60-second cinema

7 out of 10 I only saw this film because I was taking my 9 year old to the pictures and this was preferable to Fred Claus. I would rather have taken him to see Howard the Duck than this years seasonal family cash-in. Sorry, I digress, Stardust is a modern take on an old fashioned fairy story. It has good perfromances from its leads and the story is well paced. Many people (particularly men) will be put off by the fact that it is a fantasy, story with love as it's central theme. However I think it is similar in spirit to The Princess Bride and if you enjoyed that you should get a kick out of this too.

5 out of 10 The Warriors is set in gang-ruled, 1970s New York and follows the eponymous gang who, when wrongly implicated for the murder of a kingpin, have to make their way to the safety of home turf. So, a glimpse into the rough, tough world of gangland killings, then? Not really. All the gangs in the film are truly comical, both in the cartoony sense and the frankly-ridiculous sense. Entertainment comes primarily in the form of unintentional hilarity. The acting, too, is pretty ropey, but... I went into it expecting no more and wasn't disappointed. Even so, I can't give this cheese-ridden nonsense any more than a five. Perfect fodder for a videogame , but not a great film.

7 out of 10 While the nature of the animation (think Polar Express) was a little distracting, this was generally quite an enjoyable film, telling a great story. We read Beowulf at school, but my memory’s so poor that I’ve no idea how faithful the film is to the original. Regardless, as I say, it still told a good story... even with a cockney wankah pronouncing his intent to “kill your monstah”. Angelina Jolie, by the way, looks just as hot when digitally rendered as she does in real life. Think I might have to find somewhere showing the 3D version now... ;-)

9 out of 10 As a rule, I hate films I can’t explain. Donnie Darko is a nice exception to that rule. The film tells the story of a teenage boy who cheats death by sleepwalking when a jet engine crashes onto his house. What follows this, while firmly bedded in the sci-fi genre, is a whole world of Just Plain Weird™. Told by a 6-foot rabbit named Frank that the world is due to end in 28 days, Donnie, played brilliantly by Jake Gyllenhaal , is slowly drawn into uncovering the meaning behind it all. Now, I’ve seen the film at least twice and, were it not for reading FAQs on the web, I still wouldn’t have got it. In fact, I felt happier before I knew the explanation — let that be a word of warning. Until I found out, the film had real replay value. Now, I feel I’ve spoiled it for myself. Anyway, it’s still a great film and it’s easy to see how it gained its cult status. Not your average story, good actors, good acting, nicely shot, perfectly restrained use of CGI and a pervasive wei

8 out of 10 I'm not normally one for the Die Hard series, but on this occasion, I managed to disengage my brain just the right amount and I genuinely enjoyed it. Let's face it, whenever a film involves cyber-crime, you just know you're going to have to filter a lot of stuff out and this film's no exception. However, the interplay between the 2 main characters (McClane & hacker-boy Farrell) in this outing was good enough to make me forget the technical nonsense and the pace of the action kept everything rolling along nicely. Not bad for a popcorn movie. :)

2 out of 10 About as formulaic a horror film as you can get. Start with a scene of some people being killed in some woods, then put some annoying teenagers into the same woods, lost and wait from them to get kicked in. The teenagers are also joined by a bloke, who gets lost trying to take a short cut, who then bumps into a toothless simpleton at a garage that has no phone, in the middle of nowhere in outback Virginia. Said, simpleton then tells the man to watch out and tells him to nick off back to your fancy house with pillows, hot water, noise discs and walls. The bloke then takes the wrong turn and crashes into the annoying teenagers and the whole lot of them then set about on a rather poor adventure. Isn't it about time, horror films started using more than just teenagers in peril as their basis. Surely, a family getting chopped up, chinned or simply buggered, would be more scary, than more stupid buggers of varying levels of annoyance, which as in most films of this type, c