Toy Story 3 (Lee Unkrich, 2010)

***Contains very minor potential spoilers***

It’s not just Kids that like these toys.

Pixar are arguably the best film makers of this generation. They are pioneers for the future of cinema whilst they embodying the story telling techniques of classical film. This is a film where all the wiz bang technology on display, the flawless CGI and now standard digital 3D, goes relatively unnoticed due to the masterful narrative and characterisation on display. It is this year’s first masterpiece, the best of the Toy Story trilogy, and the best computer animated film ever made.

Like this summer’s other stand out film, Inception, it is a film that works on many levels of both the conscious and subconscious. It has more genuine laughs, frights, thrills and heartache than any film in recent memory. Its themes of growing up, abandonment, growing old, and death retain a mature darkness within the film which will engage adults, whilst the consistent humour and light touch ensures that children will remain enthralled.

The film beings with an exciting action sequence which introduces the now comfortably familiar cast of action figures, dolls and plastic delights; it also demonstrates how much joy they brought to their owner, Andy, as a child. The scene shows youth in its prime, of both the then, new shiny toys and the child playing with them. This is followed by a montage of home movies that show Andy and his family growing up. This sets the tone for the inevitable abandonment the toys will face. The next scene shows Woody desperately clinging to a phone longing to get his owners attention along with the rest of the toys, all now placed in a box in Andy’s, who is now 17, vastly changed room.

Andy is going to college and the toys, particularly Woody struggle to accept the changes ahead that they face. A serious of events leads them to be accidently donated to Sunny Side Day Care Center, in which they are imprisoned by the Machiavellian and creepily cute Lotso the Bear. They are subjected to rough play, aka torture, from toddlers who don’t know how to play with toys yet and thus begins the familiar plot to get back home to their rightful owner Andy.

Much has been made of the films darkness, and there are elements in this film that are unbearably melancholic. Arguments have been made that the film is too dark for children. Certainly Lotso’s companion, Big Baby, a large doll with one eye, is terrifying at times, along with a demented Monkey who watches the CCTV with his all seeing blood shot eyes. This is all counteracted though with moments of comic genius; witness Buzz Lightyear’s Spanish mode which turns him into a Salsa dancing, poetry spouting lady charmer, or Mr Potato Head’s travesty when he is forced to transfer his body parts on to a tortilla.

Along with the scares and the laughs comes the pathos. Never have so many people felt so much empathy towards personified plastic objects. One scene in particular, in which the Toys realise they face an almost certain fiery death and hold hands waiting to die, is easily the bravest dramatic choice in a family film in decades. Articles have recently arisen over why the film is making grown men cry, and I asked myself the same question. Why are we so utterly moved by the adventures of a cowboy doll, an electronic action figure and a dog shaped slinky?

Toy Story 3 is a rare film, in that it hits you on a subconscious level. When the first film was released, many of its spectators were young themselves, and watching Andy grow up and abandon his childhood joys is a chance for reflection and meditation on the loss of our own youths. Similar for parents, they are forced to think about, or relive their offspring leaving the nest. The film is at heart, about saying goodbye to childhood and moving on to the next stage. As the camera pans up to the clouds after the films bittersweet conclusion you’ll be grateful that those 3D glasses hide your teary eyes. Pixar have broken new ground once again, they have uniting cinemas full of individuals of different ages, backgrounds and attitudes by invoking the most personal of themes, the changes we face when ourselves and those around us grow up and move on.

Verdict

Pixar saved the best till last. Go see it and you’ll find yourself, amongst the loud obnoxious shouts and bangs of the other screens showing mindless summer blockbusters, absorbed into a film that is both uplifting and devastating. A cinematic masterpiece.

*****

The Expendables (Sylvester Stallone, 2010)

Boom Boom Pow... (yawn)

As most of the Expendables cast made films in a time before email and blogs were popular, I thought I’d start with an old fashioned letter:

Dear Mr Stallone,

May I extend some serious respect your way for managing to work miracles and make a good, convincing Rocky movie a few years ago. Against all odds, you showed cinema goers there was life in the old ‘underdog’ yet. When you were in that ring, I was in there with you. As you may be aware, there has been a 80s revival in this new millennium, and I am pleased to say you are the only person to bring an old Action icon back with dignity. Indiana Jones showed signs of dementia in his last film as he was clearly convinced he could still cut it. John McClain needs to go into retirement, despite fighting a jet and winning, his latest film died hard.

It is with regret I must inform you that in your recent film, you have shown the world why 80s action stars belonged in the 80s, and why now in these times we welcome our Dark Knights, Jason Bourne’s and grittier James Bond’s with open arms. Times have changed, move with them, and let sleeping dogs lie.

Yours faithfully,

Roper Review

P.S Please don’t make another Rambo

Stallone’s latest film should be the final nail in the coffin which contains this ill fated attempt to milk the various action hero cash cows of the 1980s. These films are built around nostalgia and warm affection from fans, in the hope that they will forgive the creaks in the script and the actor’s bodies. However, nostalgia cannot save what is an otherwise poor film in all respects. This is a film in which Stallone got his cast first and built his story around them. Now, to synopsise the script:

Boom Boom Boom Boom Boom Boom Boom Boom – homoerotic banter – token good looking girl in hot pants – boom boom – pointless cameo- boom –Statham Stallone and Rouke compare ‘knife size’ – boom boom – moral of the story – boom X 100 and get increasingly louder.

Let it be clear there is nothing wrong with an action film that is heavy on the action as long as it is entertaining to watch. The Expendables is like watching a video game you are not allowed to play. Stallone is so determined to display that these 80s stars have still got it, that you never fear for their lives as they gun and stab their 100^th victim. During the last, very much extended, action sequence, it felt like watching children run around the playground shooting each other with their fingers, apart from with ear splitting sound effects.

I really wanted to enjoy this throw back to the shamelessly macho men films that used to dominate the cinema screens, However Stallone chose to include an action style used far more effectively in the Bourne films, a handheld camera style of shooting. This means for most of the film the shots are that quick and unstable that everything becomes a blurry mess of crimson blood and muzzle flashes.

The script is as sloppy as the direction. This is a film which has been written around its cast, so there is a token Jet Li fight scene where he can show off his skills and then recieve lots of banter from the rest of the cast about his height. Jason Statham, who is the only credible action hero in the film, gets bantered about the size of his head, and of course the big cameo, Arnold Schwarzenegger, has a joke thrown towards him about wanting to be president. The much hyped scene with the Governator, Bruce Willis and Stallone, is over within minutes, is completely arbitrary to the narrative and consists largely of a contest over who has the hardest, most masculine stare.

Verdict

This is a completely unnecessary summer blockbuster that will undoubtedly make a lot of money due to its star power. It is a film that’s not so bad it’s good, it is just bad. It is clearly hoping that fond memories will bring in punters, but these punters will leave feeling confused. Like a racist grandparent, it needs to be told that things have moved on since their heyday. Stallone, it’s time to get with the times or get to retirement.

*1/2

Roper Review Round Up May 2010

Roper Review Round Up May 2010

With deadlines looming and work building my reviewing has taken a break, but my cinema going hasn’t. Hopefully I’ll be able to expand upon a few of these into full reviews but here a short critiques of the films I’ve been to see in the a last 2 months.

4,3,2,1 (Noel Clark and Mark Davis, 2010)

The next project from the writer of the fantastic Kidulthood and director of the fairly good Adulthood appears to be Tarantino meets Sex and the City. It concerns four girls who unwittingly become involved in a diamond heist. The film is divided into four with each part following one of the girls and as the film continues the stories begin to tie together. It begins awfully with a conversation in a coffee shop in which Clark has attempted to write a script in which four girls gossip and bitch. This is the stuff of male fantasy as they talk about sex, sex and umm sex toys; it is appallingly stereotypical dross not that far away from Sex and the City 2 (review coming soon). When the main narrative kicks in however, it is fairly entertaining.

The first story lacks drive, but the others include lesbians stuck in a panic room, the singer/rapper Eve coming to the rescue of a middleclass girl who is being pursued in Manhattan and a commendably tense hold up in a convenience store. It is ludicrously plotted, but frequently funny and for a British film it feels unique. Noel Clark is certainly a strong presence within our nation’s cinema and I hope to see much more of him before he sells out and inevitably makes his millions in Hollywood.
***

[Rec] 2 (Jaume Balagueró, Paco Plaza, 2009)

Oh Spain, after so many great Horror efforts like Pans Labyrinth, the Devil’s Backbone and the original [Rec] you go so Hollywood with this sequel. The original [Rec] was a short, intense and at times terrifying experience as a handheld camera documented the break out of a virus which turned the innocent habitants within an Apartment building in Barcelona into Zombies (this word is never used, as in 28 days/weeks later, but they clearly are of the Z-Word type).

The original never gave much context for the attack adding to the horror, but this sequel explains the events using a preposterous story mixing the Exorcist with a Vatican conspiracy. It also takes all the scary elements from the original such as the handheld camera work, the screaming infected, the frantic shouting, the night vision and recycles them again and again till they become tired clichés. It opens promisingly but by the messy end is a huge disappointment.
**

The Bad Lieutenant: Port of Call - New Orleans (Werner Herzog, 2009)

Despite the awful title, this is a fantastic film and earns itself my second five star award of the year. Despite sharing the same name, and (loosely) narrative of Abel Ferrara’s hard boiled original, it is a unique, bizarre and thoroughly entertaining film. Nicholas Cage is a very bad Lieutenanct indeed, playing the drug addicted Terence McDonagh who is called in to investigate the murder of a family in a post-hurricane Katrina New Orleans. Herzog, one of the most interesting directors currently working makes a number of fantastic choices within this film. The first is the setting. Shot almost entirely on location he captures the awful state New Orleans has been left in after the Hurricane in 2005. Highlighting the abandonment the town has faced is a good move politically and also creates a distorted location for the twisted narrative to take place.

The film begins that like a straight forward cop thriller, but as McDonagh’s drug addiction, along with his gambling addiction and lust for women takes over his life, the film along with The Lieutenant forgets the original narrative all together and it becomes a dark and frequently hilarious character study. In what other Hollywood film would you see a dead alligator killed on the highway, from the eyes of another alligator on, followed shortly by a scene where Cage hallucinates presence iguanas in a stake out room. Wonderfully Amoral, with an incredible satisfying finale, it is a startling film worth seeing alone for Cage’s incredible performance.
*****

Four Lions (Christopher Morris, 2010)
Controversial satirist Christopher Morris’s debut film is a brave and daring comedy concerning the attempts of four Muslim extremists to commit an act of terrorism. What could have been an offensive misstep (See Uwe Boll’s 9/11 ‘comedy’ Postal) is an insightful, moving and at times extremely funny film. Instead of making fun of the act of terrorism, he brings to light the naivety and misguided nature of the group.

They have no set cause to commit an act of terrorism and instead blame it on an amalgamation of ‘Jews’ ‘Slags’ and (in the film’s best line) ‘Mini-Babybells’. Its documentary filming style helps the film appear scarily credible. Despite an over reliance on slapstick humour it is the best British film of the year. It is a comedy, but as the film draws to its inevitable conclusion the tone changes to one of sadness and tragedy, without ever being sentimental. I didn’t laugh within the last twenty minutes, and commend the film for that.
****

Robin Hood (Ridley Scott, 2010)

A satisfying summer film, but not a ‘Robin Hood’ film. This is more of a prequel, the ‘Batman Begins’ of a potential series of films, which while being enjoyable and an afternoon matinee sort of way is nothing revolutionary. Ridley Scott has not made a strong film since Gladiator, and unavoidably this film compares unfavourable to that. You will have heard about Russell Crowe’s accent, and yes it is terrible, but he tends to speak in low droll utterances so it is rarely noticeable. More noticeable is the complete lack of chemistry between Robin and Maid Marion played by Cate Blanchett who has shown much stronger performances that she displays here.

There are no memorable characters, speeches, or standout moments, but by the end you will have lapped up enough action sequences and medieval banter to leave fulfilled. That being said, its misguided pretences of being a historical accurate narrative (based, ironically on a highly fabricated myth) means that it lacks the fun spark that would elevate it into a strong contender for best summer blockbuster.
***

Nightmare on Elm Street (Samuel Bayer, 2010)

Realising his film isn’t at all scary; Director Samuel Bayer seems to have taken the cheap shock approach to his horror remake. As a huge fan of the franchise I was eagerly awaiting this film; however Bayer has taken all the best bits of the original, badly recycled them and then padded it out with a lot of rubbish. Freddy Kruger is the greatest horror character of all time, a monster that you can’t run or hide from as he is in your dreams; he knows your fears .
The original film series took delight in finding inventive ways of killing of his victims. The films were a great mixture of teen slasher and fantasy horror, something which has been lacking in horror cinema since the series ended. This remake relies on loud bangs as Kruger pops up to kill his next victim in their sleep while the audience themselves struggle to stay awake. There is also a misguided sub-plot involving Kruger’s child molestering days which belongs in a film with much more substance that this one can give it.
*1/2

Iron Man 2 (Jon Favreau, 2010)

The first ‘big’ film of the year is the sequel to the underrated Iron Man. If you liked the first one, you’ll like the sequel. It is certainly no better but despite some major issues it retains most of the original’s charms. Robert Downey Jr is fantastic once again as Tony Stark, the playboy millionaire/superhero and has a whale of a time playing the biggest ego in Marvel history. It gets a great balance of action and comedy; there are some spectacular actions sequences and sight gags usually at the same time. It does however, a tad convoluted.

Having realised this is their biggest franchise now Spiderman has taken a rest; the studio has crammed in several characters such as Samuel L. Jackson’s Nicky Fury and Scarlett Johansson’s Black Widow in order to set up their future films. The connections between these characters and the films plot are largely arbitrary and lead the film to be 20 minutes too long. I don’t know how the Russians will feel about Mickey Rourke’s character Ivan Vanko, the biggest Russian stereotype since the James Bond Franchise became influenced by the Cold War. For a mad scientist hell bent on revenge he sure gets through a lot of vodka.
***1/2

The Disappearance of Alice Creed (J Blakeson, 2009)

This is an impressive directorial debut; a crime thriller containing just three actors throughout its running time. Gemma Arterton is Alice Creed a young party girl who is kidnapped by two men determined to get rich off her ransom money. The meticulous Vic, played brilliantly by Eddie Marsan believes he has created the perfect crime and has everything perfectly planned out. However, his accomplice Danny has a few ticks up his sleeve and a threeway game of cat and mouse soon beings. The film takes a minimalistic approach using only a handful of settings, sparse music and a simple premise. This creates an unbearable tense film with some sweat inducing sequences. It has one or two twists too many, but to its credit the film always remains balanced, exciting and taught.
****

Centurion (Neil Marshall, 2010)

Brutal British director Neil Marshall, following up from his fantastic Chicks vs. Cave monsters horror ‘The Descent’ and the 1980s film Mash up Dooms day presents an ambitious roman epic Centurion. It continues his flair for stylish, gory action but has a overblown and essential one dimensional plot and zero characterisation. The fights are edited so quickly that is hard to tell what is going on, removing what should be the films saving grace. Michael Fassbender does make a very credible action hero however as the Centurion in question.
**1/2

Repo Men (Miguel Sapochnik, 2010)

Jude Law and Forrest Whitaker are ‘Repo Men,’ but instead of taking your couches and big screen TV’s they steal your internal organs. Set in the future, and stealing unapologetically from superior sci-fi films such as Blade Runner and Total Recall, it concerns the careers of repo men who work for a company that manufactures organs and sets up unrealistic payback schemes that often, due to those pesky repo men, result in the death of their customers. Like many ‘post-modern’ films, the production a simple case of style over substance.
It has a flashy soundtrack, gore filled set pieces and an aspiration to satirise our capitalist, credit crunchy society. It is a load of rubbish, until the final 30 minutes which is so crazy, it forced me to give in and enjoy it. Highlights include a cramped corridor fight (another film theft ,this time from Chan-Wook Park’s ‘Old Boy’) and a bizarre sex scene which includes a couple cutting each other open and scanning the bar codes of their internal organs. It then ruins this with a twist so preposterous; it reminds the audience that the film was crap all along.

**

The Killer Inside Me (2010, Michael Winterbottom) -

‘this ain’t no American Psycho’

British director Michael Winterbottom has never been one to shy away from controversy and tackling source material that most film makers would shy away from. He was last met with angry headlines with his film 9 Songs, which was widely proclaimed to be the most sexually explicit mainstream film of all time. His latest, the crime noir ‘The Killer Inside Me’; is based on Jim Thompson’s 1950s novel of the same name. At its time of release it was described as “one of the most blistering and uncompromising crime novels ever written”. I cannot clarify that statement as I’m yet to read it, but Winterbottom must have delivered a faithful adaptation as blistering and uncompromising are two adjectives very well suited to this production.

The film was reportedly booed at Cannes film festival this year and it is understandable to see why. I left the cinema with a guttural hatred towards the film; I found it repulsive, upsetting, unrelenting and irredeemable. However, after some short meditation on what I had witnessed I realised these feelings were not towards the film, but towards the films main character. Lou Ford is the deputy sheriff of a small town in south Texas; he is also a psychopathic and brutal murderer. To reveal more of the plot is arbitrary as the film rises and in many opinions falls on that character, played masterfully by Casey Affleck.

Unlike the cinematic bogeymen of recent decades such as Norman Bates, Hannibal Lector, Ghost Face (Scream) and John Kramer (Jigsaw) Lou Ford is not an anti-hero. The audience never cheer him on, or wait for his next kill. He is a deeply disturbing figure; a seemingly gentle, quiet southern gentleman who speaks in friendly clichés but harbours and at times unleashes a savage, sadomasochistic, murderous persona. The film is a character study which gives the audience no comfort, no relief and no let up right until its morbid final scene.

Despite its subject matter, this is not a horror or thriller, its heart is routed in the classic hard-boiled crime drama that dominated Hollywood in the 1940s and 50s. It relocates the genres setting, usually enlaced within the murky depths of urban America to an orange tinted, heat stricken, and southern American town. It is one in a series of films such as ‘No Country for Old Men’ and ‘There Will be Blood’ that find a darker side to the seemingly quiet sleepy rural parts of America. Winterbottom’s direction perfectly captures both a suitable tone and setting for the film, complimented with an excellent soundtrack with mixes ominous foreboding strings with ‘hick’ country and western music.

Supporting Affleck are excellent performances by both Jessica Alba and Kate Hudson. The film’s most crucial plot progression occurs when Ford is asked to pay off Alba’s character, a prostitute named Joyce Lakeland. She has been sleeping with the son of a union leader, and Ford’s money is meant to encourage her to leave town to save the families reputation. Despite being in a seemingly healthy relationship with Hudson’s character, he begins a passionate and consensually sadomasochistic relationship with Joyce. This takes a sour turn when, for no clear reason Ford beats Joyce to the brink of death in one of the most shocking depictions of cinematic violence I’ve ever witnessed. To cover his tracks he has to resort to fabricated alibis which inevitably lead to more violence and even darker turns.

Typically with any film that breaches the comforts we are used to in mainstream cinema the film has been met with much condemnation. Winterbottom has been labelled misogynistic due to his unflinching and protracting depictions of violence against women. Whilst it is unsurprising, it isn’t necessarily a fair claim. In the past two years audiences have laughed and cheered whilst a camera ogles a topless woman before she is stabbed to death by a mad man (My Bloody Valentine) and yet another naked woman is sprayed with nitrous oxide until she is frozen to death (Saw 3). It isn’t just the horror genre either, recently the awful film The Bounty Hunter depicted Jennifer Aniston been chucked around, handcuffed and locked in car trunks all in the name of ‘comedy’. Whenever cinematic violence fails to fall into the tropes familiar to audiences there is an outrage. The scene in which Ford attacks Joyce is a protracted and shocking scene. One that made me flinch, look away and it will linger with me long after the credits roll. However, in depicting such violent attacks in a realistic setting how else should such brutal acts feel to witness? The disgusted reaction Winterbottom has generated in this scene is a tribute to his directorial skills, harrowing, shocking but necessary. Instead of exploiting and sexualising women as countless horror and crime films do, he unveils the horror within such acts.

It isn’t just the violence that is unsettling; it’s the overall tone of the film. Fords voiceover with his gentle southern tones shows how far removed he is from the horror he unleashes. Affleck deserves recognition for his startling performance but such daring efforts are rarely rewarded in the political hierarchy in Hollywood. Winterbottom provides some back-story looking back at Fords childhood in which he was subjected to severe abuse, but never enough to allow the audience to empathise with him. The lack of motive means the films plot and Ford has an ambiguity that refuses to provide any simple explanation or reason for his violence.

Usually this review would be followed by a verdict and a number star. The Killer Inside Me is not a film that can be so easily quantified in its rating. It is not a film for everyone and not a film I find easy to recommend. It will divide audiences just as it has divided critics. It is however a startling, upsetting, and highly effective crime story. Never entertaining but always tense, it is the most unnerving, and memorable cinematic experience so far this year.

Busy Bee - ultra quick roundup of latest releases

I'm pretty busy at the moment, so can't do as many reviews as I would like. So in true Hollywood fashion here is a sneak preview of my ratings for other films I've seen, reviews will follow and I'll remove this spoiler!





Remember me

Twi-hard fans won't find a lot to like here. I actually did. However, its unrelenting moody tone, slow pacing and rather unneeded 'shock' ending cheapened the whole thing.
**1/2

The Ghost

Polanski’s latest is awful. Don’t believe the critics applauds, it’s needlessly slow, poorly acted with some very creaky dialogue and an awful soundtrack.
*

Cemetery Junction

This may lose a star on a second viewing as I saw it after viewing the ghost, so anything was going to be great compared to it. It may completely clone the Dawn-Tim love triangle from the office, but Gervais's and Merchant’s film debut is funny, moving and sweet.
****

Whip It

Drew Barrymore’s directorial debut is shamelessly in your face, with a brash punk soundtrack, girly food fights, actual girl fights and a lot of roller skating. She can’t quite make the roller derby matches exciting enough, but it has enough comedy and heart to make up for it.
****

Wow! Its in 3D! zzzzzzz. Double Bill Review

Technology is improving faster that wallets can gain the cash for it.

My short life has seen some huge advances in technology in all fields of life. Despite the wonders of internet broadband, Sky Plus, and Facebook the greatest improved product in the last 10 years has to be the hand dryer. The metal box that used to blow out pithy puffs of luke warm air, forcing you to dirty your hands by rubbing them on your Jeans are over. We now have the ‘Air Blade’ and ‘Air Force’, mini hurricanes for all your hand drying needs.

There’s no doubting that in the last ten years visual entertainment has also seen a huge development, although nothing as dramatic and life style changing as the hand dryer. The transition from analogue to digital television slightly improved the picture; the transition from digital to high definition improved it slightly more. The blood, sweat and tears that dominate our screens when we watch a film can shine brighter than ever before. After going out and buying your HD JVC LCD TV (acronym overload there) you would hope that all that cash you’ve handed out would be a good investment. Seemingly not, as this month sees the release of the first batch of HD LCD 3D TVs.

3D at the cinema is a gimmick to prevent piracy and make you spend an extra £2 on your cinema ticket. A few films such as Pixar’s UP, Beowulf and of course Avatar do make pretty good use of it but I’ve yet to see a film convinces me it is the next step in film and television. The following two reviews are the latest 3D releases, and I’m going to try and convince you to save that extra £2, just see the normal 2D release, and enjoy the hand dryer for free.

Clash of the Titans (Louis Leterrier, 2010)

Eyes will roll

This month’s first 3D release is a remake of the stop motion 1980s classic of the same name. Childhood memories, cowering behind a pillow at my grandparent’s house during the terrifying Medusa scene were abruptly destroyed by this awful attempt.

The films plot is quickly explained by Gemma Arterton’s charater Io in the first three minutes and is pretty much the only narrative progression in the film. Set in ancient Greece, the film revolves around two Gods, Zeus and Hades, who decide to punish earth due to their lack of worship. Unlike the regular god, who punishes through a flood of 40 days and nights, these super Gods send down various creatures which our band of heroes must defeat. The leader of which is Perseus (Sam Worthington), who just happens to be a half god as his mother was raped by a disguised Zeus

Got all that? As that’s the only exposition you get before Louis Leterrier puts forth action set piece after action set piece. It turns out that plasticine monsters are far scarier than big budget CGI as this film fails to raise the pulses. It falls into the pit-falls of many sub-par summer blockbusters, failing to realise that, even if you have a 500 ft tall monster tearing up towns during a vicious storm, audiences will be falling asleep if you don’t care about the story or characters.

Every single character is under developed, there is a poorly done love story concerning Persues and Io, several unexciting fights and two great actors spouting reams of cheesy dialogue. Zeus and Hades, played by Liam Neeson and Ralph Fiennes should have been daunting, powerhouse performances but they seem to have taken their pay check switched on auto-pilot. Pitting the good and evil Nazi from Spielberg’s Schindler's List could have been fantastic casting, but it just adds to the disappointment of the film. Fiennes, using the same voice he uses as Voldermort in the Harry Potter series can barely muster a sneer.

This is the second time Sam Worthington has been thrust in our faces in 3D, and while Avatar was a good showcase at otherwise unconvincing technology, Clash of the Titans demonstrates the way film studios are exploiting audiences. Originally planned as a 2D film, Titan’s 3D was done post-production simply so they could charge more and it really shows. Backgrounds are blurry, colours are faded and there is very little depth. If you must see it, save your £2 and buy the original DVD second hand to show how much they have tainted its name.

Verdict

Any Director who manages to make the half snake half women Medusa, a giant scorpion and a Kraken boring needs to go back to film school, and watch the original while they are there.

*1/2

How to Train your Dragon (Dean Deblois & Chris Sanders, 2010)

Our second 3D release this month, is not improved, or tainted by the technology. It is simply a very well made family film.

This is the first film since 300 where Gerard Butler is not the most irritating actor ever to grace our screens. He should stick to his CGI form as the Viking Stoick, leader of a village which has a major pest problem, Dragons. While his follow Viking warriors are battling their way through the horned beasts, his son Hiccup is struggling to find his calling. Determined to show his father he can fight, he shoots down a Dragon, and discovers he is a better Dragon Trainer than Dragon Killer. He befriends his fire breathing friend and becomes the resident Dragon tamer.

Dreamworks animation has always been second to Pixar. Their franchises such Ice-Age and Shrek, while good, are never as visually impressive or emotionally involving as Pixar’s best work such as Up, Monsters Inc and Toy Story. In this case however, the studio has made their best work.

Visually the artists made a good choice to choose cartoonish rather than hyper-real animation. The various breeds of dragon are entertaining to watch, funny when needed and scary when the nasty ones turn up. Likewise the human characters are all likable and largely well written. The bizarre choice to give the adults Scottish accents and the children American ones aside, they will appeal to both children and adults in the audience.

The film isn’t always successful with its jokes, but it is always a pleasant watch, and never boring. The flight sequences in particular are spectacular. Hiccup takes his time taming his Dragon and they build a relationship that any dog owner will be able to relate too. The pacing is excellent, the climactic battle is well drawn out, but it is the build up that is the most fun.

Verdict

Avatar is not the best 3D release of the year. How to Train Your Dragon is a breezy enjoyable romp through a stereotyped but wholly realised land, make sure you catch this one before the inevitable sequel.

****1/2