Green Lantern

Superhero movies are like sharks – if they stop moving, they die. Ok, maybe not exactly like sharks. But in a movie like Green Lantern, if the audience is given too much time to realise quite how silly what they’re watching is, then they’ll give up.

Despite having fighting purple aliens, making giant fists out of magic rings and a phobia of the colour yellow, everything in Green Lantern feels flat.

An adaptation of the DC comic, Green Lantern is the story of jet fighter pilot Hal Jordan, who reluctantly takes the place of Earth's protector as part of the Green Lantern Corps, a team of intergalactic space cops.

After a good set up, Green Lantern seems like it has all the ingredients, but ultimately spends too much time faffing about with Jordan's dull love life and boring baddies.

Ryan Reynolds is likeable enough as the man in the horrible CGI green tights, but his slacker superhero seems as bored with the whole thing as we are. Basically Top Gun’s Maverick in Space, he’s no different than cinema's countless other lovable rogues who come good in the end.

The one thing that does set Green Lantern apart from say, Superman or Thor, is his power-ring's unique ability to create whatever objects he can imagine - a race car to rescue an out of control helicopter, water to soften the landing of a falling damsel in distress or a brick wall to hide behind. This means Green Lantern has to out think his enemies, rather than just BIFF POW his way out of danger.

But sequences like this, and Hal's Green Lantern training on their home planet, which should have been fun are cut short in favour of lengthy chats between his tough guy boss Sinestro and six funny blue people who sit on massive pillars.

Add to this a very ineffectual villain in Peter Sarsgaard's mutated mad scientist Hector Hammond, and you've got a bona fide snooze-fest.


Green Lantern always never rises above ordinary, and seems satisified with that, almost as if it’s bored with itself. It has the audience in its grasp, but never goes in for the kill.

And that's something you could never say about a shark.

X MEN: FIRST CLASS

Ever wondered what Professor X and Magento were like when they were young? No me neither.

Well they've made X-Men: First Class anyway - it's a prequel to the X-Men movies of the 2000s, set in the 1960s during the Cuban missile crisis.

Young Charles (Professor X) is a little toff who goes off to Oxford, while young Erik (Magneto) is really angry about an evil Nazi (Kevin Bacon) who killed his mum. At one point he's so angry he throws a coin at a terrible pencil drawing of Kevin Bacon's face. I don't know where he got the drawing from, but it looks like he paid one of those rubbish caricaturists in Leicester Square 10 euros for it

(Charles can read minds - BUT only when he puts two fingers on his left temple.
In one part of the film he had to read someone's mind secretly so has to pretend to be putting his head in hands - that fools them! However, this means you could easily defeat Prof X - the world's most powerful psychic remember - by just tying his hands behind his back.)

They're brought together by the C.I.A. who co-opt the gang to help round up some more mutants and then go after Kevin Bacon.

Somehow Kevin had become young and American and changed his name to Sebastian Shaw. He's got nice hair and is the leader of the Hellfire Club - a bunch of bad mutants who want to trick the US and Russia into starting a nuclear war and wiping out human life. Then Kevin can rule over the world! Sadly the world will then be a pile of radioactive rubbish and not really worth ruling. BUT DON'T WORRY ABOUT THAT.

Luckily Kevin has got a special metal hat that stops anyone reading his brain, so again Charles' power is rendered completely useless.

There are two excellent montage sequences in X-Men: First Class. One where Charles and Erik ponce around the world rounding up mutants for their team to the sound of some Sixties jazz-funk. They are:

Darwin - his body will adapt to any envirnoment. He uses it to stick his head in a fish tank and to turn into rock when someone hits him with a stick. THEN HE DIES.

Angel - she's got a magic tatoo that turns into butterfly wings so she can fly(And she can also spit balls of fire from her mouth)

Havoc - fires boring energy from his chest. Mostly useless. When will they learn that energy based mutant powers ARE BORING.

Mystique - can change her appearance to look like anything. She uses this power ONCE in the film against the bad guys. The rest of the time she just turns blue, then fleshy, then blue again.

Banshee - he can scream loudly - and fly too but only when wearing his flappy costume. If it gets ripped, then he just goes back to screaming loudly again. LIKE A BIG BABY.

Beast - got big feet. At one point Beast actually says the immortal line: 'But will the world ever be able to accept my big feet?'. Listen, his big feet are pretty big and not very attractive, but I reckon the world probably would accept his big feet. One of his mates can turn into a fish, but he's more worried about having big feet.

In the second montage, Charles trains all the X-Men to use their powers. Beast runs round the block, Havoc sets fire to a mannequin, Mystique just turns blue again and Magneto makes a satalitte dish turn round. Great for getting a better reception for Sky Sports but quite useless for preventing WWIII.

In the end all the good mutants and the evil mutants and the US/Russian armies have a big stand-off. Erik nicks Kevin Bacon's special hat, ditches Charles and buggers off with all the best mutants. THE END. (Or is it?)

So basically First Class is a bit like a remake of the first X-Men film, if you subsitute Wolverine (the angry, revenge seeking mutant that's hard to control) for Erik, and Sebastian Shaw (the evil, human-hating mutant with designs on world domination) for Magneto. Add in Mystique as the Rogue analouge, and it's pretty much the same film but this time they only spent 2p on the special effects.

X-Men: First Class is alright - I will award it 4 out of 7.

The Resident

Mobile phones have changed horror films. While the Scream series used them in new and frightening ways, for most others they present a big problem - being chased by a psychotic murderer is less scary if you can just pull out your iPhone and dial 999.

New Hammer horror The Resident has a brilliant and unique way of getting round this problem: It is CLEARLY STATED in the first 10 minutes that mobile phones don't work in the block of flats where the film is set. PROBLEM SOLVED.

Anyway - imagine you had a stalker - and NOW imagine if that stalker lived in your house!

That's exactly what happens to poor Juliet (Hilary Swank)

Here's what we know about Juliet:
1) she likes jogging and taking baths (toned and likely to take her clothes off often)
2) she's an E.R. doctor (she may like taking her clothes off, but she's intelligent and important too)

But which of Juliet's two new landlords do you think is the crazy stalker obsessed with her?

Could it be the strange lonely old August, peering through th door cracks with his spooky eyes, OR is it his grandson Max, who has a lovely beard and a nice smile?

For people who've never watched Scooby Doo / or have a brain, the revelation that is is, in fact, the seemingly charming Max, may have been an exciting development - for everyone else, it's utterly boring. (August dies quietly a few minutes after this 'twist' and, having served his purpose, is never mentioned again.)

Jeffery Dean Morgan plays Max - a sort of sexier but slightly less mad Dave Lee Travis - who's psychotic tendancies are never satisfactorily explained. All we know about himm is this:
1) he likes drinking wine and hiding in cupboards (cultured but a bit evil)
2) he's good at DIY (useful for putting two-way mirrors into your tenants' flats)

His stalking kicks off quite innocently with a quick visit to Juliet's flat to brush his teeth her electric toothbrush, his face contorting with ecstacy as he works those back molars. Then, it's time to pop fully clothed into the empty bath and pleasure himself. However, his obsession with Juliet quickly esculates into hiding under her bed and licking her fingers while she's taking a nap.

When Juliet finds out, they have a big fight and she shoots Max in the brain.

If only her mobile had worked then she could have just called the police and had him arrested instead of brutally murdering him with a nail gun.

Still, he did love DIY so I'm sure that's the way he would have wanted to go.

The Resident is perhaps the most unorginial, linear film I have ever seen. With no surprises and no scares, it commits the ultimate sin for any horror film - it's dull.

G.I. Joe: The Rise of Cobra

There's no point in actually reviewing G.I. Joe: The Rise of Cobra - just look at this poster and imagine it -


It's exactly like that. Would-be reviewers might as well just write 'G.I. Joe: Rise of Cobra. Watch it if you like that sort of thing.' (In fact, I would suggest replacing EVERY film review with this simple phrase.)

Based on the 80's toy-line/cartoon show, GI Joe's are a bit like the SAS - some super-hard nutbags, a couple of ninjas and a token IT consultant - all saved for the extra hard missions the army can't handle.

There's Snake Eyes, a quiet ninja
Scarlett, an emotionally retarted super-brain
Heavy Duty, a gruff cockney with a soft centre
General Hawk, the team's leader who's not afraid to break the rules
and Breaker, the resident computer expert.

The film follows new recruits Duke and Rip-Cord as they try and save the world from a terrorist group lead by evil Scotsman Christopher Ecceleston.

(At the end, both Christopher Eccelston and side-kick Joseph Gordon-Levitt are given almost identical special metal faces. I think this is primarily so if there's a sequel, Christopher and Joseph don't have to turn up, and their parts can be played by any old cheap actor with a CGI metal face. In future this should be done at the end of all films. All the most famous actors will suddenly put a paper bag over their heads.)

Anyway, it's all very exciting and a bit like James Bond but completely de-sexulized and with no on-screen violence.

Sound rubbish? Well, despite having special effects only marginally better than these...

...G.I. Joe: Rise of Cobra is probably the most perfect film ever made (for a 13 year old boy) - lots of guns, some sexy ladies -but nothing too saucy Mums!- and the complete destruction of the Eiffel Tower.

In fact, If you could project the contents of a child's mind as s/he played with the toys in the 1980s, it would probably look EXACTLY like this film - shit CGI and all.

But NO child's mind, no matter how twisted, could ever imagine anything as horribly wrong as Christopher Ecceleston's Scottish accent.

That's GI Joe: The Rise of Cobra. Watch it if you like that sort of thing.