NO STRINGS ATTACHED

Ivan Reitman, of GHOSTBUSTERS, fame returns to our screens with the kind of contemporary social comedy more typically associated with his son Jason (THANK YOU FOR SMOKING, UP IN THE AIR). The result is a movie that wants us to think it's edgy and honest, but when you cut to the meat, it's still the same old rom-com happy-ending bullshit we've been subjected to for decades.

Natalie Portman and Ashton Kutcher play two emotionally bruised people who react to their wounds in diametrically opposite ways. The girl becomes emotionally repressed, running from anything that could turn sour and hurt her. By contrast, the boy becomes immensely open and vulnerable, rushing toward people who can't return his emotions. Not automatically the set-up for a rom-com, one might think. But hey-ho, this being Hollywood, the two star-crossed lovers meet cute and decide to have NSA sex. Inevitably, they fall in love. He pushes for a relationship and she runs. One suspects that if Jason Reitman had been directing the film that's where it would've ended. But no. Because, while this film tries to prove how modern and liberated it is with its explicit sexual references and a whole scene devoted to period cramps, essentially it is a conservative project. And this contradiction infects every scene. Thus, while there are some rather funny set-pieces, typically involving the superb supporting cast (Mindy Kalinga, Kevin Kline, Lake Bell, and a brilliantly ditzy Ophelia Lovibond), the movie as a whole just doesn't hang together.

Not only does the film not hang together, it also has the faint whiff of desperation about it. It's desperate for us to love it - for us to think it's cool. In fact, it's about as desperate as the scarily need mono-dimensionally good guy that Ashton Kutcher plays in this flick, not to mention last year's VALENTINE'S DAY. I am genuinely puzzled as to why Natalie Portman, darling of indie flicks since LEON, and soon to be Oscar winner for BLACK SWAN, decided to take a role in this film. And it's even more bizarre when you realise that she actually produced it. And perhaps most puzzling of all - what a bizarre and wasteful way to use Cary Elwes!

NO STRINGS ATTACHED was released in January in the USA and Canada. It is currently on release in Bulgaria, Belgium, Indonesia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Hungary, Portugal, Finland, Norway, France, Germany, Hong Kong, Malaysia, the Netherlands and Singapore. It opens next week in Argentina, Greece, Brazil, Estonia and the UK. It opens on March 18th in Poland; on March 25th in Iceland and Spain; and on March 31st in Slovenia. It opens on April 1st in Sweden; on April 15th in Italy and on April 22nd in Japan.

GAMER - sporadically interesting Running Man remake

GAMER is a remake of the seminal Schwarzenegger sci-fi flick, RUNNING MAN. It's set in a dystopian future, where sex and violence are commercialised in computer games, allowing obese couch potatoes to fuck beautiful women and teenagers to control ultra-violent prisoners in live-action shoot-em-ups. Why have a virtual avatar when you can remote control actual people? The game is controlled by billionaire Ken Castle (a typically mischievous Michael C Hall) and peopled by set-up con Kable (Gerard Butler) and his wife turned hooker Angie (Amber Valetta). As in the original flick, the action really takes off when the "running man", Kable, escapes the game, aided by revolutionaries (Ludcaris, Aaron Yoo and Alison Lohman).

Despite all the CGI, GAMER doesn't have the visceral thrills of the action sequences in RUNNING MAN - for a start, there are no ridiculous baddies - remember the ice-hockey guy with the chainsaw?! In fact, the action sequences were pretty dull, which has to count as a big negative in a summer action movie. It was more interesting seeing how the film-makers had updated the dystopian future to capture the full weirdness of modern gaming. In terms of style, I was pleased to see Neveldine calm down the frenetic style of the CRANK movies, delivering a film with a nice bleak, almost monochrome look, while retaining their ability to mesh computer graphics and standard live-action film. I also like the fact that this film has more layers to it than the CRANK films - simultaneously critiquing and glorying in the voyeurism and nastiness of modern entertaining culture. And let me not forgot, a song-and-dance sequence in which Michael C Hall plays to Sammy Davis Junior's I've Got You Under My Skin. Worth the price of entry alone!

GAMER is on release in Greece, Canada, Finland, Italy, Norway, Spain, Sweden, the USA, Belgium, Estonia, France, the Philippines, Russia, Hong Kong, Singapore, Cyprus, Denmark, Latvia, the UK, the Czech Republic and Austria. It opens next week in South Korea and Bulgaria. It opens in October in Brazil, the Netherlands, Iceland, Croatia and Lithuania. It opens on January 7th in Germany.

MAX PAYNE - beautiful imagery let down by transparent plot

MAX PAYNE is a beautiful, gothic thriller that convincingly establishes an air of mystery and menace in its opening half hour. In a dystopian present, skyscrapers sit alongside wood-panelled offices stuffed with 1920s filing cabinets. Drug addicts see visions of dark angels and are tatooed with norse icons to protect them from evil. There are dark hints that the movie is going to tackle the insanity of the war on terror. My expectations were high. In the midst of this, Max Payne (Mark Wahlberg) is an old-fashioned detective working cold cases from a basement, not least that of his wife's murderers. He is enmeshed in a series of brutal murders - a beautiful Russian drug addict (olga Kyrlenko), his ex-partner that seem to be linked to that traumatic ur-event. These coincidences aren't lost on internal affairs, and Max turns to his mentor (Beau Bridges) - now a security guard in a spookily slick pharma company - for help.

The problem with Max Payne is that for all its gothic beauty and superficial style, the engine of the film is transparent. You can guess whodunnit and why within the first half hour and after that, the movie just becomes one beautifully staged montage after another. Some have criticised MAX PAYNE for ripping of SIN CITY and 300 in its visual style. My criticism is that it doesn't rip off Frank Miller enough. More precisely, those Miller adaptations work because they have strong stories at their heart - the action is propelled by high stakes. The writers of MAX PAYNE had a tougher job - a self-propelled video game has less narrative to crib than the Hot Gates. Still, you have to call it as you see it, and this movie, stylish as it may be, disintegrates into banal shoot-outs.

MAX PAYNE is on release in the Philippines, Serbia, Australia, Finland, Greece, Kuwait, Lebanon, the Netherlands, Peru, Portugal, Singapore, Slovakia, Thailand, Canada, Estonia, Finland, Iceland, Italy, Norway, Romania, Spain, Sweden, Turkey, the US, the UK, Egypt, Indonesia, Israel, Russia, Austria, Denmark, Mexico, Poland, the Czech Republic, Hungary, France and Hong Kong. It opens next week in Argentina, Germany, South Korea and Brazil and the following week in Belgium and Chile, It opens in Venezuela on January 2nd.

ROCKNROLLA - Lock Stock Lite

Once upon a time, Guy Ritchie was a director who made visually stylish, wickedly funny, caper movies set in a caricature of London's underworld. Then he made box office stinkers SWEPT AWAY and REVOLVER under the evil twin influence of Madge and Luc Besson. You can hardly blame him, then, when he retreats into his comfort zone with a LOCK, STOCK-lite, commercially viable flick designed to restore him to some semblance of respect.

ROCKNROLLA is, then, something of a return to form, if you're being generous, or a desperate attempt to recapture earlier promise, if you're being harsh. It lacks the comic insanity of LOCK, STOCK and the sheer malevolence of SNATCH. The characters are re-hashes, as is much of the dialogue and situational comedy. Everything seems lightly warmed-over, like last night's pizza. Still, for all that, ROCKNROLLA is likely to be warmly received by critics and audiences for what it isn't - a pretentious disaster.

Once again, we're back in Ritchie-land circa 2007. Pre-credit crunch, London is a mix of old school East End gangsters and new-school Russian billionaire mobsters. Caught in the middle, we have "The Wild Bunch". They're actually a rather banal bunch of working-class lads who do the odd heist and serve the odd stretch. The Russian mob pay the East End gangster to use his bent Councillor to give planning permission to a big real estate deal. The low-level crims, tipped off by the Russian's temptress accountant, nick the bribe money not once, but twice. In the process, they uncover the real identity of a grass, and procure the Russian's "lucky painting" that was stolen by the Gangster's smack-head son. The fact that I can summarise the plot so succinctly shows you how much less ambitious and twisty the plot of ROCKNROLLA is compared to LOCK, STOCK and SNATCH.

Everything seems a little weaker than in previous films. Gerard Butler lacks the gruff authenticity of Jason Statham in the lead role. His side-kicks are less colourful characters than in Ritchie's first two flicks. Thandie Newton has little to do as the temptress. Jeremy Piven and Ludacris are wasted as the token yanquie guest stars. Tom Wilkinson hams it up as the East End gangster but lacks the menace and force of Alan Ford's Bricktop, or even Mike Reid's Avi. Altogether, Ritchie has gone for big-names in his cast rather than local character actors to the movie's detriment.

There remain two reasons to watch this film: Mark Strong is always watchable and is good value in the Jason Statham role of narrator and hard-man. But the real star of the show is Toby Kebbell as the fucked-up step-son of the Gangster - a rock star who has faked his own death from an overdose - a smack-head but the only person with a clear idea of the machinations of the underworld. If there is a sequel to ROCKNROLLA, and Kebbell is at the centre of it, I'll be there on opening night.

ROCKNROLLA is on release in the UK. It goes on release in the US on October 8th; in the Netherlands on October 23rd; in Argentina and Australia on November 6th; in Venezuela on November 14th; in France on November 19th; in Germany on November 27th; in Greece and Portugal on December 4th; in Belgium on December 10th; in Russia on January 1st and in Japan on March 28th.

FRED CLAUS - great cast undone by lazy script

I think Vince Vaughn is really funny. I've thought this ever since my best friend at college, James "Fast Jimmy" Gibbons introduced me to SWINGERS. Suddenly it became clear where Jimbo's fast-talking, charming, fly-by-the-seat-of-his-pants routine came from. Since then, Vaughn's career has been hit and miss. He's been hired as the light relief in a bunch of genre movies (such as MR AND MRS SMITH) and made a disastrous lead in the horrible PSYCHO remake. I think the problem is that he's usually cast rather lazily: film-makers think his innate charm will enliven weak, derivative scripts. What this means is that Vaughn, like Ryan Reynolds, is usually the only saving grace in the mediocre movies he stars in. Up till now, the one exception to this rule was DODGEBALL - a truly hillarious movie.

I'm afraid that FRED CLAUS falls solidly into that cumbersome middle ground of weak comedies in which Vaughn fans find themselves scratching their heads wondering why he didn't demand a re-write. In general, the plot is predictable and derivative, the characters are two-dimensional, and the movie is painfully thin on laughs. Worst of all, the movie is way too long for a kid-friendly Christmas flick, no matter what the quality of the picture.

Just to fulfil the basic requirements, I should clue you into the big Concept. Fred Claus is a nice kid who becomes embittered when his brother Nicholas gets all the attention. Eventually, Nick becomes Santa Claus, and as part of the deal, he and his family become immortal. Fast forward several hundred years and Fred (Vaughn) is forced to go cap in hand to the North Pole and make up with his brother Santa (Giamatti). He teaches the elves to loosen up, they fall behind on their schedule, and the big bad corporate man (Spacey) threatens to close them down. As one might expect, it all turns out for the best for the characters, which is more than can be said for the honest ticket-buying public. One can only wonder why the producers spent so much money on a high-octane cast and so little on the script.

FRED CLAUS is on release in the US, Canada, Australia, Italy, Singapore, Japan, the Philippines, Germany, South Korea, Denmark, Italy, the UK and Japan. It opens next week in Belgium, Greece, the Netherlands, Iceland, Spain, Sweden and Turkey. It opens in Christmas week in Russia, Slovenia, Estonia, France and Bulgaria. Finally, it rolls into Egypt on January 16th.

HUSTLE AND FLOW - Isaac Hayes is in this movie - do you need another reason to see it?

HUSTLE AND FLOW is one of the best films released this year. It is funny, dramatic, has elements of a thriller and a domestic farce. Trust me – you don’t have to be into rap music to get a lot from this movie.

How can I describe how awesome a movie this is? First off, every acting performance is superb. Terrence Howard is having some kind of year. First, his superb performance in Paul Haggis’ “Crash” as the TV producer dealing with racism in modern day Los Angeles, forced to look on helpless as his wife is finger-fucked by a LAPD officer. Now his break-out-role as D-Jay, a low-level Memphis p*mp, who wants to become a rap star. Howard raps on all the tracks, combines the necessary mean business-like attitude of a p*mp with occasional flashes of integrity and tenderness. Plus, he reportedly spent months trying to get the Memphis drawl just right. (I am no judge, I live in London.)

The gaggle of prostitutes controlled by D-Jay are not one-dimensional screeching cr*ck-heads – they are real women in a bad place. In particular, Taryn Manning, who plays Nola, is fantastic and will surely get picked up for mainstream Hollywood roles on the back of this. Ludakris is great as Skinny Black, another local kid made good, and James will be thrilled to see that Isaac Hayes has a small walk-on part. Behind the camera, the cinematography by Amy Vincent, who directed the 2nd unit on “Lemony Snickett” is decent. Far better is the fact that the tracks D-Jay is writing actually sound like they could chart. We actually believe in Terrence Howard could be a rap star and this makes us invest a lot of emotion in the challenge of getting him noticed.

I honestly cannot think of a bad word to say about HUSTLE AND FLOW, but others have. The movie has attracted a lot of criticism because it was written and directed by – shock! Horror! a white man, namely Craig Brewer. And it is true that when you see TV footage of Brewer he does come over a bit Ali-G. But as John Singleton, the film’s producer and director of the superb “Boyz’n the hood” said, “What is a black film? Is an Eddie Murphy film a black film.” I quite agree. If Eddie can do such populist studio crap as "Doctor Doolittle", why shouldn’t Brewer do a movie about a p*mp turned rapper? I mean it’s not like he isn’t at home with the material. Like his protagonist, Brewer’s Mrs. was a stripper who had to give up when she got pregnant. And surely the only benchmark should be whether or not he makes a good movie? Brewer seems to be aware of the minefield he is about to step in to when he introduces a young white boy who helps D-Jay out with his music. When they first meet, D’Jay asks his black friend, Key, “Who's this niggah?” Key replies, “That's Shelby, he plays piano in my church. I thought he could help us develop your sound.” D’Jay looks aghast, “You know he's white, right?”

The film also took a lot of heat from black critics for portraying “the worst of Memphis”, as though the city was only about p*mps, h*okers and decrepit housing. But surely you can’t have it both ways. If "The Cosby Show" was too unrealistically upper-middle class, at least HUSTLE AND FLOW is telling you what is actually happening at the bottom of the heap. The movie never pretends to give you a comprehensive picture of society but to take you for a short time into D-Jay’s world. Surely this is as valid as Charles Dickens only showing the seamy side of Chancery Lane in "Bleak House"….

HUSTLE AND FLOW opened in July in the US, and is released in the UK on the 11th November, in Germany on the 17th November and in France on the 7th December 2005. Terrence Howard has been nominated for an Oscar for his performance in this film.