60-second cinema

9 out of 10 A pretty decent heist caper with nicely worked bluffs throughout the film. It may have been overly conscious of its own coolness at times, but at least that was restricted to just the two characters played by George Clooney and Brad Pitt . The rest of the widely-drawn bunch of crooks form a simple, highly skilled, yet still occasionally bumbling crew. Having finally seen this first installment in the series, I’m not surprised it’s gone on to spawn a couple of sequels and will be seeking them out soon.

5 out of 10 Spoiled slightly by the difficulty I had making out what people were saying, thanks to their slightly detached, rapid mumblings and my poor hearing. Even so, I couldn’t help feeling this film thought it was a lot cleverer than it was. Really, it was no more than your average detective film, following a self-confident outsider investigating the death of a friend who’d fallen in with the wrong crowd. Honestly, that’s really all there is to it. How it won a Sundance award is beyond me.

5 out of 10 From the trailer, you might think that this is a film about a mission to save mankind, reigniting the sun with a geet massive bomb. All sounds a bit Armageddon , doesn’t it? Thankfully, it’s not. That said, replacing stock cheese with stock edginess isn’t necessarily enough to save it. While superficially it is about reigniting the sun, it could just as well have been titled “Things Go Wrong In Space”. It’s a bit of a standard sci-fi thriller in that sense and, sadly, barely deviates from the stress/mistakes/tension theme at all. It even goes so far as to steal ideas from 2001: A Space Odyssey . Overall, Sunshine is pretty derivative stuff and, while reasonably well played out, left me a little flat.

7 out of 10 Curse of the Golden Flower is director Yimou Zhang ( Hero , House of flying Daggers )at his most audacious. It is spectacular, dramatic and colourful (maybe a little to colourful for some tastes). The action sequences are used more sparingly than in either Hero or Daggers. Yet this is a positive for me as it meant that the story was stronger for it. The story itself is one of a family at war. However the main protagonists are so unlikeable that you don't really know who you want to route for and as a result the ending falls a bit flat.

5 out of 10 On the face of it The Brothers Grimm is a perfect match for the dark surrealism of Terry Gilliam . However it fails to live up to its potential. The brothers (played by Matt Damon and Heath Ledger ) are travelling con-artists who arrive in a village with a real fairy tale curse. For a Fairy tale the cinematography is very grey and brown. There is little of the Gilliam imagination that we might have expected. Most surprising of all is that the special effects ranged from the sublime (blobby gingerbread man) to the downright awful. A scene where a CGI scarf was floating down a river was particularly derisible. At times it seems that the script is a vehicle for referencing yet another fairy tale rather than to tell the tale that the viewer is actually watching. This is a shame because when the movie does get going there are moments to enjoy.

6 out of 10 One of those films whose story you know from the moment you see the trailer, Stranger Than Fiction is a little predictable, but still fairly enjoyable. Will Ferrell does a decent job of reining in his Anchorman tendencies, while Emma Thompson and Dustin Hoffman perform reasonable support roles. Maggie Gyllenhaal , however, really impressed me — easily the best thing about the film. And she’s properly cute to boot. Overall, however, I doubt this is going to stick too long in the memory. It reminded me a little of the rather excellent Adaptation (in which Gyllenhaal also featured), but couldn’t hope to equal it. Worth renting on DVD nonetheless.

7 out of 10 (revised) One word to sum this up: bittersweet. Not just in the story being told, but also in how it fared against my expectations. Being a joint effort between Michel Gondry (music video legend) and Charlie Kaufman (screenwriting legend), I really wanted this to be outstanding. To find that it was merely very good almost feels like a let-down. It seems the curse of having read glowing reviews strikes again. :-/ Eternal Sunshine tells the story of Joel ( Jim Carrey ) and Clementine ( Kate Winslet ), a couple who’ve fallen out and end up seeking help to erase each other from their respective memories. Naturally, this fantasy aspect requires some suspension of disbelief, but beyond that, it’s a regular tale of an irregular relationship gone sour and the struggle to make sense of it all. Both Carrey and Winslet play their roles really well and are well supported by a strong cast. The writing, too, is equally strong and the film’s subplots support the mai...