THE WAITING ROOM - modern life is rubbish

Real life is drab. Grey skies, banal relationships, sitting on grubby trains pulling into worn out railway stations. People stay in crap relationships through inertia and the man/woman of your dreams walks by on the platform. THE WAITING ROOM is an earnest, well-acted drama that faithfully transcribes all this dreariness and the result is one of the most boring movies I have ever seen. Anne-Marie Duff and Ralf Little play two nice people who meet by chance in a railway station waiting room but don't act on their mutual attraction because they are both stuck in unfulfilling relationships. The rest of the film sees them mope around until they finally meet again and hold hands. Seriously. That's it.

THE WAITING ROOM was released in the UK last summer and is available on DVD.

WILD CHILD- I am Spartacus!

Deeply derivative and banal teen romance in which a troubled California teen learns the value of real friendship, hard-work and team spirit at a British boarding school. The tone is as dismal and dull as the grey British weather and even the presence of Shirley Henderson as Matron can't enliven things. Emma (niece of Julia) Roberts is appropriately snotty then earnest as the transformed girl. Alex "Stormrider" Pettyfer is wooden as the boyf. It's not really their fault. What are you meant to do with a script that contains lines like: "every second I'm with you I catch my breath"? I also liked the irony of a girl finding her true self when she cuts off her blonde hair extensions and returns to a natural brunette - all the time pashing over a boy sporting a set of blonde highlights not seen since the heyday of WHAM!

Will someone please give Juno Temple a starring role, please, and end this reign of banality?

WILD CHILD is on release in the Netherlands and in the UK. It goes on release in Norway on August 29th; in Australia on September 18th; in Spain on November 7th; in Singapore on November 13th; in Denmark on November 14th; in Italy on December 5th and in Germany on January 1st 2009.

DEATH AT A FUNERAL - monumentally unfunny

DEATH AT A FUNERAL is a British farce blessed with a good director (Frank Oz) and a hansome cast of British actors - from Rupert Graves to Kris Marshall to Daisy Donovan. These are people we KNOW can be funny. Frank Oz is a funny man. Kris Marshall is a funny man. Daisy Donovan had her own comedy show, for heaven's sake. And yet the resulting ninety minute film is monumentally unfunny. I mean, I was sitting in the cinema, bored and unsmiling, thinking how much of an achievement it was to make a film in which Kris Marshall and Daisy Donovan are just NOT funny. Stupendous. Miraculous, even? Certainly, something which suggests a malevolent deliberateness rather than unfortunate cack-handedness. Screen-writer needs to go and stand in the corner and think very carefully about what he's done. This is arguably the worst film I have seen in the year to date.

DEATH AT A FUNERAL was released in Belgium, Israel, Germany, the Netherlands, the USA, Finland, Norway, Italy, Denmark, France, Portugal, Sweden, Singapore, Brazil, Australia, Russia, Spain and Greece earlier this year. It is currently on release in the UK and opens in Hungary on November 22nd.