FREE GUY****

FREE GUY is an absolutely hilarious, heartwarming, fast-paced, action-adventure film that perfectly entertains the family. If I've docked it a point, it's only because the plot and concept are highly derivative of films like THE MATRIX and THE TRUMAN SHOW, albeit repackaged in a fun zany mix all of its own.

Ryan Reynolds is typically superb as a guy named Guy who lives a mediocre banal life in Free City. Except what's pretty obvious to us, but not to him, is that he's a Non Playable Character in a computer game, whose only job is to be in the background as real life kids rob banks and smoke strangers in a Grand Theft Auto style shoot-em-up game. The twist is that his AI character comes to consciousness when he meets Jodie Comer's player, because some old code had pre-programmed him to search for love. Somehow, Guy manages to steal a real player's powers and realises that a) he's in a game and b) he has agency! But unlike fucked up real world people, he decides to play as the good guy, rather than as a criminal, levelling up with breakneck speed and attracting a real world following of fans who just can't get enough of "blue shirt guy".

Meanwhile back in the real world, the true baddie turns about to be Taika Waititi's pretentious egotistical video game developer Antwon, who I read as based on the decades old British satirical show NATHAN BARLEY.  Turns out Antwon bilked Jodie Comer's character out of some of her original code, as well as her best friend Keys (Joe Keery) and now they have to team up with Guy to stop him.

The resulting film is full of fun and imagination and I loved how it not to subtly criticised the way in which real world people play video games to indulge their worst imagined vices. What does it say about us that the nicest and kindest character in the film is an AI?! I also loved the way the ending respected the bounds of the concept that had been set up and gave all the main characters an ending that actually seemed fulfilling. So kudos to all involved, not least director Shawn Levy (STANGER THINGS) and writers Matt Lieberman (SCOOB!) and Zak Penn (READY PLAYER ONE).

FREE GUY is rated PG-13 and has a running time of 115 minutes. The film played Locarno 2021 and was released on Netflix earlier this year.

DEADPOOL 2

I loved DEADPOOL - the dark humour, the self-awareness, the bloody violence, and the surprisingly mushy love story at its heart.  And I can happily say that DEADPOOL 2 lives up to the promise of the first film, while giving the protagonist a motley crew of superhero buddies and poking even more fun at superhero films, its own actors, and everything else.

The movie opens with our cynical wise-cracking mutant hero murdering bad guys for pay before going home to his beloved wife who is murdered in turn.  Being worthy of meeting her in heaven motivates the otherwise self-interested Deadpool to try to save an angry young mutant called Firefist (Julian Dennison who could easily be Rebel Wilson's kid brother such are his looks and facility for comedy).  Deadpool has to do this in opposition to time-travelling tough guy Cable (a ridiculously ripped Josh Brolin), who just wants to kill Firefist to prevent  him wreaking havoc in future.  Along the way, Deadpool picks up a new super-lucky mutant friend called Domino - a charismatic scene stealing performance from ATLANTA's Zazie Beetz - while hooking up with Colossus and Negasonic Teenage Warhead from the first film, as well as her girlfriend Yukio.

What I love about this film is that while it has a filthy sense of humour it really does have a heart. It really is about family and reaching out to people. And it's values are rock solid. Not just in the classic mutant universe as a metaphor for civil rights way. But in making a point about having a protagonist who is plus sized, a teenage lesbian relationship, and a strong black female lead.  The film is also clever. The way in which it uses time travel is neat, and all of its jokes hit their mark, getting particularly meta in the credits sequence, and with a fantastic use of music. 

Having tired of the Marvel and Star Wars franchises, I can honestly say I'm genuinely looking forward to DEADPOOL 3!

DEADPOOL has a running time of 119 minutes and is rated R. It is global release.

A partial review of LIFE

I walked into LIFE thinking it would be a GRAVITY like intelligent sci-film with an A-list cast and great visuals.  Actually what I got was a movie far closer to ALIEN - sleek, well-acted, but basically a derivative horror film. And as I don't do well with horror films, I left after the first hour.

Still for what it's worth, the movie rolls like this:  we're in the International Space Station and the action starts in media res.  Ryan Reynolds plays the character he always plays - a wise-ass cocky man who is highly skilled at something and ultimately has a heart of gold. In this case, Ryan/Rory is rescuing a set of soil samples from Mars that a previous astronaut suspected might contains microscopic living cells.  Back on board, Rory hands the soil over to scientist Hugh (Ariyon Bakare - JONATHAN STRANGE & MR NORRELL) who is delighted to discover a micro-organism that he lovingly tends until it grows to the size of a playful little starfish like creature that could sit in the palm of your hand.  Naturally, LIFE is not going to be about how this new alien species and humanity learn to love each other. Very quickly the alien beastie, nicknamed Calvin, goes into hostile survival mode, and all the carefully set-up CDC security measures designed by Miranda (Rebecca Ferguson - THE GIRL ON THE TRAIN).  It escapes out of the lab and into the ship, and the rest is an ALIEN style hunter-prey thriller.  

Of the cast, the Russian and Japanese crewmembers (Olga Dihovichnaya and Hiroyuki Sanada) are actually among the most compelling - with a deeply ethical arc to play out and the emotional resonance of a family back home respectively.  Bakare is also impressive as the biologist who has the most sympathy for Calvin's survival instinct. But Reynolds barely moves beyond self-parody, Ferguson is under-used and Jake Gyllenhaal is under-drawn as the kind of nice, banal, everyman figure.  Nonetheless, this film has the makings of something great given its superb cinematography from DP Seamus McGarvey (NOCTURNAL ANIMALS) and elegantly choreographed space sequences from Director Daniel Espinosa (CHILD 44).  It's just a shame that the basic story is such a predictably derivative version of a justifiably classic space-horror.  For that, we have DEADPOOL writers Paul Wernick and Rhett Reese to blame. 

LIFE has a running time of 103 minutes and is rated R. The movie is on global release everywhere but South Korea, where it opens on April 6th; France, Brazil and Greece where it opens on April 20th and Japan where it opens on July 8th. 

DEADPOOL

DEADPOOL is the most knowing and self-aware comic book movie to date. It satirises the conventions of the genre, breaks the fourth wall, and has its characters refer to actors in other comic book movies in media res.  This is meta-film-making beyond anything WATCHMEN or KICK-ASS have attempted.  The result is a movie that is hilariously laugh-out loud funny, but much much darker than the typical Marvel fare. Because Deadpool/Wade is NOT a superhero. He starts off as a mercenary who's suckered into trying a weird experimental treatment to cure his cancer.  But it turns out an evil villain called Francis aka Ajax is going to torture Wade to the point where his genes mutate and then sell him as an evil super-soldier.  Wade does mutate and assume awesome healing powers and ninja skills but his whole body also gets fried.  He escapes, becomes Deadpool, and goes on an epic vigilante killing spree to find Francis, in the hope that he will reverse the pizza-face side-effects so that Wade can be reunited with his fiancee.  

Throughout all of this, Wade/Deadpool chats to us directly and gives us a witty commentary on all his actions. He continuously declares that he isn't a superhero and refuses to become an X-Man despite being an artificially created mutant.  And the comedy is crude to say the least.  What's really amazing - and kudos to the writers Rhett Reese and Paul Wernick (ZOMBIELAND) - is that despite all this meta-comedy the movie still has heart.  Despite all the rude jokes, I absolutely cared about Wade, and felt sympathy for his predicament and believed in the love story that motivates him. 

So kudos to all involved. Most especially the writers, but also director Tim Miller in his debut feature for pulling off some fantastic action set-pieces but also committing to the gonzo dark comedy in the first place.  But ultimately this is a Ryan Reynolds movie.  And just like Robert Downey Junior in IRON MAN one can't imagine this movie without his Van Wilder patter.  The supporting cast is also very able including a number of unknowns - from the original Daario Naharis Ed Skrein as Ajax, to Brianna Hildebrand as Negasonic Teenage Warhead.   I can't wait to see the film again and catch up on all the jokes I missed on the first viewing.

DEADPOOL has a running time of 108 minutes and is rated R. The movie is on global release.

WOMAN IN GOLD

You can listen to a podcast review of this film here.

The Bloch-Bauers were a successful cosmopolitan Viennese family whose house formed a salon where one might meet Dr Freud or Arnold Schoenberg.  Gustav Klimt painted a portrait of Adele, the celebrated Woman In Gold, but this was confiscated by the Nazis along with many other works of art.  After the war the painting hung for decades in the Belvedere Gallery until Adele's niece Maria sued the Austrian government for its return.  Dispute instituting a restitution committee, the government was understandably reluctant to give up paintings which had, by then, become synonymous with Austrian culture.  The process was thus one that was obdurate and highly contested. 

THE CROODS

Dreamworks' latest kids animated feature, THE CROODS, is a major disappointment. It has basically the same story as the wonderful HOTEL TRANSYLVANIA, but without the visual style, the wit, the poignancy and the gentle homage to its cinematic antecedents. 

Emma Stone voices Eep, a teenage Neanderthal rebelling against her father Grug's fear of all things new.  This extends to her new more advanced Homo Sapiens boycrush Guy (Ryan Reynolds) - the kid who knows how to make fire, and shoes and whatnot.  After a nasty attack on the family cave, the Croods head off on a road trip to "tomorrow" (I kid you not) with Grug (Nic Cage) and Guy increasingly at odds until, this being a kids film, it all ends happily.

Director Kirk DeMicco (SPACE CHIMPS) and Chris Sanders (HOW TO TRAIN YOUR DRAGON) have fashioned a script so completely ham-fisted and devoid of humour as to give their starry cast little to work with. Stone and Reynolds are utterly wasted. The visuals are polished, but in a manner we have come to take for granted from CGI animation. There's none of the layered comedy that filled TRANSYLVANIA, or even PARANORMAN - and none of the teary-eyed family moments that made those two movies adorable and memorable.  The whole thing was just banal and derivative. 

THE CROODS played Berlin 2013 and is currently on release in the USA, Mexico, Indonesia, Argentina, Bahrain, Bolivia, Chile, the Czech Republic, Denmark, Dominican Republic, Germany, Hungary, Israel, Italy, Kuwait, Portugal, Puerto Rico, Macedonia, Russia, Serbia, Singapore, Brazil, Canada, Colombia, Costa Rica, Ecuador, El Salvador, Estonia, Guatemala, Honduras, India, Ireland, Lithuania, Nicaragua, Norway, Panama, the Philippines, Romania, Spain, Sweden,  the UK, Uruguay, Venezuela, Belgium, Iceland, the Netherlands, Australia, Hong Kong,  Slovenia, Bulgaria and Finland, It opens on April 4th in Thailand; April 5th in Poland; April 10th in France; April 11th in New Zealand and April 18th in Greece.

THE CROODS has a running time of 98 minutes and is rated PG in the USA.

iPad Round-Up 1 - THE CHANGE-UP

THE CHANGE-UP is a piss-poor reworking of the FREAKY FRIDAY/BIG body-switch movie genre.  In this instance, Jason Bateman's weary lawyer-father switches with Ryan Reynold's playboy soft-porn actor.  Despite the frequent cursing and references to explicit sex acts, this is basically a deeply conservative movie in which the father learns to appreciate his wife and children and the playboy learns to grow up and start acting like a responsible member of society.  The script, by Jon Lucas Scott Moore (THE HANGOVER) contains very few genuine moments of humour, but a lot of cursing and physical gross out humour that fails to fly. The direction from David Dobkin (WEDDING CRASHERS) is workmanlike. Reynolds and Bateman are actually quite good at mimicking each other's speech styles but in service of a weak script it's all for nothing.  Avoid. 

Script 

THE CHANGE-UP was released in late summer and autumn 2011. It is available to rent and own.

GREEN LANTERN - the fifth rule of cinema: all green superheroes suck big honky ass

The Green Lantern strikes me as a remarkably anachronistic, even parochial, name for a superhero, considering that it's meant to have been invented by a bunch of super-intelligent Nietzchean aliens, who police the world with their Green Lantern corps officers powered by the energy of Will. I mean, can we take seriously any super-hero who has a magic ring (my precious!) powered by an old-school lantern - whose special power is basically manifesting his imagination as kids toys and power-tools? A superhero so crappy that his friends see right through his mask to his real identity? A superhero whose evil nemesis is basically a mean-looking Cloud, and whose human enemy basically looks like a weedy version of The Elephant Man? Colour me unimpressed.

And what can we say about the translation from comic book to screen? Well, sadly not much. Ryan Reynolds is certainly buff, but the screenplay doesn't take advantage of his talent for comedy, or of his genuine acting chops, as last seen in BURIED. Blake Lively, so impressive in THE TOWN, is limpid as his love interest, Carole Ferris, and about as believable as a test pilot as Jessica Biel in STEALTH. Tim Robbins is a caricature, Angela Bassett is under-used, Mark Strong, as Sinestro, looks like some camp Flash Gordon throwback, and as for Peter Sarsgaard as The Elephant Man, full marks for effort, but he chews up the scenery like he's in JURASSIC PARK.

GREEN LANTERN fails on every level. The plot is simplistic and predictable; the acting wooden; the special effects goofy (despite alleged millions spent on the CGI green suit); the action set-pieces unengaging. I didn't give a crap about any of it. And the tragedy is that we KNOW all these actors can act, and we KNOW, having watched X-MEN:FIRST CLASS, that origins movies that grapple with big ethical questions about the use and abuse of superpowers can be genuinely profound. I blame Martin Campbell, sometime BOND director. He looks like he was overwhelmed by his first big CGI action block-buster, and never really had the balls to bring some subtlety to the script. And the depiction of both the aliens and their perfect planet also looks like a lo-rent throwback - production design so goofy and unimpressive that kids were laughing at the alien Guardians in the screening I attended.

GREEN LANTERN is on release in the UK, US, New Zealand, Belarus, Hong Kong, Kazakhstan, Kuwait, Malaysia, the Philippines, Russia, Singapore, Slovenia, Thailand, Canada, India, Ireland, Poland and Qatar. It opens on June 23rd in Armenia, on June 30th in Argentina, on July 17th in Azerbaijan, on July 22nd in Japan and on July 29th in Belgium. Germany, Estonia, Spain and Sweden. It opens on August 5th in Australia, the Netherlands, Finland and Norway. It opens on August 10th in France, on August 11th in Hungary, on August 19th in Brazil, Colombia, Paraguay and Portugal. It opens on August 26th in Turkey and on August 31st in Italy.

Random DVD Round-Up 4 - BURIED

Ryan Reynolds plays Paul Conroy - a man buried in a coffin - running out air, and running out of cellphone battery life. He frantically tries to call his employers, his wife, the emergency services - he is frustrated, put on hold, given the run around.  It's the perfect horror movie set-up. Claustrophobia - a truly hard deadline - and the frustration that comes of dealing with an invisible enemy and supposed helpers unwilling to realise what's at stake. The concept is brought to screen with absolute perfection: director Rodrigo Cortes and DP Eduardo Gau (A SINGLE MAN) create a sense of true horror by never letting us leave the coffin. We are trapped with Paul, only seeing by the light of his Zippo and only hearing the voices on the other end of the cell. I don't suffer from claustrophobia but I was squirming in my seat by the end of the flick. 

You can take BURIED as a high concept horror flick and leave it at that, but it's so much more. Arguably much of the best horror has a political or social agenda - all those Fifth Columnist body-snatchers, for example - and BURIED is firmly in that tradition. For Paul Conroy is a military contractor working in Iraq, paid by the US government. His captors are angry that he has come to their country and wrought war, but he comes off as naive and deluded - denying that he is a warmonger because he is not actually, technically a US soldier. As the movie develops, we see Paul disabused of that naivete, most brilliantly - not because his captors treat him badly but because his employer does! And, politics aside, who doesn't sympathise with being passed around a phone loop being forever put on hold by ignorant, underpaid, idiots at call centres? 

BURIED is, then, a perfect film. It satisfies both as horror and as political satire. The crew deserve mad props for pulling off the technical feat and for having the good sense never to show a flashback or the face at the other end of the line. Ryan Reynolds deserves props for making his character believable and go on a genuine narrative journey despite the fact that he can barely move. But most of all, praise to the screenwriter Chris Sparling for combining fear, wit and intelligence in equal parts. 

BURIED played Sundance and Toronto 2010 and went on global release last October. It opens in Hungary on April 21st.

ADVENTURELAND - surprsingly sensitive

ADVENTURELAND is a quiet little drama focusing on the love-lives of a bunch of teenagers working in the eponymous lo-rent amusement park for a summer in the late 80s. Indeed, it's such a sweet, real film that it's hard to believe it was directed by the same guy who made the crass SUPERBAD. Jesse Eisenberg (THE SQUID AND THE WHALE) plays a nice kid, smart, with dreams of summer travelling through Europe. When his parents can't pony up the cash, he ends working in an amusement park. He falls for an emotionally distant girl called Em (Kristen Stewart), who despite her difficulties is also intelligent and sensitive. But, true to life, our hero is distracted by the standard-issue hot chick egged on by the guy (Ryan Reynolds) who Em is already seeing. I love this film because it feels real - anyone who's spent a summer working a shitty job, feeling that their life is on hold, feeling under-appreciated can relate. And anyone who's ever made a dumb decision in a relationship, knowingly, but unable to resist can relate to. Jesse Eisenberg impresses again, but it's Kristen Bell who really struck me as a good actress, in a nuanced performance so much more interesting than that TWILIGHT schtick.

ADVENTURELAND played Sundance 2009 and opened in the US, Canada, Turkey, Australia, Iceland, Argentina, South Africa, Estonia, Italy, Romania, Hungary, Ecuador and Germany earlier this year. It is currently on release in the UK and opens in Spain in two weeks time.

THE PROPOSAL - over-styled, under-powered rom-com

Anne Fletcher, of 27 DRESSES and STEP UP fame, delivers a high-concept but low-on-laughs "romantic comedy". The big concept takes a career-bitch (Sandra Bullock) who fakes an engagement to her younger executive assistant (Ryan Reynolds). She wants to get a visa to the US; he wants to be promoted to editor. Over a weekend in Alaska to visit his parents they are meant to fall in love with each other. Problem is, there is zero chemistry between the two. It just looks like a middle-aged woman, with too much Botox and far too over-styled, macking onto a much younger guy. I didn't buy the whole "I'm a tortured rich-kid" dynamic with the guy. I didn't buy the whole "I'm a power-bitch because my parents died" excuse for the woman. And I really didn't buy the wannabe schmaltzy ending. For falling-in-love over a family country-house weekend, check out the far superior in DAN IN REAL LIFE. And for a more credible and affecting immigration set-up, check out the old Andie McDowell/Depardieu classic, GREEN CARD.

THE PROPOSAL is on release in the UK, the US, the Netherlands, Belgium, Australia, Georgia, Hungary, Israel, Kazakhstan, Kuwait, New Zealand, Russia, Lithuania, Mexico, Poland, Turkey, Egypt, Sweden, Greece, Bulgaria, Argentina, Portugal, Ukraine, Brazil, Spain and Estonia. It opens later in July in Iceland and Germany. It opens in August in Malaysia, Finland, Denmark, Norway, Singapore and the Czech Republic. It opens in September in Italy, Hong Kong and France. It opens in Japan on October 16th.

X-MEN ORIGINS: WOLVERINE - works, but not as intended

Gavin Hood's addition to the fantastically popular and lucrative X-MEN franchise has attracted mixed reviews. Fans of the original Marvel comics have complained about the cavalier attitude of screen-writer, David Benioff (25th HOUR), to the source material, in particular, the transformation of mutant Logan (Hugh Jackman) into adamantium-enhanced Wolverine in the lab run by General William Stryker (Danny Huston). Logan's relationship with his some-time partner Victor Creed/Sabretooth (Liev Schreiber) has also been changed. Other complaints include the fact that we never see Wolverine go berserker and that too many classic comic book characters are introduced and then given not much to do. Perhaps the most damning criticism is that the content of this movie adds precious little to the narrative arc of the original three X-MEN movies. It is, when all is said and done, a $150million irrelevance.

I can't really defend the film against these charges. Nonetheless, I did enjoy watching it. I liked the action set pieces. I liked the sarcastic humour of Ryan Reynolds as Wade Wilson, even if he was only on screen for 10 minutes. I liked the gallery of mutants. I was genuinely surprised by the plot twists and double-crosses. And most of all, I bought into the love affair between Logan and Kayla Silverfox (Lynn Collins). Hugh Jackman may look ludicrously buff as Logan, but he can also look vulnerable. He sells the love story.

The upshot is that I didn't so much enjoy WOLVERINE as a standard summer blockbuster but as a thriller with some emotional heft, enlivened by the occasional technically brilliant action set-piece. And I think that if you take the movie on those terms, it works perfectly well.

WOLVERINE is on release pretty much everywhere except Japan, where it opens on August 22nd.

DEFINITELY MAYBE - ho hum

DEFINITELY MAYBE is not a romantic comedy, as you might expect from the marketing campaign. Rather, it is a modestly enjoyable but perfectly forgettable drama about a rather bland but earnest young man and the three women he has loved. Ryan Reynolds tones down his trademark comic style to play political activist William Hayes, whose big plans for life scare off his high-school sweetheart (a deeply superficial performance from Elizabeth Banks). He then falls for a sophisticated writer who proceeds to skewer his career and his heart. Rachel Weisz is brilliant in this small role, and Kevin Kline is responsible for the only real humour and energy of the film as the outrageous Professor. Finally, our hero has an off-on friendship with a ditzy but well-meaning kid played by the charming Isla Fisher. They are both adorable together.

The movie rolls along at a leisurely pace and, with the exception of the college sweetheart, the characters are amiable enough to hold our interest for the run-time of the film, if not for one second more. The only real flaw in the film is the twee framing device, which has William relating his sexual adventures in flashback to an irritatingly knowing and cute daughter, played by Abigail Breslin.

DEFINITELY MAYBE is on release in the UK. It opens next week in Australia, the US, Norway and Venezuela. It opens in March in the Netherlands, Belgium, Mexico, Germany, Denmark and Turkey. It opens in April in Egypt, Singapore, Sweden and Spain. It opens in Brazil on May 9th and in Argentina and Russia on May 29th.

THE NINES - tricksy, smart, but not quite convincing

THE NINES is a movie that is tricksy and smart and gripping, in parts, but I was too often reminded of other movies that had covered the same ground more convincingly.

The movie was written and directed by Hollywood screen-writer John August (CHARLIE AND THE CHOCOLATE FACTORY, BIG FISH). It deals with issues of fact and fiction in a manner reminiscent of Charlie Kauffman movies. It deals with haunting coincidence in the manner of THE NUMBER 23. It satirises the Hollywood/network TV game in the manner of THE TRUMAN SHOW or EDTV. All these movies and more were swimming round my head during this film. The only thing that was genuinely new was the fact that Ryan Reynolds was given room to flex his acting chops, to great effect.

The movie has three inter-twining strands starring a trio of actors playing different actors, sometimes reminiscent of John August - sometimes just playing themselves. In the first strand, Reynolds plays a network TV star. He goes on a drug-fuelled binge and ends up under house arrest, being babyset by his publicist, played by McCarthy. His "desperate housewife" neighbour, played by Hope Davis, starts a flirtation with him, but it's soon clear that both she and the publicist hate each other and are hiding things from him. The tone of this strand is uneasiness - sort of similar to INLAND EMPIRE but infinitely more straightforward. There's a fair amount of spooooky seeing and hearing number nine everywhere but the reason for this is also straightforward. Hope Davis' character is jealous of McCarthy's overweight publicist. Ranked out of ten, she thinks Reynolds' TV star belongs with the nines.

The second strand sees Reynolds playing a TV writer based on the real-life John August. He's trying to get his pilot picked up by the network represented by Hope Davis' exec. The network want the writer to drop his best friend from the cast - Melissa McCarthy - and replace her with the more svelte real-life actress Dahlia Salem. She'll appeal more to the test audiences who loved the pilot - the ones who ranked it "in the nines". Reynolds' character's moral vacuity is captured on reality TV. He muses on the fact that while he plays god with his characters, for the reality TV producers, he's merely a puppet.

The TV pilot is about a wife (McCarthy) and a kid (Elle Fanning). The husband (Reynolds) leaves them in a forest to go call for help. He is intercepted by a hotter chick (Davis) who once again fears that his domesticated life with his fat wife is holding him back from his true potential. He's a video game designer who's over-stepping the boundaries in his self-designed Second Life.

I find the issues raised by THE NINES compelling. The increasing availability to consumers of virtual worlds. The moral redundancy of network TV and especially of reality TV shows. The superficiality of modern society. But John August never convinced me that he was fully in control of them. What's more, he retreads on ground that was broken by Kauffman almost a decade ago. All this, makes this a film that one can probably overlook.

THE NINES played Sundance 2007 and went on release in the US in August. It is currently on release in the UK.

SMOKIN' ACES - cheap thrills, yay!

I was expecting cheap thrills: mindless violence, smart-talkin' wise-guys and 70s-style handle-bar moustaches that would make the Village People weep. And I got all of that, sort of. The kitsch wasn't quite as stylised as in LUCKY NUMBER SLEVIN; the eccentric characters weren't quite as cartoon-funny as in SNATCH; the twisty plot was half guessable but not as irritating as, say, OCEAN'S TWELVE.

Still, in terms of bullets fired and curses uttered, SMOKIN' ACES delivered. You mix a bunch of FBI agents, a double-cross mafia hit and a handful of international assassins and there's just going to be tears before bedtime. And even if the humour wasn't quite up to scratch there were two scenes that made it all worth while: first off, an absolutely hysterical cameo from Jason Bateman as a sleazy burnt-out lawyer; second, Ben Affleck, sporting the aforementioned handlebar moustache, giving his greatest comedic performance while playing dead. There's a mean joke in that.

So, on the level of pure popcorn entertainment, SMOKIN' ACES does what it says on the tin. The Brucey Bonus is that - and I can't believe I'm writing this - SMOKIN' ACES has surprising depth. To wit, the central performance by Jeremy Piven as a Sinatra-style lounge act turned mafia snitch, Buddy "Aces" Israel. In any other movie, Piven would just've been a MacGuffin. The anonymous commodity that the assassins are trying to kill and the Feds are trying to protect. After all, all Buddy does for the flick is pace around his fortified penthouse suite in Taho waiting for the shit to hit the fan. But Piven actually gives a fairly sympathetic depiction of a guy selling out his friends and cracking up. I was surprisingly moved by it. Similarly, director Joe Carnahan (NARC) shows his quality in getting an emotional scene out of Ryan Reynolds.

Is SMOKIN' ACES as slick as it should be? No. Do a lot of people get brutally murdered? Yes. Is it worth checking out? Yes. But perhaps it'll work best for DVD and pizza night with the lads.

SMOKIN' ACES is on release in the UK. It opens in Russia on the 25th and in the US on the 26th. It opens in the Netherlands, Spain and Sweden on Feb 2nd and in Australia, Iceland and Norway on the 9th. It opens in Denmark on Feb 23rd and in Germany and Estonia on March 2nd. It opens in Belgium on March 7th Turkey on March 17th, France on March 28th and in Argentina on March 29th. It opens in Italy on June 15th.

WAITING - More painful than picturing John Prescott shag his secretary

It's hard to say *definitively* if WAITING is the worst film of 2006. Not because I am afraid of pronouncing on such subjective matters as though I were the oracle of cinematic Objectivity. Rather, because I have not yet seen CASINO ROYALE. What I can say is that despite featuring all the hallmarks of a Binatastic Low Rent night out, WAITING sucked ass. I set the bar pretty low when it comes to gross-out humour. I'll take Ryan Reynolds injecting a chocolate eclair with dog sperm and laugh my ass off. But this movie is just terrible. The basic premise is that a bunch of losers work in a crappy restaurent. To add purpose to their meaningless lives they adulterate the food. That's it! There is no humour, be it verbal witticism or just a chick slipping on some spilled pudding. I just give up. I cannot articulate how devoid of any entertainment value this movie is. And no, it is not so bad it is good. And it's not so "straight to video" that it will earn a cult following. So do yourself a favour, and Just Say No.

WAITING was released in the US last October and Australia last December. It opened in the UK yesterday and, I would imagine, will go "straight to video" everywhere else.

JUST FRIENDS - not half bad!

JUST FRIENDS is really not as bad as the critics make out. Okay, so it won't win a Nobel, but as far as harmless, funny date flicks go, you can do worse. The flick stars Ryan Reynolds, otherwise known as Van Wilder: Party Liason, and the hot bod in Blade:Trinity. Ryan was a fat guy in school and accordingly never "boinked" his best mate, the hot chick cheerleader. Ten years later he returns to town, a slimmed down, rich music industry exec., ready to win back the girl of is dreams. Cue lots of holiday-related slapstick comedy involving incendiary Christmas decorations and ice hockey. Reynolds is really very funny, but the show is stolen by Anna Faris. She plays the ditzy blonde Paris-Hilton look-a-like wannabe pop star than Reynolds is managing. Like I said, this is not the best romantic-comedy ever made, but it is laugh-out-loud funny in parts and has a surprisingly sweet heart considering it was made by the guy who directed Cruel Intentions. One for dinner and a DVD, perhaps?

JUST FRIENDS is on general release in the UK and US. There are no scheduled release dates for Continental Europe.

HAROLD AND KUMAR GO TO WHITECASTLE – superior gross-out comedy

HAROLD AND KUMAR GO TO WHITECASTLE is the perfect Friday night, gross-out, frat-boy comedy. It has a neat but simple plot, lots of great one-liners, some good visual gags, and a happy ending. This is not rocket science – just comedy that works. The basic idea is that Harold and Kumar – to young guys just out of college – get stoned, get the munchies, see an ad for Whitecastle hamburgers on TV, and decide to go to Whitecastle and eat those luscious burgers. That’s it! On the way, they get sidetracked by psychos, the need to buy more pot, an invitation to a student party and other sundry classic plot devices. And then, finally, they get to Whitecastle. I’d love to tell you that they learn a lot about themselves along the way, and there are some nods to a more profound message in the movie. Harold is a pent-up young investment banker who learns to say “f*ck it, let’s just have a good time.” Kumar is guy who is fighting against his family’s desire for him to become a doctor, just like his dad and brother, who eventually realises that rebellion aside, he actually *wants* to be a doctor. But in all honesty, I would be struggling to call these plot strands “character development”. Fundamentally, this is just a great buddy movie, performed by two guys with superb comic timing and good chemistry – Kal Penn and John Cho. Oh yeah, I should also mention that it features cool cameos from Ryan Reynolds and cult-status self mockery from Neil Patrick Harris a.k.a Doogie Howser MD. Somehow it doesn’t sound very funny when I type this up, but the line “Doogie Howser stole my car!” had me rolling in the aisle. Genius.

HAROLD AND KUMAR GO TO WHITECASTLE was released in the US last year. Re-branded as HAROLD AND KUMAR GET THE MUNCHIES, the movie opens in the UK today.