60-second cinema

9 out of 10 Little Miss Sunshine follows six members of a family, brought together by chance rather than choice, as they travel across America to enter a young girl in a beauty pageant. With each of the characters going through their own crisis, this is a somewhat dark comedy. Despite this, it still manages to get the tag of a feel-good movie as the group battles to overcome adversity. In fact, I enjoyed it more than I’d expected to. Perhaps the only criticism I could level at it is that one or two of the characters’ situations felt a little under-explored or unresolved. As a simple tale of humanity emerging in difficult times, however, it did a great job in making me smile.

6 out of 10 Having already read the book that allegedly inspired the film, I was keen to see where they differed — not least because the book is excellent and the film got pretty average reviews. As it happens, The Island appears to have taken a single concept and ignored the main story, thereby saving the book from criticism. Phew. The path taken sees the film borrow heavily from both The Matrix and Logan's Run — both for the story and for some of the visuals. Really, it's quite a rip-off all-round. Despite this, however, it's still a reasonable film. The first half is even quite respectable sci-fi, but the rest is pure Hollywood. Needless CGI, endless chase scenes, the works. Nowhere near dark enough for its subject matter.

7 out of 10 This is a teen comedy set in a High School in Idaho. This alone would be enough to put a lot of people off, however this is not your average high school comedy. I like to think of it as Forest Gump meets Saved by the bell (but in a good way). Like Forest Gump, the enjoyment of the movie will depend how comfortable you are laughing at the afflicted. As soon as you think too hard about it the enjoyment will inevitably take a hit. To truly immerse yourself in the weird world of Napoleon Dynamite it's best not to think. Napoleon Dynamite polarises opinion - it is adored by its fans and loathed by its critics. It seems appropriate that in reviewing a film about a guy who doesn't really seem to fit in, that I don't fall into either category. It had a few good 'laugh out loud' moments but it won't be something I will rush to watch again.

4 out of 10 For any normal movie, I'd say this was terrible. Truly awful. And less forgivably so than the original cartoon movie . But... he wasn't really trying , was he? Michael Bay wasn't trying to make a good movie, right? I figure there are two approaches you can take with a film (and franchise) like this: Really invest some time and effort to understand what people loved about the original, then reward them with an intelligent, modernised interpretation, OR Forget all about what people liked, forget about dialogue, forget about acting and forget about intelligence. Just focus on a bit of blockbuster CGI and throw in some lame clichés. Let's face it: he took the latter option. Lazy bastard. Even the CGI was disappointing, though. I wanted to see transformations more like what my toys did, not this million-moves-a-second nonsense that was too quick to follow. I wanted to feel like the robots were my friends brought back to life. But, no. Instead, it was n

9 out of 10 I admit, I was surprised. United 93 does a brilliant job of conveying the horror, disbelief and confusion that was rife on September 11th, 2001. With a title that makes it sound like a 1970’s air disaster movie, I was expecting some kind of over-dramatised schlock with a liberal dose of jingoism thrown in. That, however, is emphatically not what the film is all about. United 93 follows 4 key groups of people through the day’s events: the flight’s passengers; the hijackers; air traffic controllers; and the military. While most of the dialogue is, out of necessity, conjecture, it’s to the film's credit that it manages to play out closer to a fly-on-the-wall documentary than a drama — at least until the final half hour. From that point on, instead of skipping from one group to the next, we are left with the build-up to the famous "Let’s roll" scenario and the equally well-known consequences. Remarkably intense, this is a DVD I expected to give away once I’