Better To Reign In Hell

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There are lots of reasons that people didn't like Prometheus, however I'd cite the big smile on the zoologist's face as he attempts to stroke the fucking space-cobra as being one of the main ones. Rule number one of going into space.. don't stroke the fucking space-cobra! But before we judge that movie too harshly, perhaps we should have a quick look at the franchise as a whole. Alien is obviously a masterpiece; Aliens is one of the greatest sequels of all time; Alien 3 is like seeing a facehugger accidentally latch on to the anus of the franchise; and Alien: Resurrection is what happens when that misplaced Chestburster explodes. It should go without saying too that I don't acknowledge Alien Vs. Predator or it's even shittier sequel having agreed with its tagline of “Whoever wins, we lose”. So essentially I'd guess most peoples love of this series is actually down to just the good-will of the first two movies alone, with one of the franchise's biggest problems being its struggle to survive without Sigourney Weaver. I mean, just look at the fourth movie which jumped through so many fucking hoops to try and include her despite the fact that her character had died in the previous movie. If Prometheus should be credited for one thing it's that it figured out a way of continuing the franchise without her. If it can be criticised, it's that it forgot to put the fucking alien in it too.

One Of The Good Ones

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I'm sure I'm not alone when I say that we all look forward to finding ourselves with a good old Woody. Allen is obviously a controversial figure, with some people having written him off as nothing more than an over-privileged kiddie-fiddler whose very career is an insult to his alleged victim. Others cite the intensive investigation and lack of conclusive evidence as proof that he should be treated as both an innocent man and the film-making and comedic genius that he quite clearly is. I developed my love of Woody Allen last year in which a casual enjoyment of Annie Hall turned into a full blown 'crack-head in a door way level' of obsession with his career. I don't want to accuse a victim of abuse of being a liar, but nor would I like to think of an innocent man as being a sly and unrepentant child-fucker. The fact of the matter is however that none of us know the truth and most likely never will. I therefore exist in a Schroedinger's Box of Allen's alleged nonciness. I can enjoy his movies, and if I were to ever meet him then I'd be over-joyed to ask him a million questions about his work. But if he started a childminding service and I needed somebody to look after my kid.. well, I probably would still use him in order to meet him. But I'd be suspicious.

Marvel Shows Off Its Ego

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Guardians Of The Galaxy Volume 2 has quite probably the greatest opening ten minutes of any Marvel movie yet. Beginning on Earth in a flashback sequence set in the 1980's, we see a young Kurt Russell enjoying a day out with who we know to be the mother of Chris Pratt's Peter Quill. "Hang on!", I hear you say, "As cool as Kurt Russell is, I'm pretty sure that even he has aged slightly over the last thirty years!" Well, as was the case with Downey Jr. in Civil War, Marvel seem to have access to the most cutting edge technology and have de-aged him to the point of absolute believability. I can only assume that this technology is known as "a fucking time-machine" because, trust me, it's fucking crazy how good it is. I'm one of those people who spent their teenage years shunting nights out looking for pubs that might serve my underage self in favour of nights in watching old John Carpenter movies. My younger self was what you might call 'a cool motherfucker'. As a result, the image of a younger Kurt Russell is something that I've spent so many hours staring at that it's pretty much burnt onto my fucking retina, with what we see here matching it perfectly.

A Turd On The Waves

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Pirates Of The Caribbean: The Curse Of The Black Pearl, was released in 2003 and was a direct result of two great rides. The first was of course the Pirates Of The Caribbean ride at Disney of which the film is based, and the second was that special romance-ride that Mr and Mrs Depp once had with each other that led to the conception of little baby Johnny. What was originally going to be an average movie about the ongoing battle between some floating sea scum and a load of posh, land-based twats instantly became a million times more fun thanks to Depp's now-iconic performance as Captain Jack Sparrow. Things took a turn when it came to the sequels however, as it was decided to replace all the fun of the first movie with a convoluted plot, elongated running length, and a focus on some of the most boring characters of all time. Show me Elizabeth Swan and Will Turner's dull romance and I'll show you two rotting manakins that have more passion in their moth-infested heads. The second film was obviously crap, but it admittedly had just enough watchable moments to keep me mildly numb to the world. The third film however has to be one of the biggest pieces of shit I've ever seen in my life. By the time of the credits of that one, not only had I not had any fun but I was actively looking for a rusty fucking nail to plunge into my eye socket in order to help scrape out the memories.

Dom And Dumber

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In many ways, I think you could argue that the Fast And Furious series is one of the most important franchises in cinema right now. Firstly it presents us with a diverse cast without in anyway making a big deal of it. The team consists of characters from a variety of ethnic backgrounds, with both genders being shown to be as strong as the other. Well, mentally anyway. Because let's not forget that The Rock is in the movie and I'm pretty sure that the only woman that's of equal strength to him is the fucking She-Hulk. Which isn't a slight against women of course, being that the only way that most men could even slow him down would be if they drove at him in a tank after making peace with the fact that they're about to die in a tank crash. And of course when I say the female members of the group are all of equal mental strength to the men, that's not really saying too much. At the end of the day, this is a group that's led by Vin Diesel who I'm pretty convinced is actually a rogue potato that's made a deal with the Pinocchio's fucking Blue Fairy.

It's Snoring Time

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Who remembers Power Rangers from back in the day? It was basically a playground code word for 'lets have a fight'! You'd find somebody that you didn't really like, invite them for a game of Power Rangers, and then spend the next thirty minutes kicking the shit out of them. I was always White Ranger because I was male and, most importantly, I was white. If anything was ever squarely designed to wean kids onto the BNP it must have been fucking Power Rangers which put labels onto its characters and then colour co-ordinated the shit out of them. Pink Ranger was the girl, Black Ranger was a black guy, and Yellow Ranger was.. well, I'm sure you can guess. Apparently the chap that played the original Blue Ranger ultimately felt that he had to leave the show because of his sexuality and the rampant homophobia that was prevalent behind the scenes. In which case, I'm honestly fucking surprised that he didn't morph into the fucking Rainbow Ranger with his assigned Zord being a 70ft mechanical recreation of Freddie Mercury on all fours.

Under The Shell

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Like most people I was completely disgusted when I saw Scarlett Johansson playing the character of Major in this live-action remake of Ghost In The Shell. Of course most people were annoyed because they saw her casting as being yet another example of Hollywood 'white-washing' however what pissed me off was that in the original anime you saw Major's tits. Arguably the outrage over race is probably somewhat more justified than my simple desire to see a famous lady's chest-melons however I'd argue that both complaints contain some validity. Sure I would quite literally kill a man to be allowed within the vicinity of Johansson, who is quite probably the number one person on my list of people I'm allowed to have sex with without my partner getting mad. This is despite both my awareness that this list of celebrities wouldn't piss on me if I was on fire, and also the fact that I don't have a current partner anyway. However the lack of titties is in fact indicative of a greater issue with the film which I will now attempt to use to justify my own pervertedness.

Bashing The Monkey

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With the exception of that time that I was working in a pub during some bloke's Stag night and I thought we'd just been raided by the police, I can honestly say that I have never seen a stripper in my life. However I imagine that they probably share a slight similarity with monster movies, in that 90% of what they do is a tease before revealing everything for the final 10%. So with a monster movie, you get a shot of a foot, then a silhouette, and then maybe a close up of an eye. Finally, and at the point that a stripper would be popping out her titty-boom-booms, you'll get the full body shot of the creature before it's swiftly destroyed with an A-bomb. Kong: Skull Island however spunks its wad up the wall before the opening title has even come up as during its first five minutes we essentially see Kong in all of his glory. In many ways, this is one of the more brilliant aspects of the movie because we're now left wondering where is left to go? If a stripper walks into a pub by opening the door with her already exposed peachy wah-wah's then what the hell is her show actually going to be? Well, in the case of Skull Island, what follows is an all-out orgy of weird creatures, adventure, and action. If a stripper were to follow the logic of this movie then I can only imagine that she'd leave the pub in a police van having turned the venue into a scene from fucking Caligula.

It Doesn't Hold A Candelabra

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Beauty And The Beast is the latest of Disney's live-action cash-ins and begins as we all remember the animated original does. An old hag crashes a party and wonders why she's instantly told that she has to leave. Because when I have party I just love it when uninvited tramps decide to turn up for the free punch. I mean, I'm not exactly happy when the people I've invited turn up. However the hag turns out to be a witch and therefore places a curse on the owner of the house for having “no love in his heart”... she also curses everybody that he seems to know because presumably the hypocritical bitch has no love in her heart either. It's that kind of twatty act of magical revenge that probably prevented her from having any friends and parties of her own to go to. Not that I have any sympathy for either the Prince in charge of the party or the Beast the he ultimately becomes. He turned away a person in need, he's rich, he's a prick, and he has “no love in his heart”. If Donald Trump was turned into a monster, I wouldn't spend the movie hoping he'd find love in order to free himself of his curse. I'd spend it feeling smug that he now has to spend his life putting his shit into a litter tray instead of onto twitter.

No Country For Old Man Logan

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In the way that the media presents us with an unrealistic expectation of beauty, it also, to a slightly lesser extent, presents us with an unrealistic expectation of coolness. I mean, we all agree that James Bond is cool, right? But apply his lifestyle to reality and imagine that dopey fucker surviving more than a year. If his hard-drinking hasn't left his liver on the verge of packing in then at the very least his years of sexually exploiting a never ending conveyor belt of vulnerable simpletons would surely leave him with a horrendously crippling case of knob-rot?! Well it seems to be in this later and slightly more realistic world that Logan takes place. Having spent his cinematic career watching everybody he ever loved end up with a bad case of being completely fucking dead whilst remaining a total bad-ass himself, Wolverine has finally hit rock bottom. He's a shadow of what we've seen in the past and now lives the kind of life that Mel Gibson might in an alternate world in which Hollywood failed to find him. He's got a shitty job, his anger issues and mental anguish have isolated him from society, and his alcoholism could only be worse if before taking a shot he replaced the sprinkle of salt on the back of his hand with the ashes of George fucking Best.

A Kung Fu James Bond Movie

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Enter The Dragon is widely hailed as one of the best kung-fu movies ever because it includes Bruce motherfucking Lee and essentially stole the basic feel of a Bond movie. The Roger Moore Bond movies are interesting because half of them pretty much just stole from whatever was popular at the time. In the case of the mid-70's that included kung-fu movies, which is why you have all of that tacked-on martial arts stuff mid-way through The Man With The Golden Gun. In case you don't remember, it's the scene in which Bond defeats a school of fighters that have been training their entire life by surprise kicking one in the head and then promptly jumping out the fucking window. The interesting thing about both Enter The Dragon and The Man With The Golden Gun is that not only are they chasing each other like a circular human-centipede consisting of two limber gymnasts, but they both basically have the same ending too. In both cases the films end with the hero fighting the main villain in a fun-house type arena which consists predominately of mirrors. I guess that kind of set provides an interesting challenge for the camera-team and keeps the actors morale up as they get to spend the day looking at themselves and mentally masturbating.

This Film Blew

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I'm currently 28 years old and is it just me or are most of the generations above mine not quite as rude? I don't mean rude in the sense that my generation slams doors into old people's faces. That's not because of rudeness.. that's because they keep voting for things that end up fucking us over and there's more of them. I mean 'rude' as in that they say things that sound sexual without any obvious clue as to what they're doing. For example I was in work the other day and a member of the generation above mine said, “Is anybody going to come with me?” She then looked out of the window to see it was raining and added, “Or am I going to be getting wet all by myself?” Nobody even smiled! I was even talking to my own Mum after that about her partner who was told he couldn't go running any more because his knee was basically buggered. After discovering he'd gone out running regardless, I asked “I didn't think he was able to run any more because of his knee?” To which my Mum obliviously responded with, “Well, I just told him to get a strap on and now he can”. I mean how did she not hear that? How is a strap-on going to help somebody run? Is that to hand to somebody faster to wear and then have them fucking chase you?

Some Trash Potato

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XXX: Return Of Xander Cage is an interesting title because it implies that people give one solitary fuck about Xander Cage. That's about the only thing interesting about the movie really. If it wasn't for the fact that XXX was in the title and that the poster featured the giant chicken nugget-like head of Vin Diesel, then I really wouldn't have a clue who Xander fucking Cage was. The film begins fairly promisingly with a Donnie Yen fight and then Diesel himself skateboarding down a hill. Sadly I hadn't realised that as Diesel was going down hill, the film would manage to beat him to the bottom. In fact, I've quite literally seen two people banging each other in an Amsterdam titty booth and yet I've never seen anything going down faster than the quality of XXX: Return Of Xander Cage. As Donnie Yen lay the smackdown on a bunch of goons, I stupidly thought I might actually enjoy this film too. I love the Fast And The Furious movies from the fifth instalment onwards, so maybe this would be in a similar vein to those? Well, if Fast Five, Six, and Seven are the film equivalent of a steroid-addled super-freak, then XXX: Return Of Xander Cage is both tedious and predictable- the film equivalent of watching a bodybuilder lift too much and accidentally rupture his anus.

I Gotta Have Faith

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To quote the great Woody Allen, “to you I'm an atheist; to God, I'm the loyal opposition”. It was therefore with great anticipation that I went to see Martin Scorsese's latest film Silence which deals with God's seemingly never-ending decision to stay mute in spite of his followers' needs. I was talking to a Christian friend of mine once, when I asked him some of the more cliched questions regarding his religion- “Why do bad things happen to good people?”, “How insecure must a super-being be to create an ant-farm planet of humans that he insists must either worship him or spend an eternity in agonising damnation?”.. the usual bullshit. In every single case he confidently answered me with, “I don't know”, as though these things didn't bother him. Finally, I asked, “Why has nothing Bible related happened more recently than the time of the Bible? Since the invention of the camera, there's been no parting of the seas, no talking bushes, no booming voice from the sky...” It was at this point my religious friend lowered his head and with a defeated tone answered, “I don't know.. I just don't know.. but I wonder that all the time too”. He then went silent. “Right”, I thought, “My job here is done. I'm off for a fucking cheeseburger”.

Bored Of The Rings

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The Ring is a film in which a video cassette exists that will send shivers down the spine of anybody that watches it. No, not that homemade sex tape in which Screech from Saved By The Bell supposedly gets a bit of poo on his finger and rubs it above his girlfriend's lip.. something much, much worse. Actually, if we're being honest, I don't think many videos can get much fucking worse than Screech's sex tape, and certainly not the one in The fucking Ring. It features shitty footage of some vaguely surreal and supposedly nightmarish imagery that looks like it was handed in on a lazy day by a particularly pretentious visual arts student. However once this footage has been viewed, things do get scary because soon you'll receive a phone call in which a girls voice simply says “Seven days”. Of course I'd just assume that this is the fucking take-away shop finally calling me back to tell me how much longer my pizza is delayed until delivery. However in the world of the film, it means that you have a week left to live... which if you eat at the same shitty take-away shop I constantly do is probably fucking true all the same.

Trainspotting Is My Favourite Film.. Now for T2.

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Trainspotting is without a doubt my favourite film of all time and so the last thing I needed was a shite sequel to it. As I saw something that I held so close to me thrown all over the cinema screen like Spud's post-piss up shit flung from his bed covers, I can only imagine the disappointment I'd feel. I can imagine the new film starting and as its crapness dawned on me, getting that sinking feeling in my stomach that dragged me down through the cinema floor as Lou Reed played softly through my mind. I might not have been the appropriate age to have seen the first movie during its original decade-defining release, but for about the last twelve years, there's only been one film that I turn to in times of need. Whether shit is going well or shit is going wrong, I don't just sit at home on the couch watching mind-numbing spirit-crushing game shows. When depressed about my own failure to choose a family, a career, a starter home.. when I lie there wondering who the fuck I am on a Sunday morning, then I know it's time to watch the film. I choose Renton's destructive connection to his friends, Begbie's impotent rage, Sickboys unsuccessful schemes, and contrary to Vin Diesel's appearance as a giant human potato, I choose cinemas most iconic Spud.

The First Good Video Game Movie?

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Like googling the phrase 'two girls one cup', invading Poland, or visiting Toxteth, it seems that adapting a video game into a movie is one of the worst things that you could ever possibly do. Over the years we've been hit by a tsunami of shit after people have tried and failed to successfully transition one medium to the other and yet film-makers still persist in trying. This is despite almost every case attempted so far ending its life as a Tomb Raider or Super Mario Bros. shaped turd bobbing its way towards cinemas like a bloated corpse in a sea of piss. Assassin's Creed is the latest series to attempt the jump from games to movies, however if the reviews are anything to go by, it would appear that the success of this leap of faith has been equal to watching a drunk bloke attempt a 60ft bungee into a post-curry cesspool whilst using only his dick for a rope.

Ready For La La Love?!

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Musicals are a strange old thing. Especially the ones in which crowds spring into a huge song and dance routines en mass and then go back to their normal activities as though nothing had ever happened. It's sort of as though every musical like that belongs to a George A Romero-like apocalyptic sub-genre in which humanity has been infected with some sort of singing tourettes. If the afflicted in 28 Days Later were bitten by a rage infected monkey then I can only assume the occupants of a musical were bitten by whatever this genre's equivalent is. I don't know what that would be but I'm thinking.. probably.. Bonnie Tyler. As such, I can see why some people wouldn't like musicals. It is strange to see people express their inner thoughts and deepest emotions with what looks like a completely improvised song and dance that everybody knows the lyrics and choreography too. Although fuck it- I'm English, so I'm shocked whenever people simply express their deepest emotions regardless of how they do it.

An Emotional Kick

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Other than the global economy, the destruction of the environment, and our complete inhumanity towards the poor and needy, I suppose the most annoying thing about the world are those pricks that talk at the cinema. My problem with this is that I refuse to leave the screening to get a staff member because I don't want to miss any of the film and I can't shush them because I'm too busy holding in a fireball of rage. As a result, I worry that if I go over and ask them to be quiet I'll accidentally lose my shit and just throw battery acid in their face and then piss on their burning body. I suppose I should just stop carrying battery acid around really. However when I went to see A Monster Calls, some dickhead Mum had brought her melon-headed gizoid of a child and the little turd-monger just wouldn't shut the fuck up throughout the movie. I tried to hush the noisy little nipper with a polite word but in doing so I accidentally uncorked my own bottle of rage and before I knew what was going on I'd accidentally threatened the tiny mite with physical violence. Anyway, I felt a surge of adrenalin, he shut the fuck up, and I was able to get on with enjoying the film. The moral of the story? Sometimes it's okay to scare children.

An Infernal Waste Of Time

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The cinema I go to is near the sea and so when the wind picks up, it really fucking picks up. The other day I went to see a showing of the new Ron Howard film Inferno and, as the wind got stronger, it managed to find its way into the screen through a vent which could be heard throughout the entire movie as a high-pitched whistling. Or at least I think that's what that noise was?! Because in all honesty from about five minutes in I can't be sure that the sound wasn't actually the dying screams of my brain as the film spent two full hours mercilessly smothering it with a mouldy pillow of dumbness. Apparently this film is the third in the Dan Brown trilogy following on from The Da Vinci Code and Angels And Demons, which I'll admit I haven't actually seen. However from what I hear, Dan Brown is both Brown in name and brown in quality with his series being as shit as Tom Hanks's Da Vinci Code mullet. If that's true then I guess I'm here to report that Inferno hasn't broken that run of bollocks. Imagine the already crap Mission:Impossible 2 if they replaced Ethan Hunt with the boring version of Marcus Brody from Raiders Of The Lost Ark and you're not a million miles away from what this film is. But it's shitter than that... Somehow...

What Is The Chance Of Success?

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Whether it be The Scorpion King from The Mummy franchise or a bit of dog shit from a bike tyre, spin-offs are not always very enjoyable. Rather than being a cash-in however, Rogue One: A Star Wars Story is like a kid on the last day of school. You're still attending class and therefore have to abide by the bulk of the usual rules but so long as you don't do something too stupid like reveal the teacher's blatant alcoholism or out the caretaker as a nonce, then you're mostly left to do what you want. Well, in that vein, Rogue One is still very much a part of the Star Wars universe, but one that's not shackled to every single one of the tropes of the main episodes. So gone are the old familiars of an opening text crawl, the Jedi, and incest, only to be replaced by a much more gritty, much more self-contained story of blowing up.. well.. the Death Star. I guess some things never change and although we might not be so bound to the intergalactic episode of The Jeremy Kyle Show that is the Skywalker family, you can never have too many films in which a rag-tag gang of survivors must fight to destroy cinema's most devastating disco-ball.

Face To Face With Greatness

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Disney's latest film Moana tells the story of a teenage Polynesian girl that wants to run away from home. However although most teenage girls that runaway from home do so for dangerous reasons, such as the fact that they've put their trust into an older man with a nice car and a predatory agenda, Moana simply wants to save her island from a destructive curse. To do this she must hunt down a demi-God named Maui who is essentially responsible for all of the troubles that she's suffering, which must be nice for her. I mean, as a society, we're all used to a God being at the heart of our troubles, but unlike everybody else that's ever been gullible enough to believe in one, at least she knows that hers isn't total made-up bullshit. Her adventure involves travelling overseas, which is something that her father has strictly forbidden her to do because it's dangerous and he has some common sense. However the girl's dying Grandma is at a point in her life where she clearly doesn't give a fuck about anything and so encourages our hero out on her suicide mission. The old woman also thinks that once she dies she'll turn into a giant stingray looking thing that'll no doubt help the plot out at some point. I don't know why she wants to be a giant stingray but I'm going to guess she's not a fan of Steve Irwin.