Insanitarium (2008) 6/10

Starring : Jesse Metcalfe, Kiele Sanchez, Peter Stormare
Director : Jeff Bueller
Running Time : 89 mins

In order to prevent his sister Lily (Sanchez) from being committed to an insane asylum, Jack (Metcalfe) pretends that he is crazy in order to take her place and protect her, but once he has been institutionalized he discovers that one of his carers, Dr Gianetti (Stormare), is using the patients as guinea pigs for his experimental drug that turns people into flesh-eating psychopaths.

The performances in this movie are so over the top it actually becomes quite entertaining. With Peter Stormare putting in a ridiculous performance as the power-crazy doctor, and Carla Gallo putting in an appearance as his overly sexualised assistant, this is filled with unintentional laughs that will have fans of B movies chuckling and fans of decent movies cringing.

You’ll like this if you liked : Sublime

Maniac (2012) 7/10

Starring : Elijah Wood, Nora Arnezeder, Genevieve Alexandra, Jan Broberg, Megan Duffy
Director : Frank Khalfoun
Running Time : 89 mins

Frank (Wood) has an unhealthy obsession with murdering women and removing their scalps so he can put them on the dummies in his mannequin shop, but when he meets a young artist named Anna (Arnezeder) and she seeks his aid in an art exhibition. As their friendship develops, he finds it harder and harder to supress his inner demons that so desperately want to kill her too.

Elijah Wood is expertly creepy in this slasher remake, similar to the role he played in Sin City. The director tires to make us feel for Wood by filming everything as if it is from his perspective, but sadly this only leads the viewer to have less sympathy for him as we rarely see him except in reflections. I’m not sure why this was banned in so many countries – I guess the scalpings were a little too much for some - but fans of old school slasher movies will enjoy this dramatic horror, though the ending is a little random.

You’ll like this if you liked : American Psycho

Green Lantern : First Flight (2009) 7/10

Starring : Christopher Meloni, Victor Garber, Tricia Helfer, Michael Madsen, John Larroquette
Director : Lauren Montgomery
Running Time : 78 mins

When Hal Jordan (Meloni) is bequeathed a strange ring by an alien he finds dying, he is imbued with a mysterious power that transforms him into the Green Lantern and reluctantly recruited into the Green Lantern Corps – a group of intergalactic guardians charged with protecting the universe – and teamed up with top Green Lantern operative Sinestro (Garber) for training, but Hal soon realises that Sinestro has his own ideas about how the universe should be controlled.

In spite of having a terrible name, Sinestro is one of the better DC universe villains, mainly because he comes across as so much of a good guy from the outset. In many ways this is better than the live action movie from a few years back and this, in fact, came first. Unfortunately the character of Hall Jordan is a little bland and flat, doing little to win viewers over other than continually say I told you so when Sinestro turns evil.

You’ll like this if you liked : Wonder Woman

Mama (2013) 7/10

Starring : Jessica Chastain, Nikolaj Coster-Waldau, Megan Charpentier, Isabelle Nelisse, Daniel Kash, Javier Botet
Director : Andres Muschietti
Running Time : 101 mins

When Lucas Desange (Coster-Waldau) discovers that his two nieces Victoria (Charpentier) and Lilly (Nelisse) who had been presumed dead when they vanished five years earlier have been found in the woods, he and his girlfriend Annabel (Chastain) are faced with the prospect of raising the two girls as their own. As they do their best to rehabilitate the girls into normal society, they start to suspect that they may not been as alone as they think when they lived in the woods.

This could have been a very tense horror-thriller if the makers had relied entirely on Javier “Mama” Botet’s naturally creepy look. Instead there is a little too much CGI and costumery towards the end which did spoil it a little for me. Other than that, this is a very well-paced thriller that has some disturbing imagery and will no doubt creep out most viewers that can appreciate the CGI and don’t find it amusing.

You’ll like this if you liked : [Rec]

Dante’s Inferno : An Animated Epic (2010) 7/10

Starring : Graham McTavish, Vanessa Branch, Steve Blum, Peter Jessop, Mark Hamill
Director : Victor Cook, Mike Disa, Sang-Jin Kin, Shuko Murase, Jong-Sik Nam & Lee Seung-Gyu
Running Time : 80 mins

Returning soldier Dante (McTavish) arrives home to find that his entire family have been slain, and that his wife Beatrice (Branch) has been taken to hell be the evil Lucifer (Blum). Dante decides to follow his wife into hell and, with a man named Virgil (Jessop) as his guide, he traverses the various perils of the nine circles of hell in order to get his family back.

As with most cartoons that have more than one animation company working on them, this does at times feel a little disjointed. Thankfully this doesn’t suffer too badly, but the material it’s working with is so confusing that at times it feels like the writers don’t know what they’re doing and seemingly introduce characters randomly. Still, this is an interesting and valiant effort at translating the epic poem for the small screen.

You’ll like this if you liked : Batman : Gotham Knight

Small Apartments (2012) 5/10

Starring : Matt Lucas, Billy Crystal, Juno Temple, James Marsden, Peter Stormare, James Caan, Johnny Knoxville
Director : Jonas Akerlund
Running Time : 97 mins

Slightly troubled Franklin Franklin (Lucas) lives in an apartment complex, surrounded by strange and colourful characters that have various problems of their own. When he accidentally kills his abusive landlord, Mr Olivetti (Stormare), Franklin is forced to try and hide the body, while distracted by his oddball neighbours and faced with the terrible news that his brother Bernard (Marsden) has died.

The performances in this apparent comedy were a little lacking in any kind of skill as far as I’m concerned. Matt Lucas really doesn’t work as a lead, and his American accent wasn’t particularly convincing. The fact that he is obviously completely nuts is very much underplayed, which was a little annoying, and the overall direction was flat and kind of unimaginative.

You’ll like this if you liked : A Fantastic Fear Of Everything

Die Another Day (2002) 7/10

Starring : Pierce Brosnan, Halle Berry, Toby Stephens, Rosamund Pike, Rick Yune
Director : Lee Tamahori
Running Time : 128 mins

After being held hostage in North Korea for over a year, James Bond (Brosnan) is finally traded his freedom in return for the freedom of a Korean agent named Zao (Yune) who had been captured by MI6. When he discovers that this was the deal for his freedom, Bond sets off in search of Zao and discovers that he is working with a British billionaire named Gustav Graves (Stephens) and they have a deadly plan involving a seemingly humanitarian satellite designed to provide solar energy for failing crops.

The overuse of computer generated effects really spoils this otherwise reasonable Bond flick. The plot is interesting and easy to follow, and although the use of solar energy to destroy land borders might sound stupid, it is approached in a reasonably plausible way. This does lack some of the humour of earlier Brosnan movies, but it is still very watchable.

You’ll like this if you liked : Quantum Of Solace

21 & Over (2013) 7/10

Starring : Miles Teller, Skylar Astin, Justin Chon, Sarah Wright
Director : Jon Lucas & Scott Moore
Running Time : 90 mins

When Jeff Chang (Chon) turns twenty-one, his oldest and closest friends Miller (Teller) and Casey (Astin) decide to take him out to all the bars that have turned them down over the years and get completely drunk, but when Jeff passes out and they forget where he lives, they find themselves on a bizarre road trip to get him home in time for the most important interview of his life.

This is a very silly movie that will appeal to fans of franchise comedies like American Pie and The Hangover. The cast of relative unknowns do a great job of appealing themselves to the audience, and the overall feel of the movie is like a dirty John Hughes comedy, with plenty of romance and coming of age moments. Definitely worth watching, but only if you like gross out slapstick.

You’ll like this if you liked : I Love You, Beth Cooper

Reign Of Assassins (2010) 6/10

Starring : Michelle Yeoh, Woo-sung Jung, Xueqi Wang, Barbie Hsu
Director : Chao-Bin Su
Running Time : 116 mins

The legend of a monk’s remains, which have been split into parts and spread around China, that can give whoever assembles them the greatest Kung Fu powers imaginable, turns out to be true and skilled assassin Zeng Jing (Yeoh), known in her circles as Drizzle, comes into possession of them and sets out on a journey to return them to set them to rest, but a number of other assassins set out to stop her and take possession of the body parts.

Fans of Kung Fu movies should enjoy this, although it is pretty slow paced largely thanks to the huge amount of exposition in the opening credits. The remainder of the movie is predominantly fight scenes in between slow scenes of travelling from town to town, but most classic Kung Fu movie and TV shows are about journeys so this is pretty loyal to the genre.

You’ll like this if you liked : House Of Flying Daggers

Playing For Keeps (2012) 6/10

Starring : Gerard Butler, Jessica Biel, Noah Lomax, Uma Thurman, Catherine Zeta-Jones, Dennis Quaid
Director : Gabriele Muccino
Running Time : 106 mins

Former football star George Dryer (Butler) moves to the United States in order to see his son Lewis (Lomax) and to try and resolve issues with his ex-wife Stacie (Biel), but due to his lack of direction in life he is nothing but a bitter disappointment to the pair of them. So, in order to try to reconnect with his son, and by default his ex, George takes a job as a football coach – a job that unfortunately leads to him receiving some unwanted attention from many of the player’s mums.

This movie was a little slow and pretty predictable overall. Butler and Biel had little or no chemistry, and his attempts at winning her character back meet with the most predictable of French farce. Granted, the supporting characters weren’t too bad apart from Dennis Quaid who was terrible, but if the leads don’t work, the rest of the movie still suffers.

You’ll like this if you liked : Larry Crowne

Dance Flick (2009) 6/10

Starring : Shoshana Bush, Damon Wayans Jr, Essence Atkins, Affion Crockett
Director : Damien Dante Wayans
Running Time : 89 mins

When her mother dies, Megan White (Bush) decides to move to an inner city school to pursue her dream of becoming a dancer. When she meets street dancer Thomas Uncles (Wayans Jr) through his sister Charity (Atkins), the two slowly start to form a close bond and eventually Megan helps form a dance crew so that Thomas can enter a dance battle to avenge one of his friends.

The Wayans brothers once again try to make a parody movie, and at least this time the references are largely dance and musical based. The comedy songs were actually pretty well written, and the spoofs were loyal to the parody material. Fans of what I like to call movie-movies will find this to be one of the better efforts, and compared to the Friedberg / Seltzer horror shows that seem to get progressively worse and less relevant as they go on, this is more than okay.

You’ll like this if you liked : I’m Gonna Git Ya Sucka

Iron Man 3 (2013) 8/10

Starring : Robert Downey Jr, Gwyneth Paltrow, Don Cheadle, Guy Pearce, Rebecca Hall, Jon Favreau, Ben Kingsley
Director : Shane Black
Running Time : 131 mins

Tony Stark (Downey Jr) is faced with a serious problem when hi home is destroyed by a terrorist called the Mandarin (Kingsley), so he decides to get over his panic attacks following the recent alien attack on the planet and sets about tracking down the Mandarin, only to discover that the truth about him is far more sinister than he could ever have imagined.

This was better than the second Iron Man movie, mainly because it wasn’t just an introduction to the Avengers movie. The villains were far more interesting, and we get a little more characterisation for Pepper and Happy. The action is fun to watch, and Stark is his usual drunken charismatic self which makes for an enjoyable watch. And don’t forget to watch passed the end credits for an extra scene between Tony Stark and Bruce Banner.

You’ll like this if you liked : 4 : Rise Of The Silver Surfer

Choose (2010) 6/10

Starring : Katheryn Winnick, Kevin Pollak, Nicholas Tucci, Bruce Dern
Director : Marcus Graves
Running Time : 87 mins

When her Sheriff father, Tom (Pollak), starts investigating the death of a man who was murdered by his daughter after she was forced to choose between him and her mother, journalist student Fiona Wagner (Winnick) starts to suspect that there may be a serial killer on the loose, one who forced his victims to make tough choices that could result in their disfigurement or death.

This is like a really long episode of Criminal Minds, but lacks a little in the characterisation department. Winnick is okay in the lead, but there really needed to be a huge injection of passion into the performances of the victims who for the most part don’t seem particularly bothered that they are being threatened. And the twist in the ending actually ruined the rest of the movie for me.

You’ll like this if you liked : Seven

John Dies At The End (2012) 8/10

Starring : Chase Williamson, Rob Mayes, Paul Giamatti, Clancy Brown
Director : Don Coscarelli
Running Time : 100 mins

A new street drug nicknamed Soy Sauce promises to give anyone who uses it a true out of body experience, with the side effect that it allows users to travel through time and into other dimensions, but when John (Mayes) and Dave (Williamson) discover that the drug may be a cunning plan for those from another dimension to invade ours, they find that they may be our world’s last hope.

The plot for this movie is completely silly, and the two leads manage to keep their faces straight as they are attacked by meat monsters and alien bugs. There are some clever nods to what will happen, specifically the axe scene at the start of the film, and fans of weirdness will very much lap this movie up.

You’ll like this if you liked : Poultrygeist : Night Of The Chicken Dead

Like Crazy (2011) 5/10

Starring : Anton Yelchin, Felicity Jones, Jennifer Lawrence
Director : Drake Doremus
Running Time : 91 mins

When Anna Gardner (Jones) moves from England to America on a student visa, she falls madly in love with fellow student Jacob Helm (Yelchin). Anna decides to stay with Jacob, allowing her visa to expire, so when she finally does go to England to visit her family she isn’t allowed to travel back to the States. The two are forced to decide whether their love is worth the hassle of fighting immigration and if they can continue a long distance relationship.

This movie annoyed me. The relationship between the two leads was, I’m guessing, supposed to be superficial, and the end result of the movie, though ambiguous, really showed how much of a waste of time the rest of the film was. If you are a fan of dramas where none of the characters are sympathetic and their choices are ridiculously poorly made, then you might find this entertaining, but if you prefer you characters well-rounded and likeable then steer clear of this.

You’ll like this if you liked : Last Night

Olympus Has Fallen (2013) 7/10

Starring : Gerard Butler, Aaron Eckhart, Morgan Freeman, Dylan McDermott, Rick Yune
Director : Antoine Fuqua
Running Time : 120 mins

When the White House is attacked by North Korean terrorists and President Benjamin Asher (Eckhart) is taken hostage, former presidential guard Mike Banning (Butler) takes it upon himself to sneak into the White House, rescue the hostages and take on the terrorists.

As far as action movies go this was pretty entertaining – that is until you realise all the other movies that have been ripped off to make this. The opening sequence is straight out of Along Came A Spider (it also has a touch of Cliffhanger and Vertical Limit to it), the scene between Butler and McDermott is very similar to the Willis / Rickman scene from the first Die Hard, and the idea of North Korea being the new threat to America is taken straight from the remake of Red Dawn. If you can ignore all of the homages that this movie seems to pay to so many other movies, then you may enjoy this, but otherwise you’ll be too busy pointing out the stolen moments to concentrate on the action.

You’ll like this if you liked : Air Force One

Scooby-Doo! Abracadabra-Doo (2010) 7/10

Starring : Frank Welker, Matthew Lillard, Mindy Cohn, Grey DeLisle
Director : Spike Brandt
Running Time : 74 mins

In the fourteenth of the direct to video Scooby-Doo series, Scooby-Doo (Welker) and the rest of the gang travel to the Whirlen Merlin Magic Academy where they discover that a giant griffin is terrorising the students and driving them away in droves.

It’s always fun in Scooby-Doo to see one of the gangs’ relatives (except when it’s Scrappy-Doo) and in this movie we get to meet Velma’s sister Madelyn. There’s a cute side-story that involves Madelyn fancying Shaggy, and with a villain who is only trying to be romantic this is the perfect Scooby-Doo movie for a romantic night in (if you can find a woman who will actually sit down and watch this with you!).

You’ll like this if you liked : Scooby-Doo And The Samurai Sword

End Of Watch (2012) 7/10

Starring : Jake Gyllenhaal, Michael Pena, Natalie Martinez, Anna Kendrick
Director : David Ayer
Running Time : 105 mins

Unconventional LA cop Brian Taylor (Gyllenhaal), much to the annoyance of his partner Mike Zavala (Pena), decides to secretly film their rounds as part of a film project. Their call-outs start to irritate some of the gangs in the area, and it isn’t long until one group plan on killing the two cops.

The only real gripe I have with this movie concerns the scenes with the criminals, which are filmed in the same way as the cop footage, insinuating that they too are filming their activities. Now what kind of a crook would film themselves planning vengeance against the cops – and then hope to get away with it? What would they do with the footage? Put it on YouTube? They’d so easily get caught.

You’ll like this if you liked : The Town

Return Of The Living Dead : Necropolis (2005) 5/10

Starring : Aimee-Lynn Chadwick, Cory Hardrict, John Keefe, Jana Kramer, Peter Coyote
Director : Ellory Elkayem
Running Time : 89 mins

When one of their friends goes missing, a gang of teenagers suspect that evil corporation Hybra-Tech was behind his disappearance so break into the local facility in order to find out what happened to him. Unfortunately the facility has recently become the recipient of a large quantity of toxic waste from Chernobyl for the purpose of experimenting with zombies, and the teens accidentally release the zombies into the population.

In the fourth of the tongue-in-cheek horror series, an attempt at reviving and updating the series falls down at the halfway mark, mainly due to its latching on to the military aspect of part three rather than the character driven element. Up until the zombies begin their attack, this isn’t that bad a comedy zombie movie, but once the fighting commences and people start choosing hand to hand combat over a bullet to the brain, the action becomes hokier than usual.

You’ll like this if you liked : Re-Animator