestar Galactica who wears a constant smirk (which, instead of making her look cool, makes her look like she's been told to wear a constant smirk).

Riddick, sadly, also gets annoying. As soon as he speaks he becomes unutterably smug. When he's caught and held prisoner, instead of gagging him everyone listens, rapt, while he predicts their doom in a slow, self-satisfied baritone. It's impossible not to picture Vin Diesel telling Twohy "Write in the screenplay, 'Everyone listens because Riddick is awesome and scary.'" The ridiculously specific prophecies don't help. When Riddick says, "I'm going to kill you with that sword in exactly five minutes," it just made me think he'd flipped ahead in the script.

The twists from Pitch Black aren't there, nor is the huge ambition of the silly-but-fun middle film. And the climax is a damp squib. Well, squid. Tonnes of the double-headed monsters attack, except suddenly they are very easy to despatch. Riddick kicks loads off a cliff as he, erm, runs away and gets airlifted to safety by the lesbian bounty hunter he saved earlier. Not very badass.

And yet...if they can dial down the smug and dial up the broken, silent Riddick, I'll come back for more. I want to find out what the B stands for, Bernard or Bdick.

Elysium - by Danny

This is the follow up from the director of District 9. This one is not as good. It's still entertaining, but is nothing more than a bit of sci-fi fun.

Here the poor people all live on an overcrowded Earth, speak Spanish and have tattoos. The lucky few live on a spinning Space Hotel called Elysium, with robot servants and Med Bays that quickly cure any ailment with a laser. They speak French and wear crisp suits.

Matt Damon is an Earth-bound low-life desperate to get to Elysium. Opposed to him are the evil elite of Jodie Foster and William Fichtner, who have been cast specifically for their pale skin and impassive faces. There's also a South African mercenary, who, as I now expect of all South Africans, drinks beer and eats meat and loves killing people for fun, with a sword and a leery grin.

The director isn't too interested in the actual mechanics of the Space Station. This is no Babylon 5. Instead it's just a general metaphor for rich and poor, and gives Matt Damon something to aim for. I enjoyed that to begin with he is motivated by purely selfish reasons, but sadly by the end his childhood sweetheart and her sickly child are competing for his affection.

As well as the driving force of Matt Damon trying to get into space, there's also a plot device of Matt having something important stuck in his head, which everybody wants. It's unclear what is required to get this out of his head, as sometimes people are putting cables in his head, sometimes just being nearby lets them hack in, and once he has lots of cables put down his mouth to extract it.

The plot lines all converge towards the end in a great big pile up co-incidences, and the two Worlds of Earth and Elysium suddenly seem very small. I would have liked a bit more sweeping majesty and slowness, and less plot.

The best parts of the film are where it's hinted what life is like in each habitat, which you only get for a second or two, before the story drives on. For example, at one point the merc Kruger pulls out some sort of forcefield to defend himself from bullets, then puts it away again. There's no introduction or explanation to this, he just does it, and it makes you wonder what sort of other cool stuff they have in the future. In contrast to this, the regenerative power of the Med Bays is laboured from the first scene of the film to the last.

And the ending is ridiculous. Still, overall quite enjoyable. I'll be curious to see if Neill Blomkamp's next film also features apartheid and mech suits.

Alan Partridge: Alpha Papa - Danny's review

He started on the radio with On the Hour and Knowing Me, Knowing You, then transferred to TV with The Day Today and more KMKY. Then came two series of I'm Alan Partridge, the mini-series Mid-Morning Matters and his autobiography, I, Partridge: We Need to Talk About Alan. I've grown up with this, and am slightly converned that, 22 years on, Alan Partridge is still my favourite character.

I expected the big screen debut to be a new and significant chapter of Alan's life, maybe not involving the radio at all. But the film continues on pretty directly from Mid-Morning Matters, with Alan a DJ at Radio Norwich (changed back from North Norfolk Digital). The plot is set in motion when it's discovered that the station is being totally rebranded. Initially Alan doesn't care, until he sees that they're going to sack either him or other veteran D-Jock Pat Farrell, played by Colm Meaney. When it's Farrell who's dismissed he returns with a shotgun and takes them all hostage. Alan uses this as an opportunity to boost his public image, but he's also quite sympathetic to Farrell's old school radio, and broadcasts a cheesy live show with him throughout the siege, and on the Radio Norwich tour bus.

When Alan was broadcasting I somehow expected his chat to be different, because this was in the cinema now, and not just a web segment sponsored by Fosters. But in retrospect that is the beauty of the film, that it's a slice of Alan's mundane life. It's never boring watching him, and such is the character that anything can be entertaining.

I enjoyed that Alan Partridge continues to mellow out the character, and Steve Coogan, get older. The support performances are all fine too, understated as you'd expect in this sort of close-to-life drama. I especially liked Sidekick Simon, but could have done without Michael the ever-present Geordie. The action scenes are always brief and exciting, as they should be in a comedy.

It's subtly directed. When Farrell leaves the gun lying around no sooner do you think could Alan steal that?, then it cuts to Alan thinking that too. But Farrell always looks so big and mean, you don't fancy Alan's chances. Although it's potentially a dangerous situation, the film takes a light tone and doesn't try to make an emotional drama. It's a low key affair - in fact by the end all Alan's achieved is a slightly better slot for his Radio Show. But maybe, if this film is successful enough, there'll be a sequel building on Alan's new found fame and burgeoning love interest.

I would have preferred it if the film was some sort of pseudo-documentary, to preserve the illusion that Alan Partridge is a real person. As it is there's a logical disconnect of Alan promoting his movie, which clearly shows him as a fictional character. Though I suppose this has already happened with the I'm Alan Partridge series.

Overall, it's a funny film, that keeps up the high standard of the Partridge brand. My favourite part is the final stand off between Farrell and Alan, on Cromer Pier. Farrell is having a breakdown, talking about ending it all, to be with his dead wife again. "It's the circle of life" he blubs sadly, with a shotgun in his mouth. "Cirque de Soleil" replies Alan, irrelevantly.

The World's End - Danny says

This is a buddy comedy which turns into a Sci-fi zombie invasion.

I preferred the buddy bits more than the zombies. When the gang are together there's a great chemistry. Simon Pegg is frenetic and hyperactive, and the rest are happy to play second fiddle to him. He's got a big responsibility, in being the extrovert and in driving the plot forward. It's quite believable that without him the rest of them would happily have a cup of tea or just go home. I enjoyed Nick Frost's very reluctant accomplice the most.

When they go back to Newton Haven the pubs are all chain bars. I couldn't tell if the joke is that the town is actually the same, or if the joke is that it's become completely homogenized. It's a good reflection on forty year old men reliving their youth, and it's actually a bit of an interruption once the zombies arrive. When they do, there's some good set pieces mixing mundane and bizarre and Pierce Brosnan. For my money there's too much actual fighting though, which becomes a bit tiresome once you get over the zombies' funny robot bodies.

The biggest strength is the freedom - you feel like the film-makers can do whatever they want and that makes it unpredictable. There's some nice touches, such as the small number of residents who actually quite like the aliens and want to live among them. There's a casual attitude to peril - when Rosamund Pike asks what's become of her zombified brother she's just told "Er, I'll tell you later, just drive!". The epilogue is good too, when all of the aliens, including Martin Freeman with half a head, are awkwardly integrated back into society.

Despite lots of highlights I wasn't totally convinced. Overall I would rate the film as quite fun. I enjoyed it equally as much as Sean of the Dead and Hot Fuzz, which is probably the best guide for how much you'll enjoy it.

Pacific Rim - Danny's review

Firstly, I thought this was a great movie.

Next, I want to immediately address a few obvious criticisms, which I think are all justitified on the basis of making a dramatic film. Of course the Jaeger's are an absolutely ridiculous way of defending Earth. With unlimited resources and the co-operation of all nations I'd just build a series of massive plasma cannons pointing at the breach. But no one really wants to watch a movie of dispassionate drone attacks, so fair enough having some bipedal robots. By the same logic I can also forgive the concession of a robot requiring two pilots, to split the neural load. It's silly, but makes it more fun.

I like the idea of the pilots becoming heroes. In the rapid five minute catch up at the very start you get a glimpse of a world where nothing else matters but the men who are saving the World. The drifting skill is presented a bit like a psychic power, in that you never know who'll be good at it, and so you get unlikely fighting heroes without any athletic prowess. Having said that though they do all seem quite muscly and good at fighting with sticks. And the synchronicity required to co-pilot gets a bit relaxed as the film goes on - to begin with we see twins, then it's father-son and brother-sister and by the end just two people who fancy each other.

When the main guy Raleigh rejoins the program there's only very few Jaegers left, and with Kaiju's coming through the wall more and more it really seems like they're doomed. Only the most streotypical national pilots are left - massive stoic Russians, impassive Chinese, cocky Aussies and heroic Americans. It's such a desperate state of affairs that it feels like there's already been an apocalypse, and these are the only survivors. In fact, the rest of the World is still all there, but they seem to have lost interest a bit and are only building a big crumbly wall. Having just four Jaegers left does crank up the tension though.

The pilot I'm afraid to mention is the Japanese woman, Mako. She is totally rubbish, and the whole story of her not being allowed to co-pilot, then being allowed after all, is tiresome. I wonder if originally the script had Raleigh flying solo or with someone else, then at the last minute they realised there were no women in the film at all so wrote one in. The other subplot, about the black market in dead monster parts, is much more interesting. It's the one diversion outside of the main robot battles.

After Man of Steel I vowed to give up on 3D films, but accidentally went to the wrong performance of Pacific Rim and had to buy another pair of 3D glasses. I'm glad I did, as the 3D was awesome. Worked even better than Life of Pi. It felt like I was already watching the remastered special edition.

In fact most of the film was gripping. Crucially, the aliens looked really good and reptilian. I wanted to know more about their command structure. When the over-excited scientist mind melds with the Kaiju brain I was braced for one of two possible outcomes. Either the aliens were being misunderstood, and might even be good aliens, or they were just super evil and there was even more incentive to kill them. it turned out to be the second option, which is at least simpler. This mind meld was two way, and naturally the aliens have a hive mind so they all knew the human's plan, but I'm not sure if they did anything with this knowledge. Also I baulked slightly at the throwaway line that the aliens invaded before with the dinosaurs, but that didn't work out.

The early battle scenes were better than expected. It was good meaty fighting. But I didn't feel any empathy when the robots got injured. And I never quite worked out how interdependent the two pilots were. Was the talk of left-brains and right-brains just nonsense or did it imply anything? I'm pretty sure that Crimson Typhoon with it's three pilots and three arms makes no sense. The final battle did nothing for me, as it was all underwater and you couldn't tell what was going on once there were multiple robots and aliens.

I'm prepared to forgive a lot though as it looked so good.

Finally here's a list of things that didn't make sense to me. They're fairly minor points, and maybe I'll work it out when I watch this again.

• Mako knew her father was dying (at one point she prompts him to wipe his nose), so why after drifting with her does Raleigh not know about his cancer?
• The last ditch plan is to drop a nuclear bomb into the breach. Why do they believe this has any chance of working, when it's exactly what's been tried and failed before? (This is before they find out about using alien DNA to open up the breach).
• Idris Elba's character Pentecost used to fly with Aussie Dad (which is how Pentecost justifies being able to drift with Aussie son). So how come Aussie Dad wrongly claims to his son that Raleigh is the only one who's ever piloted alone?

Pacific Rim - Jamie's take

I'm a big Del Toro fan. And on the surface, Pacific Rim promises plenty for a big Del Toro fan. Massive monsters, massive robots, and massive-headed Ron Perlman. But it's a kid's movie. And that's what you should know going into the film. It's for kids.

A bloody big ruskie robot

The plot is this: in the future, giant monsters have been popping out of an inter-dimensional portal in the sea and attacking our cities. Mankind has built giant robots to wrestle them to death. It takes two people to pilot a robot and they interconnet with one another's minds to do it - called 'drifitng'. The hero and his brother, let's call him Danny, are robot pilots, but while they are battling a monster, Danny dies. Fast forward five years, and some stupids in charge of the world have foolishly closed the robot programme because they think building a big wall along the coast is a better way to defend against the monsters. Turns out it isn't. There are only a few robots left, but suddenly more and bigger monsters have started coming through the portal. So robot programme boss Idris Elba calls the hero out of retirement to join humanity's last-gasp attack. At the training base the hero becomes friends with a Japanese woman and argues with an Australian pilot who's mean and who drives one of the other robots with his dad. Then they all pull it together and fight some damn monsters. The hero's played by Charlie Hunnam and he wears a carefully weathered woolly jumper (like the Matrix, everyone seems to have picked their clothes from the H&M derelicte collection).

Unfortunately the dialogue and the characters are so basic it's basically a mime. For toddlers. For adults it is painful. Ron Perlman, who plays a flamboyant, mercenary smuggler of dead monster parts, is great. It must be down to him being a fantastic actor, because it's unlikely the script was a lot better just for his bits. And Idris Elba is fine, playing a stoic God of a man. Despite some awful lines. But... But some of the others. Jeez. Mainly, the Japanese heroine. She is so bad at acting my audience (an audience of uber-fan geeks predisposed to love this film, who all piled in to the BFI Imax 3D for the first public screening in the UK) were coughing laughter at her emoting attempts.

The other problem is scale. As soon as the giant monsters are seen at sea, which is a lot of the time, they stop being giant monsters because there's nothing against which to compare them. Without buildings or people around, we could be watching 10mm-tall robots fighting flea monsters. I stress, I am not a child and hopefully kids will love it. But as a 32 year old, on first viewing at least, I came out craving Cloverfield. The monster in that film is viewed from a human eye-level perspective in built human environments, which gives a context for the scale that makes you really feel there is a giant monster stomping around. Plus it boasts more realistic dialogue and, ironically, more 3D humans. All creating a more scary and transporting experience.

Maybe I'm just too old for this sh*t. A robot hitting a monster in the face with an oil tanker might have got the ten-year-old me giddy. But even for kids, I don't know. This doesn't feel like it could have the impact of Jurassic Park. Maybe I'm wrong. I don't have kids and I wasn't drifting with any when I watched this.

But as a grown-up, even a childish one, I wanted something more sophisticated. Just the level of Del Toro's unabashedly pulpy seam - the Hellboys and Blade 2 - would have been fine. Pacific Rim felt like Mr Bean. Made for a lowest common denominator international audience.

I think it will get a pass from a lot of geek critics because, quite rightly, they love what Del Toro usually brings to the table - sparky myth, amazing monsters and a big dose of originality. I hate to diss Pacific Rim, because I love Del Toro. Hollywood should still give him $250 million every 3 years to make what he wants. Unfortunately this film would get panned if it was directed by Roland Emmerich.

Behind the Candleabra: Danny's Take

This is a biopic of someone I've hardly heard of, but that doesn't matter. Liberace is a crazy character, and that's what makes the film fun, and what made Lincoln boring. Lincoln's idea of humour is a lengthy story about a portrait of George Washington. But Michael Douglas plays Liberace in a free and wild way, and you can't take your eyes off him.

My favourite bit is when Liberace and Matt Damon, both dressed in glitzy suits and enormous white fur coats, take the limousine to a seedy gay porn shop. They're stoned out their minds, and Matt Damon collapses in a hallway. After a second Liberace pops his head up from behind a door, and spots his friend lying there. In a camp and childish sing-song voice he asks innocently "Hey, what you doooo-ing?" He's absolutely mad.

The story starts with Matt Damon playing Scott, a country bumpkin, who gets lured into Liberace's Vegas lifestyle. There's some rather uncomfortable moments when Liberace is looking him over like a sexual predator, and soon enough Scott becomes his latest live-in lover. Surprisingly, it turns out that Liberace is actually fairly well grounded, and knows what he wants in life. It's Scott who gets addicted to Rob Lowe's prescription drugs and goes off the rails.

It's fascinating to watch the relationship unfold on the big screen. Although of course the official message was that Liberace wasn't gay, and was just "waiting for that special woman", we get to see everything in his private life. There's a thrill of voyeurism, seeing into his dressing room and bedroom. You even get to see the plastic surgery, which is pretty unpleasant and I had to look away. It's a smart idea inviting us to stare, acknowledging that celebrities really do get work done to their faces.

The asymmetry of Scott and Liberace's relationship proves too much in the end, and Scott goes the way of the others and gets kicked out the big house. There's a slight lull when you think the movie might be over now, but then a decent epilogue when Scott sues Liberace, then gets a minimum wage job and a haircut. Years later Liberace calls him up from his deathbed to say that of all the men in his life, Scott was the best one. I'm not sure if I like this - I prefer to think of Scott being just another guy who gets sucked in by Liberace's charisma. I expect this scene about how special Scott is was invented either by Scott himself, on whose memoirs this might be based, or by the film-makers.

There's a lot of sympathy for Liberace, and I'm glad that his demise is from dying, rather than just fading into obscurity. It's what he would have wanted. It's a bit like William Shatner, desperate to keep working and stay famous for as long as possible, and people loving him for it.

Man of Steel: by SuperDanny

This looked pretty good in the trailers, and I was excited.

I liked the start on Krypton, with Russell Crowe as Jor-El. It's a pretty strange, almost incomprehensible place, and looked great on the big screen. But the super-advanced citizens have been extremely irresponsible in letting their planet go to waste. They've clearly not watched enough Steven Seagal eco-thrillers. In fact they've been so stupid that even though everyone knows the planet is about to explode, only one baby is able to leave, along with some criminals who are 'sentenced' to a space ship outside the blast radius. They must be laughing on the inside.

When Superbaby gets to Earth he has the excellent fortune to be adopted by Kevin Costner. At this point the person next to me in the cinema leant over and informed me that this was Kal-el's second Robin Hood father, an excellent point. The best scenes in the film are the ones with the two Robin Hoods. I think that's because you get lots of juicy revelations about the history and back story, and that's what's interesting. Superboy has a tough time not revealing his powers, as he gets into a surprising amount of tricky situations (I've not seen Smallville, but imagine it happens a lot there too). It's not very convincing though when Jor-El bangs on about how important humans are, and that they must be saved. We all know he only decided to sent the baby to Earth two minutes before he went. For all he knew, it could have been a planet inhabited by two foot tall people.

I enjoyed Superteen's roaming around Alaska, like Christian Bale in Batman Begins. There was a great moment when he's humbly working in a bar and someone insults him, but he decides not to reveal his superpowers and just stands there getting beer thrown at him. He walks away with dignity, a true hero. Unfortunately this is all undone when outside the bar we see he's pushed ten trees through the guy's truck. This destroyed the point of the scene, just for a cheap laugh at the bad guy's expense - criminal. I like to think this addition was the doing of an evil Hollywood executive, who insisted on putting in some lighter moments, and the Director had no choice but to agree.

I liked Lois Lane, and her interplay with Superman was good. She would do anything for a story, including leaking it to Julian Assange, but once she heard about Superman's story she decided not to tell anyone. This was nicely established but not overdone, and there were actually not many scenes of them together. When Lois was in the Arctic two things occurred to me that need explanations, can you help? Firstly, is it just coincidence that Clark Kent is working on the site where the Scout Ship, which has been there for 20,000 years, is finally found? And why does the Scout Ship contain a Superman outfit?

As for General Zod - he's OK. A very serious man, who often looks more sad than angry. I enjoyed it when he whimsically recounted his journey's round the Universe: "once, we even discovered an Earth Engine...", he says nostalgically. There's room for a good spin-off series there. By the end you actually feel a bit sorry for him.

In summary then, the first half was good. The big problem is in the second half, when Zod gets to Earth. His henchman are faithful to the original (Superman 2), with an Eastern European woman and a massive guy. The woman here is rubbish though, and seems to be in a totally different film (a Steven Seagal film). She claims she has no morals, and screams that "Evolution always wins!".

Zod's plan to attack Earth is ridiculous, but that's to be expected. I wish it was a smaller plan though, that didn't involve such huge special effects generating machines. This film was partly written by Christopher Nolan, I thought he was against CGI? By the end so many huge buildings have been toppled with big crunches you're just waiting for the tiresome fight scenes to be over so the story can move on. It's like Transformers 2 mixed with The Incredible Hulk. Everyone knows that bullets don't harm Superman, and that he fights really hard. So I can do without seeing that twenty times. In fact, if we got rid of all the scenes involving the army, and Zod's henchmen, you'd get a much tighter drama between the big actors.

The Earth scientist eagerly keeps up with the alien technology, and is soon able to inform us about countering the threat by combining two mega-devices into a Black Hole. He puts his plan to the army commander, who clearly has no idea what's going on, but nods approval. The only relief in the ensuing action-fest is seeing Laurence Fishburne running. After Zod's ship is destroyed I had no appetite for the final showdown with Zod himself, but got it anyway. I was only curious how they would show that a super-being had died, and was impressed Superman went for a simple neck-breaker. Afterwards he's pretty sad, as he's wiped out the last of his people. Although given the magic codex, and the necessity of a sequel to this remake, I bet he wasn't really the last.

Behind the Candelabra - Jamie's review

It’s a sad indictment of US movie studios that none of them would pick up the story of Liberace’s love affair with his chauffeur Scott (played by Matt Damon), so the film had to appear on HBO in America, not the cinema where it belongs.

Michael Douglas is always worth watching. Even in The Sentinel. No wonder Soderbergh forced him to wait a year after he got the cancer all-clear before shooting this film. Liberace is the role of his lifetime, and requires, well, a lot of life. Douglas does it justice. By turns creepy and guileless, loving and cruel, funny and egotistical, blind and self-aware, his Liberace is brilliant. He should get an Oscar just for the bit in a porn shop where he pops his head above a video booth door, simultaneously high, demonic and angelic, his eyes ablaze with virility and joie de vivre, and laughs at his far-younger lover who has passed out on the floor, out-paced and out-sexed by a buzzing pensioner.

Though there are plenty of scenes where Douglas looks just fabulous, there are many more requiring him to leave vanity at the door. It's a breathtaking moment when he presents a sagging, wattled body and balding pate for the camera’s scrutiny, stripped of costume and wig.

Energy suffuses the film, driving it headlong from the dizzying introduction of rural Scott to Liberace’s gilded world (full of male “helpers” who are well aware that Scott is about to replace them, as they replaced the young men who came before them), to the pianist's death from an AIDS-related illness.

And it is always funny, even when he dies. There’s a shocking sequence where Liberace persuades Scott to have plastic surgery to look more like him. It could have been played, with some justification, to make Liberace look like a monster. Instead, yes, it is gross, but also very funny.

Even Rob Lowe, given a stretched face with tiny, watery eye-slits to play Liberace’s unscrupulous plastic surgeon, is too fun to hate, despite readily agreeing to cut naïve Scott, and happily getting him addicted to drugs.

The ageing and de-aging effects look seamless (except when the seams are meant to show) as Scott and Liberace get older, younger, fatter, thinner, ill. But behind the amazing make-up, and the costumes and the camp, is a grown-up love story. Neither is innocent, though both are innocents. Scott absolutely, in the beginning, and Liberace always, in his way, clumsily wielding his material wealth and affections, addicted to love but allergic to constancy. We're used to the clichéd rise and fall, but Liberace (unexpectedly considering), offers something less superficial, and more subtle, an undulating depiction of a relationship, full of rhinestone peaks and buttock-shaped valleys.

Plus it features Dan Ackroyd, Scott Bakula and Carter Burke from Aliens. Can’t argue with that.

The Stone Roses: Made of Stone: by Danny

I didn't mean to watch this film. I thought I was going to see Byzantium, but walked into the wrong screen. I should have known something was up, as there were only ten other people in there, all middle aged men in big coats sitting on their own. I joined them, and ate a sandwich before the film started (it was lunch time). We all looked quite shifty.

I'm not a Stone Roses fan, and would never have watched this film deliberately. I know all of their songs though, and quite enjoyed it. Here's a brief history of the band: In the 1980s they were mad kids who went round on scooters. They got really popular in Manchester, a few of them left, and they released a massive album. Then they had a six year legal wrangle, released an acrimonious second album, and split up for twenty years.

The director, Shane Meadows, is obviously a massive fan, and it was more of a tribute than a documentary. The sort of thing that might be released if they all died. I liked that he put himself into the film, and we got to see his face, rather than pretending we were magically behind the scenes without any cameras present. In fact, I think Shane is the main interviewee, as the band never talk to him.

The best bit is the build up to a special free comeback gig in Warrington. They give away free tickers if you bring along old merchandise, and loads of the fans are interviewed being really excited. Inside the gig the atmosphere is brilliant, and rather than clips we get complete songs, which sound great.

After this high the other gigs, on the European tour, look like hard work. There's one bit of drama when the comeback stalls in Amsterdam, when the drummer decides to go home. Instead of talking to the band Mr Meadows just interviews himself, saying that he really hopes they get back together (again), which they do.

The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey: By Danny

I saw this a while ago, just after reading the book. The book's only got about ten pages, but this movie was three hours long and is only the first one of a trilogy, so ought to feel epic. Sadly though, it doesn't. There's nothing like the sense of foreboding that you get in the proper Lord of the Rings films. The villain here is some sort of misshapen orc, who just grunts and looks very ugly.

The band of dwarves are not especially amusing, and could do with a heavy editing. They're from various parts of the British Isles, and the people I watched it with (in Belfast) were upset the only good looking one was English. There's a few Middle Earth stalwarts popping up - in one strange scene Elrond, Gladriel and Saruman (an impossibly old Christopher Lee) gather in Rivendell for no good reason. Ian McKellen as Gandalf is good, but seems to be doing a lot of work to hold it together.

My highlight was the Goblin King's song, which was mad. But I also hold him responsible for the low point in the film - the tremendously tiresome underground chase. I watched the film in 2D, maybe action scenes like that would have been great in 3D?

Overall then, I'm saying the film was a failure. But I still enjoyed it at the time. It's a big lavish production, with lots of good actors, and it moves along fairly well. I like fantasy films, and in fact I could take hours and hours of this kind of thing before I got bored. Wouldn't even mind watching it again.

The Purge: by Danny

This review, and all the other reviews, contains spoilers.

It's not about enemas. It's about enemies. That should have been the tagline.

I was a little worried this was going go be a horror movie, but Sci-Fi was mentioned somewhere in the description, along with Ethan Hawke, so I went to see it. The Purge has a really strong central idea - every year for one night all crime is legal and anything goes. Ethan is a contented rich guy who can afford protection, and locks down his big house for Purge Night. There's other rich guys who enjoy the The Purge and go outside their houses for a little 'hunting', to let off steam or take out someone they don't like. The few poor people left in society end up killing each other or just trying to stag safe.

Ethan plays a different role to usual. I'm so used to him being nice and innocent that I gave him the benefit of the doubt for a long time, before realising that actually his character really is supposed to be a bit of a prick. The give away is that he keeps fist pumping when he mentions his bonus from work. I also found Ethan's wife quite annoying, but I'm not sure if I was supposed to. It may be partly because she plays evil Cersei Lannister. There were certainly suggestions that the family were a little 'too perfect', which is why all the neighbours hated them. When Ethan got home she was cooking dinner, wearing high heels (do women do that?), and claimed "Dinner's nearly ready honey" or something like that, even though she'd only just begun chopping some vegetables.

Ethan's family were very casual about putting down the shutters for Purge Night, I guess to imply that they were usually totally safe and it was exceptional for anything to go wrong. But of course it did go wrong. The moral son opens their shutters to let in a desperate man, and a mob of masked preppy kids out enjoying The Purge demand his release so they can exercise their right to Purge, or they'll get Ethan's family too. The director (James DeMonaco) wrote The Negotiator and Assault on Precinct 13, so I should have known a siege was coming up.

Ethan is hard-nosed and wants to toss the poor black guy out the window for the mob to kill, but then has a cathartic change of heart and decides not to. Seconds later the poor guy says "no, you should throw me out the window", which shows that he's a nice guy too, so Ethan was right to save him. Ethan then decides his family will fight the mob, but they do it very cack-handedly. Can't they just wind down one of their windows and shoot the smug Joker-ish guy in the face? His wife, who played Sarah Connor in the Sarah Connor Chronicles, is surprisingly deadwood and Ethan has to slay about eight of them himself before getting stabbed, good work for a middle aged salesman.

An interesting idea about The Purge is that everyone needs to feel the release, even those who think they don't. This was hinted at by Ethan in his control room, and turned out to be true when at the end of the night his jealous neighbours take advantage of the mayhem to come round and take out Ethan's family. A minor query, was the Asian guy involved at the end? He was definitely in one scene, then didn't appear again.

There's a subplot about Ethan's daughter's boyfriend Henry, who tries to take advantage of the amnesty on Purge Night to shoot Ethan. This is a nice idea, and probably could have done with happening in a separate household, if the script could have stretched to two families rather than cramming everything into one house. The problem with Henry's plan, is that even though he won't get prosecuted for the crime, there's still going to be consequences. There's going to be a strain on the relationship if everyone knows he shot her father in front of the family.

That's a general problem with Purge Night - you might not be convicted for crimes but everyone will still know, for example, that you killed your boss with an axe. Maybe that's OK though, they'll just bottle up their feelings then try and kill you next year. Or maybe people who've grown up with The Purge have gotten so used to it they can forget about what happens for the other 364 days of the year, and what happens on Purge Night stays on Purge Night?

I'm focusing on the idea, as the action itself was fairly poor. I counted four times when someone was about to be killed, only for their potential assassin to be surprisingly shot in the back just in time. Ethan's son introduces two things early on, that you know will appear later on. Firstly, he has a radio controlled car, which he boasts "can now see in infra-red, and I've muffled the motor so it's virtually silent!" Not very subtle. Secondly, he shows everyone his strange habit of recording his own pulse with a heart rate monitor on his watch. It's a little harder to work out where that's going to reappear. Turns out that he rather morbidly attaches it to his Dad's wrist as he is expiring, so we can all hear Ethan's final pulses. A nice touch.

The single night of madness, and the scary masks, makes Purge Night feel a lot like Halloween. This genuinely is a night where more crime is gotten away with. My house was burgled once on Halloween, and the police were too busy to come and deal with it because of other 'mischief'. The next year the house was again burgled on Halloween. But Purge Night is definitely not Halloween, in the end credits they reveal it's March 21st. Afterwards, while I was purging myself in the bathroom, I wondered why they'd chosen 21st March. Then it became clear to me, it's the night before William Shatner's birthday! In fact, Shatner's Eve would be a much better title.

Star Trek Into Darkness: Jamie's take

STID suggests that JJ Abrams and his team got lucky when they made the first film. This sequel suffers from the same problems but more so (caricatures of the original actors instead of characters, incomprehensible action, nonsensical plot), and, sadly, makes the first film look worse in retrospect. Those over-obvious references to Spock's logical nature and Kirk's rashness that we forgave and even kind of enjoyed in the first reboot? STID is slathered in them, and makes you think Star Trek wasn't setting the scene to drill deep into these characters - it had them fully-formed, and they're staying paper thin.

So we get 2 hours of Bones being grumpy and nothing else, Uhura being keen to speak foreign languages and nothing else, Scotty getting anxious and - well, there's some Pegg comedy shtick - and Kirk. Oh Kirk. Shatner's Kirk was impetuous, yes, but he was also brainy. This Kirk is so rash and dumb it's just annoying. Credit to Quinto - his Spock is excellent. But the only way people interact with him is to note that he's very logical. Get over it guys. Worse is when they seem to wink to camera when they note each other's defining characteristics. It makes you realise you're watching a pandering show.

There's also a scary suggestion that Alice Eve has joined the crew. If so, I hope she gets a lot better at acting before the next film. Even in the background she drew the eye pulling unconvincing faces. Hopefully she'll be the franchise's Tasha Yar (non-Trekkies: she died).

And for all the critical love he's deservedly got for his other roles, here Cumberbtach is just...hammy. When he announces that his...name...is...Khan, he shakes and sweats and rolls it around his mouth like we're all in the very back row of the royal circle, not watching him on a movie screen where his face is 8 stories high and will bear a bit of subtlety. Although he's not helped by Abrams who, for some reason, shoots everyone in extreme close-up. Oftentimes I wanted to tell them to take a step back. If it were a conversation, they'd be invading your personal space. You'd think they were weird.

The first half of the film is really confusing, with a domino-fall of plot revelations that don't make sense and aren't really explained. You're just pulled through hoping all will become clear. It never does, because it's dropped when the film reveals what it really is -  a poor rehash of Wrath of Khan. Which is terrible news for anyone who's seen the original, since the emotional climax is lifted from that film, which means anyone with knowledge of Wrath is pulled right out of this one. They even hammer home the theft with dialogue ("I'm being you, Spock" "Yes, and I'm doing what you would usually do Jim") that is so on-the-nose and nod-nod wink-wink that it guarantees there's no space for engagement in the moment on its own terms.

Kirk doesn't even have the decency to wait until the next film to get resurrected. This diluted Wrath is a bloodless parody.

Some of the action sequences are good (the anti-grav run through the ship, Kirk and Khan's hurtle between ships), although they're shot using the crack cocaine of the modern Hollywood action director, shakycam, so the good ideas are only ever half-realised, the other half is blurry.

Other action sequences are too obviously superfluous to the plot to look like anything other than "an action bit". They don't move on the plot, they just tick a box. I counted four different situations where they created peril by adding a countdown. By the third literal ticking clock, the stakes looked hollow.

But do watch the end credits  - in 3D (which elsewhere is often blurry and doesn't improve the viewing experience) they are brilliant and make you feel like you're flying through space.

Star Trek Into Darkness: by Danny

I liked the first new Star Trek movie (even though Shatner wasn't in it), and thought this one would be good too. The best parts of Into Darkness are that it's slickly made, as expected, and the characters are mostly very good. The new villain is great too, although most of his actions seem nonsensical if you have time to think about them, which you don't. In fact by the end of it I felt bludgeoned by action, and slightly bewildered. Call me feeble, but I've not felt like this since the shakycam in Bourne Ultimatum forced me to lie down across three seats to cope.

Peter Weller was good, and of course Nimoy was excellent. But what was his special advice on how to beat Khan? Exploit his weakness, was that it? In Wrath of Khan (a much better film, than all other films), they defeat Khan by thinking in three dimensions. What did they do here, send some bombs across with a knowing wink because Spock wasn't really lying? The English woman was rubbish too.

The worst bit was that it felt like J.J.Abrams hadn't really got that Star Trek takes place in remote space, and instead made it feel like a standard Sci-Fi film, set in Earth's near future where we have a bit more technology. He dropped in Star Trek references in a slapdash way. I'm worried that when he makes the new Star Wars films they'll be nearly the same, but instead of things like Tribbles popping up here and there it'll be Ewoks instead.