Certificate:

Director: Edgar Wright

Release Date: 14 February 2010

Tagline: In a town where nothing much goes on, a whole lot is about to go down.

Main Cast:

Simon Pegg … Nicholas Angel

Nick Frost … PC Danny Butterman

I don’t know why I waited so long to watch this. I like Simon Pegg, but was put off by the poor reviews. Hot Fuzz is, in fact, very, very funny. I have a feeling though that people who didn’t grow up in a small country village (like I did) might not get the wonderful parody of village life. Perhaps it was those people who didn’t like it.

Nicholas Angel is almost superhuman. He is an outstanding cop in the Metropolitan Police with an amazing arrest record. However, his fellow officers don’t like the fact that he makes them look bad and he is transferred to Sandford, a very traditional rural village. His new colleagues turn a blind eye to anything and everything that goes on, but Nicholas, being a stickler for the law, cannot let anything go unpunished. When a series of fatal ‘accidents’ occur, he begins to get suspicious and becomes determined to get to the root of things.

Rating: 4 out of 5 stars

Certificate:

Director: Pedro Almodóvar

Release Date: 26 August 2011

Main Cast:

Antonio Banderas … Robert Ledgard

Elena Anaya … Vera

Blanca Suárez … Norma

Jan Cornet … Vincente

Marisa Paredes … Marilia

Blimey! What an amazing film. Pedro Almodóvar does it again.

A brilliant plastic surgeon creates a type of synthetic skin that withstands any kind of damage. His human test subject is a beautiful woman named Vera who is contained within his home, and cared for by his head servant Marilia. Vera wears a skin-coloured suit made out of fabric instead of clothes and she is constantly watched by Robert and Marilia. She never leaves her room, which only Robert himself holds the key to.

You get no more than that from me! An absolute must see.

Rating: 5 out of 5 stars

Certificate:

Director: Guillem Morales

Release Date: 20 May 2011

Tagline: You can’t hide in the dark.

Main Cast:

Belén Rueda … Julia Levin / Sara

Lluís Homar … Isaac

Pablo Derqui … Ángel

This is a real treat!

In a nutshell, Sara and her twin sister, Julia both suffer from the same degenerative eye problem that is untreatable. After Sarah is found hanged at her home, Julia and her husband temporarily move in to Sarah’s home to deal with the funeral and such like. However, Julia suspects that her sister was murdered and tries to get to the bottom of it. As her own sight begins to falter things take a turn for the worse and she finds herself in a very dangerous situation.

Rating: 4 out of 5 stars

Certificate:

Director: Takashi Miike

Release Date: 25 September 2010

Tagline: Take up your sword.

Main Cast:

Kôji Yakusho … Shinzaemon Shimada

Takayuki Yamada … Shinrouko

Yûsuke Iseya … Koyata

Gorô Inagaki … Lord Naritsugu Matsudaira

WARNING – MAJOR SPOILER BELOW!

This should have been called 12 Assassins and a Village Idiot With a Sling Shot. I love a good martial arts and sword fight film, but this is tedious beyond belief. Films of this genre, e.g. Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon,  are usually very believable. I understand that you sometimes have to suspend disbelief, but this goes beyond that.

Let’s start with the ‘village idiot’. He is found in the forest/mountains where a group of highly trained samurais have got lost in on the way to the showdown with the evil Lord Naritsugu Matsudaira. He’s the only one who lives in the forest/whatever, but they find him caught in a trap up in a tree. He’s an idiot, but surely not so much of an idiot that he would get caught in one of, presumably, his own traps.

Moving on to the fight scene. The amount of ludicrous traps that are made and set seemingly overnight in a small village are ridiculous. Somehow, the said assassins and idiot manage to fight and kill around two hundred proficient swordsmen. This goes on for an insufferable amount of time. The final scene where Lord Naritsugu Matsudaira is confronted by the man set on killing him is a total let down. At the end of the film, there are only two men left standing; one assassin and the idiot.

Yawn.

Rating: 2.5 out of 5 stars

Certificate:

Director: Dennis Gansel

Release Date: 19 September 2008

Main Cast:

Jürgen Vogel … Rainer Wenger

Frederick Lau … Tim Stoltefuss

Max Riemelt … Marco

Jennifer Ulrich … Karo

Fascist autocracy could never happen again in these enlightened times, could it? Worryingly, the answer is yes and The Wave demonstrates this brilliantly. A school has a ‘project week’, and teacher Rainer Wenger is assigned a class to discuss autocracy. However, things soon get out of hand…

Undoubtedly based on the events of the real life ‘Stanford Experiment’ (see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stanford_experiment), The Wave is a powerful film that shows how careful and alert we must all be that such events never happen again.

Rating: 5 out of 5 stars

Certificate:

Director: Florian Henckel von Donnersmarck

Release Date: 13 April 2007

Tagline: Before the fall of the Berlin Wall, East Germany’s Secret Police listened to your secrets.

Main Cast:

Ulrich Mühe … Oberstleutnant Anton Grubitz

Martina Gedeck … Christa-Maria Sieland

Sebastian Koch … Georg Dreyman

Know everything. They pretty much did. This might, at first, seem like a boring and dull subject, but the films hooks and reels you in from the first few minutes. A member of the East German authorities is given the task to monitor a writer who is seen as a threat to the government by writing anti-Communist material. The whole house has been bugged and Grubitz listens to and reports on any and every event that happens. However, the longer he listens to the events, the more unsure he becomes of his convictions…

Brilliant!

Rating: 5 out of 5 stars

Certificate:

Directors: Luis Piedrahita and Rodrigo Sopeña

Release Date: 29 May 2009

Tagline: Think inside the box.

Main Cast:

Lluís Homar … Hilbert

Alejo Sauras … Galois

Elena Ballesteros … Oliva

Santi Millán … Pascal

Federico Luppi … Fermat

I enjoyed this. However, it is far too much like Cube for me to rate it too highly. In a nutshell, four geniuses have been selected (supposedly on their ability to solve a kind of mathematical problem) to attend a special gathering of elite minds. They are all directed to drive to an isolated location, and are all given pseudonyms. It soon becomes clear that they have fallen into a deadly trap and must use their intelligence and quick thinking if they are to save their lives.

There are, however, two plot holes (see here http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1016301/goofs) that are far too big to overlook. All in all, though, I did enjoy it, and would recommend watching it.

Rating: 3 out of 5 stars

Certificate:

Director: Scott Derrickson

Release Date: 25 November 2005

Tagline: What happened to Emily?

Main Cast:

Laura Linney … Erin Bruner

Tom Wilkinson … Father Moore

Jennifer Carpenter … Emily Rose

This is by far the second best demonic possession/exorcism film that I’ve seen (The Exorcist will, inarguably,  never be surpassed). It’s based on the True Story of Anneliese Michel, a German Catholic girl who was possibly mentally ill, possibly an epileptic, possibly possessed by demons, and possibly a combination of two or all three. After the failure of medication (it’s entirely possible that this failed because of her belief that she might be possessed) she underwent sixty seven exorcisms over a period of ten months.

There are photographs of her after the illness(es) and or possession took hold that are really quite shocking. Is it possible that she was ‘only’ mentally ill and the suggestion that she was demonically possessed caused added complications to this? It seems very unlikely that psychosis, epilepsy and/or anorexia was her primary problem and the cause of all her disturbances.

Now, although I do believe (through personal experience and other eyewitness accounts that are absolutely genuine) that there are ghosts and other things that science cannot explain, I don’t believe in Heaven and Hell. Bearing in mind that I’m an atheist (although I accept that I could be wrong; after all the existence of God can neither be confirmed or denied), I find the story of Anneliese very disturbing. The photographs of her before, during and at the end of her life are genuinely shocking.

So, what do I believe? Illness or demonic possession? Surprisingly, I don’t know what I believe. What *did* happen to Emily?

Rating: 5 out of 5 stars

Certificate:

Director: Daniel Stamm

Release Date: 3 September 2010

Tagline: Believe in Him.

Main Cast:

Patrick Fabian … Rev. Cotton Marcus

Ashley Bell … Nell Sweetzer

Iris Bahr … Iris Reisen

Louis Herthum … Louis Sweetzer

I love a good exorcism/demonic film. Unfortunately, this is nothing like one. Like the utterly abysmal Paranormal Activity this had very little funding and used the same viral/word of mouth marketing tactics. I wasn’t aware of this until after watching it, and it explained a lot.

Just when you thought it might get quite good, the end is rushed in a confusing final scene. I would suggest that they had no idea how to end it. On the plus side, I thought that the acting was reasonably good.

The Last Exorcism is a rip off of The Exorcist and Rosemary’s Baby, both of which are masterpieces. It’s not quite as boring as Paranormal Activity, so it gets half a star more than that.

Rating: 1.5 out of 5 stars

P.S. Don’t be mislead by the fantastic poster. She doesn’t crawl up the wall – the image has been doctored to make it appear so.

Certificate:

Director: Danny Boyle

Release Date: 7 January 2011

Tagline: There is no force more powerful than the will to live.

Main Cast:

James Franco … Aron Ralston

Based on the true story of how Aron Ralston got himself trapped in an isolated and treacherous canyon walk, 127 Hours is, just like Touching the Void, a brilliantly made yet difficult to watch film.

Aron had a freakish accident and found himself trapped by his right arm between a huge boulder and an impenetrable rock wall. 127 Hours documents his harrowing experience and the only solution that he had left to him if he wanted to survive.

It’s a captivating film that never strays into anything other than a pure and simple story of survival.

It’s hard to rate it as this is a real story being played for us, and unlike the average real life biographies (such as Walk the Line), there is not a lifetime of experiences to draw from  - only 127 hours. So, I shall rate it purely on the basis of its ability to captivate the audience.

Rating: 4 out of 5 stars