One Sentence Film Reviews

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Welcome to my film guide.


This is a list of all the films I have ever seen and my one-sentence(ish) thoughts on each.  This will be a constantly evolving list as I add new films and remember what I thought of old ones.  I’ve put them in roughly chronological order.

My Most Recent Reviews:


Batman: Return Of The Caped Crusaders [2016] – “Quickly Robin, to the crosswalk.” Having just finished watching all of the TV show, it was fun spotting the references, although weirdly some of it doesn’t seem to match; this is a witty film with pretty much everything you could want thrown in plot-wise, but because of that it doesn’t have enough time to focus on a lot of it.

To Wong Foo Thanks For Everything, Julie Newmar [1995] – “I think that’s healthy.” Surprisingly formulaic with no character depth, which disappointed me.

The Mitchells Vs The Machines [2021] – “I found one.” “Me too.” “Yaaaay.” The story balances on the rift between a father and daughter and the audience’s desire for them to work it out, but since the father was 100% THE WORST, I mostly just found this annoying.

The Finest Hours [2016] – “That’s regulation, you know.” Enjoyable disaster/rescue movie, although the romance didn’t add anything.

The Sting [1973] – “Christ, they’ll probably miss you and hit me.” Although it can never live up to the first viewing once you know the various twists, this is still a really witty, engrossing and entertaining movie; I just wish all subsequent con artist and heist movies would stop ripping it off.

Robin Hood [1973] – fairly bland with no character depth, but at times it’s fun, moving and highly nostalgic.

Little Monsters [2019] – this was quite funny but I quit after a quick glance at doesthedogdie.com – I hadn’t realised going in that this was set in a petting zoo or I wouldn’t have gone near it.

This Sporting Life [1963] – bleak and dull, not my kind of thing at all.

Six Days, Seven Nights [1998] – garbage.

Adventures In Babysitting [1987] – “Take back what you said about Thor!” Fun 80s kids adventure movie, except I saw the heavily edited Disney+ version with all the bad words dubbed out, which often makes scenes illogical, and since this did appear to be a kids movie, I have no idea why there was so much bad language in it in the first place.







1921

The Kid‘Are you the father of this child?’ ‘Well – practically.’ The opening title of ‘A picture with a smile—and perhaps, a tear’ pretty much sums it up; an enjoyable silent movie (apart from the pointless dream sequence).


1927

The Jazz Singer - generally referred to as the first 'talkie', this rather disappointingly actually still uses caption cards, the only audible dialogue being adlibs over the music (although this is very cool); oh, and the unexplained and sudden blacking up is just baffling.

1931

Bad Sister – watchable I guess, although I was surprised by the happy ending.

City Lights – “Tomorrow the birds will sing.” Didn’t really enjoy this, the slapstick routines go on far too long, and it’s just the story of a man trying to do good but bad things keep happening to him and then it ends.

Draculastagy direction, stilted line delivery, creaky movement, cheap rubber bats and spiders on strings and a lead who sounds like a confused old man who doesn’t understand English… not exactly scary.

Frankenstein - it's just so boring, plus the monster is a total jerk.

The Public Enemy - with no particular narrative drive or interesting characters, this isn't a fascinating watch and the shock ending is one part comic, one part memorably disturbing and one part irritatingly moral - unfortunately films about crime being bad never got less blunt.

1932

Grand Hotel "Nothing ever happens."  Well, I didn't see that coming; miserable now.

1933

42nd Street – like the stage show it inspired if you removed ALL OF THE PLOT.

Duck Soup – “This is the fifth trip I’ve made today and I haven’t been anywhere yet.” This is the first Marx Brothers movie I have seen and I guess I was expecting something else from it, as it is, with everyone constantly trying to be the zany one, it is exhausting and not very funny.

King Kong – Humans: Look, incredibly rare, unique species unknown anywhere else in the world… kill the hell out of them; Dinosaurs: Stop killing the hell out of us or we’ll kill the hell out of you; King Kong: I will kill the hell out of all of you and I’ll do it in the most malicious ways I possibly can; Me: When will the killing end?

The Invisible Man – there are no sympathetic characters but plenty of wooden performances, watchable only for the mind-blowingly good special effects.

1934

It Happened One Night - there are too many examples of domestic abuse in this movie, opening with a father hitting his daughter in the face yet never being punished for the act, while she falls for a man who constantly belittles her, and the ending of the movie, featuring neither lead and their reunion happening off screen, is decidedly disappointing.

Of Human Bondage - Leslie Howard is as mesmerising as always (although he's been a lot more awesome) but Bette Davis's accent completely derails whatever it is she's going for with the character.

The Man Who Knew Too Much – I can see why he wanted to remake it.

The Scarlet Pimpernel – “Good evening, Monsieur Chauvelin, how nice of you to wait up for me.” It’s a real shame that the female role has been reduced so much from the novel but on the other hand the ending is undeniably awesome.

The Thin Man an utterly loopy film, the kind of talk-your-ear-off everyone’s-a-screwball style you only got in the 30s, with a delightful husband and wife relationship; this one spawned a series and I’d certainly watch more.

1935

The 39 Steps – "It's a whole flock of detectives."  A fun romp.

The Bride Of Frankenstein - filled with eye-scratchingly irritating characters and mind-numbingly wooden actors, and the Monster is still a murderous jerk, but Frankenstein is kind of sweet.

Top Hat – “You see, every once in a while I suddenly find myself... dancing.” “Oh, I suppose it’s some kind of an affliction.” The songs are lame and the plot is asinine.

1936

After The Thin Man – pretty much repeats everything the first film did except now the charm has worn off.

My Man Godfrey - "Shall I wear my tails or come just as I am?"  A charming film, although Irene’s lack of character development is a little disappointing..

Rose Marie - forgets to resolve the fact that the lovers split up because he is basically murdering her brother.

The Petrified Forest – Leslie Howard is mesmerising as ever but the ending is disappointing and cruel.

1937

It's Love I'm After - "Why is it no one loves me?" "But I love you, sir." "Don't confuse the issue."  An entertaining farce.

Lost Horizon - “Did you say we left 10,000 natives down there to be annihilated? No, no, you wouldn’t say that. They don’t count.”  The movie has been (mostly) restored to its original 132 minute run time, but I think they actually mean 132 HOUR run time; after an exciting ten minutes at the start the film slides into a slow and dull pace, never gives the characters any depth (due I think to being hacked to pieces in an editing suite if rumours of Capra’s initial six hour cut are true) or explains why anyone would want to stay in this stagnant society that makes no effort to help the outside world while it happily kidnaps completely innocent bystanders in order to get their hands on one guy, who could make a difference to the world if he’d been left to it.

Return Of The Scarlet Pimpernel - I really want to see a sequel to The Scarlet Pimpernel not starring Leslie Howard said no one ever.

Seventh Heaven – “Chico, Diane, Heaven.”  Watchable but there’s a startling lack of plot.

Snow White And The Seven Dwarfs  hardly any plot or character to speak of but the light-hearted bits are fun, the serious bits are downright terrifying and the animation is amazing.

Stage Door – didn’t really rise above being a silly melodrama.

The Prisoner Of Zenda - "I cannot get used to fighting with furniture." Ronald Colman is extremely watchable as the hero while Douglas Fairbanks Jr is delightfully roguish as the villain, and the whole doppelganger/kidnap/siege plot is lots of fun, but the film really falls down with the romance - Princess Flavia being about as interesting as a damp handkerchief.

Topper – “All right, I’ll change the tyre, but I’ll be darned if I’m going to waste any ectoplasm doing it.”  Another of those 30s movies that thinks alcoholic socialites are the height of sophistication and hilarity; the movie has very little plot and really no likeable characters but the special effects are impressive.

1938

Blockade – unwatchable obvious war propaganda filled with stilted worthy rhetoric that the actors look uncomfortable delivering. 

Bringing Up Baby – more irritating than funny.

Carefree - creepy film in which a very unprofessional psychiatrist subjects a woman to a lot of mental abuse (it's supposed to be a romcom).

Mad About Music – ‘Young ladies must not make other young ladies eat photographs.’ Very enjoyable but the ending is too rushed so a bit of a let down.

Pygmalion – an insult rather than an adaptation.

The Divorce Of Lady X – “In my profession I have to be able to see what’s behind those lovely, deceiving lips.” “Are you a dentist?” This is a weird movie, in which a guy falls in love with a woman he’s known for five minutes and she lies to him constantly during their courtship and then the film just sort of ends with them both being fine with each other now without them ever getting to know each other; it’s far too reliant on ye olde battle of the sexes whiffling.

The Goldwyn Follies – just about mildly entertaining but an excuse to shove a bunch of not-talented-enough-to-carry-a-whole-movie entertainers into one movie-soup doesn’t justify making a film and the ending barely makes sense.

The Lady Vanishes – once it gets going, it’s a watchable thriller, but the first part is interminable.

Vivacious Lady - "I can't have my husband engaged to just anybody." A cute movie with some entertaining performances but it goes way too over the top with the 1930s style sex jokes (so many wolf whistles)..

1939

Bachelor Mother - Ginger Rogers and David Niven are always going to be watchable, but I'm sure it must be possible to prove a baby is not biologically yours, even in the thirties - having never given birth would be a starting place; NB the version I saw was pointlessly and incompetently colourised.

Destry Rides Again – "Get out before I kill you." "You mean you haven't been trying?" An enjoyable film, but weird to think this is spoofing western tropes when this is actually the oldest western I’ve seen – how were there already so many tropes?  “I was just tryin’ to tell ya that I ain’t got any guns. You see, if I would have had a gun there, why, one of us might have got hurt - and it might have been me. I wouldn’t like that, would I?”

Eternally Yours – ghastly tale of neglect, manipulation and abuse being portrayed as romance.

Gone With The Wind – ghastly, overlong love letter to the American South in which we have to suffer cinema’s most repulsive heroine, her unrequited love for Ashley Wilkes (Leslie Howard just ain’t gonna bother with an American accent) while Rhett Butler goes about beating and raping her.

Goodbye, Mr. Chips - unbearably sad.

Gulliver’s Travels – it’s more like Gulliver’s Travel, singular, and seems to be designed to be as irritating as possible.

His Girl Friday – uninteresting; I have seen these basic character and plot ideas done to death and never satisfactorily.

Intermezzo - the story of a total douche; I have no idea what the audience is meant to get out of this; skipping the bit when selfish man and idiot girl fall in love was disastrous.

Made For Each Other - not much focus to the plot, just a bunch of stuff that newlyweds have to deal with, with a harrowing life-or-death plane flight involving a character we haven't seen before randomly thrown in at the end.

Mr Smith Goes To Washington – the final half hour is really good and James Stewart is watchable as ever, but a slow drama about American politics just ain't fascinating fare.

Raffles – “I hope you weren’t looking at it professionally.”  Er, this is not a whole story, you keep waiting for some clever outwitting to begin and instead the movie just ends.

Stagecoach – an all right film, less compelling than I expected but nice to see some tropes being inverted.

The Cat And The Canary – Bob Hope is on fire, shame about the rest of the film.

The Wizard Of Oz – "You've killed her so completely, that we thank you very sweetly." Not one of my favourite movies, but always watchable with amazing production values..

1940

Fantasia – it adds nothing but visual tedium to brilliant pieces of music.

Foreign Correspondent – “Pardon me gentlemen, I represent the Jupiter Life Assurance, could I interest you in a small policy?” Starts off a little slow but more than makes up for it with multiple exciting set pieces later on, however not sure why Joel McCrea drops out of the story for a bit and George Sanders takes over as the hero, very odd plotting, made me realise I would rather watch Sanders.

Gaslight – “Are you suggesting this is a knife I have in my hand?”  The plot is good but the execution is rather clunky, especially with the former detective character as the outside hero ready to swoop in to save the day.

My Favourite Wife (My Favorite Wife) – “I bet you say that to all your wives.” A funny film; while the characters behave in irritating ways and cause unnecessary pain to each other, they do get comeuppances for it so it’s not too annoying.

Pinocchio – while Snow White didn’t have enough plot to fill a film, this has too much plot to handle so rushes through without pause for breath and has some unbelievably dark moments (Pinocchio face down in a puddle, dead, for example), but it's certainly watchable.

Pride And Prejudice “At this moment it’s difficult to believe you’re so proud.” “At this moment it’s difficult to believe that you’re so prejudiced.”  The most breakneck-speed and schmooified version of the story you’re likely to come across, it’s a charming film on its own with a brilliant performance from Greer Garson as Elizabeth Bennet, but I can never get over Laurence Olivier’s cuddly performance as the nicest Mr Darcy you could imagine and the dumb ending where Lady Catherine de Bourgh turns out to be a good guy – could 1940's audiences not handle mean characters?  “Oh, if you want to be really refined, you have to be dead.” 

Primrose Path – forgettable.

Road To Singapore – quite fun buddy film, not sure why it spawned an entire series though.

The Great Dictator - a good, sometimes excellent film but it's been so overhyped.

The Philadelphia Storydespite the wonderful cast it just comes across as 'women should shut up and take adultery and abuse from their husbands’.

The Shop Around The Corner – “Why do you hate me so?” “I don’t hate you.” “Oh, I suppose you love me.” “No, why should I? What have you done to make me love you?” “I don’t want you to love me.” “I don’t!” An absolute classic - it’s so well crafted, very funny and filled with great performances.

1941

49th Parallel “You can’t expect me to capture an armed Nazi without getting hurt a little.”  This blatant propaganda movie is actually a little bit of a slog, despite being well acted, because the only recurring characters in the film, the main characters, are the villains; meanwhile Laurence Olivier’s French Canadian accent is unbelievable, but Leslie Howard’s scene is so cool it kinda makes it all worth it.

Citizen Kane – unfortunately knowing the famous ending undermines the whole mystery while the non-linear plot means we never get to know the title character so I didn't get much out of it.

Dumbo  “The magic feather was just a gag! You can fly! Honest, you can!”  Really more of a glorified short than a full story, but you’d have to have a heart of stone not to side with that adorable baby elephant.

Here Comes Mr. Jordan – “He’s being murdered, Joe.” A neat idea that has clearly inspired other movies since, and a fun enough ride but for two things: the totally underwhelming ‘romance’ that is supposed to be a catalyst and is instead almost non-existent, and the presumably ‘happy’ ending that actually made me shed a tear it was so cruel.

I Wake Up Screamingforgettable.

Pimpernel Smith – "How annoying for you."  This has been one of my favourite movies since I was a teenager; despite a few cheesy characters, it’s full of great lines; a delightful battle of wits between the man saving lives and the man who’s hunting him.

Road To Zanzibar – starts well but it loses its way later into completely random.

Sullivan’s Travels  – “I’m gonna find out how it feels to be in trouble, without friends, without credit, without chequebook, without name… alone.” “And I’ll go with you.” “How could I be alone if you’re with me?” An enjoyable film, although it’s a bit heavy handed on the ‘comedy is good’ moral.

Suspicion - while the suspense of whether or not her husband is a murderer is exciting, there's no doubt that this is yet another Hollywood movie in which a weak-willed and impressionable woman is swept off her feet by a domineering and cruel man and we're meant to mistake that for romance.

Topper Returns – started to watch this but it recaps the first film by just showing a lot of the first film, which reminded me how much I didn’t like the first film so I certainly don’t want to sit through a sequel that doesn’t even have Cary Grant in it.

1942

Bambi – devoid of plot and the characters have no more personality than their names; hunters are evil though.

Casablanca – "If I were a woman (and I were not around), I should be in love with Rick." Fairly gripping story, but it's hard to believe that Ilsa could cause such strong turmoil or devotion in two men when she's as interesting as a sack of wet potatoes.

Holiday Inn - it'd be a lot better if the female lead wasn't treated like an object.

Keeper Of The Flame – “Buttons or zipper?” Keeps you wondering what the hell is going on for an hour and a quarter and then ends on a long speech about how destructive fascism is because it sneaks up on you without you realising you’re being manipulated, which is sadly as relevant today as it was in 1942.

Road To Morocco“A fine pal you are, letting me give her up and all the time you knew you weren’t gonna die. That’s what’s killing me; you weren’t even gonna die!” The most coherent of the Road movies and therefore probably the best, it’s filled with constant funny repartee, delightfully clever nods at the fourth wall and the two most-back-stabbiest friends you ever saw (try to ignore the horrifying scene in which they impersonate a person with a learning disability and general stereotypical representation of ‘Arabian culture’). “You mean they missed my song?”   

Saludos Amigos - not as trippy or creepy as The Three Caballeros which followed, but it has no cohesive plot whatsoever, so really a tossup which is more bearable; this is so short it's hardly a film at all.

The First Of The Few (Spitfire) – “It’s not a question of getting my own way; it’s the way I’ve been going for more than two years. Now it is my way, inevitably. It’s a question of whether you’re coming with me.”  The framing device is surprisingly poor but the main movie in-between is a compelling and interesting piece, even with the tragic ending.

The Talk Of The Town - “I’ve had that umbrella eleven years.” A movie with an exciting escaped-criminal-detective-story plot, a cute will-they-won’t-they romance, a really decent heart-warming friendship between the three leads and some wonderful natural-sounding dialogue (especially between Cary Grant and Jean Arthur) makes this a very enjoyable film.

To Be Or Not To Be “Heil myself.”  Fairly funny, but the plot moves along a little too easily, while there’s always a slight edge behind the humour as you wonder how much the people making this movie knew of the atrocities the Nazis were doing in Poland and whether we should really be laughing. 

Woman Of The Year – “Shall we pass them around again now?”  One of those old timey anti-feminist movies in which an intelligent, world-travelled, hard-working important woman is shown to be selfish and ridiculous because she isn’t an obedient little wife (even though her husband knew exactly what she and her life was like before he chose to marry her).

1943

Heaven Can Wait – “Do you think I’m the kind of girl who would take a boy’s last beetle?” Pretty boring, he should get sent to Hell for wasting everyone’s time with his lame not-evil story.

Phantom Of The Opera – almost no connection to the novel and very poorly structured but the rivalry between Raoul and Anatole is fun.

The Gentle Sex – “A worm in a corpse is efficient.” Notable only because it was Lesley Howard’s last film (as narrator and director), this has almost no plot, it’s just an extended advert encouraging women to sign up for the war effort, but as a piece of entertainment is devoid of any.

1944

Arsenic And Old Lace “This is developing into a very bad habit.” A decent farce that’s extremely OTT so you have to be in the right mood; Peter Lorre gives the best performance. “Insanity runs in my family… it practically gallops.”

Double Indemnity - the starts-at-the-end opening is tediously reminiscent of Billy Wilder's more famous Sunset Blvd., while Fred MacMurray comes across as a total creep and the fast-paced dialogue is almost impenetrable while still being painfully blunt with its innuendos. 

Going My Way - it's kind of aimless and far too gentle.

Laura – “Shall I produce x-ray pictures to prove it?” Quite good, except the love plot isn’t really believable, and the whodunit is incredibly obvious from the start.

The Three Caballeros - a trippy splicing of cartoon and real footage in which Donald Duck is aroused by human women; I want out.

1945

Anchors Aweigh – “I’d quit this piano tuning. Ain’t no future in it.” The plot is trite and not nearly enough to cover the ridiculously long run time, which is filled with completely forgettable songs but undeniably stunning moments like the Hollywood Bowl pianos scene or Gene Kelly hurling himself through the air, and Frank Sinatra brings some much needed charm to the tale. 

Brief Encounter - what a pushy jerk!

House Of Dracula – a reasonable enough excuse to have Dracula and the Wolf Man meet (although actually they don’t share any scenes) but there is no reason for Frankenstein’s Monster, and horrible that the hunchbacked nurse gets killed but the pretty blonde one lives. 

Lady On A Train – fairly entertaining although the comic elements can be frustrating and it’s very obvious who the villain is.

Road To Utopiaoften touted as one of if not the best Road movie, this actually has a lot more in common with the messy Zanzibar than the masterful Morocco; the plot is far too convoluted, the commentary never really feels like it should be there and the ending is quite disappointing.

1946

A Matter Of Life And Death (Stairway To Heaven) – a pilot tries to win his life in Heaven court, but only achieves this when a top surgeon gets killed and represents him, so how come the surgeon doesn’t deserve to live?

It’s A Wonderful Life – “We don’t use money in Heaven.” “Oh yeah, that’s right, I keep forgetting. Comes in pretty handy down here, bub.” A compelling movie because George is such an understated good person – even though he gets frustrated, despondent or angry at times, he always does what’s best to protect other people at the cost of his own wellbeing, so it’s very believable that he doesn’t rate his own worth while everyone else does; the only gripe is that the worst thing that could have happened to Mary is that she wore some glasses and worked at a library without a husband.

Make Mine Music - "Miracles never really die." Made up of ten musical shorts, this film is incredibly dull, apart from the two final shorts which are watchable, so on the plus side it ends well but on the down side I can't see many people making it that far alive.

The Big Sleep  “Somebody’s always giving me guns.”  Bogart absolutely shines in this twisty talky plot, where every line’s a zinger. 

1947

Brighton Rock - got to admit, mostly just watched it to see William Hartnell in a non-Who role, otherwise it's interesting but there are no sympathetic characters.

Fun And Fancy Free – the 40s saw a lot of tosh come out of Disney; in this 'Classic' Jiminy Cricket is either immortal or a time traveller, appearing here in modern day Hollywood, listening to an overly-long record about bear domestic abuse and looking in on a man (who can't do ventriloquism) who invites a little girl alone to his house at night for a 'party' while Mickey and co re-enact the skimpiest version of Jack And The Beanstalk I've ever seen - all that said, however, the narration for both stories is well performed.

Miracle On 34th Street “I have great respect for psychiatry and great contempt for meddling amateurs who go around practising it.”  Edmund Gwenn is so charming he makes the movie work; the supporting cast are rather shallow and it brings up that annoying concept of if Santa was real, how could people possibly not know (don’t they wonder where their kids’ presents come from?) while there’s a lot of eyebrow-raising blurring around ‘the real meaning of Christmas’ but it’s a nice movie with a sharp wit hidden behind a gentle exterior.

Road To Rio - the fifth in the series doesn't really do anything new and is actually a bit boring.

The Bishop’s Wife“He knows more about history than the professor.” “He’s been at it longer.” Like a not-good version of It’s A Wonderful Life, while it starts off cute, it soon becomes incredibly frustrating as the angel thwarts the bishop’s attempts to actually pay his wife attention, and ends on an uneasy and unresolved solution.

1948

A Foreign Affair – “Life goes on in those ruins.” Bit of a dud, with the dark material being played for laughs, one of those old timey abusive relationships passing for romance and the plot being generated by some very irritating misunderstandings.  

Berlin Express – starts off well, but forgets what it is about (a group of different nationalities putting aside their differences to help someone) and just focuses on two of the characters having a forced romance.

Bond Street – pretty dull, this is four separate stories, only one of which is mildly interesting.

Call Northside 777 – “I figure if you pull such a corny gag as this you must want me to go pretty bad so I’m going… but I want you to know that you didn’t get away with it.” Once you get past the really clumsy narration at the start, this is all right, but the film came out before the story it is telling was fully resolved, so it feels like more could happen.

Key Largo – “Are you thieves or what? You want money? Is this a robbery?”  “That’s right, Pop, we’re gonna steal all your towels.”  Watchable, but not nearly as tense or thrilling as I thought it would be.

Melody Time just as soullessly boring as Fantasia but also slightly creepy.

Mr. Blandings Builds His Dream House – “On them second floor lintels between the lally columns, do you want we should rabbet them or not?” Definitely not enough plot here for an entire movie so I am surprised how many times this story has been retold.

Rope – more of a gimmick than a film, and actually, the gimmick that it’s all one long take is a bit… well… don’t actors do this kind of thing every day; it’s called theatre.

The Bachelor And The Bobby-Soxer (Bachelor Knight) – “Hey, you remind me of a man.” “What man?” “Man with the power.” “What power?” “Power of hoodoo.” “Hoodoo?” “You do.” “Do what?” “Remind me of a man…” This is a weird film, with the premise involving a fortyish man being made to date a teenager without ever properly explaining why or how, and the ‘romance’ (between characters of appropriate age) being forced by the will of a creepy uncle taints the whole thing until you want to get away from it.

The Paleface – “What do you want, a happy ending?” The first time I saw this, I thought it was really funny, but subsequent viewings have failed to raise a laugh and I don’t like stereotypical Native American stuff. "Either way, he wins.” 

1949

Adam’s Rib - “And after you shot him, how did you feel then?” “…Hungry.” What should be a really interesting courtroom drama is instead just window dressing for a dumb battle of the sexes comedy.

A Letter To Three Wives – “Bad, not badly! You feel badly this way.” An enjoyable movie, although Husband A needed to be in it more for us to really get invested.

In The Good Old Summertime – if you haven’t seen The Shop Around The Corner, then this is probably a perfectly enjoyable movie, but since I have and TSATC is one of my favourite movies, this is just a cheap replica; swathes of the dialogue is identical but they cut most of the drama, move around the plot so it doesn’t work as well and jam in a couple of irrelevant diegetic songs – they could at least have actually rewritten this as a musical, what we have here is a lazy in-between.

I Was A Male War Bride – forgettable.

Kind Hearts And Coronets - "You're playing with fire."  "At least it warms me."  Comedy black as an oil slick, but it's kind of odd to not actually care who lives or dies by the end. 

Passport To Pimlico – forgettable.

The Adventures Of Ichabod And Mr Toad – "When he cuts out, that's when I cut in." Has the audacity to start in a library with The Wind In The Willows, yet what follows has almost zero relation to the novel at all; Bing Crosby's narration of Sleepy Hollow does a little better because it's easier to be faithful to a short story and because Bing's always entertaining; can't see this being anyone's favourite Disney movie though.

The Third Man – “Is that what you say to people after death? ‘Goodness, that’s awkward.’” This wasn’t that interesting.

1950

All About Eve – “She loves me like a father, also she’s loaded.” Watchable drama which is a little harmed by its own fame (I feel like the truth about Eve is supposed to be a twist, not something I know going in) and I could have done with a public destruction of the interloper, but that’s not to say it doesn’t have a good ending.

Annie Get Your Gun - a lot of fun, Betty Hutton is brilliant, shame about Howard Keel's one-note bellowing.

At War With The Army - beans beans beans beans beans beans MAKE IT STOP PLEASE.

Broken Arrow –the first film to depict the Native Americans in a positive light; it’s embarrassing that westerns after this continued to perpetuate myth.

Cinderellawhile Cinderella herself is an interesting lead, her own film is stolen from her in a bizarre decision to show the story from the point of view of the supporting cast.

Harvey – “I wrestled with reality for thirty-five years, Doctor, and I’m happy to state I finally won out over it.”  While at the heart of the film is an interesting idea, it leaves the audience with a rather heavy, sad feeling, mainly because it’s peopled with really horrible characters only made more awkward by Elwood blindly only seeing the good in them (and a rather creepy need to pair young women off with raging a-hole men), and of course it romanticises alcoholism, and when you hear about Elwood’s life you can’t help but feel that Harvey is wilfully destroying it.

In A Lonely Place – watchable, but kind of hard to believe how quickly their love affair becomes serious.

Summer Stock - hard-working farmer engaged to Mr Nice But Dull is seduced by egotistical actor and gives up her way of life to be a flake; stupid film.

Sunset Blvd. - not a film I want to watch often, but undeniably well written, well directed and well acted.

Treasure Island – fun adventure when I was a kid, not so great now.

Winchester ’73 – the main character is a gun… the acting is a mixed bag, the plot is a cliché and James Stewart just isn’t in it enough.

1951


Alice In Wonderlandwith no plot motivation, it’s tedious, and since it all turns out to be a dream, it’s nightmarishly pointless.

My Favourite Spy - "Don't you want to be a hero?" "What for? I've been happy all my life as a coward." Not particularly interesting, going through the motions of Bob Hope shtick but with little charm.

The Man In The White Suit – forgettable, and I didn’t really get it.

The Thing From Another World – “Close the door!” Takes a while to get going but ultimately it’s pretty cool, although there are way too many people on the base and they don’t get into enough peril.

1952

Bend Of The River – watchable western but James Stewart needs more dialogue.

High Noon – “Sure I want you to stick, but I’m not buying it, it’s gotta be up to you.” A taut real-time thriller, that works very well at what it’s doing, but lacks anything deeper.

Pat And Mike – “Did you ever see a thing like this before?” Despite some dull golfing scenes at the start, I think this might be my preferred pairing of Tracy and Hepburn, where the script never belittles the woman and the romance is so low-key that it almost doesn’t exist, making it instead a story of self-worth and genuine companionship.

Singin’ In The Rain – “Hey, Cos, do something! Call me a cab!” “Okay, you’re a cab.” Great, fun movie, so witty and energetic.

Son Of Palefacenot as good as the first film, mainly due to the inclusion of Roy Rogers (and Hope and especially Russell have less interesting characters to work with this time).

Sudden Fear excellent suspense thriller but actually too tense for me – I had to go look up how it ends before I could continue.

The Prisoner Of Zenda – “Why don’t you stand your ground and fight?” “‘He who fights and runs away…’ remember?” A pointless film because it’s almost exactly the same as the 1937 version except with a less interesting cast; the story’s faults still stand out, which is that most of the characters are tedious (with the notable exception of Rupert of Hentzau), while the romance is creepy, and ultimately I just feel really sorry for the prisoner of Zenda and kind of wish I was watching his movie instead; the sword fight is pretty good though.

1953

Calamity Jane – “I’m glad to say he’s a very good friend, of a friend, of mine.” Doris Day is brilliant as the title character, giving about 200% to her exuberant performance, and it’s a fun movie, but the love triangle is toxic – if this were a cartoon or a romcom, Danny would absolutely be the villain, he is VILE, yet here he gets a happy ending.

Invaders From Mars – saw this all the time as a kid, it was both disturbing and hilariously cheap.

Kiss Me Katenowhere near as good as the stage show, at all, in any way.

Peter Pandevoid of any of the drama of Barrie’s story.

Roman Holiday – a watchable movie but you can predict exactly what will happen from the premise.

Stalag 17 – “I suffer from insomnia.” “Did you ever try forty sleeping pills?”  The drama side of the film is fine, but the awful comedy is totally out of place and drags the film to an interminable length; this would have worked much better as a thriller than whatever the hell it actually is.

The Band Wagon – “I’d audition my own grandmother.” “Then why don’t you audition mine? She’d be just about right for you!” While the plot is interesting, the movie barely focuses on it and the random montage of songs at the end is annoying because they don’t fit into the plot of the show they are supposed to be staging..

The Desert Rats  – “No one but a camel could get used to that.” Dull.

The Naked Spur – “Plain arithmetic, money splits better two ways instead of three.” A terse Western thriller, the direction is a little OTT at times, but mostly it’s a small, compelling movie examining how far men will go for greed.

The War Of The Worlds – forgettable and wooden.

1954

Animal Farm – forgettable.

Dial M For Murder – “They talk about flat-footed policemen, may the saints protect us from the gifted amateur.” It’s watchable, but the story is weakened significantly by treating the victim as an object throughout.

It Should Happen To You – “You ever think of getting a parrot?” Has a very odd moral in which a Hollywood movie tells us ordinary folks that we are wrong to aspire to be anything other than average, and also like a lot of old movies the romance ends up feeling quite toxic.

Johnny Guitar - "I'm sitting here in my own house, minding my own business, playing my own piano. I don't think you can make a crime out of that." Intensely compelling movie.

On The Waterfront – “When I’m dead and gone, you’ll know what a friend I was.” “Why don’t you drop dead now so we can test your theory.” The first time I saw this, I thought it was amazing but I’ve seen it a couple times since and now I just find it kind of uncomfortable and confusing.

Rear Window – “I’ve seen it through that window. I’ve seen bickering and family quarrels and mysterious trips at night and knives and saws and rope. And now, since last evening, not a sign of the wife.” Brilliantly simple thriller, other films should take note.

Seven Brides For Seven Brothers – revolting, sexist, misogynist film that promotes rape (and there are no good musical numbers either).

The Dam Busters – watchable if overlong; shame about the dog.

The Far Country – exciting if clichéd western about law and civilisation and selfishness; James Stewart is on top form.

The Glenn Miller Story - weird hearing Glenn Miller music described as 'something for the kids'; as much as I love James Stewart, this isn't a grabber.

1955

Guys And Dolls – “Daddy, I got cider in my ear.” Does a decent homage to Runyon’s charm and humour, although it’s weird to see all the violence replaced with multi-coloured prancing.

Lady And The Tramp – “Have you noticed, darling, since we’ve had Lady, we’ve seen less and less of those disturbing headlines?” Charming film that wins with its dedication to showing a story through a dog’s perspective.

The Ladykillers – a bunch of crooks kill each other… fascinating…

The Man From Laramie – I accidentally sided with the ‘baddie’.

The Trouble With Harry - "Beat it, you little creep... I mean, hurry home son."  Weird film.

To Catch A Thief – “Not that pretty; we want to get rid of him.” Shockingly lacking in thrills for a Hitchcock.

1956

Carouselthe worst directed/staged film I have ever seen.

Reach For The Sky – “I wouldn’t marry you if you were the last man on Earth.”  “You wouldn’t get a chance; you’d be killed in the rush.”  It’s an interesting story of course and very convincingly performed, but there’s so much in Bader’s life that they could have focused on, I’m not sure they found the right balance.

The Man Who Knew Too Much – “Don’t you realise that Americans dislike having their children stolen?” James Stewart and Doris Day’s performances with Hitchcock’s direction makes this damn watchable.

The Ten Commandments – “The old windbag.” Somehow takes three and a half hours to tell the exact same story that The Prince Of Egypt tells in one and a half (although I’d actually rather watch this version) – it’s all right to start with but once Moses finds God, it becomes interminable and the pious Bible-reading narration kills it.

1957

12 Angry Men – “What are you so polite about?”  “For the same reason you are not – it’s the way I was brought up.”  Compelling and satisfying, one of those all-talk movies that you can’t take your eyes off.

An Affair To Remember – “I had planned only to live till I was 80. Now I am 82. Well, if I’m not going to die, I must start saving money for my old age.” An unbalanced film in which I spent the first half screaming at the screen for something to happen, and the second half heckling the idiotic female lead for her terrible decisions.

Barnacle Bill – “Thomas, you’re what is known as a fiddler.” “Yes sir.” “Well, at least you’re honest.” Harmless bit of fun, slightly undermined because the plot and ending never live up to the hype established in the framing device.

Funny Face – “He’s about as interested in your intellect as I am.” Not very interesting.

Night PassageAnthony Mann apparently left the project because he didn’t feel the script was ready; I think he was right; the story is watchable but it’s all too simple; there’s a beginning here and an end, but no middle.

The Bridge On The River Kwai – “With or without a parachute?” A massive downer the first time I saw it, but I appreciate it a lot more now – there’s a reason it’s a classic.

The Spirit Of St. Louis “It’s earth all right, but what earth, where?” It seems like a hard sell, setting most of the film with one very sleepy guy in a cockpit, but somehow they pull it off, and I was practically cheering with him when he sees Ireland.

The Three Faces Of Eve – creaky, stilted filmmaking, but Joanne Woodward’s portrayal of split personality is convincing.

1958

Bell, Book And Candle – the fact that this stars James Stewart and Jack Lemmon excited me no end so I was very disappointed to discover I hated it; it’s about sexual manipulation and is a fetid piece of poo.

Indiscreet – one of those films that just doesn’t work now that social mores have changed.

South Pacific – forgettable.

The Defiant Ones – “Why, it’s just like runnin’ rabbits.” “These are men.” “Same thing.” “Sure. Men and rabbits… same thing. It’s not the same thing!”  I like that neither side of the law is demonised, but this also means that it can never have a truly satisfying ending and it lacks depth; I think I like the idea better than the execution.

Vertigo – pretentious style, ridiculous plot, poor dialogue, shoddy structure and crassly unsubtle music.

1959

Anatomy Of A Murder – “How can a jury disregard what it’s already heard?” “They can’t.” A brilliant courtroom drama.

Ben-Hur – kinda boring, not brain-meltingly boring or anything, I would describe it more as ‘meh’ but FOUR HOURS of ‘meh’ is more than I can bear; everything interesting happens off screen; also, it’s distractingly homoerotic.

Journey To The Center Of The Earth – funny, intentionally and unintentionally (iguanas do not pass for dinosaurs) if forgettable.

North By Northwest – “I’m sorry, old man, too bad, keep trying.” The premise is so dumb that it takes a while to get on board, but mostly it’s an exciting, enjoyable film, excepting the romance which is dull and the terrible ending.

Operation Petticoat Cary Grant is great and Tony Curtis is unbearable, but the film is ultimately sexist.

Sleeping Beauty“You know, sometimes I don’t think she’s really very happy.” An oddly made film in which the title character does almost nothing and the hero is completely mute for the entire second half of the film, but it’s still the most exciting of the old Disney fairy tale films, which all make deliberate choices to tell the stories from non-main-character POVs.

Some Like It Hot – Jack Lemmon is great but I don’t like Tony Curtis; the characters only exist on a comic level and lack any substance or depth.

1960

Carry On Constable – a tame but nice comedy, before the series went awful.

Inherit The Wind – “What is this? Be kind to bigots week?” One of those compelling talky old movies to start with, but there was so much showboating, I couldn’t actually follow what was happening clearly, and it didn’t make sense until I read about the original case it was based on.

Ocean’s ElevenMONEY; COFFIN; MONEY; COFFIN; what ELSE was going to happen; too many characters to follow (obviously) and it's dull.

Psycho“Did he kill my sister?” “Yes …and no!” Having recently read the novel for the first time, I have to say that the film just isn’t anywhere near as good.

Swiss Family Robinson – “What if we put up a distress flag?” “Don’t you think we look distressed enough? Anyone who sees the ship stuck on the rocks might possibly guess it’s in trouble.” The cruel treatment of the animals (both from a plot and production point of view) made me turn it off.

The Apartment “I said I had no family, I didn’t say I had an empty apartment.” Absolutely brilliant film, perfectly constructed. “That’s the way it crumbles, cookie-wise.”

The Magnificent Seven – with seven leads there isn't enough screen time to go around and come the big shootout finale it’s obvious which of the seven are going to cop it.

The Time Machine – "A million years of sensitive men dying for their dreams, for what?!” A diverting movie although the lead comes across as bipolar.

1961

A Raisin In The Sun – none of the characters are likeable.

Breakfast At Tiffany’s – soooooooooooooo boooooooooooring.

One Hundred And One Dalmatians it's all right as a cartoon but as an adaptation it's a travesty, not least because it deletes three of the strong female leads, rewrites another as a male character and completely dumps the personality of the remaining one.

The Absent-Minded Professor – “Oh shut up.” Surprising how quickly it gives up on the premise of the main character being absent-minded, and annoying how he never does anything to win back his lost love but just gets her back anyway.

The Guns Of Navarone – “I cannot stand pain.” Watchable adventure war movie, but it’s too long.

Two Rode Together – forgettable.

West Side Story – "Everyone there will have moved here!" Safe to say it isn’t my kind of musical.

Whistle Down The Wind – turns out, he isn't Jesus.

1962

Carry On Cruising – utterly naff.

Dr No – I was surprised by how boring, unpleasant and occasionally unintentionally amusing this was.

Flower Drum Song – the songs are utterly forgettable and the plot comes down to three women all fancying the same man and the only likeable one gets the only miserable ending.

Gypsy – the story of a mother who destroys her daughter… thanks for that.

In Search Of The Castaways - everyone in this is so happy and completely unaffected by the ridiculous and dangerous events occurring that it is impossible to care what is happening.  

Lawrence Of Arabia – “The trick, William Potter, is not minding that it hurts.” There’s no need for it to be so long – it’s just slow.

Mr Hobbs Takes A Vacation – a gently amusing movie that passes the time, but it has no particular plot or drive.

Summer Holiday – forgettable, mindless fluff.

That Touch Of Mink Cary Grant plays the handsome cad, Doris Day the simpering virgin and that’s the entire plot.

The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance – didn’t get it.

The Music Man – “Don’t believe I caught your name.” “Don’t believe I dropped it.” I don’t entirely follow the plot but it is enjoyable nonetheless, mostly thanks to Robert Preston’s performance.

To Kill A Mockingbird - empty 'obviously-an-adaptation' film that leaves you aching to read the book instead.

1963

Charade – “I already know an awful lot of people, so until one of them dies I couldn't possibly meet anyone else.” “Well, if anyone goes on the critical list, let me know.” Exciting and refreshingly funny, even if some of the twists could have played out for a bit longer while others were pretty apparent from the get go.

Dr Strangelove, Or How I Learned To Stop Worrying And Love The Bomb – I just don’t enjoy satire.

From Russia With Love – this is pretty dumb, the bad guy could easily kill Bond and just doesn’t, plus the fact that I actually want him to is not a good sign, and the woman’s changing allegiance is practically off-screen and I had no idea what was going on for a lot of it.

Irma La Douce – this would be brilliant if the hero didn’t turn into a wife abuser towards the end and ruin the film completely (however, Jack Lemmon’s English impression is the funniest thing ever recorded).

It’s A Mad Mad Mad Mad World – forgettable.

Jason And The Argonauts – it’s not about anything, nothing happens, it’s horribly made, the acting is abysmal, the characters don’t matter and it doesn’t conclude, but other than that…

The Birds – there are some effectively chilling moments in this but mixed in with some other very odd choices, it’s all a bit weird really..

The Great Escape – watchable but I don’t think we ever grasp the scale of the events and of course, being based on a true story, it’s deeply depressing.

The Haunting – “Whose hand was I holding?” I don’t really have much of an opinion on this movie, I guess I feel like there’s not quite enough to it and it’s hard to buy the ‘evil house’ idea when so little evil has actually happened.
The Nutty Professor - "You might as well like yourself.  Just think about all the time you're going to have to spend with you."  Lacks focus and depth, but Jerry Lewis is very good.

The Pink Panther – meandering and endless, thank goodness for David Niven.

The Sword In The Stone – entertaining, but there's no structure to the plot, no real aim or crisis or threat or anything.

This Sporting Life – bleak and dull, not my kind of thing at all.

Zulu – have you studied 1870s African colonialism wars; if not, Zulu has no time for you!  See my full review here.

1964

A Hard Day's Night - “If he says that again, I’ll strike him.” No plot to speak of, so really only of interest if you’re a big Beatles fan.

Bedtime Story – when I heard that Dirty Rotten Scoundrels was based on a movie starring David Niven and Marlon Brando, that sounded like the greatest movie ever made and I wondered why I had never heard of it; well Dirty Rotten Scoundrels is practically word-for-word the same script except that they made up a new ending, so get ready to be let down when you get to the end of this one.

Carry On Cleo – some of it is just embarrassing, but the stuff with Kenneth Connor as the bodyguard is quite entertaining.

Cheyenne Autumn – forgettable, sprawling piece with lots of characters, not my kind of thing.

Father Goose – “Mr Eckland, where are your tea things?” “My what?” “Your tea things.” “Last time I looked they were next to the finger bowls.” Starts off well, gets dull after the kids show up and nosedives once it attempts a ‘romance’.

Mary Poppins – "I beg your pardon, are you ill?”  Very enjoyable.

1965

Doctor Who And The Daleks – WHAT DID THEY DO?

How To Murder Your Wife – seems to be satirising misogyny but manages this by being completely sexist.

Shenandoah – “Where do you think you’re going?” “Wherever you go, Papa.” “From what these preachers tell me, where I’m going, you wouldn’t like it there at all.” I think the point of this film is that war is inherently bad, but considering the setting is the American Civil War, it doesn’t really deal with slavery with any clear opinion.

The Flight Of The Phoenix – “They’ll find us all right… trouble is, we’ll all be dead.” A compelling disaster movie.

The Great Race – “Maaaaaaaaax!” A lot of fun but it would be better without the random Prisoner of Zenda parody that monopolises a third of the movie for no reason.

The Sound Of Music – "You flatter me, Captain.” “Oh how clumsy of me, I meant to accuse you.” This film is way too long, especially for something that never focuses on the interesting parts of its own plot, and most of the songs are surprisingly forgettable.

Those Magnificent Men In Their Flying Machines – funny but the ending sucks.

1966

Alfie - my life is a little worse for having seen it.

Batman – “Some days you just can’t get rid of a bomb.”  Insane gibberish; pick any scene and it's a good laugh, but watching the whole thing is painful.

Daleks – Invasion Earth 2150 AD – better than the first one but still rubbish.

How To Steal A Million – “You don’t think I’d steal something that didn’t belong to me, do you?” A cute, understated heist movie that feels nicely different to the rest of the genre.

Lt Robin Crusoe, USN – stupid, very stupid, but the ending was funny.

The Good, The Bad And The Ugly (Il Buono, Il Brutto, Il Cattivo) – “When you have to shoot, shoot. Don’t talk.” Enjoyable western; I was surprised how little ‘the bad’ has to do with the plot or the other two characters, makes the final shootout feel less important, but I was pleasantly surprised that ‘the ugly’ is basically the main character, because he’s clearly the best character by miles.

The Rare Breed – a stupid film really and yet James Stewart still manages to do amazing work with his dialogue.

1967

Bedazzled – I just didn’t like the characters.

Casino Royale – insanity; makes no sense thanks to Peter Sellers quitting halfway through production but David Niven is awesome as always.

Cool Hand Luke – it’s an ALLEGORY.

Doctor Dolittle – ENDLESS; one nice pro-vegan song, otherwise quite horrible.

Guess Who's Coming To Dinner - “It’s not that I don’t want to know you, Hilary – although I don’t – it’s just that I’m afraid we’re not really the sort of people that you can afford to be associated with.” Very well written but while this was compelling the first time I saw it, knowing what Spencer Tracy is going to say at the end makes the rest of the film just feel like each character setting up what he needs to react to, also everyone gets so caught up in the race issue that no one addresses the actual stupidity of the couple wanting to immediately marry after having only known each other for ten days in a holiday setting. “You think of yourself as a coloured man.  I think of myself as a man.”  

In The Heat Of The Night - "Whom?" A good film (although not a whodunnit where you can work out the mystery yourself because the evidence and clues aren't presented until they become relevant).

Planet Of The Apes – preachy satire.

The Dirty Dozen – next time don’t take a psychopath with you.

The Graduate – didn’t get it.

The Jungle Book - not much of a plot but some good tunes, however Mowgli is infuriating and impossible to like; wish it stuck to the character relationships from the source material.

The Producers – despite being told this film was the funniest movie ever made before I saw it first, I just find it passable, vaguely amusing, but there’s not much plot and it comes across as irritatingly sexist and possibly homophobic, probably because the supporting characters aren’t really characters, just gags on legs. (Weirdly, the stage show added a lot of depth.)

Thoroughly Modern Millie – “I never read Tom Sawyer. Was he... sexy?” “He was only twelve!” “So? If ya got it, ya got it.” A lot of fun… if you ignore the racism and sexism.

To Sir, With Love – “I’ve seen garbage collectors who are cleaner.” I enjoyed it while I was watching it, but have almost completely forgotten it now it’s over.

You Only Live Twice – while you might derive some entertainment from the silly 1960s Thunderbirds style set pieces, this film is so revoltingly sexist and racist that it’s total garbage.

1968

2001: A Space Odyssey – I really think that the pace and sound in this film are seriously misjudged, it feels more like an art installation than a movie and at two and a half hours, with less than an hour’s worth of plot (and maybe ten minutes of dialogue), I kind of hate it for boring me so painfully.

Bandolero! – forgettable other than the fact that the ‘heroes’ die at the end.

Bullitt – Robert Vaughn: here’s a guy, keep him alive for the weekend so he can testify against the mafia on Monday; Steve McQueen: Whoops, I shot him dead; Me: Yeah, another great case, Bullitt.

Carry On Up The Khyber – forgettable but I recall it was one of the more bearable Carry Ons.

Chitty Chitty Bang Bang – “Start swimming!” “I don’t swim!” “Then start drowning!” Pretty much pure childhood joy on film, although I have seen it a bit too much.

Firecreek – forgettable.

Funny Girl – Barbra Streisand gives a brilliant performance as Fanny Brice, an interesting, intelligent, witty person who also happens to be female, such a rare treat in movies, so it’s a shame that the plot a) summarises a lot, skipping on too fast, and b) focuses way too much on her relationship with a total creep; the film is far more interesting when it’s about her career.

Hannibal Brooks – (one of those films I saw all the time when I was a kid) fairly nasty story actually; the ending certainly isn't satisfactory.

Oliver! – “These sausages are mouldy!” “Shut up and drink your gin!” This is an exuberant musical but I am so familiar with the story now that I couldn’t concentrate at all.

Once Upon A Time in the West – disappointingly dull, devoid of the fun of his earlier films.

Sweet Charity – DOWNBEAT ENDING ALERT.

The Love Bug – “Rotten sportsmanship if you ask me.” I’m not that into this film, I guess I just don’t like Jim and don’t see why Herbie wants to hang out with him.

The Odd Couple – strangely forgettable, something about it doesn't quite work.

The Scalphunters – “I have been trained in the habit of eating each and every individual day.” The trouble with this is that while Ossie Davis’s escaped slave character is compelling and interesting, for some reason he’s forced to play the double act with Burt Lancaster’s trapper, who, like every other character in the movie, is despicable, so the film never really works.

The Thomas Crown Affair – “Go.” Ridiculously over-directed, a hero that’s impossible to sympathise with and a slow, dull story; this is practically unwatchable.

Yellow Submarine – strictly for modern art lovers and maybe a few die-hard Beatles fans, if you keep your eyes shut and just listen to the music.  Read my full review here.

1969

Butch Cassidy And The Sundance Kid – brilliant dialogue.

Hello, Dolly! – “90% of the people in this world are fools and the rest of us are in great danger of contamination.” Enjoyable musical although there aren’t many great songs and the plot is about as lightweight as it can get.

Support Your Local Sheriff! – “That’s about all I’m gonna do the rest of my life is go around rememberin’ your name.” Pleasingly witty, but it doesn’t do much with the final act.

The Computer Wore Tennis Shoes – “We live in hope, Dexter.” Because the film never focuses on the main character, it’s kind of boring.

The Italian Job – too famous to really appreciate, watchable once but I don’t find anything interesting on further rewatches.

True Grit – “She reminds me of me.” Its greatest strength is an interesting lead in a practical little girl, although the actual plot is less interesting.

Where Eagles Dare – it didn't hold my attention.

1970

Catch-22 – I enjoyed the extremely black humour but disliked the non-linear plot; easier to get into than the book anyway.

Kelly’s Heroes – “It’s still up… no it ain’t.” This is a fun caper, but pretty tasteless considering it’s a war movie..

The Aristocats – very bland, while the premise is just annoying (obviously don't dispose of the cats until after the woman dies or she'll just get another one).

The Railway Children – not exactly plot driven.

1971

And Now For Something Completely Different – bunch of Monty Python sketches, so gonna go with hit and miss.

A New Leaf – “Did you hurt yourself?” “No, kneeling on glass is my favourite pastime. It keeps me from slouching.” Walter Matthau is clearly too old for the role but it’s watchable, except I don’t like that the woman-object basically needs a carer and that’s her happy ending, being stuck with a guy who was trying to murder her, because she’s too helpless to do better.

Bedknobs And Broomsticks – the remastered 25th Anniversary version is about seven hours long and has the worst dubbing I’ve seen this side of a spoof; possible drinking game – every time the words are out of sync with the actor’s mouth take a sip, every time their voice morphs into the wrong accent down a shot.

Dad’s Army – retelling the origins of Walmington-On-Sea's LDV three years after the TV show already told us is a little odd, but it's still Dad's Army, so it's a good watch and it has a pretty kick-ass ending.

Duel – how is this a whole film?

Escape From The Planet Of The Apes – forgettable apart from the horrible ending.

Fiddler On The Roof - very enjoyable, intelligent and exuberant musical, but what a sad ending.

Tales Of Beatrix Potter – ballet is boring.

The French Connection – “Never trust anyone.” So boring (also devoid of anything to like).

Willy Wonka And The Chocolate Factory – teaches us that being bad and doing what you are explicitly told not to is fine, so long as you don’t get caught.

1972

Cabaret – wooden acting, flat characters, lack of plot, erratic editing, pointless lacklustre songs and a subtext that’s both brutally in your face and yet barely touched on.

Carry On Abroad – awful; I’m embarrassed I watched the whole thing.

Pulp – funny but the inclusion of bull fighting makes it a dud.

The Godfather – “Who’s being naïve, Kay?” This is okay but I find it a little difficult to follow and the time jump among other things keeps the characters at arm’s length from the audience so I can’t find anything to connect with.

The Poseidon Adventure – “By the way, happy New Year.”  A very watchable disaster-thriller, but I really could have done with more survivors, thanks.

1973

Charlotte’s Web – the songs add nothing.

Dark Star – pretty sure this is a student film.

Paper Moon – “I want my two hundred dollars.” One of the best movies ever made, the characterisation and humour are perfect.

Robin Hood – fairly bland with no character depth, but at times it’s fun, moving and highly nostalgic.

Serpico – never quite engaged my attention, like a lot of biopics, this was pretty forgettable.

The Sting – “Christ, they’ll probably miss you and hit me.” Although it can never live up to the first viewing once you know the various twists, this is still a really witty, engrossing and entertaining movie; I just wish all subsequent con artist and heist movies would stop ripping it off. “Luther said I could learn something from you.  I already know how to drink.”

Westworld – AARGH, painful to watch as it’s purposely about flat, nasty characters, and why is the control room hermetically sealed anyway?

1974

All Creatures Great And Small – not exactly gripping as it’s set over a very long time period, but Anthony Hopkins is quite funny.

Blazing Saddles – Cleavon Little is very good but otherwise it isn't really my sense of humour.

Herbie Rides Again – Herbie gets more to do than in the first film and there are other living objects, which makes it all a bit more fun.

Swallows And Amazons - completely fails as a movie; this is a film devoid of tension, peril or any plot whatsoever.

The Conversation - it's just so boring.

The Front Page – based on the same source material as His Girl Friday, so it didn’t work for me.

The Godfather, Part II – forgettable.

The Return Of The Pink Panther – Christopher Plummer is no David Niven.

Young Frankenstein – not funny.

1975

Dog Day Afternoon – “Is there any special country you want to go to?” “Wyoming.” Entertaining and engrossing until the incredibly abrupt ending.

Jaws – the shark EATS people.

Monty Python And The Holy Grail – the best Monty Python thing by far.

The Rocky Horror Picture Show – this is either one of those satires that accidentally end up being the thing they’re trying to mock or it really is as dumb as it looks.

Tubby The Tuba – incredibly cheap animation but you try to get ‘oom pah pah’ out of your head.

1976

All The President’s Men – very, very dull; I did not follow any of it.

Bugsy Malone – might have been okay if they hadn’t dubbed the kids with adults, which is just creepy.

Futureworld – forgettable.

Logan’s Run – I always liked his friend… so it wasn’t a happy tale.

Marathon Man – oddly nothing like the book.

Murder By Death – far more annoying than any of the stories it is trying to mock.

Rocky – no idea how this spawned a franchise.

Silent Movie – nicely choreographed slapstick.

Taxi Driver – I can’t fathom it, none of the scenes go anywhere, the lead’s extremely boring and the film is so ponderous I was barely aware there was a narrative.

The Shootist – forgettable.

1977

A Bridge Too Far – “I’m awfully sorry, but I’m afraid we’re going to have to occupy your house.” A sprawling mess filled with so many characters that you never have any idea who anyone is or what they are doing; for some reason I kept watching hoping that it would get good but turns out it’s just three hours of confusion heading for a big downer anti-climax (which you know going in anyway, so it’s just a boring misery-fest with the occasional random witty line).

Candleshoe – “Get up out of bed every morning with your dukes up, you know. Got ’em up, first punch is yours.” Cutesy sort of Famous Five type story, made more interesting by having Jodie Foster and David Niven in the cast.

Close Encounters Of The Third Kind – the story of a man who destroys his family’s life so he can hang out with aliens; I just can't bear to watch this jerk.

Herbie Goes To Monte Carlo – Jim is back, less a wife, with a new sidekick, the repulsive, misogynistic, mean, stupid Wheelie; I wish they had stopped with the second film.

High Anxiety – I only found three jokes funny and the rest is AWFUL.

Jabberwocky – visually a lot of effort has gone in here and the humour is extremely sharp, but the plot… oh the plot; there isn’t one.

Smokey And The Bandit – “Let’s haul ass.” It’s watchable, but the stakes are so pointless that it’s hard to get invested.

Star Wars – enjoyable (certainly the best of the franchise).

The Incredible Hulk – one of the saddest stories I’ve ever seen, made me cry a lot and I felt sad for days afterwards.

The Many Adventures Of Winnie The Pooh - even more episodic than the books it's based on, this cuts most of the punch lines and endings to the stories, so is a bit pointless really.

The Rescuers – the kidnapped orphan Penny is a great character with a heart-breaking plot, but the Rescuers themselves are rather bland and the sexist overtones that Miss Bianca needs a man to look after her are never addressed.

1978

Damien – Omen II – the story of how Damien kills a whole load of people… fascinating…

Force 10 From Navarone - exciting enough but the characters are hardly interesting, the traitor turns out to be the guy they knew was the traitor at the start and as a sequel it's utterly baffling. 

Grease – fun but devoid of plot or the satire that was the entire point of the stage show.

La Cage Aux Folles – enjoyable if underdeveloped.

Superman – he could clearly stop both missiles considering he can fly so fast he can turn back time.

The Lord Of The Rings – the animation is poor and… well… it’s just poorly made all round; for example, evil wizard’s name changes between Sarroman and Arrowman; also Strider has a menacingly short skirt.

The Rutles – All You Need Is Cash – not remotely funny.

1979

Animalympics – cheap and not that interesting.

Being There – I completely missed that this was a satire…

Escape From Alcatraz “You still reading that Bible?” “Oh yeah, it’s opening up all kinds of new doors.” Does what you’d expect from a prison escape movie but doesn’t add much else to the enjoyment.

Kramer Vs Kramer – “My wife used to always say to me ‘why can’t a woman have the same ambitions as a man?’ I think you’re right and maybe I’ve learned that much. But by the same token, I’d like to know what law is it that says that a woman is a better parent simply by virtue of her sex.” Well-made and compelling, but not particularly satisfying; it suffers from only being from the father’s perspective instead of split between the two parents and Dustin Hoffman is absolutely terrifying, presumably unintentionally.

Monty Python’s Life Of Brian – they did funny last time so this time they’re going to try to make a point.

Porridge – not so much a film as three new episodes of the TV show but it’s just as good as the old stuff.

Rocky II – better than the first film in that there’s some drama but boxing still isn’t interesting.

Star Trek: The Motion Picturethere’s an awful lot of staring at spaceships and nothing happening; after a while, the nothing happening becomes funny but later into the film, these endless shots of spaceships and alien guff is more likely to lead to weeping and self-harm than guffawing in disbelief; it’s hardly reminiscent of the series.

The Black Stallion - really does not need to be this long.

The Bugs Bunny/Road Runner Movie – excuse to watch Looney Tunes cartoons (pointlessly strung together to make a ‘narrative’).

The Jerk – not something I find very funny.

The Muppet Movie – PLUS: witty dialogue, genius mix of deadpan and cartoon humour, impressive puppetry, Steve Martin cameo, MINUS: dull plot, lame songs, pants ending, all the other cameos.

Unidentified Flying Oddball (The Spaceman And King Arthur) - the story of a man who is unfazed by everything.

1980

Airplane! – a very good spoof but I’m just not a big fan of spoof humour.

Caddyshack – it wasn’t funny.

Flash Gordon – Flash – a-ah; there’s no time for sense, we must get through this plot at superhuman speeds; an insane film but a complete load of fun.

Herbie Goes Bananas – the worst of the Herbie films; Herbie takes up bull fighting in this one; this is a Herbie film in which no one calls him Herbie; a better title would have been 'Herbie gets in with the wrong crowd'.

Hopscotch – pointless.

Nine To Five – “You’re a sexist, egotistical, lying, hypocritical bigot.” Starts off well but the plot is nutballs and too OTT to care about.

Raging Bull – I didn’t like it, at all; I would rather stare at the wall.

Superman II – right, let’s all walk to the North Pole, apparently it’s easy, just head north; hey, look, Superman’s giant ice fortress, open for anyone to enter, who knew?

The Blues Brothers – completely insane, but it works.

The Elephant Man – it was a mistake to give the film to David Lynch.

The Empire Strikes Back – enjoyable despite not much of a plot structure, but I feel like we've missed a lot of character development between films (R2D2 is super cute though); also offing admirals, promoting their subordinates and when they're not very good at their job because they haven't been trained for it, offing them too is not an intelligent way to run an army; by the end, probably the man who empties the bins is in charge.

The Shining – I know it’s nothing like the book, but it’s not even scary, it’s just empty.

1981

Escape From New York – since there are no likeable characters, it's hard to care.

Gallipoli – I only remember the ending but it has stuck with me for most of my life.

Raiders Of The Lost Ark – a lot of fun, Indy and Marion are great but the plot is quite repetitive—it just seems to be a game of swapsies with Marion and the ark in the middle.

Stripes – two lazy bums join the army on a whim and find out that it’s really strict… fascinating…

The Fox And The Hound – it's like Zootopia if you took away the moral and the happy ending.

The Great Muppet Caper – lame, apart from the brilliant Kermit-and-Fozzy-are-identical-twins joke.

Time Bandits – looks pretty cool but the episodic nature of the plot, the fact that you never really get to know the characters and the nihilistic ending leave me cold.

1982

48 Hrs. – “Jack, tell me a story.” “F*** you.” “Oh, that’s one of my favourites.” Unless you happen to enjoy racist slurs and loads of people getting murdered, this is one to skip.

Airplane II: The Sequel – pretty funny apart from the huge amount of sexist and sex jokes - do they think we're still in the 70s?

Annie – Albert Finney goes for Oliver Warbucks via Frankenstein’s monster.

Blade Runner – in the futuristic world of the eighties… oh sorry, it’s not supposed to be the eighties, it’s just so tacky I didn’t realise; practically unbearably boring.

Dead Men Don’t Wear Plaid – very clever, although it’s more of a watch-once film.

ET The Extra-Terrestrial – simplistic.

Grease 2 – uh, it wasn’t completely awful.

Rocky III – Eye of the Tiger, Eye of the Tiger, Eye of the Tiger; easily the best of the Rocky films, the Rocky/Apollo plot really feels earned but whoa is it homoerotic.

Star Trek II: The Wrath Of Khan – more like the series than the first film; Kirk is amazing but the plot is undercooked.

The Dark Crystal – boring and horrible in equal measures, watching this could’ve killed me; pretty sure this film was designed, then made, skipping the bit where normally there's a script; guaranteed to give children nightmares due to the endless stream of freaky monsters and nasty deaths.

The Secret Of NIMH - right from the opening scene with MAGIC it's clear this isn't going to be very true to the source, also it looks pretty grotty.

The Thing – characterisation, suspense and script logic are lost to lots of impressive special effects and graphic horror.

Tootsie – complete lame rubbish.

Tron – dull.

Victor/Victoria – there’s a serious problem when I want the female lead to turn out to be a man, just to prove the male lead wrong.

1983

Educating Rita – forgettable.

Flashdance – this is not a movie, it’s just an hour and a half music video; nothing to enjoy.

Monty Python’s The Meaning Of Life – last time they replaced being funny with making a point, this time they’re going to replace being funny with being gross.

Return Of The Jedi – some great moments but kinda disappointing that Luke doesn't really do anything; everyone looks way older than in the previous film despite it only being three years later; also how many finales does one film need; and why are the bad guys all total perverts?

Superman III – silly.

The Evil Dead – possibly a form of torture having to sit through it.

The King Of Comedy uncomfortable.

The Man With Two Brains – “What are those assholes doing on the porch?” “Those aren’t assholes; it’s pronounced ‘azaleas’.” The constant objectification of women makes me uncomfortable.

To Be Or Not To Be – the stage sequences are a lot of fun, the historical setting is poignantly unsettling, the plot is often extremely tense while the bedroom farce is a hoot.

Trading Places – didn’t do it for me.

WarGames – a slow start, a simple ending but the middle is good; Matthew Broderick was in his twenties when he made this but he looks about nine.

Yentl – an okay movie, Yentl’s story is fairly compelling, but the songs could be cut, all they do is express Yentl’s emotions in her head and drown out the dialogue, while I can’t see what she likes about Avigdor, and Hadass doesn’t get nearly enough focus.

1984

2010 – really boring but at least this one goes for plot, pace, characters and tension, unlike the first film.

Amadeus - fairly enjoyable despite demonising both Salieri and Mozart for no reason but it's overlong for such a vague story, I couldn't empathise with Salieri (or work out why F. Murray Abraham got an Oscar) and there's... just... so... much... opera.

A Nightmare On Elm Street – so much screaming.

Beverly Hills Cop – “In Beverly Hills, we just take whichever car is closest.” Gets better as it goes.

Birdy – worth it for the ending.

Dune – truly disgusting.

Footloose - "I thought only pansies wore neckties." "See that? I thought only assholes used the word 'pansy'."  Feels like there're a few scenes missing, but more nuanced than expected.

Ghostbusters – “No human being would stack books like this.” A classic, very funny and awesome (shame about the montagey plot).

Gremlins – "They’re watching Snow White. And they love it.” Gremlins is fun (although the pub scene could do with trimming!)

Indiana Jones And The Temple Of Doom – too nasty and who thought that woman was a good replacement for Marion?

Romancing The Stone – absolutely ghastly and dull as hell, it’s just an endlessly repetitive plot, poorly edited with completely flat characters, plus one utterly gross love scene.

Splash – “Show some dignity for Christ’s sake!” Naff and irritating, and a ‘romance’ no one could possibly care about..

Starman – damn aliens coming to our planet and impregnating our women (having first emotionally manipulated them); a tediously predictable tepid science fiction love story with about as much brain as a dead ant and not once do they play the song 'Starman'.

Star Trek III: The Search For Spock – II, III and IV are their own little trilogy, so as the middle of the arc, I quite like it.

The Karate Kid – “You got a name?” “Ali with an I. Hey, what’s your name?” “Daniel with an L.” Enjoyable film.

The Muppets Take Manhattan – the most coherent Muppet film so far but the show they put on at the end is lame.

The NeverEnding Story – an intriguing premise but it’s nowhere near as good as the book and it’s so dark in places that it screwed me up when I was a kid.

The Terminator – Sarah and Reese run away from the Terminator but are seen before they get away and Reese gets mortally injured but then gets up and runs seconds later anyway… repeat ad infinitum.

This Is Spinal Tap – an okay spoof, but not great.

Top Secret! – lowbrow spoof, not particularly interesting.

1985

A Room With A View – forgettable, I watched this on a coach and was the only person who stayed awake (other than the driver) and at the end realised sleep would have been more entertaining.

Back To The Future – "Let's see if you bastards can do 90.” Technically my favourite film (certainly for humour, excitement and a great script) but I admit it lacks any depth and the female characters are little more than prizes for the men.

BrazilI like the fantastic sets, clever direction, fun music, Jonathan Pryce and the humour, shame about the plot.

Clue it’s weird, occasionally I can see what is supposed to be funny but it just ISN’T, and then at the end it gets all frenetic and farcical like it has crashed into a different film, and the multiple endings, while a neat idea, mean that ultimately none of it matters in the slightest.

Explorers - "I watched four episodes of Lassie before I figured out why the little hairy kid never spoke." Weirdly dull film that makes huge leaps of logic to start with, with three kid leads you couldn't really give a hoot about, and then absolutely loses its nut when they get to space. 

Family Ties Vacation - American sitcom meets 'British-land', sheesh.

Red Sonja – forgettable.

Return To Oz – “If his brain’s ran down, how can he talk?” “It happens to people all the time, Jack.” Visually amazing movie, unfortunately annoys me because it is not a very accurate adaptation of the novel.

Rocky IV – so Paulie has a robot bride (it’s also just one long montage) (and the plot is redundant).

Santa Claus - nonsensical rubbish but if you're stuffed on Christmas dinner and surrounded by wrapping paper, you're hardly going to be at your most discerning, so who really cares?

Silverado – not fascinating.

Teen Wolf – utter garbage.

The Black Cauldron – poor animation, awful voice acting and badly realised characters.

The Breakfast Club – great when I was a teenager, insultingly clichéd now I’m not.

The Goonies – it’s not as good as you remember.

The Purple Rose Of Cairo – with this premise, you could do anything, but Woody Allen doesn’t, he just has Cecelia endlessly say this isn’t like real life because real life sucks and then that’s the ending.

Witness – whoever was in charge of the awful and completely out of place score should be fired.

Young Sherlock Holmes – the film asks ‘what would have happened if Sherlock Holmes and Dr Watson had met as schoolboys’, I can take an educated guess that it wouldn’t have been anything like this pointless tripe; this film wins the WORST NARRATION EVER award.  See my full review here.

1986

Aliens – people dying makes me sad.

Big Trouble In Little China – one of those insane nonsense logic films, but not a successful one.

Clockwise - "It's not the despair, Laura, I can take the despair; it's the hope I can't stand."  I like the rapport between headmaster and student, but some of the incidents are irritating rather than funny, the ending has practically no conclusion and frankly I wanted him to come out on top, so I'm kinda disappointed.

Crocodile Dundee – sexist.

Ferris Bueller’s Day Off - while there's really no reason to like Ferris, the film is so light-hearted, it's hard not to enjoy. 

Flight Of The Navigator – all premise, absolutely no plot.

Highlander – there is one awesome scene in this, the WWII ‘it’s a kind of magic’ bit, shame about the rest of the film.

Labyrinth – gotta love the complexity of the characters.

Little Shop Of Horrors – whenever I watch this excellent musical, I can't stop thinking about how much it would suck if they had kept the original ending.

Manhunterboring and very 80s.

Peggy Sue Got Married – majorly disappointing.

Short Circuit – terrible film, cute robot.

Something Wild – very 80s.

Stand By Me – "It should've been me." Compelling piece on childhood that'll make you cry, although the narration is a bit heavy-handed.

Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home – the modern day setting, the eco message, the cuddliness of it all and the constant laughs lack the grandeur of the previous films, but it’s so fun that can hardly be a problem.

The Adventures Of The Great Mouse Detective (Basil The Great Mouse Detective) - Basil is so cool.

The Golden Child - I don't think I can convey quite how bad this film is without you watching it, but DON'T do that, whatever you do.

The Karate Kid Part II - “Hey can you break a log like that?” “Don’t know. Never been attacked by tree.” The baddie plot is ridiculous and I can’t believe the audience at the end don’t call the police, but otherwise this is an enjoyable addition to the story.

Three Amigos! – suffering as all spoofs do with being unable to carry a whole film, this is still extremely funny in places.

Top Gun – possible drinking games: 1. Take a sip for every homoerotic inference (dangerous as you’d be under the table within five minutes); 2. Take a sip for every time the characters say the title of the film (Top Gun; Top Gun; Top Gun, we get it already); 3. Spot Nathan from Heroes - there he goes!

Transformers - The Movie – my brain melted.

Withnail & Ididn’t really do it for me.

1987

*batteries not included – "Bobby!" Hey, lady, my name's not Bobby!" "Well, excuse me. Robert." Apart from some cute robot moments, there's nothing to recommend about this film, it's naff and dull and the 'heroes' range from flat to downright dislikeable; Carlos's arc is a little interesting but it doesn't go anywhere.

Adventures In Babysitting  – “Take back what you said about Thor!” Fun 80s kids adventure movie, except I saw the heavily edited Disney+ version with all the bad words dubbed out, which often makes scenes illogical, and since this did appear to be a kids movie, I have no idea why there was so much bad language in it in the first place.

Beverly Hills Cop II – “How the f*** can you steal a house?” If you liked the first one, it’s nice to see the characters so happy to see each other, but there’s not much to it and it’s painfully masculine.

Broadcast News – forgettable, although I think Albert Brooks was okay.

Dirty Dancing – forgettable, it was all right, if you like watching a lot of grinding.

Dragnet - not particularly funny and a boring plot.

Empire Of the Sun – “White light: I thought it was Mrs Victor’s soul going up to heaven.” Sort of rambling and vague – you never really get to know the characters and the music is completely out of place.

Evil Dead IIwell, it’s better than the first one.

Harry And The Hendersons - while it's hard not to like John Lithgow whatever he's doing, this film is surprisingly dull and has rather a confused moral of don't kill animals, unless they're fish.

Innerspace – fun as a watch-once movie.

Lethal Weapon – so boring.

Light Of Day – forgettable while I was actually watching it.

Masters Of The Universe – look, it’s Tom Paris from Star Trek Voyager!

Overboard – a film I saw a gazillion times as a kid, shame the plot is actually incredibly nasty.

Planes, Trains and Automobiles – not funny, painfully 80s and tediously repetitive.

Raising Arizona – I just cannot get on with it.

Roxanne – Steve Martin’s good but it’s just not that nice.

Spaceballs - I actually used to get it confused with Star Wars when I was a kid and that’s when you should watch it, never watch it as a grown up.

The Brave Little Toaster - "To the showers." What the hell was that?

The Lost Boys – it’s just so 80s…

The Monster Squad – “Told ya, only one way to kill a werewolf.” Way too many characters and a holey script leave this in a complete mess, despite the cool monster effects.

The Princess Bride – an enjoyable comic fantasy with tiny moments of brilliance, but always feels like it could be better (which it is if you read the book).

The Secret Of My Success – so 80s it makes me puke.

The Untouchables – if you like cheese, then tuck in, because this is one of the cheesiest films I’ve seen.

Three Men And A Baby – the drug subplot is stupid and Ted Danson's character doesn’t need to be in it.

1988

A Fish Called Wanda – Wanda and Archie don’t work, Ken and Otto do.

Akira – still mentally scarred from seeing this as a kid.

Beetle Juice – “I’m gonna get her.” Charming and eerie and wonderfully imaginative and visually impressive.

Big – no plot beyond its premise and several creepy themes.

Bill & Ted’s Excellent Adventure – irritating.

Biloxi Blues – amusing and watchable but not enough really happens to make it truly interesting.

Checking Out – repulsive.

Coming To America – “Only dogs are to obey. If you truly love your wife, you will value her opinion.” While there is some mileage in the fish out of water stuff, it mostly seems to be sex jokes and Eddie Murphy doing silly voices, which isn’t my cup of tea.

Die Hard – I’m not an action fan.

Dirty Rotten Scoundrels – a lot of fun.

Earth Girls Are Easy – one of the worst films I’ve ever seen; there’s no character or plot development in the entire 100 minutes and the whole thing is stomach-wrenchingly eighties—and if that doesn’t make you vomit, then the sporadic ‘songs’ will.

Hairspray – pretty awful most of the time, but I liked Corny and Penny.

I'll Be Home For Christmas - sentimental pap.

Mac And Me – watch that alien try to kill that disabled kid.

Midnight Run – Charles Grodin and Robert De Niro are both excellent.

My Neighbor Totoro - sweet film apart from the terrifying monsters, far too light on plot.

My Stepmother Is An Alien – dire, poor, ghastly, confusing, limp, unexplained, baffling, unconvincing and contradictory; the highlight is the few seconds Seth Green is in it, apparently about 13, but so small you could fit him in a shoebox.

Oliver & Company – the finale is so ridiculous that it's too dumb to enjoy.

Rain Man – forgettable and I didn’t really get it.

Scrooged – very dark, very witty.

Short Circuit 2 – I can’t believe I’ve seen this.

The Accidental Tourist – forgettable and dull.

The Adventures Of Baron Munchausen – visually amazing, but hollow.

The Land Before Time – for toddlers only (I’ve also seen one of the eight million sequels but no idea which).

The Naked Gun a good spoof but like all spoofs, there’s nothing else to it.

Twins – it’s funny and Arnold Schwarzenegger is very good, but the plot is weak and the ‘romance’ and sentimentality are ghastly.

Who Framed Roger Rabbit – “This is the last time I work with someone with a speech impediment.”  Sheer unbridled genius.

Willow – forgettable; the costumes and puppetry are amazing (or amazingly horrible) but the plot is thin, the characters underdeveloped, the bad guys baffling, it’s all buried in clichéd fantasy drivel, nothing and no one is explained, terrible names fly all over the place and all the evil Queen and big finale stuff is just embarrassing.

Without A Clue – Ben Kingsley and Michael Caine are brilliant.  See my full review here.

Working Girl – forgettable, apart from the horrendous 80s hair.

1989

All Dogs Go To Heaven – feeble plot, terrible music and bad animation.

Back To The Future Part II – the best idea for a time travel sequel.

Batman - there are some serious script and editing issues in this movie, also when I watch a film called Batman, I kinda expect it to be about Batman, not some idiotic photographer woman.

Casualties Of War – gruelling.

Chances Are - absolutely ghastly film where at the end the guy gets together with his daughter; gross.

Danny, The Champion Of The World – forgettable.

Family Business - devoid of likeable characters.

Felix The Cat: The Movie – the worst experience of my life; I may have suffered permanent brain damage.

Field Of Dreams – “You lied to me.” “Well, you were kidnapping me at the time, you big jerk.” Meandering, weird and strangely dull.

Ghostbusters II – “I don’t blame them. Because one time, I turned into a dog and they helped me. Thank you.” I grew up on this movie, so I always loved it, but this time I really noticed how it is exactly the same beat-for-beat as the first movie and doesn’t add anything new.

Glory well made and well performed but seems more interested in making a historical point about ‘America’s forgotten heroes’ than making a watchable narrative or giving the story a resolution.

Heathers – “What are you trying to do, kill me?” Doesn’t do it for me; I know it’s black comedy but some of this is really inappropriate, and satire always leaves me feeling cold; one of those ‘becomes the thing it is mocking’, ie glorifying suicide.

Honey, I Shrunk The Kids – gets a bit tedious after a while.

Indiana Jones And The Last Crusade – good in parts.

K-9 – forgettable, but it’s the one where the dog doesn’t die.

Little Monsters – naff, boring and unpleasant.

Look Who’s Talking – Baby Mikey wants James to be his dad; James wants to be Mikey’s dad; an hour and a half later, big surprise, this is what happens (hate these films).

Parenthood – well made comedy drama, suffering usual ensemble cast lack of focus.

Say Anything… – “Is everything nice, but not too nice?” Rather dull, and it’s particularly difficult to care about two bland teenagers’ ‘true love’.

See No Evil, Hear No Evil – oh dear.

Star Trek V: The Final Frontier – Kirk is awesome.

Steel Magnolias – “Ouiser, you look like hammered shit.” “Don’t talk to me like that!” “Sorry, you look like regular shit.” Kinda dull.

The ’Burbs – "I've never seen that.  I've never seen anybody drive their garbage down to the street and bang the hell out of it with a stick."  So OTT it's brilliant.

The Dream Team – enjoyable enough.

The Little Mermaid – surpasses all previous Disney efforts by eight million miles, awing animation, beautiful songs, genuine laughs, a great lead, an even greater sidekick and the prince is Spider-man; what more could you want?

The Witches – not great, too gross for a kids’ film and why do we see the kid naked at the end?

Tremors – fun monster movie.

Turner & Hooch – the one where the dog dies.

Uncle Buck – completely flat film, in which nothing happens.

When Harry Met Sally… – Harry’s a pig who treats women like dirt; Sally’s irritatingly pious; Harry says, right at the start, men and women can’t be friends because sex gets in the way, Sally disputes this; ninety minutes later, turns out she’s wrong; how’s that an interesting story?

1990

Arachnophobia – exactly how I like my monster movies, although it makes me uncomfortable because there are scenes where they must surely have killed real spiders.

Back To The Future Part III – the weakest of the trilogy due to focusing on Doc rather than Marty, going with wise 80s Doc rather than silly 50s Doc and the wild west not being a fascinating time period, but still way better than most other films.

Captain America – Captain America steals people’s cars by pretending to be sick, gets the love of his life killed and then dates her daughter and Red Skull doesn’t have a red skull and cuts off his own hand for no logical reason.

Cry-Baby - "Electricity makes me insane!"  What the hell was that?

Darkman – sort of like The Punisher meets The Shadow (probably), this is awful and yet Face/Off and Mission: Impossible rip it off.

Days Of Thunder – utter poo.

Dick Tracy – would work better if the lead wasn't so wooden.

Duck Tales: The Movie – Treasure Of The Lost Lamp – forgettable.

Edward Scissorhands – I just didn’t like it.

Ghostthe ghost stuff is all really cool but the romance is gaggingly awful; also, the two men who led to Sam’s death go to Hell, even though one of them didn’t kill him or want him to be killed, and yet Sam goes to Heaven despite hunting down and killing them; bit of a mixed message there.

GoodFellas – what a bunch of dicks.

Gremlins 2: The New Batch – daffier than the first film but very fun from start to finish.

Home Alone – watchable but the slapstick comes out of nowhere, the first two thirds have no slapstick at all and this imbalance unsettled me.

Kindergarten Cop – forgettable, it’s all right for what it is.

Look Who’s Talking Too – the parents scream abuse at each other until toddler Mikey is so disturbed that he rips the head off of a toy penguin; this disturbed nature goes completely unnoticed by the adults and is never resolved; happy sequel (hate these films).

Miller’s Crossing – not my kinda film.

Misery – good thriller.

My Blue Heaven – I can’t believe how bad this is, very disappointing.

Nuns On The Run – meh.

Quick Change – brilliant, smart comedy.

Pretty Woman – “I’m assuming you’re a… relative?” “Yes.” “I thought so. Then you must be his…” “Niece?” Richard Gere’s character is charmless and devoid of personality and the ‘romance’ never overcomes the fact that it’s about a guy paying for a prostitute.

Spaced Invadersforgettable.

Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles – awful.

The Flashhe’s not funny, so how is he the Flash?

The Godfather Part III – I’m sick of all this ‘he’s doomed, DOOMED’ stuff.

The Grifters – nasty.

The Rescuers Down Under – Disney are clearly proud to have entered their modern age and are showing off, but the story itself is forgettable and I can't believe we don't see that room of caged animals get free.

Three Men And A Little Lady – racist or xenophobic.

Truly Madly Deeply – very dull.

1991

Beauty And The Beast – a lame villain and lamer romance make for a dull film - I think Disney must have spent all their money and effort on that 3D chandelier. 

Bill & Ted’s Bogus Journey – much more fun than the first film.

Cape Fear – hilariously awful, when this isn’t laugh-out-loud funny it’s so bad, it’s extremely irritating; so well done Martin Scorsese for making the cinematic equivalent of an amusingly shaped skin rash.

Curly Sue – seems to be heavily influenced by Paper Moon, very mawkish, but okay for lazy rainy afternoon fare.

Doc Hollywood – well, the word 'bland' springs to mind; will Doctor Stone stay in the small town of Grady - does anyone care?

Drop Dead Fred – loved it when I was a kid, but even then I didn’t like the metaphorical ending.

Father Of The Bride – why is everyone so mean to George?

Hook – witty, with detailed sets, clever characterisations and smart references, this is an exhilarating adventure film, ruined by every scene that includes the Lost Boys, which drags it down into bog-standard children’s film.

Hot Shots! – yet again, I’m not a big fan of spoof humour, but it does have Cary Elwes in it.

King Ralph – ugh, really?

Little Man Tate – enjoyable drama, perhaps too serious.

My Girl – bees?

Robin Hood: Prince Of Thieves – naff, so much more naff than I remembered; also, this year’s Worst Father Award goes to Robin and Will’s dad; you gave up your younger son to appease your older son; no wonder Will is miffed.

Rocketeer – a tedious ‘superhero’ film devoid of superheroics, with heroes so boring they could send you into a coma, pottering around with ghastly small town values to saccharin small town music and how many people are hiding in those bushes?

Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country – flawed but entertaining, shame all the baddies stand out like neon.

Soapdish – “He doesn’t have a head!” Transphobic (this seemed like a fun bit of harmless fluff with a good cast, until the finale randomly hurled surprise bigotry at the audience that left me feeling shocked and deeply disappointed with everyone involved).

Suburban Commando – it’s a film starring Hulk Hogan, what were you expecting?

Terminator 2: Judgement Day – "Trust me."  Really exciting to start with and some undeniably cool moments, but it's definitely too long (both versions) and the narration is dire.

The Addams Family – worth every bizarre second for the amazing, frenetic performance of Raul Julia as Gomez Addams.

The Fisher King - um, I dunno, guess it didn't work for me.

The Hard Way – there’s no character development or detective work, two elements essential in buddy cop movies; it’s just a clichéd cop thriller minus the thrills.

Thelma & Louise – it’s all very slow and depressing for far too long then towards the end of the film it all goes rather over the top and is a lot more fun, but as amusing and exciting as this road trip part of the film is, it doesn’t fit in with the very ponderous first half.

The Naked Gun 2½: The Smell Of Fear – there are a few laughs here and there; one of those just not my kinda thing deal.

The Silence Of The Lambs – a workable hunt-the-villain thriller, but the characters range from underdeveloped (Clarice) to silly (Lecter).

True Identity – probably rubbish but I haven't seen it since I was a kid and wasn't entirely sure I hadn't dreamed it.

What About Bob? – I sided with the wrong one.

1992

A Few Good Men – too much like a play, every scene is set so the characters come in and say a bunch of very clever but entirely unbelievable bits of dialogue and then leave; I never believed any of these characters could be real people.

Aladdin – entertaining but the pace is far too quick.

A League Of Their Own – “Well then, this would be more, wouldn’t it.” Way too broad and unfocused, it feels almost entirely made of montages, it’s at its best when it focuses on the relationship between the two sisters, but too often it feels like there’s no real plot at all. 

Batman Returns - Michael Keaton and Michelle Pfeiffer are really good and if the movie focused on them, it’d probably be really good, but as it is it spends nearly all its time making us watch the Penguin vomiting ink (also the movie is riddled with plot holes and just dumb contrivances).

Beethoven – okay for kids.

Bram Stoker’s Dracula – terrible, don’t make Dracula sympathetic.

Buffy The Vampire Slayer – oh boy is this bad.

Carry On Columbus – because we really needed a new Carry On film.

Death Becomes Her – an intriguing dark comedy spoiled by a lack of consistent main character and the fact that none of them are sympathetic.

FernGully: The Last Rainforest – one of those especially awful, cheap, clichéd cartoons that steals a little of your soul.

Forever Young – forgettable.

Glengarry Glen Ross – so boring it was unwatchable.

Home Alone 2: Lost In New York – it’s the first film again!

Honeymoon In Vegas – it's kinda fun.

Mad Dog And Glory – grotty.

My Cousin Vinny – very funny.

Newsies – “How bout a crooked politician?” “Hey, stupid, that ain’t news no more!” Very Disney (and formulaic), but watchable for what it is.

Out On A Limb – oh dear.

Scent Of A Woman - not a very interesting story.

Sister Act – a fun piece of fluff.

Sneakers – ‘COOTYS RAT SEMEN’ Fairly bland stuff.

Strictly Ballroom – on one hand a droning, clichéd plot with crude direction, on the other sharp, satirical humour with well-defined characters.

The Mighty Ducks – “Does that sound stupid to anyone else?” So formulaic I’m not sure it ever stopped being a montage.

The Muppet Christmas Carol – while A Christmas Carol is SO overdone, this is probably the most fun version.

The Player – satire bothers me.

Tom And Jerry: The Movie – well I saw it when I was a kid so it was all right, seem to recall it was the same plot as the Rescuers.

Toys - LL Cool J is the highlight.

Wayne’s World – sorry Garth, it sucks.

1993

Ace Ventura: Pet Detective – ghastly, homophobic.

Addams Family Values – Gomez still rocks but he has less to do in this one.

Army Of Darkness (Evil Dead 3) – forgettable.

Batman: Mask Of The Phantasm – the pace is so slow it’s been declared dead.

Beethoven’s 2nd – fun for kids, just don’t watch it again as an adult.

Coneheads – not good, but not completely awful.

Cool Runnings – “You know what my grandfather says?” “What?” “Get back to work!” Run of the mill underdog sports movie.

Dave - a nice, watchable film, but rather run of the mill.

Demolition Man – forgettable.

For Love Or Money - a bland The Apartment rip-off with hints of personality mostly drowned by poor casting (not Michael J Fox of course, he's always great). 

Free Willy – they do.

Groundhog Day – enjoyable.

Heart And Souls – sweet ghost story.

Hocus Pocus – no matter how hard I try, this just isn’t Eerie, Indiana.

Homeward Bound: The Incredible Journey – the ending gets me every time, shame the plot is driven by stupidity.

Hot Shots! Part Deux – I don’t particularly like spoofs anyway but this is a bad one.

Jurassic Park – “We can discuss sexism in survival situations when I get back.”  Despite all the non-sequiturs, it’s so exciting and the special effects are so convincing, that you somehow don’t care.

Last Action Hero – cool premise.

Les Visiteurs - I don't know what sense of humour it's going for, but it isn't mine.

Life With Mikey (Give Me A Break) – better to leave it in the 'watch-once' category.

Matinee – “Insecticide, where?” A fun, enjoyable movie but there were too many characters so the plot could have been sharper.

Mrs Doubtfire – don’t watch this when your parents are going through a divorce.

Much Ado About Nothing – the Beatrice/Benedick bits are fun.

National Lampoon’s Loaded Weapon 1 – another run-of-the-mill spoof, unbelievably short, probably funnier back when Lethal Weapon was a thing people could remember.

Philadelphia – “With all due respect, your honour, we don’t live in this courtroom, do we?” While I appreciate at the time this film was fairly ground-breaking in its portrayal of AIDS, and that’s great, by today’s standards, having the lead be a raging bigot in order to appeal to the ‘average Joe’ in the audience is sickening, and because the film keeps skipping so much time, it feels more like a summary of events rather than a story.

Robin Hood: Men In Tights – "Unlike some other Robin Hoods, I can speak with an English accent."  Unfortunately naff.

RoboCop 3 – terrible, cheap, lazy, stupid, so sometimes hilarious.

Schindler’s List – heavy-handed attempt at history, this shows events rather than people, horrific yes, but not involving, more a museum than a story, it should focus more on individuals and less on set pieces.

Sister Act 2: Back In The Habit – WHAT DID THEY DO?

Sleepless In Seattle – with the moral of leave your fiancé for some guy you’ve never met.

So I Married An Axe Murderer – watchable, forgettable.

Sommersby – well there’s nothing to enjoy.

Splitting Heirs – not very funny, fairly derivative and irritating that every woman in it wants to sleep with Eric Idle.

The Fugitive – decent thriller, best not watch it too often so the obvious ending stays fresh.

The Nightmare Before Christmas – the moral is that you can’t change and are wrong to try.

The Night We Never Met – none of the characters are likeable, so I don’t care how their love lives turn out.

The Secret Garden – strangely cold; Mary finds a locked garden that is constantly filled with angelic choir music as the film desperately tries to hammer home how awesome flowers are but since I don’t find flowers very awesome, the film certainly lacks something quite major, like a plot; probably better than the book though.

Tombstone – no humour, lots of violence and a lack of character, in other words: booooooooooooooooooooooring.

Wayne’s World 2 – funny sketches are not enough to make a film but at least Mike Myers is more bearable than in the first film.

We're Back! A Dinosaur's Story - utterly random weird stuff unsuitable for adults.

What’s Eating Gilbert Grape – the most boring film ever made; I thought it would kill me with tedium; I am so glad it’s over.

Where The Rivers Flow North – forgettable, other than a feeling like being dunked in the freezing, churning, never ceasing river for a hundred minutes.

1994

Airheads – not great, would be a lot funnier if the characters weren't so 'serious' about their music.

An Awfully Big Adventure – incredibly depressing and/or creepy.

Andre – this was huge when it came out, which is when I last saw it, wonder why no one mentions it any more?

Baby’s Day Out – Home Alone if instead of a kid outwitting people you just had a completely unaware baby (so a stupid idea).

Black Beauty – don’t let horses make films.

Chung King Express – two stories and I’ve only seen one, but it was quite good.

Don't Drink The Water - the timescale is too long and the characters aren't interesting enough to hold the attention, while the camera work is irritating and distracting. 

Dumb And Dumber – I know they’re supposed to be stupid and I know they’re supposed to be irritating, but at no point did I find that funny.

Ed Wood – "Really?  Worst film you ever saw?  Well, my next one will be better."  A delightful tale of optimism and friendship and possibly the only good biopic I've seen.

Forrest Gump – certainly watchable.

Four Weddings And A Funeral – ultimately disappointing as I can’t find anything to like about Carrie.

Greedy – most of the characters are funny, but the structure is a mess and the plot mostly idiotic.

Little Women – that woman looks nothing like a grown up Kirsten Dunst.

Loch Ness – tacky, plus terrible Scottish accent alert.

Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein – to create life, take one corpse, buckets of umbilical fluid and some electric eels… this is a stupid film with waaaaaaay too much gore and the ending makes no sense.

Miracle On 34th Street – “Nuts. I should have got his autograph.” This is just sickly 90s trash; stick to the original.

Muriel’s Wedding – incredibly depressing and yet not much happens plot-wise, it ends with Muriel and her friend escaping their hometown, a situation they had already reached an hour ago.

Naked Gun 33 1/3: The Final Insult – another spoof, this one lacks a middle.

Shallow Grave – the world’s three most dislikeable people fight over money, who cares.

Speed – what do you mean Jeff Daniels's character dies?

Stargate – very little plot that stretches on and on for over two hours.

Star Trek: GenerationsWHAT DID THEY DO?

The Adventures Of Priscilla, Queen Of The Desert – “I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again.  No more f***ing ABBA.”  A very enjoyable film - this is one of my comfort movies.

The Chase – oh dear Lord.

The Flintstones – the film isn’t so good, but the performances are excellent.

The Hudsucker Proxy – lovely fairy tale.

The Jungle Book – if the Jungle Book was Tarzan and The Mummy… and stupid.

The Lion King – lighten up, eh.

The Mask – did I mention I don’t like Jim Carrey?

The Pagemaster – have they even read a book?

The Return Of Jafar – a bit naff (more a pilot to the series than a sequel to the film) but it's an interesting idea to focus on Iago.

The Road To Wellville – creepy.

The Shadow – an enjoyable and tongue in cheek superhero movie, from before films were so oversaturated with superheroes.

The Shawshank Redemption – it’s okay but the ending rambles on far too long.

The Swan Princess - "You should write a book: How To Offend Women In Five Syllables Or Less." Passable children's fare; how does Odette not have a mother, even when she was born?

Thumbelina – “I’m not your toots.” Ghastly film: the songs are poor, the animation ugly, our hero Thumbelina is vain and fickle and the plot unstructured.

True Lies – probably the most fun I’ve had watching an action film.

1995

Ace Ventura: When Nature Calls – it can’t be as bad as the first one.

Apollo 13 – the fact that even after an explosion that sees oxygen levels plummeting, the characters still chat about whether they’ll be getting to the moon somewhat detracts from the whole life or death drama; and while the claustrophobic scenes of the astronauts can be nerve-racking, we always cut immediately to the safety of Houston, killing the suspense.

Babe – utterly untaxing, but pleasant.

Batman Forever – like 60s Batman but much worse.

Casper – not good.

Clueless – “You think the death of Sammy Davis left an opening in the Rat Pack?” A cute movie, surprisingly sweet (apart from the ending) but the plot does better when it does its own thing rather than when it tries to replicate scenes straight out of Emma, when it just ends up with redundant plot threads.

Copycat – unpleasant.

Desperado – detested this.

Die Hard With A Vengeance – a fun action film; hoorah!

Dolores Claiborne – less compelling than I thought it would be.

Dracula: Dead And Loving It – an okay spoof.

Dr Jekyll And Ms Hyde – diabolically awful.

Far From Home: The Adventures Of Yellow Dog – this whole movie feels like a montage, I never connected with the characters and that kid sure does murder a lot of animals.

Fargo – boring and unpleasant.

Father Of The Bride Part 2 – the moral of the film is that we must never ever change or grow; no one faces any trials (or plot) of any (relevant) kind and yet, despite it all, this is better than the first one.

French Kiss – Kevin Kline and Meg Ryan are fun, but enough of the scenery worship.

From Dusk Till Dawn – turns out I’m not a teenager any more.

Get Shorty – slick and funny but none of the plot strands go anywhere (can we say NOVEL ADAPTATION?).

GoldenEye – unbelievable, unendurable and stodgy; Alec, just SHOOT James already.

Heatsuch a massive cliché, this shows us a cop and a villain and suggests they are similar, yeah, groundbreaking; what this comes down to is a bunch of ugly violent people mumbling incomprehensibly for almost three hours; have a nap instead, it’d be more interesting, and more original.

Jumanji – "Well, a little rain never hurt anybody."  "Yeah, but a lot can kill you."  Entertaining kids' film.

Nick Of Time – thrilling enough on a first watch, but not particularly well made and more tedious and embarrassing on each repeat viewing.

Nine Months – Hugh Grant's characters always seem to be paired with repulsive women I don’t want him to end up with in these things.

Nixon – forgettable.

Pocahontas – barely scratches the surface of either plot or character.

Sabrina – I certainly don’t want her to end up with Linus.

Sense And Sensibility – good, but suffers severely from Austen's 'tell don't show' style and seriously, couldn't someone kiss?

Se7en – didn’t do it for me (and that doesn’t look like a v).

The American President – a relationship I don’t care about, politics I don’t understand, no, this is not the film for me.

The Brady Bunch Movie – neither spoof nor homage, this falls flat between the two.

The Usual Suspects – would probably be better if it had just been the story with the twist, rather than the flashback, then it would have been subtle and more convincing, as it is, at times I found it tediously obvious and sniggeringly silly.

The Wind In The Willowsawful; badly made and very, very boring.

Tommy Boy – why did I watch this?

To Wong Foo Thanks For Everything, Julie Newmar – “I think that’s healthy.” Surprisingly formulaic with no character depth, which disappointed me.

Toy Story “You Are A TOY!” Despite the dated computer animation, this is a very good film, emotional, thrilling and funny.

Trainspotting – stylish and witty it might be, but pretension, vapidity and gratuitousness let it down.

Tremors II: Aftershocks"Actually, I'm not the original guy."  There isn't much of a plot and it looks quite cheap, but there are laughs to be had.

Twelve Monkeys – that twist sure is frustrating, forgettable.

Waterworld – dull.

While You Were Sleeping – self-indulgently sentimental, but sometimes that’s exactly what you need.

1996

Aladdin And The King Of Thieves – ties up the trilogy and TV series but I didn’t see it until I was grown up so it meant nothing to me.

A Midsummer Night’s Dreamone of those stage shows they record on film and probably lose what worked about it live; this does nothing with the material.

A Very Brady Sequel – who really cares, should have been wittier.

Broken Arrow – “Would you mind not shooting at the thermonuclear weapons?” I was hoping this would be dumb fun the way certain 90s action movies were and it did not disappoint.

Dear God – lightweight Christmas fluff, this is corny and pointless but Greg Kinnear convinces as a con artist and he is entertaining.

Down Periscope – bit naff, but watchable.

Emma - so unbelievably fast-paced that it doesn't entirely make sense; some novels are not meant to be films.

Fly Away Home – very slow but once the adorable baby geese turn up, it’s all worth it.

Happy Gilmore – forgettable.

Homeward Bound II: Lost In San Francisco – a lot worse than the first one with nauseating additions to the cast, but Michael J Fox is still an entertaining voice actor.

Independence Day – cheesy, very clichéd and soppy with the word ‘American’ being said far too often and devoid of female role models, somehow it’s watchable, even enjoyable, maybe it’s because of the utter ‘them versus us’ mentality or skilful casting of likeable actors; dumb yet fun.

Jack – sad.

James And The Giant Peach – lame.

Jane Eyre – who casts William ‘boring’ Hurt as Mr Rochester?

Jerry Maguire – strangely watchable.

Larger Than Life – probably naff, but I enjoyed it when I was a teen.

Lost Highway – wha?

Mars Attacks! – yet another spoof.

Matilda – good but doesn’t quite capture the magic of the book.

Michael – forgettable.

Mission: Impossible – boring espionage stuff, strung together with an awkward structure, a badly written script, no character development, plot holes from blatant deleted scenes and villains and twists obvious from Uranus.

Multiplicity – kinda fun.

Muppet Treasure Island – fun but sailing quite far from the source material.

Primal Fear – Edward Norton is brilliant, shame about the rest.

Scream – I don’t like violent films even if they’re satirical.

Sgt Bilko – sided with the antagonist again (because he’s completely in the right).

Sleepers – I like the start anyway.

Star Trek: First Contact – “You’re all astronauts on... some kind of star trek.” Doubtless the best TNG movie, but this is such a dull crew I really don’t want to keep revisiting them.

Surviving Picasso – this film taught me that Picasso was a right git.

That Thing You Do! – kind of enjoyable, but never really goes anywhere and how many times can you play the same song.

The Adventures Of Pinocchio – watchable but not great.

The Birdcage – “Sweetie, you’re wasting your gum.” Always entertaining.
 
The Cable Guy – "I don't know what the big fuss is about. I saw that movie nine times. It rules!" I find myself wanting to like this film a lot more than I do, just because other people don't like it so much, but honestly while the premise is really interesting, it may have been a lot more compelling with a different cast. 

The English Patient – didn’t get it.

The First Wives Club – “I told him to drop dead.” A convoluted farce that has too many threads and some dire narration.

The Frighteners – fun and creepy.

The Hunchback Of Notre Dame – while admirable that Disney have a disfigured lead, many plot elements are not suitable for the audience (the villain's lust for the heroine, for example) and the 'comedy' is out of place and hammered in.

The Nutty Professor – forgettable.

The Phantom – the Phantom’s superpower seems to be boring the audience to death, the plot is pointlessly dull and nothing that happens makes any sense.

The Rock – what once I enjoyed as cheesy fun I now see only as irritating cliché, it is entertaining if there’s nothing better to do but there’s always something better to do.

The Wind In The Willows – Steve Coogan and Eric Idle are good (the others aren’t), it’s a lot of fun, the make-up is excellent and the actors appear to be having a whale of a time; but the dog food plot is just stupid and the ending is the big let down.

Twister – one of the stupidest films ever made.

1997

Air Bud – okay Sunday afternoon kid’s film.

Air Force One – watchable nonsense, with a disappointing finale.

A Life Less Ordinary – I despised this.

Anastasia – enjoyable.

As Good As It Gets – are we seriously supposed to want Melvin and Carol together?

Austin Powers: International Man Of Mystery – forgettable, I never really got the Austin Powers craze.

Batman & Robin – who cares by this point; it can't be worse than the previous one.

Bean – anorexic film, edited within millimetres of life.

Boogie Nights – too many characters.

Breast Men – another depressing biopic.

Casper: A Spirited Beginningthe amount of incompetence that has gone into this film is actually impressive, it’s a g-g-g-god awful film (and THIS year’s Worst Father Award goes to…).

Con Air – “I’m gonna show you God does exist.”  Hilarious, from the absurdly cheesy dialogue, to the endless stream of impossible explosions, to the patriotic strains of an electric guitar underscoring all the most embarrassing moments, this is a hysterical example of ‘Dumb OTT American Action Flick From The 90s’.  “Don’t.  Treat.  Women.  Like.  That!”

Contact – forgettable.

Face/Off – the dumbest film ever made.

FairyTale: A True Story – not fascinating.

Fierce Creatures – fun, except for the boring Willa.

Flubberthis didn’t really do it for me, even when I was a kid.

Gattaca – a good premise, wasted; nothing happens, nothing is gained, nothing changes, by the end, Vincent has made no one’s life better and hasn’t learnt anything, also, what happens to Jerome is horrifying.

George Of The Jungle – forgettable pants.

Godzilla – atmospheric and funny.

Good Will Hunting – it's just kind of 'meh' really.

Grosse Pointe Blank – hit men get on my nerves.

Hercules – the montage nature of the story means we never really get to know Hercules, while the actual plot is trite, dull and has little to do with the mythology on which it's based.

I Know What You Did Last Summer – stupid slasher.

In & Outthis used to be one of my favourite films but now I find its portrayal of homosexuality is skin deep and frankly a bit offensive; but the ‘Exploring Your Masculinity’ tape and the Oscar-winning film ‘To Serve and Protect’ are still funny.

Jungle 2 Jungle – kind of okay once, then very naff.

LA Confidentialwhile the dialogue is entertaining, the ham-fisted plot is full of clichés, the story holds no surprises, the characters are one dimensional, their arcs appear to have been written with a sledgehammer and the ending is an irritating cop-out.

Lawn Dogs – weird and po-faced.

Liar Liar – who else wants to punch Jim Carrey?

Life Is Beautiful (La Vita E Bella) - makes you feel worse the more you think about it.

Martha – Meet Frank, Daniel And Laurence – predictable, stupid and DULL; and the moral is you should dump your lifelong friends for a woman you just met; the only fun I could have with this film was imagining how I would re-cut it as a horror film (I do fancy Tom Hollander though).

Men In Black – fun but there’s no depth to it.

Mousehunt – "I forgot to put holes in the box.” Amusing and surprisingly warm-hearted.

Mrs Brown - oh who cares.

My Best Friend’s Wedding – an egotist fights an idiot for a pig; while the film is harmless, there's no way I want either woman to get stuck with that jerk for the rest of her life and it's startlingly clear that the marriage ain't gonna last; Rupert Everett easily walks away with the movie.

Scream 2 – why did they kill off Randy?

Sliding Doors – got on my wrong side, somehow.

Space Jam – Looney Tunes are funny, sport is boring, whose stupid idea was this?

Spice World: The Movie – not as bad as I was expecting but no way I would watch it again.

Subway Stories: Tales From The Underground – these short stories are evocative in their own ways but there’s no narrative drive so overall it’s unsatisfying; if only there had been some kind of arc or recurring character, just to draw it all together.

The Big Lebowski – I just don’t get it.

The Edge – Anthony Hopkins is good, but it’s a gruesome, stupid film with clumsy ‘moralising’.

The Fifth Element – Gary Oldman and Ian Holm carry it and remind us what the rest is probably supposed to be like.

The Full Monty entertaining for a one-watch, so you don’t notice how it never really scratches the surface of the characters or how the plot is incredibly brief yet heavy-handed.

The Lost World: Jurassic Park – who knew Jurassic ‘excuse for dinosaurs to eat people’ Park could get even dumber.

The Magic Sword: Quest For Camelot – awful.

The Man In The Iron Mask – baaaaaaaaaaaad acting.

The Man Who Knew Too Little – very fun, just don’t stop to think about the ending.

’Til There Was You – really did not want them to end up together, although mostly just didn’t care.

Titanic – insulting.

Trial And Error – a harmlessly lame comedy that will pass an afternoon, but not challenge or move you in any way.

Twin Town – was bored.

Volcano – the sense of gleeful edge-of-seat anticipation carried me right through to the end, but I made the mistake of watching it again and realised it's just a bunch of unconnected scenes in which people die a lot.

Wilde – so boring.

1998

A Bug’s Life – funny but I just don't care a jot about the ants.

All The Little Animals – Christian Bale is amazing, shame about the clichéd plot and general terribleness of the film.

American History X – good and yet somehow failed to keep my attention.

Babe: Pig In The City – worth watching for just why anyone thought this gothic film should be about Babe, but not really suitable for children.

Blade – yet another lame trendy vampire story, with some politics thrown in too, the story doesn’t go anywhere and it was a boring ride to this nowhere.

Blast From The Past – terrible.

Blues Brothers 2000 – it's a pointless remake of the original.

Casper Meets Wendy – better than the second film and for that, I am willing to forgive a lot.

City Of Angels – don’t cycle around blind corners on mountains with your eyes shut.

Croupier – completely forgettable.

Dark City – didn’t do it for me.

Deep Rising – utter pants; the tagline 'Full Scream Ahead' is the best thing about this catastrophe of a monster movie.

Doctor Dolittle – forgettable.

Elizabeth – insanely gruesome.

Enemy Of The Statefull of baffling techno-blah and ludicrous action plot stuff, but it’s funny and exciting when it’s meant to be, so kind of enjoyable.

Ever After: A Cinderella Story – watchable if there’s nothing else to do.

Hideous Kinky – okay but forgettable.

I Still Know What You Did Last Summer – another dumb slasher.

Jack Frost – can’t believe this made me cry.

Le Diner De Cons - never was so much humour conveyed through just a look.

Lethal Weapon 4 – stupid, forgettable.

Lock, Stock And Two Smoking Barrels – better the second time, once I knew who the hell everyone was.

Meet Joe Black – I liked the ending the first time I saw it, but only because the film stopped being repulsive, otherwise it’s way too long and boring.

Mulan - lovely tale of female empowerment, if lacking in rewatch value.

Out Of Sight – okay but forgettable.

Paperback Hero – forgettable other than a topless Hugh Jackman.

Patch Adams – “I wanna help them with their troubles.” “That’s what I do.” “But you suck at it.” Schmaltzy and repetitive.

Perfect Blue – screwed up.

Pleasantville – excellent film, until it goes all heavy-handed on the metaphors.

Practical Magic – a very confused film, clearly a novel adaptation, it just doesn’t work.

Rushmore - didn't engage.

Shakespeare In Love – if they both died, I wouldn’t care.

Simon Birch – one of those ‘watchable because I have nothing better to do’ films.

Six Days, Seven Nights – garbage.

Sleepy Hollow – this might be one to miss if it wasn’t for Johnny Depp's hilarious performance.

Small Soldiers – apart from the occasionally very funny bit and the creepy and scary action sequences this is just tame kids’ fare.

Snake Eyes – twist!

Sphere – hated it, baffling and yet dumb.

Star Trek: Insurrection – still don’t care about these characters (this would be fine as an episode, by why is it a film?)

Stepmom – stepmom is actually not a very important character at all, the title and the trailer are total misnomers, presumably because some exec at some point went, ‘whoa whoa whoa, no one is going to go see the cancer movie; pretend it’s about divorce instead’; it’s an utterly bipolar plot and the moral is cancer makes everyone friends; well that’s nice.

The Connaff and unconvincing.

The Faculty – probably the most fun you'll have watching a teen flick so a real shame it's so overbearingly pro-drugs.

The Lion King 2: Simba’s Pride – the story of how Simba grew up to be a terrible king, so thanks for that.

The Mask Of Zorro – pants.

The Opposite Of Sex – very slick black comedy.

The Pentagon Wars – watchable.

The Prince Of Egypt - looks amazing, but isn't emotionally involving unless you count the horror of watching Moses not want to be an Egyptian any more because of Hebrew babies being killed, and then watching the Hebrews celebrating Egyptian babies being killed.

The Truman Show – good but cold.

The Waterboy – didn't make me laugh.

The Wedding Singer – they get together; that’s all there is to this tedious ‘rom-com’ that forgets both romance and comedy, so now I’ve saved you the pain of having to sit through it.

The X-Files – a big confusing mess of weird nothing.

Urban Legend – everyone on this campus happens to own the exact same coat.

What Dreams May Come – a big stupid lot of sad, poorly done.

You’ve Got Mail – charming (though the ending is a little flat).  Read my full review here.

1999

10 Things I Hate About You – nothing particularly good about it but nothing particularly bad about it either; it’s a nothing-film; it’s a teen flick.

Alice In Wonderland – while giving this story a plot and theme draws it together and creates an arc we can follow, it thwarts the point of the book, for now instead of everyone being rude to Alice, they help her; cast are great though.

American Beauty – didn’t get it, besides when it was new teenagers kept going on about plastic bags, which drove me MAD.

A Midsummer Night’s Dream – the all-star cast do NOTHING with the material.

Analyze This – funny but forgettable.

An Ideal Husband – if only Oscar Wilde could come back to life so I could punch him in the face.

Animal Farm - the patronising narration by Jessie the dog suggests this is a children's film but it's not suitable for children; it is a gruelling, cruel and depressing horror story; a poor adaptation with wasted visuals that will leave you at best irritated and patronised, at worst shattered and hollow inside.

Anna And The Kingbrilliant performances from Jodie Foster and Chow Yun-Fat.

Annie – completely lacking in any tension or interest (Kathy Bates is good though).

Austin Powers: The Spy Who Shagged Me – I think I laughed twice.

Being John Malkovich – creeped the hell out of me.

Big Daddy – worth a laugh, but I didn’t like the characters or plot.

Bowfinger – entertaining but I think I've watched it too many times.

Cradle Will Rock – "Please join us, we were just creating an insurmountable tension for our working relationship."  Overstuffed with so many characters and subplots that the meaning gets lost, but when it actually focuses on the title musical it's very enjoyable.

Dogma – loathed this.

Drop Dead Gorgeous – "I'll be right behind you in the hearse!"  A funny film.

East Is East – “It’s not fair coz I love curry an’ all.” This is pretty good, but I don’t like the ending where they just continue living with their abuser.

Edtv - not awful, but Ed really isn't a character worth watching. 

Election – a very sharp black comedy, if too black sometimes.

Fantasia 2000 – I didn't even like the first one.

Fight Club absolutely tedious and making a point so stale that the birds wouldn’t touch it (the twist is blatant from the start).

Galaxy Quest"Let's get out of here before one of those things kills Guy."  Lots of witty lines and memorable performances by Sigourney Weaver, Alan Rickman and Sam Rockwell.

Girl. Interrupted – pretentious, forgettable.

Happy, Texas – it’d work better if Jeremy Northam was gay.

Inspector Gadget – pants with a couple of funny bits.

Isn’t She Great – not really.

Lake Placid – way too short, Brendan Gleeson plays the only likeable person in it (there’s a problem with the characters when I spend the entire finale worrying about that poor cow (good news, it survives) and not the humans) and for some reason the croc appears to be bulimic, so how did it grow so big?

Love’s Labour’s Lost – not great.

Magnolia – I studied this at college and have seen it a million times so have no actual thoughts on it any more.

Man On The Moon – made me sad.

Mansfield Park – clearly trying to make period drama appealing to the teen audience (embarrassing).

Maybe Baby – not very good.

Mickey Blue Eyes – fluff.

Mission: Impossible 2 – at the time it was the worst film I’d ever seen at the cinema; I haven’t bothered watching it since.

Molly – bit naff, but watchable (although it’s a rip of Flowers For Algernon, right?).

Muppets From Space – killed the Muppets for me.

My Favourite Martian – pants.

Mystery Men – not that good which is a shame because it’s a funny idea.

Never Been Kissed – yes she has, she’s just never had a good kiss (teen flick).

Notting Hill – dump her!

Office Space – forgettable.

Pushing Tin – hardly interesting.

Runaway Bride – completely forgettable.

Scream 3 – they really should have stopped making these.

She’s All That – I cannot BELIEVE I liked this when I was a teen.

Soccer Dog: The Movie – watchable Sunday afternoon kids’ fare, but the POV doesn’t quite work.

South Park: Bigger, Longer & Uncut – I’m not really a South Park fan.

Star Wars Episode I: The Phantom Menace – bored me.

Stuart Little – lovely fairy tale.

Tarzan – Tarzan is actually a really likeable lead, but the comedy sidekicks need killing.

The Bachelor – a lot of fun, even if his ‘fear of commitment’ isn’t remotely believable.

The Green Mile – just did not care.

The Haunting – awful film with unbelievable misunderstanding of what is scary, exacerbated by rubbish cgi.

The Iron Giant – "What kind of sick person would name a kid Hogarth?"  This movie doesn't quite work for me, probably because Hogarth is an irritating, bland child who spends his time shouting, playing dumb games and rarely having any actual emotions; there's little depth to these characters, while the Iron Giant's journey is fairly compelling, beyond him there're no interesting or likeable characters, and no one at all to identify with.

The Matrix – a big pile of nonsense full of bad dialogue, bad acting, flat characters, accidentally amusing fight scenes and even a character returning from the dead due to a kiss (gah!).

The Mummy – stupid.

The Ninth Gate – horrid.

The Sixth Sense Haley Joel Osment is amazing but the Bruce Willis stuff just gets in the way, as does the unrealistic dialogue and the pretentious camerawork. 

The Talented Mr Ripley – the ending is unnecessary.

The Virgin Suicides – goes nowhere.

The World Is Not Enough – this was a bad year for the cinema.

Three Kings studied this at college so little thoughts left; it’s violent, exciting, funny and moving, but it’s too slick for its own good and there’s no escaping that this is SATIRE.

Toy Story 2 – good, but not nearly as good as the first film, it rather lazily reverses the roles of the leads despite it not making sense, the plot is too disjointed and doesn’t swell together neatly or inevitably in the end and it gains nothing from adding new characters and massive action sequences.

Virtual Sexuality some of it is all right (for teens) some of it is just lame.

Wild Wild West – mostly forgettable.

2000

28 Days – didn’t enjoy.

Almost Famous – “There it is. Your sister used the F-word.” “I think she said ‘feck’.” “What’s the difference?” “The letter U.” If this had been 90 minutes it would be entertaining, but at a leisurely, overinflated two and a half hours, it struggles to hold the attention.

Bedazzled – a string of one-joke scenes, they do raise a laugh but not worth watching.

Best In Show - mild.

Billy Elliot – "She must've been a very special woman, your mother." "No she was just me mam."  Compelling and heart-warming, with lots of fun T-Rex songs.

Bootmen – felt like a soap.

Born Romantic – some good moments but it’s undermined by its ensemble nature, the male leads are fairly well developed but the females are nothing more than a slag, a snob and a kook, and only one pairing looks like it will last, also, enough salsa already!

Bring It On – forgettable, apart from the moral: when they cheat, they win; when they don’t cheat, they lose; so what does that teach us?

Cast Away – didn’t do it for me.

Charlie’s Angels – naff.

Chicken Run – enjoyable.

Coyote Ugly – you really have to be the right age to enjoy this film, and I haven't been that age in over a decade.

Dinosaur – not particularly good.


Erin Brockovich – “What makes you think you can just walk in there and find what we need?” “They’re called boobs, Ed.” It starts off well but never really seems to escalate.

Frequency – such a cool plot.

Gladiator – far too grisly and very boring.

Gone In Sixty Seconds – stupid film.

High Fidelity – it certainly has something.

Little Nicky – dumb but funny occasionally.

Memento – look, it’s backwards, that makes it clever (felt very patronised watching this).

Me, Myself & Irene – dumb.

Miss Congeniality – fluff that tries and forgets to make some kind of point about feminism.

Nurse Betty – odd mix of genres, very good in places, unsettling in others.

O Brother, Where Art Thou? – failed to interest or amuse me.

Relative Values – "We just say  'riding' in England.  The horse-back's taken for granted."  Unfortunately neither deep nor hilarious.

Save The Last Dance – didn’t grab me then, forgettable now.

Scary Movie – rubbish, although the finale made me chuckle.

Sexy Beast – “No, you are going to have to turn this opportunity yes!” Although I have tried to watch this twice, somehow I still don’t feel like I’ve actually seen it (I think the first time I might have turned it off when it got too violent, and the second time I was multi-tasking and don’t feel I paid enough attention to really form an opinion, even though I did see the whole thing).

Shadow Of The Vampire – horrible.

Snatch – so stylish I want to punch it in the face; it was fun but not involving.

The Dish – I thought it was going to be a comedy so was pretty bored by the drama that followed (why do advertisers push dramas as comedies so often?).

The Emperor’s New Groove – funny but no guts.

The Family Man – okay for a one-watch.

The Flintstones In Viva Rock Vegas – lame, forgettable.

The Little Mermaid II: Return To The Sea – WHAT DID THEY DO?

The Next Best Thing – another ‘not a comedy as advertised’, really quite nasty.

The Road To El Dorado – "I blame you." Love it.

The Whole Nine Yards – forgettable.

Titan A.E. - despite a clichéd plot, this is still too weird for me with creepy visuals that freak me out. 

Unbreakable – what if superheroes were boring?

What Lies Beneath – one massive cliché; with a red herring plot that’s more interesting than the real one, endless no-not-really explanations, an avenge-me ghost, memory loss and a just-can’t-be-killed killer, you’d think this was a spoof, but of course it’s all dreadfully po-faced.

Where The Heart Is - clearly a novel adaptation; a melodrama with cheesy music, stuffed with multiple births, deaths and marriages, and kidnappers, paedophiles, tornadoes and crippling train accidents hiding behind every number 5; but it's still affecting.

Wild About Harry – bit naff.

X-Men  "It's me."  "Prove it."  "You're a dick."  Watching this reminds me of those days when a superhero movie was something mysterious and exciting; and although the three X-Men are rather flat and side-lined and it could do with a proper sense of humour, all the Wolverine/Rogue scenes are brilliant and this film is fresh exciting, cool, emotional and full of potential. Read my full review here.

2001

A Beautiful Mind – excellent one-watch film.

AI: Artificial Intelligence – not sure what I was meant to like about this.

A Knight’s Tale – one of those ‘if they both died, I wouldn’t care’ films.

Amélie – lovely (apart from the surprise dirty bits).

American Pie 2 – I survived watching this.

Animal Attraction (Someone Like You) – it’s just rubbish.

Atlantis: The Lost Empire – pretty good in places, shame about the baffling crystal plot; tries to be far too big for an animated kids' movie.

Bridget Jones’s Diary – enjoyable.

Christmas Carol: The Movie – I liked it when I saw it at the cinema, but in retrospect it’s probably rubbish (at least it tries to do something different with the tired source material).

Conspiracy – forgettable.

Donnie Darko oh get lost.

Eight Legged Freaks – gets better as it goes.

Enigma – so boring.

Evolution – not that good.

From Hell - this is a terrible story, missing everything that makes murder mysteries interesting and including everything that makes them dumb and contrived, one of the worst films I've ever seen.

Get Over It – a lot of innovative techniques and ideas, but ultimately you still need to be a teenager to enjoy.

Gosford Park – with about a million different character connections and motivations to get straight, it could do with coming with a reference guide, but it’s still enjoyable, clever, witty and populated with an excellent cast (notably Clive Owen).
 
Hannibal – utter awful rubbish, but what do you expect from the source material.

Harry Potter And The Philosopher’s Stone – it’s watchable but I don’t get the point of Ron and Hermione, they could easily be cut and Ron looks like he’s got wind throughout the film while Hermione can’t speak without gyrating her head like she’s about to throw up.

I Am Sam – one of those emotionally manipulative dramas (Dakota Fanning is terrifyingly grown up and it’s difficult to imagine that she really is a child and not some alien overlord come down to our pitiful planet to make us her slaves).

I Saw Mommy Kissing Santa Claus – fluff for kids.

Jeepers Creepers – good for about three minutes, then it’s tripe.

Jimmy Neutron: Boy Genius – forgettable.

Jurassic Park III – exciting and fun rather than scary, which is where I like my monster movies.

Just Visiting – not very good.

Legally Blonde about two thirds in, this pointless and insulting tirade of obvious lameness gives up on plot and character and just starts ranting ‘Women GOOD; Men BAD’ and sees Elle winning a court case because it rests on knowledge of hairdos and shoes rather than because she’s learnt anything about law.

Monsters, Inc – a plot so obvious I guessed the entire thing from the trailer.

Not Another Teen Movie – maybe as many as two laughs in the entire film, if I’m generous.

Ocean’s Eleven – smug; the characters are all so laid back and Smug that they never worry so there’s no tension so it’s all extremely boring; only it’s so damn SMUG that it’s also grating; it boils down to a heist that’s boring, heroes that can’t be liked, a villain that can’t be hated and a romantic interest with no interest.  Far more irritating than the original.

One Hour Photo – the camera ponders on huge empty sets to painfully slow ‘is your skin crawling yet’ music while Robin Williams stares into space, and first time viewers wet themselves by the threat suggested by its very absence, and the rest of us smack our heads into the wall knowing NOTHING is going to happen for another forty minutes.

Orange County – okay for a one-watch teen flick, I guess, certainly not worth watching again.

Osmosis Jones – at times funny and sweet but never that good.

Rat Race – "Look, a drifter; let's kill him."  A dense mixture of both the funny and the lame. 

Serendipity – really didn’t like it at all.

Shrek – it’s not funny and the moral is screwed up.

The Cat’s Meow – all problems can be solved by Charleston, Charleston, Charleston

The Lord Of The Rings: The Fellowship Of The Ring – the fellowship take an hour and a half to form and then at the end, having not yet reached where they are supposed to be going, they disband so I wonder what was the point of them and this film in the first place (also the best character is killed).

The Majestic it’s an uncomfortable experience, watching two plots, one where people think Peter is Luke but we know he’s not, and one where people think Peter is a communist, but we know he’s not, waiting for these two disparate strands to collide.

The Man Who Wasn’t There – just could not engage with this.

The Mummy Returns – so dumb, also a bore, so much worse than the first film and that wasn’t very good.

The Others – the servant plot makes no sense, the ending isn’t great and it doesn’t live up to repeat viewings, but it’s tense and moody (and occasionally startlingly frightening), creepy and extremely atmospheric, all quietness and darkness, tinted with the feeling that something is very wrong here and that’s where it’s good.

The Parole Officer – a gentle comedy that’s occasionally very funny but spoils itself by going too far with pathetic grossness and is less funny with every re-watch.

The Princess Diaries – forgettable.

The Royal Tenenbaums – ever get the feeling Wes Anderson would have been happier as a novelist?

The Score – the first time the heist was tense and the twist was cool, but that’s lost completely with repeat viewings (Edward Norton’s good though).

Tremors 3: Back To Perfection - a witty script, loads of references and it all ties up, there are problems here but it's also a lot of fun.

Vanilla Sky – pseudo-clever stuff, with a twist that makes the whole film pointless followed by a lame ending—McCabe’s existentialism was the only interesting bit; forgotten all of it now.

What Women Want – really fun and inventive, but that ‘romance’ kills it (Hunt is a black hole to Gibson’s charisma).

Wit – cancer is sad.

2002

28 Days Later… – occasionally ludicrous, often pretentious and constantly boring, a party of tedium and depression.

About A Boy – pithy, witty comedy, extremely clever and very cynical, only let down slightly by the romance.

Adaptation. – very funny, very clever.

A Guy Thing – ghastly.

Analyze That – terrible unneeded sequel.

Bad Company – inoffensive action film complete with plot holes, tacky editing and flat leads, but I liked Agent Seale.

Blade II – couldn’t stand it, forgettable.

Blood Work – ghastly, stupid action flick.

Bowling For Columbine – effective.

Bubba Ho-tep – would work a lot better as a short film.

Catch Me If You Can – excellent, compelling film; its wit and charm carry you through.

Chicago – impressive dance numbers, a miscast Renée Zellweger, a slightly more coherent plot than the stage show but cuts lots of important character stuff and missing some of the better songs; it looks good but as with the show, it's hard to care about any of it. 

Confessions Of A Dangerous Mind – not good, not helped by the direction.

Death To Smoochy – the Randolph versus Sheldon stuff works (when it’s not desperate) but the rest is just boring and unnecessary.

Dragonfly – why do ghosts never just explain what they’re trying to say in understandable ways?

Full Frontal – what was that?

Harry Potter And The Chamber Of Secrets – despite Harry saving them all from Voldemort in the last film, they now believe that he is a raging murderer; these people are idiots.

Hey Arnold! The Movie – naff with random references, but Helga does finally tell Arnold how she feels.

Hope Springs – paint-by-numbers romance, Colin Firth is very good but that’s not enough to save a dull script.

Ice Age – a compelling and funny story with interesting characters.

Interstate 60 - one of those films that makes my life a little bit worse for having seen it.

It’s A Very Merry Muppet Christmas Movie – giving Kermit the George Bailey treatment is a fun idea but what’s with the sexual references?

K-19: The Widowmaker – okay for what it is I guess.

Kate & Leopold – forgettable and the ending is dumb.

Lilo & Stitch “I like you better as a sister than a mom.” “Yeah?” “And you like me better as a sister than a rabbit, right?” The emotional notes in this film are actually so affecting that it’s almost draining to watch (while the zany comedy alien stuff would be pretty lame if you had time to notice them over your own blubbing).

Men In Black 2 – bit naff but kinda fun.

My Big Fat Greek Wedding – the moral is: embrace your heritage even if it takes every piece of happiness and individuality from you, and make sure it controls the lives of your husband and children too.

Nicholas Nickleby – once Phlegm or whatever he was called died it went downhill (also, Mr Nickleby, that’s not an English accent).

Panic Room – one of the best examples of the suspense thriller, taut and terrifying, exhilarating and entertaining, viewing after viewing.

Red Dragon – forgettable, never amounts to much because it tries too hard to evoke The Silence Of The Lambs, rather than being a film in its own right.

Road To Perdition – the opening narration spoils what’s going to happen.

Scooby-Doo – “I’m a man of substance.  Dorky chicks like you turn me on too.”  Some of it is brilliant but some of it is awful, shame really.

Shanghai Knights – this just could not catch my attention.

Signs – I can’t believe they left their dog outside.

Spider-Man – there’s not much to the characters and the ‘comic-book dialogue’ is poor and hokey, but the film is funny.

Star Trek: Nemesis – the fourth and final Next Generation film again basically only stars Picard and Data, making you wonder why the other cast members bother turning up and I still don’t care about any of them.

Stuart Little 2 – a complete waste of space.

The Bourne Identity – “How could I forget about you?  You’re the only person I know.”  Watchable for an action film but having the audience know what it takes Bourne the whole film to find out is dull.

The Hot Chick – surprisingly watchable.

The Hoursoh it’s just so boring and pretentious.

The Lord Of The Rings: The Two Towers – way too many main characters, so whenever the film cuts back to a group it’s very ‘oh yeah, them’ and they still haven’t succeeded in what they set off to do about six hours of film ago.

The Pianist - laboriously horrific and almost entirely lacking in heroism.

The Sweetest Thing – to enjoy, disengage brain (one of those ‘chicks can do gross-out humour’ films).

The Time Machine – utterly unbearably awful.

Tomorrow La Scala! – enjoyable comic drama.

Treasure Planet – lame.

Two Weeks Notice – entertaining mostly thanks to Hugh Grant.

Welcome To Collinwood – perfectly enjoyable but it’s no classic; perhaps more one to rent than own.

xXx – forgettable.

2003

American Splendor – I can't believe I've sat through this twice, ugh.

Big Fish – a bunch of half-baked snippets of tales that probably didn't happen do not make an interesting story.

Brother Bear - really quite poor - children should not be raised by the person who murdered their mother.

Bruce Almighty – endless and humourless.

Cheaper By The Dozen – what starts as a fun family film melts into a distressing and depressing trudge towards the finish line, in which we learn that big problems solve small problems and good people have to give up their dreams for selfish people.

Daredevil – an utterly pants film on every level; there isn’t a good moment here. 

Dead End – stupid but thinks it is clever, which just makes it more stupid.

Dickie Roberts: Former Child Star – better than I expected, okay for a watch once.

Down With Love – successful attempt to homage 60s rom-coms... but there's no other level to it.

Elf – pretty good until the massive plot-shift at the end.

Eternal Sunshine Of The Spotless Mind – I’d say interesting rather than enjoyable; it’s very Kaufman.

Finding Nemo – very emotional, very affecting, but the ending is rather trite and the funny touches, while very funny, aren’t enough to counterbalance the emotional heaviness.

Garden State – coma-inducing.

Girl With A Pearl Earring – art (boring).

Good Bye Lenin! – this was an interesting and watchable film, but I wouldn’t have called it a comedy.

Gothika – hilariously awful, I spent the time counting the ceiling tiles in the cinema.

Holes – “I used to go to Laney Park all the time!” “Oh really? I used to sleep in the tunnel next to the swinging bridge.”  Enjoyable movie, with surprisingly dark undertones.

Hulk – pretty sure I slipped into a coma.

I Capture The Castle - surprisingly good novel adaptation but it messes up the twist by deliberately making it blatant from the start and the ending just doesn't capture the brilliance of the book.

Identity – stupid, with a double twist (one painfully obvious and one utterly ridiculous).

InterMission – the wobbling, zooming camera gave me a headache.

Intolerable Cruelty – so slick it’s boring.

I Witness – gritty and sad, so not for me.

Johnny English – the plot is embarrassing but overall the film is funny.

Le Divorce – unbearably awful.

Lost In Translation – NOTHING HAPPENS.

Love Actually – by mashing all these plots together, none get attention, development or depth.

Master And Commander: The Far Side Of The World – excellent cinematic experience, but I do want them all to die (bar the doctor and the kid).

Matchstick Men – twist ruins it.

Mona Lisa Smile – okay, quite rushed, obviously a novel adaptation, forgettable.

Peter Pan – Jeremy Sumpter is excellent as Peter.

Pirates Of The Caribbean: The Curse Of The Black Pearl – dumb but watchable (once), if you can put up with the two dullest leads ever.

Runaway Jury – quite enjoyable courtroom thriller.

Stuck On You – kind of lowbrow humour, but the film is sweet and poignant, manages to have a moral without being schmaltzy and it can be funny and moving at the same time.

Terminator 3: Rise Of The Machines – there was no need for a third Terminator film and this pathetic sequel offers nothing to excuse its existence. 

The Italian Job – predictable and straightforward, this is at least a harmless way to spend an evening if you can’t be bothered to get up off the settee.

The League Of Extraordinary Gentlemen – what a league of rubbish.

The Lord Of The Rings: The Return Of The King – the whole film, and it’s a very, very long film, is one battle, Sam is the only good character (Faramir might be if he had any screen time) and it should all end about twenty minutes sooner than it does; overall, emotionally gruelling.

The School Of Rock – fluff.

Thoughtcrimes – rushes through the plot, throwing characters that are never explained about willy-nilly and repeatedly dumping potential male leads (I did like Brendan though); it’s just dull dreck.

What A Girl Wants - so poor you'd think it was a school play, never was a film so squarely aimed at the tweenage audience, although somehow Colin Firth still gives a great performance.

Willard – had to stop watching it due to cat-peril.

X2 - a major let down after the first one, it's like an early draft that meandered about and never got anywhere but for some reason actually made it to the screen; sure glad they didn't waste the whole sequel opportunity...  Read my full review here.

2004

13 Going On 30 - funny but very sad, Jennifer Garner is a hoot but the quick happy ending isn't enough to outweigh the melancholy preceding it. 

50 First Dates – bittersweet syrup.

Along Came Polly – a big heap of rubbish, I know that romantic comedies are formulaic but that’s not an excuse to not try; the plot is painfully, sledgehammer obvious, the comedy clichéd and old and there’s no conflict.

Anchorman: The Legend Of Ron Burgundy – seems to have confused wit with randomness.

Because Of Winn-Dixie – disappointing, forgettable.

Bridget Jones: The Edge Of Reason – pathetic retread of the first, except now stupid, irritating and puerile.

Churchill: The Hollywood Years – funny in places but overall a let down.

Connie And Carla – oh no, it's so hard being a woman pretending to be a man who dresses as a woman because you can't go out with the boys you fancy.

De-Lovely – it’s boring, pretentious, depressing and explains NOTHING.

Dodgeball: A True Underdog Story – obvious and crude.

Ella Enchanted – dire (nothing like the book).

Finding Neverland – dreamlike, fails to explain anything.

Five Children And It – very disappointing, forgettable.

Garfield – featuring none of the things that Garfield is.

Harry Potter And The Prisoner Of Azkaban – he’s called Remus Lupin but it’s supposed to be a secret that he’s a werewolf, hilarious!

Hellboy – the plot and writing is terrible, although Hellboy himself is kind of amusing.

Home On The Range - extremely poor.

Howl’s Moving Castle – what the hell is this - not only does it bear little resemblance to the book but it’s incredibly dull.

I ♥ Huckabees – I do not.

I, Robot – painfully obvious, which is a shame because it looked like it would be fun.

Lemony Snicket’s A Series Of Unfortunate Events – good, not as good as it thinks it is, but good.

Looney Tunes: Back In Action – lame, but there are a lot of great cartoon jokes and references and Daffy Duck, Bugs Bunny, Yosemite Sam, Elmer Fudd, Tasmanian Devil, Marvin The Martian, Wile E Coyote, Sylvester, Granny, Tweety, Beaky Buzzard, Foghorn Leghorn, Michigan J Frog, Pepe Le Pew, Porky Pig, Ralph and Sam…

Mean Girls - watchable, if a little preachy, and somehow suggesting that only girls are capable of cruelty.

Napoleon Dynamite – didn’t laugh, forgettable.

National Treasure – incredibly anti-British and logic free.

Ocean’s Twelve – despite a satisfying start, somehow Twelve is actually worse than Eleven, which I honestly didn’t think was possible, it’s a confusing mess, has a limitless list of backtracking double bluffs that make the whole film pointless and it’s dreary and lifeless.

Racing Stripes – pathetic, forgettable.

Raising Helen – clichéd and patronising, it irritated me because I didn’t like Helen.

Scooby-Doo 2: Monsters Unleashed – funny in places, mainly lame but only in so far as what are you expecting of a live action Scooby Doo film?

Secret Window – terrible twist.

Shaun Of The Dead – did not do it for me, think I was expecting something different from the advertising, it seems to stop being funny halfway through.

Shrek 2 – it would be a nicer moral if they didn’t both have to be ogres, or are only people who look the same allowed to become a couple?

Sky Captain And The World Of Tomorrow – dull, pointless gimmick (nothing is really there, including extras) and the most irritating female lead ever, but Sky Captain does punch her, which I’d wanted to do for the entire film, and the very ending is really funny.

Son Of The Mask – unsurprisingly, it isn’t very good, but the dog vs baby stuff is nicely ACME.

Spider-Man 2 – if you can ignore that Doc Ock’s plan makes no sense, the cheesy dialogue and that Harry has had his personality removed then this is a witty and exciting film (the bit where Peter saves that toddler from the burning building is awesome).

Stage Beauty – it’s amusing and interesting and there are good performances (if you ignore the wobbly accents) but I’m not entirely sure what point it’s trying to make and I didn’t really enjoy it the last time I saw it.

Starsky & Hutch – abysmal, forgettable.

Team America World Police – becomes what it is trying to mock, dull and puerile.

The Incredibles – advertised so much before its release that it was completely ruined and in repeat viewings the film fails to grab me on any level.

The Ladykillers – didn’t make me laugh, wished it would just END.

The Life Aquatic With Steve Zissou – mostly boring.

The Lion King 3: Hakuna Matata (The Lion King 1½) – “Well enough of that.”  The plot/ending's a bit naff, but it's very funny.

The Phantom Of The Opera – rubbish.

The Polar Express - all the stuff on the train is atmospheric and exciting, shame the finale of meeting Santa Claus is a major anti-climax.

The SpongeBob SquarePants Movie – okay if you like the cartoon and are nine.

The Stepford Wives – the music is amazing, the dark humour hits the spot, the choreography and direction keep it creepy and threatening but it lacks detail, character development and run time.

The Terminal – enjoyable.

Thunderbirds – WHAT DID THEY DO?

Tremors 4: The Legend Beginsfunny, littered with references, Michael Gross gets to play a very different Gummer and the Graboids are a welcome return to form; but it’s an unnecessary prequel, it’s too serious and needs better characters; still, more westerns should have giant underground monsters in them.

Troy – boring and poorly acted.

Wimbledonharmless fluff but no lasting joy.

2005

A Cock And Bull Story – too short.

Batman Begins – the best of the trilogy by a long way.  

Capote - not sure what the point of it is.

Casanova – ugh, how to win the affections of a woman by undermining and manipulating her at every turn; if you've seen a farce before you'll guess every turn of the plot a mile off.

Charlie And The Chocolate Factory – pointless; Charlie’s characterisation is dumped after half an hour, the Oompa Loompas are incredibly disturbing, the visuals are underwhelming and too computerised, the sub-plot about Willy Wonka’s father is awkward and unnecessary and Johnny Depp’s performance is bizarre and misjudged.

Cheaper By The Dozen 2 – a moral at complete odds with the first film, too many characters, a repetitive plot, a schmaltzy unsatisfying ending plus some offensive anti-gay and disabled jokes, yet this is superior to the first film because it isn’t gruelling.

Chicken Little - naff film with weak jokes, embarrassing attempts to be cool and far too heavy-handed with the emotional plot. 

Constantine – confusing, dull and clichéd, but bearable.

Elektra – pants.

Fantastic Four – the story of four egotists who forget there were FIVE people on that space mission and the evil baddy who randomly goes all Norman Osborn for no reason (possibly because his surname is Von Doom and he just felt it was going that way) and whose grand master evil plan is to cure a guy of his disability.

Fun With Dick And Jane - the story of rich people who mug people so they can afford a Jacuzzi (it's also poorly constructed).

Harry Potter And The Goblet Of Fire – dull and grim and the plot is even more horrendously obvious than in the last one.

Herbie: Fully Loaded – misses the point of Herbie on many levels, most notably that Herbie is supposed to help those who need help, not someone who is capable of winning on their own and at no point does the villain sabotage Herbie, so at no point does he cheat, so he’s a fairer player than the hero.

Just Like Heaven - with surprisingly interesting characterisation, this would be very enjoyable if it wasn't for that one nagging fact that it's suggesting that an amazing successful hard-working intelligent doctor who constantly saves lives is somehow a failure because she hasn't got a man or babies.

Keeping Mum – enjoyable.

King Kong – so lengthy that Kong feels like a subplot and why is Ann in love with the ape, that’s gross; Kyle Chandler and Colin Hanks are the only highlights.

Kinky Boots – typical clichéd ‘heart-warming’ Brit-flick, but Charlie and Lola are magnificent, shame the film lacks focus (the brief opening scene with a young Simon aka Lola dancing in women’s shoes on a pier is amazing).

Kiss Kiss Bang Bang – brilliantly witty (bit sexist though).

Kronk’s New Groove – “A time I like to think of as… earlier that same day.” This is POOR; they couldn’t even think of enough plot to fill the whole thing, it’s like a couple episodes of a crummy cartoon show stuck together.

March Of The Penguins – the story of how being a penguin SUCKS.

Monster-In-Law – okay fluff until the lame ending.

Nanny McPhee – the ending is rushed, the moral is a bit shifty and the children are a bunch of ungrateful brats, but Colin Firth is a hoot.

Proof – the interesting part of the plot doesn’t rear its head until two thirds of the way through.

Robots – "You can bunk with me.  We'll ignore the gossip."  A lot of interesting visual ideas, shame the plot and characters aren't half so innovative.

Serenity – I was so bored; this is a Star Wars rip off without the charm; there’s overly serious rambling, tediously choreographed action sequences, an utterly predictable plot and it’s smug.

Sky High – “You know how my mum can communicate with animals?  Apparently they don’t like being eaten.”  Very funny film, if a bit teen-centric at times.

Thank You For Smoking – “Please don’t ruin my childhood.”  Darkly funny, but there’s no character growth or narrative journey, so what’s the point?

The 40 Year Old Virgin – pants.

The Brothers Grimm – awful, not funny, terrible pointless cgi but Heath Ledger is good.

The Chronicles Of Narnia: The Lion, The Witch And The Wardrobe very dull and I'm sure Peter is abusive to Edmond.

The Family Stone – billed as a comedy, this is actually a drama and it’s ghastly; the Stones are evil and the plot is a cliché (including my least favourite romantic film cliché ‘loosen up an uptight female by getting her drunk rather than relying on character development’) so why should I care.

The Hitchhiker’s Guide To The Galaxy – the music and special effects are amazing, but the plot and characters are terrible.

The Illusionist – the tagline is ‘Nothing Is What It Seems’ which is hilarious because this is the most predictable film ever.

The Producers – often fails to use the scale a film can handle, settling instead for stagy shots, which is irritating; losing King Of Broadway completely mucks up both the structure of the story and the character development; but it is still very funny with some amazing songs and Nathan Lane is awesome, so I still love it.

The Science Of Sleep – lots of boring, confusing and trippy dream sequences with irritating camera work and the fact that Stephane neither gets better nor learns to live with his delusions is distressing and left me with an uncomfortable and depressed feeling inside.

Tim Burton’s Corpse Bride – Victor completely changes his priorities halfway through, the film becomes boring, irritating, nonsensical, the ending is pathetic and the songs just aren’t songs.

Valiant – the plot is so straightforward it may as well not exist and the animation is bland.

V For Vendetta – I enjoyed it up until that gutting twist, at which point it degenerates into the patronisingly obvious yet unconvincingly unbelievable.

Walk The Line a poorly constructed story that did nothing for me, other than make me dislike and slightly fear Cash.

Wallace & Gromit in The Curse Of The Were-Rabbit – Gromit is still a triumph, but Wallace is too stupid (and now insane) to spend a feature length amount of time with, plus I don't recall actually laughing.

Zathura - "I like Mom's [house] better." "Well, so did she and now it's hers." I really enjoyed this the first time I saw it, but second time round with no surprises to look forward to, I just couldn't escape how excruciatingly annoying the kids are.

2006

A Good Year – bland.

Alien Autopsy – unfortunately since PJ and Duncan were a big part of my tweenage years, I spent most of the film contemplating this rather than paying attention, but that may be because it never quite engages.

A Prairie Home Companion – what the hell is this?

Bah, Humduck! A Looney Tunes Christmas (Looney Tunes: Bah Humduck) – very disappointing, feels like it was made by someone who had no grasp of how Looney Tunes works.

Black Sheepdisgusting and not funny (example, at one point we see a sheep bite off a guy’s penis), it’s irrelevant that the monsters are sheep and it’s boring; the title isn’t a pun, it’s a description – this really is a disgrace.

Bridge To Terabithia – boring yet horrific.

Cars – why do cars exist if there are no humans?

Charlotte’s Web – while retaining the lifestyle-changing heartbreak of the book, this is coated in diabolically bad dialogue and pathetic jokes - just, y'know, read the book instead.

Children Of Men – if you’ve seen one post-apocalyptic drama, you’ve seen them all. 

Click – it isn’t funny, the final third is too depressing and Adam Sandler just seems to be bored.

Confetti – the scenes that made the final cut and the scenes left on the deleted section of the DVD are of equal or random quality, since it was all improvised anyway, so if you watch it all, there is definitely a good film in there, but if you just watch the film you’ll be left somewhat disappointed.

Eight Below - two of the dogs die.

Failure To Launch – very bad, the characters are completely flat and it forgets to actually put any romance in between the set-up and the finale.

Flushed Away – doesn’t have time to set up the characters or plot in enough detail, making it feel empty and the laughs are very hit and miss.

Happily N’Ever After – terrible, has misunderstood the point of Cinderella and its internal logic is non-existent and what is that apostrophe doing?

Happy Feet – comes across as six short stories stuck together rather than a coherent plot, short on character development, the music is terrible (and disturbingly sexualised for a kids’ film) and the ending happens so easily, it might as well not have bothered with any of the struggle.

High School Musical – oh no, Gabriella and Troy are too talented, what tribulation.

Ice Age 2: The Meltdown – comic genius.

Inside Man – slow paced, entirely unconvincing, no thrills, no tension, no emotional involvement.

Little Miss Sunshine – quite a nice film, but it’s difficult to like any of the characters (other than Olive).

Meet The Robinsons – funny, smart and sweet.

Mission: Impossible III (MI:III) – "Throw the switch on and off.  Don't forget the off."  Starting at the end makes 90% of the film redundant, plus it just feels like an endless list of the good guys failing, but other than that and the bad writing, poor direction and scary-Tom-Cruise-doesn't-know-how-to-smile acting, it's fine.

Miss Potter – there’s no focus, not on how Beatrix wrote her stories, not on her relationship with Mr Warne and not on her life in the country; it just feels like they didn’t know where it was going when they wrote it and didn’t bother redrafting when they got to the end.

Monster House – wonderfully nostalgic, funny and creepy, this is thoroughly enjoyable (they should make more films like this and Super 8).

My Super Ex-Girlfriend – as much plot as the title, it is funny but it’s also sexist (towards men), which kind of kills it.

Night At The Museum – making the magical mundane.

Over The Hedge – much more enjoyable than it looks, but it doesn’t really linger in the memory once it has finished.

Pan’s Labyrinth – I very much wish I had not seen this film; twenty minutes in a man has his face and skull bashed in with a bottle on screen; this is the first of many ridiculously graphic moments that make this sadistically unpleasant film utterly gruelling to sit through as the pace trickles along; it’s also heavy-handed, simplistic and dull.

Penelope – the major reason why this utterly pants film doesn’t work is that pig-faced Penelope isn’t ugly, also her romantic interest is incredibly bland, there are too many characters and it’s a boring, convoluted mess; the only thing going for this vapid and hideously misjudged ‘story’ is the comedy, but even that is sporadic and too black.

Pirates Of The Caribbean: Dead Man’s Chest – I still want my money back; none of the (weak) characters are likeable any more, the plot is insipid, there’s no ending and the makers seem to have forgotten what pirates are; the first film was at least fun the first time round, this doesn’t even have that. 

Sixty Six – so downbeat that the happy ending hasn't a chance of making it up to the viewer (plus over-identifying with the kid leaves me crying throughout).

Starter For 10 – ghastly, he’s just loathsome and it’s pointless.

Stranger Than Fiction – there’s something wrong with a film when the best character is a wristwatch.

Superman Returns – the plot is crummy, the style is jejune and slow and most of the characters and actors are poor.

Talladega Nights: The Ballad Of Ricky Bobby – carrying the sufficient warning label ‘from the people who brought us Anchorman and The 40 Year Old Virgin’, this is as slow and unfunny as I expected.

The Ant Bully – nothing special but a nice moral.

The Fall  -"It says all that on that little locket?"  An enjoyable interweaving of reality and storytelling, with a compelling relationship between man and child, well played by Lee Pace and Catinca Untaru, but somehow I wish the ending had been more developed.

The Holiday Jude Law's character is so perfect he could turn straight men gay, but the rest of the film is pretty lame.

The Host – I dislike that he fails, means I don’t really get it.

The Pink Panther – not funny, therefore a bore.

The Prestige – utter awfulness, this is so bad I immediately went out and read the book as I was sure no book could possibly be this bad (turns out the film repeatedly does the OPPOSITE of what happens in the novel).

The Pursuit Of Happyness – a soul-destroying slog about a jerk.

The Wild – ghastly unfunny hyperactive rubbish (the only thing I enjoyed was the joke that the koala’s nemesis is a toy version of himself).

X-Men - The Last Stand – “What have I done?”  Rogue, Cyclops, where are you, come back!  Read my full review here.

2007

1408 – afterwards I found out I was watching the Director’s Cut; so this is the film how the director wanted it to be; someone out there is proud of this boring and stupid film; that’s really sad.

4: Rise Of The Silver Surferflat characters, wooden actors, atrocious dialogue, unexplained plot developments and the Fantastic 4 are the worst superheroes ever, selfish, slow, not particularly skilled and they don’t learn from their mistakes, but there’s plenty to laugh at (that’s AT, not with).

Alvin And The Chipmunks – bafflingly the chipmunks aren’t the main characters and if you’re going to make an Alvin and the Chipmunks film, get a lead who can actually shout ALVIN!

And When Did You Last See Your Father?I’m just not sure why a non-linear memoir about bereavement sounded like a book that needed to be adapted into a film; the film is exactly as expected, sad, slow, dreary, inconclusive, mildly pretentious and bereft of likeable characters.

Bee Movie – the first half hour is good, the rest isn’t.

Beowulf - extremely unpleasant, upsetting, gruesome, gratuitous, boring, terrible, upsettingly terrible, with hardly any plot or character, nobody seems to have bothered writing a script, I can't believe Robert Zemeckis made it.

Cinderella III: A Twist In Time – “Remember me?” Kind of funny watching Disney hurriedly invent a personality for Prince Charming, since he was barely in the first movie (they go for a Prince Philip crossed with Prince Eric), but if they had to make another story in the rather dull Cinderella universe, this is decent fare.

Disturbia – utterly ridiculous, this is sort of Rear Window for teenagers, except I was perfectly capable of enjoying Rear Window when I was a teenager.

Enchanted – major let down, but the (underused) cartoon-in-real-world stuff is funny.

Evan Almighty – blatantly an old script that has been poorly changed to be a Bruce sequel, doesn’t really make sense (why does he need animals from all over the world if the flood is localised, also ‘acts of random kindness’ doesn’t mean the same thing as ‘random acts of kindness’) and hugely not funny.

Fred Clauswhen you become a saint, you, your family and spouse live forever… how much of your family; who counts as family; does this mean you can’t have children, because you’ll end up populating the world; don’t saints only become so after death, so do they get resurrected; can you die; what if a car hit you?

Ghost Rider – doesn’t try for a second to make any sense or go anywhere plot-related, at least it’s so predictable that it can be ignored and so isn’t the worst superhero film.

Gone Baby Gone – I loathed this.

Hairspray – fun, entertaining and witty, but it lacks memorable songs, the direction and choreography are unimaginative, there are too many underused characters, it has a weak plot, the moral is heavy-handed and the happy ending comes about remarkably easy; the whole film is a series of easily deflated situations.

Harry Potter And The Order Of The Phoenix – as the plot speeds along, explained only in the lazy device of spinning newspapers, it crashes into the finale, where we learn the good guys will fight Voldemort, but it won’t be in this film; so much like the previous two, this is a non-entity, simply setting stuff up for further sequels.

High School Musical 2 – Sharpay, after having her hard work and dreams destroyed in the first film by the boring Gabriella, again loses everything to the boring Gabriella.

Hot Fuzz – I enjoy it up until the finale.

I Am Legend – the dog-peril was too much for me and I cannot believe the dumb reshot ending which means the whole film makes no sense.

Inkheart – doesn't do justice to the novel.

Juno – so straightforward it’s pointless.

Magicians – it’s okay, but I wish Robert Webb was in it more; Darren Boyd is the highlight.

Mr. Bean’s Holiday – a really nice film, except for the movie premiere finale which stretches disbelief too far.

Mr Magorium’s Wonder Emporium – nice fairy tale but it’s so magical that the characters don’t feel real.

National Treasure: Book Of Secrets – it’s still anti-British, the baddie makes no sense and what’s with all the breaking in and stealing; just say, “Hello, I’m that world famous treasure hunter that everyone loves because I found the most important historical discovery ever, could I please look at your antique because there’s a really important clue hidden in it.”

Next – for dumb action fare, it’s watchable (even though the special effects are quite terrible and the characters are utterly flat) because the gimmick is cool.

Ocean’s Thirteen – unbearable; the problem is I hate these smug gits and want them to fail; if only Benedict had stuck to his guns and had them killed when they stole from him in the first film, I wouldn’t have to sit through this irritating and uninteresting smug-fest.

Ratatouille – speeds through every tedious film cliché, making them all worse since they don’t go anywhere, the characters are all dull and it has a boring ending (if you want to watch a film that contains a rodent and gourmet cooking, watch MouseHunt, instead).

Run Fatboy Run – it’s not funny, the lead is detestable and no matter how many ‘emotional’ scenes are rammed in, it has been five years since Dennis left his pregnant fiancée at the alter, FIVE YEARS of seeing her every day, how is it only NOW that he wants to do anything about it?

Shrek The Third – who cares, why did they keep making these?

Son Of Rambowfunny and sweet with two excellent child leads, but personally I’d have cut the weird French kid plot so the film could focus where it belongs, on the relationship between Lee Carter and Will and their home lives.

Spider-Man 3 – WHAT DID THEY DO?

Stardust a boring, patronising, clichéd mess that’s offensively misogynistic (all the women are either malicious, promiscuous or subordinate to men and when Captain Shakespeare, who we know to be proficient at swordplay, puts on a dress, he instantly becomes weak and ineffectual). 

St Trinian’s – a school of minors involved in organised crime, voyeurism, alcoholism, theft, drug abuse, drug dealing, drug smuggling, bullying, violence, murder, sex and solicitation, this is horrific subject matter and the camera spends most of the film looking up the skirts of schoolgirls; Colin Firth's character shouldn't just shut this place down, he should carpet-bomb it back to hell.

Sunshine – following in the footsteps of every science fiction drama ever made, this does nothing new, nothing unexpected, bores the life out of you and yet still manages to have a ludicrous unstoppable killer plot from cheapo slasher films, ooh, the worst of both worlds, thanks.

Surf’s Up – ‘surfing penguins’ is not enough of an idea on which to base an entire film.

The Dark Is Rising (The Seeker) – this wouldn’t be half bad, if anyone had taken the time to explain any of what is going on, but alas they did not and instead it’s an ill-explained, horribly clichéd mess.

The Golden Compassin an unexplained parallel world, one really irritating girl is destined to do absolutely nothing; I could not sit straight-faced through a film where people endlessly mention dust and get very serious and angry about it; and there’s no ending, so it’s confusing right up until it just stops being on.

The Nines – self-indulgent tosh.

Then She Found Me – clearly a novel adaptation so kind of an unfocused mess.

The Simpsons Movie – stays pretty much on ‘meh’ level, these aren’t really the Simpsons, just caricatures of themselves and all the elements in it have been done before, and better.

TMNT – harmless, forgettable.

Transformers –propaganda for the American army.

Wild Hogs – homophobic (among many other flaws).

Zodiac – the gratuitous brutality at the start sickened me.

2008

27 Dresses – “Don’t you have any needs?”  “No, I’m Jesus.”  What's this, non-mediocre dialogue, quick, shove every single rom-com cliché ever devised into the last act so the audience don't start using their brains.  “What colour is this, vomit?”

Angus, Thongs And Perfect Snogging – really irritating.

Baby Mama – it’s some bad writing that can make a plot I’ve never seen before this clichéd.

Bedtime Stories - irritating and unfunny; remind me not to bother with Adam Sandler movies.

Be Kind Rewind - too boring.

Bolt – although it majorly rips off both Toy Story and Toy Story 2, this still manages to tug the heart strings and is enjoyable.

Cloverfield – watchable monster movie.

Coraline – it’s very interesting but all too fleeting.

Definitely, Maybe – interesting structural idea and as rom-coms go it is diverting and not as clichéd, but I don’t want him to end up with any of them (particularly the emotionally manipulative one).

Dr Seuss’ Horton Hears A Who! – I like the Whoville stuff, but not the Horton stuff and the moral is very confused.

Easy Virtue – it's overly keen on the modern touches which can distract from the drama; when it's funny, it's good but when it's serious it's outstanding; Colin Firth is smouldering, acerbic and brilliant.

Four Christmases – it doesn’t work (and what the hell is a jump-jump?).

Frost/Nixon - it's all right; didn't really do much for me.

Get Smart – the female lead is so clichéd I can’t believe she made it into a film this century and I actively prayed for her death when I could muster the energy that this boring and tediously obvious film had dragged from me, because it’s not funny. 

Ghost Town – gentle and effective if soppy and rushed towards the end.

Hancock – there are a few laughs in the premise, then it’s kind of schmaltzy as Hancock meets the world’s nicest guy and learns to be responsible for his actions, but that only takes forty minutes at which point a completely new, boring, confusing plot starts that changes the entire film and makes it really serious.

Hellboy II: The Golden Armyone of the most painful viewing experiences ever, I tried to turn it off, but had been paralysed by boredom and had to lie there waiting for the film to die.

Hotel For Dogs – so stupid it needs to be put down.

Igor – “And bring me back a toy.”  A huge mess, there are so many ideas here that contradict each other, potential sadly wasted.

In Bruges – very simple and obvious, I was bored by the first hour but started to enjoy the final forty minutes.

Indiana Jones And The Kingdom Of The Crystal Skull – glad to have Marion back, but other than that, this can get lost.

Iron Man – gets better the more I watch it, helped greatly by Robert Downey Jr generally oozing charisma.

Journey To The Center Of The Earth – “You try that without wings.” Really quite poor, it’s very bland and every five seconds they unsubtly jab any random thing at the screen – woooo 3D!

Kung Fu Panda - do you really enjoy cartoon animals doing kung fu, like reeeeeeeeally enjoy, coz that's all this is?

Mad Money – bland American remake of bland English TV drama.

Mamma Mia! – paternity test!

Miss Pettigrew Lives For A Day – “They don’t remember the last one.” “No. They don't.” Total fluff, but sometimes it is nice to just watch a feel-good movie.

My Name Is Bruce – I didn’t hate it as much as The Housemate and he’s the Bruce fan.

Nim’s Island – the three plots never satisfactorily come together but the lizard is a hoot.

Phoebe In Wonderland - "Jump." Seems only to exist to introduce Tourette's to the audience.

Recount – compelling but we all know the ending.

Role Models - bizarre mix; the Danny/Augie side of the plot is watchable enough, but what is Wheeler and the crude teen misogynist 'comedy' he brings with him doing here?

Slumdog Millionaire – a lot heavier than I was expecting, but fairly compelling.

Sunshine Cleaning - interesting film but it could go much deeper.

Synecdoche, New York – blood and poo in the first five minutes - do you even want the audience to stick around?

The Accidental Husband – he’s not the accidental husband, he’s the malicious deliberate husband.

The Bank Job – badly written, not very interesting and nasty to boot.

The Brothers Bloom – bit pretentious, stupid ending.

The Bucket ListCarter and Edward go around jumping out of planes and trekking the Earth because one of them is luckily a billionaire, and learn that family will forgive anything if you’re dying and that cancer can be ignored until the moment you drop dead.

The Chronicles Of Narnia: Prince Caspian – everyone from the first film is dead, great sequel idea; and the battle is horrific.

The Dark Knight – I can’t believe the Joker’s convoluted forward-thinking-to-impossible-levels plans work and he survives them by luck, such as when he isn’t crushed to death by that lorry, or he isn’t blown up or shredded in that exploding police station, or he doesn’t have his brains blown out by Harvey.

The Incredible Hulk – tells a good story; Edward Norton's MY Bruce Banner.

The Spiderwick Chronicles – does absolutely nothing new or interesting and is manipulative and dull. 

The Tale Of Despereaux – who is the main character?

The Women – all female cast doesn’t work if all they talk about is men.

The X-Files: I Want To Believe – but the X-File part is the twist so why did they get Mulder in to start with, also, as with the TV show, they fail to save anyone other than themselves.

Tropic Thunder – funny but not hilarious, not particularly clever, doesn’t tell us anything we haven’t seen before in movie parodies and doesn’t go anywhere; the mock trailers at the start are much funnier than the rest of the film.

Twilight I’ve lost part of my life watching this nonsense, I’m still sick about it; watching this dreary teen schlock is like drowning in bad soup, it’s all awful, but it gets everywhere and you can’t get away, you just sink.

WALL-E – entertaining and emotionally charged, it has slapstick, adventure, sacrifice and love, and yes, it is just that little bit awing at times.

Yes Man – utter rubbish.  Read my full review here.

2009

17 Again – diverting enough for this sort of fluff.

A Christmas Carol – why did they bother?

Aliens In The Attic - poor.

Astro Boy – so sad.

A Town Called Panic - amusing.

Avatar – can’t believe I watched this tripe.

Cirque Du Freak: The Vampire’s Assistant – there’s something wrong with a film when the best character is a spider.

Cloudy With A Chance Of Meatballs – “It was a really long time ago but... I, too, was... a nerd!” “Too?” So funny, this must have one of the highest ratios of jokes per minute of any movie.

Creation – dull and probably obvious.

Did You Hear About The Morgans? – even Hugh Grant can’t save this.

Dorian Gray – aargh, no, ghastly, bad, terrible, awful, nothing works about this at all, it completely fails at any kind of pace and the ‘monster’ noises coming from the painting are hilarious and what’s with all the slo-mo?

Fantastic Mr Fox – just weird, doesn’t seem to be aimed at children and the animation is creepy.

Harry Potter And The Half-Blood Prince – what’s the point of the Half-Blood Prince, it makes no difference to anything.

Ice Age 3: Dawn Of The Dinosaurs – I was incredibly disappointed by this, a total dud.

Knowing – nastily depressing.

Monsters Vs Aliens“Don’t think of this as a prison, think of it as a hotel you never leave because it’s locked from the outside.”  It’s fun, but I didn’t care much about the characters (due to the film skipping the month in which they get to know each other) and in the end, Susan’s personality is swallowed entirely as she discovers the only thing worthwhile about her is her superpower, which is an incredibly depressing moral.

Moon - a lot more interesting than it looks, but I wish it had a happier ending, although it does have an ending about fifty per cent happier than I was expecting, plus Sam Rockwell is brilliant.

New Moon – I’m Team ‘Edward and Bella should fall off a cliff and DIE’.

Ondine - it's difficult to empathise with a fisherman.

Sherlock Holmes – a mixture of violent fight scenes that are practically wetting themselves over how cool they are and clichéd Holmesesque deduction; Holmes doesn’t come across as remotely intelligent, just occasionally lucky or psychic (Watson’s good though).

Shutter Island – trippy, twisty nonsense is not my kind of thing and the actors felt like performance artists, the whole thing kept reminding me of The Others, The Wicker Man, Identity, Memento and Gone Baby Gone all mashed together and I have issues with the ending.

Star Trek – WHAT DID THEY DO?

The Ghosts Of Girlfriends Past – bad.

The Imaginarium Of Doctor Parnassus – wha?

The Invention Of Lying – illogical film, it’s a funny idea for a sketch but doesn’t work for a full-length film and veers between being a comedy about blunt people, a clumsy satire on religion and a love story that tells us it’s okay to be ugly so long as you have a nice personality (if you’re a man).

The Princess And The Frog – Tiana and Naveen are awesome.

The Proposal – a rom-com without much focus on either rom or com, plus it’s misogynist, as Andrew rebels against having a female boss and by the end he’s telling her to shut up and forcing her into a kiss; did we just slip back in time sixty years?

Transformers: Revenge Of The Fallen – the psychotic ‘goodies’ terrorise the harmless ‘baddies’, chase them when they run away and savagely murder them, and then laugh about it.

Up – the emotional exploration of life after the death of a loved one is at odds with the dispiritingly naff, ridiculously illogical, hole-ridden plot, while the paper-thin villain is an insult to anyone with a brain cell; this is often very amusing and guaranteed to jerk the heartstrings, but overall it’s simplistic and unsatisfying.

Where The Wild Things Are – the puppetry is impressive but otherwise, what a tedious, horrible film, what was that and who could it possibly be aimed at?

X-Men Origins: Wolverine – utter pants.  Read my full review here.

Zombieland – no matter how hard a film tries to look good or have quirky ideas, if it is obvious, it is boring; the only positive I can think of to sitting through this paint-by-numbers childlike attempt to create a piece of fiction is: at least it’s short.  Read my full review here.

2010

127 Hours - "Is it true that despite, or maybe because, you're a big f*cking hard hero, you didn't tell anyone where you were going? Yeah, that's absolutely correct. Anyone? Anyone. Oops."  At first feels over-directed but you get used to it, there're only so many ways you can keep the audience interested in a guy in a hole pinned by a rock, and this works.

Burke And Hare - what are we supposed to get out of this?

Date Night – “And will you, for the love of God, put on a f***ing shirt!” Harmless date night type movie, sweeter than I expected.

Despicable Me – utterly lame.

Diary Of A Wimpy Kid – it was all right.

Dinner For Schmucks – didn’t particularly make me laugh, and there are several very Hollywood changes from the plot of Le Diner De Cons.

Furry Vengeance – life threatening.

Grown Ups – not funny, don’t like the characters and going to a water park is not a simple back to your roots thing, it’s what spoilt rich people do.

Harry Potter And The Deathly Hallows: Part 1 – nothing really happens.

How To Train Your Dragon – very funny, poignant and the dragon is adorable.

Hugo – the plot is all over the place, it wastes many opportunities and it’s stupid.

Iron Man 2much better the second time.

Knight And Day – stupid so I got bored.

Life As We Know It - despite a mildly interesting premise, this soon slides into the usual hokey Hollywood misogynist pap.

Made In Dagenham - an enjoyable history lesson in the fight for equal pay, but I'm not sure it has much rewatch value.

Mars Needs Moms – “Is that broccoli?” “No, that’s vomit, but I understand the confusion.” It would be an okay movie if it wasn’t for the (what one hopes is) inadvertent anti-feminist theme and reinforcing of heteronormative family stereotypes.

Megamind – “Minion, Code: Send In The Brain-bots.” “You know, the whole point of a code is…” “Oh, Code: Just Do It, Minion!” I love this movie, such a rare example of actually examining the concept of good and evil. “You were right.  I was... less right."

Nanny McPhee And The Big Bang (Nanny McPhee Returns) – “We are in the land of poo.” Utterly naff.

Percy Jackson & The Lightning Thief – the plot developments are painfully predictable, the structure mimics that of computer games, with a quest to find objects, levelling up and boss battles, and it’s lazy pandering to teenagers that Percy’s issues are actually superpowers, but the mythology stuff is pretty cool, so it is watchable.

The A-Team – WHAT DID THEY DO?

The King’s Speech – a rather staid historical drama but it’s enjoyable enough and the leads are excellent.

The Sorcerer’s Apprentice – “Go Team Magical Stuff.” This was a fun movie, smarter than I was expecting for the genre.

Toy Story 3 – WHAT DID THEY DO?

True Grit – “Are we trading again?” Almost indistinguishable from the 60s movie, so I really don’t know why they bothered remaking it.

2011

A Monster In Paris - a nice film, but it raises more questions than it answers and it's jarring that the story starts with the B couple instead of the A couple.

Arthur Christmasmade me kind of MAD and this year’s winner of the Worst Father Award goes to…

Attack The Block - "This is too much madness to explain in one text!" Watchable, but fails to elicit any real scares, excitement or laughs.

Bridesmaids – an okay chick flick, when you ignore the ‘look women can do gross out humour too’ stuff that’s painfully spread on top.

Captain America: The First Avenger – a superhero in the 1940s is AWESOME COOL, Peggy is excellent and how could I possibly say anything bad about a superhero film with this musical number in the middle?

Cowboys & Aliens – “Got a kid and a dog, why not a woman?” So the problem with this movie is that it takes itself too seriously, while the contrivance of having a good alien character who knows exactly what is going on and how to solve it removes all of the tension and intrigue from the era setting, plus the characters are bland and the dialogue uninspired; all that said, it is watchable.

Crazy, Stupid, Love – “What a cliché.”  A garbage movie, that writes and treats women as garbage; there is a muttered line towards the end that suggests that objectifying women is wrong, but the shouted moral is still that once a man stakes a claim on a woman, she is his property, regardless of her consent.

Harry Potter And The Deathly Hallows: Part 2 – why did Lupin and that twin have to die, I’d happily trade Ron and Hermione if those other two could survive and what was the point of Snape?

Jane Eyre - excuse me while I scream into a pillow - WHAT DID THEY DO?

Johnny English Reborn - it might not be great but I'd rather watch this than a James Bond.

Kung Fu Panda 2 - it's like the first one except even less interesting, also characters keep getting shot by cannons and surviving.

Paul – GOD AWFUL, it looked like poo from the trailer, it was worse.

Rango - a strange blend of the unsettlingly weird and bog standard western.

Rise Of The Planet Of The Apes – ‘Apes stupid.’ A bit dull, the plot feels very edited and rushed so you never get attached to any characters, and annoying there are zero nice humans in it.

Sherlock Holmes: A Game Of Shadows – “Did you kill my wife?!” Actually a lot of fun, I didn’t follow the MacGuffiny plot that closely and they could maybe tone down the Holmes/Watson shipping a tad, but Jude Law and Robert Downey Jr are a riot throughout.

Source Code – “Oh boy.” The premise is really cool but I don’t think they got enough out of the execution of it, particularly regarding the ending (also while the Quantum Leap references are great, it’s really a lot more like Groundhog Day).

Super 8"I loosened it for you."  Excellent film, nostalgic, funny, scary, exciting with wonderful performances, but the ending is a let down.

Tangled – funny but no guts. 

The Artist - a compelling film but it works better the first time when the tension is so taut it could decapitate you; repeat viewings lose that.

The Beaver – “It’s a brain. Mom says yours got broken.” Not my kind of film, very slow, I never connected with the characters and why did no one get him help?

The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel - way too many characters to give any depth to anything, and strangely downbeat.

The Green Hornet - quite enjoyable, even though the lead is a total jerk.

The Helpfairly absorbing story but the ‘novel adaptation’ nature of random characters popping in as if we should know who they are and important scenes seemingly missing does get distracting; seriously, who the hell is Stuart, what is he doing here and where did he go? 

The Muppets – I love nostalgia as much as the next maladjusted adult, but rehashing the same plot the muppets have done at least three times already is jejune (plus, stop ignoring the 90s!), and it badly needed to pick and stick to a POV – Walter or Kermit, not both.

Thor – here’s an idea, don’t kidnap your enemy’s son and pretend he’s yours, don’t raise him to despise his biological race so that when he finds out his real heritage he’ll be overwhelmed by self-loathing, don’t tell him he was born to be a king but can never be the king, don’t fall asleep in the middle of the most important conversation of his life and don’t tell him he’s a failure when he’s dangling over an abyss… (Odin wins this year’s Worst Father Award).

Winnie-The-Pooh - "'Back soon.'  Sounds like Backson...  Oh well.  Good luck everyone!"  WHY did they make another one?

X-Men First Class – wake me when the X-Men get here; repulsively misogynistic.

Your Highness - ghastly sense of 'humour'.

2012

21 Jump Street – the fish out of water/culture clash plot looked like it could be amusing, but it instantly dissolves into a string of sex and drug jokes that aren’t remotely funny, and the two main characters are so bad at their jobs that they really, really deserve to fail.

A Fantastic Fear Of Everything - interesting.

Avengers Assemble – dumb fun.

Big Miracle – overpopulated movie that somehow demonises every character in it and forgets to make anyone the lead.

Braveplotless, characterless, humourless, derivative, pointless, boring bag of lame.

Cabin In The Woods - if you try to be smart but show the gore, revel in the violence and 'reference' previous horror films, then you're just as bad as them (still, totally called it on the 'not really dead' character - why would you kill off the ONLY character you remembered to write for - no Scream 2 for me today!).

Chronicle - booooooooooooooooriiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiing.

Flight – the trailer made this look exciting but it is actually a very dull film about alcoholism.

Hitchcock - "And that, my dear, is why they call me the Master of Suspense."  A really enjoyable biopic (focusing equally on Alfred Hitchcock and his wife Alma Reville) with great performances from Anthony Hopkins and Helen Mirren.

Horrible Bosses – a waste of an already overused premise, with dislikeable leads.

Hotel Transylvania - within the first five minutes there's a joke where a disembodied bottom frames someone for an enormous fart - it was at this moment I should have realised the level of intelligence involved here and turned it off - alas I endured it all; it is really, really dumb; and lame.

Ice Age 4: Continental Drift – not as bad as the third film, but forgettable.

Journey 2: The Mysterious Island – “Who gave him a speaking part?” Rubbish, far too similar to the plot of the first movie and the ‘literary references’ are ludicrous.

Men In Black 3 - "If we report this, they're going to scrub the launch." "I didn't see anything." Entertaining fluff; the finale is surprisingly underwhelming but Will Smith and Josh Brolin give enjoyable performances.

Mirror Mirror quite funny but seriously lacks focus and depth and Snow herself is devoid of personality; still I do desperately love Nathan Lane.

ParaNorman - feels like someone put a lot of thought into this film and yet the finished product is so convoluted it just gets dull and were any of the characters remotely interesting (plus, moral, turns out it is wrong to kill children; who knew?!)?

Rise Of The Guardians - some interesting ideas but not enough was explained and the villain didn't really work because a) his name is one loop away from a swearword, b) his MO is exactly the same as the hero so why are we supposed to side with one over the other and c) he's voiced by Jude 'sexy accent' Law so hard to dislike.

Robot & Frank - so short it doesn't progress beyond the interesting premise.

Seven Psychopaths - appears to have been written by a fourteen year old.

Skyfallit’s ludicrously stupid, clichéd and anti-climatic as well as demeaning to women, has a chillingly callous attitude towards life and utterly detestable characters (but I did like Mallory and Q).

The Amazing Spider-Man - no one needed another Spider-Man origin story.

The Dark Knight Rises – catwoman really irritated me, Bane was hilarious, I don’t understand why Lucius didn’t flood the room with the bomb since that was exactly why they built in that failsafe and it was painfully obvious who the ‘real’ bad guy was so I was baffled why Batman didn’t work it out. 

The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journeyactually pretty watchable, best when it remembers it is The Hobbit (funny and fanciful with a sweet lead) and only getting dull when it tries to be The Lord Of The Rings and because it is ridiculously overlong, unedited and inflated just to bulk it up into a trilogy. 

The Hunger Games - "You know what my mother said? She said 'District 12 might finally have a winner,' but she wasn't talking about me."  A good thriller.

The Lorax - filled with nauseating 'minion'esque critters and incredibly fickle characters, this moralising SATIRE isn't deep enough to hold an entire film, particularly when you raise the question of why didn't The Once-ler just plant the tree like fifty years ago instead of sitting in his room not doing that.

The Pirates!  In An Adventure With Scientists! (The Pirates! Band Of Misfits) – "Blood Island.  So called because it's the exact shape of some blood."  A couple of duff jokes, but generally really, really fun, an improvement on the creepy book.

The Woman In Black – BOO!

Wreck-It Ralph - occasionally ingenious, shame about setting it in a dull game and the terribly convenient monster menace that randomly don't know it's a game for no reason.

2013

About Time - "Go in there and wait, quietly. I mean it; don't make a sound... or I'll kill you." Boring AND sexist, my two least favourite attributes for a movie; I thoroughly regret watching this.

Alan Partridge: Alpha Papa - fairly entertaining Alan Partridge film.

Captain Phillips poorly directed but the plot it very exciting, just a shame that due to its 'true story' nature the first half is a lot more interesting than the second half.

Cloudy With A Chance Of Meatballs 2 - lacking the wit and charm of the (extremely good) first film, this is nothing more than a pile of food puns, questionable morals and the characters of the first film turning up and having nothing to do, plus is essentially rewrites the beginning and ending of the first film; LAME and extremely disappointing.

Elysium – got about halfway through and had to pause for some reason and have discovered absolutely no desire to continue watching the rest; there’s just nothing/no one to care about; also really feels like a novel adaptation (yet apparently isn’t) as none of it goes into enough detail.

Frozen - what a load of arse.  See The Housemate's very accurate review here.

Her - NOPE (could this be any less my kind of movie?)

Iron Man Three  Pepper really doesn't have enough to do, but there's some great moments particularly in the middle and it was brilliant the first time, so at least worth watching once.

Justice League: The Flashpoint Paradox “I knew using these morons would put you off your guard.” “Hey!” Unbelievably gratuitously gruesome, no way in hell this should only be a 12 certificate.

Man Of Steel - I can't believe how many people must die in this film; it has some of the clumsiest writing I've ever witnessed and endless blurry action sequences, this is hilariously dumb and sadly tedious, with pathetically pointless characters, a practically psychotic hero, some awful performances and just not in any way what I want from a Superman film; I laughed hysterically during the Jesus scene.

Pacific Rim - very obvious and dumb, but it is about robots fighting monsters so it's really my own fault for watching it - it's the total lack of any interesting characters that kills it.

R.I.P.D. – generic and derivative, and it was a misstep to have two white dudes masquerading as an elderly Asian man and a good-looking woman, scenes which come across as awkwardly unfunny at best and offensive at worst and kept reminding me that this would have been more interesting if we could have had those actors in the main roles instead.

Saving Mr. Banks - "When does anybody get to go to Disneyland with Walt Disney himself?" Watchable if extremely heavy-handed, can't imagine it is very true to what really happened: saintly Disney must do battle with crazy mean Travers so that the wonderful film Mary Poppins can exist as is right and proper.

The Adventurer: The Curse Of The Midas Box - the same as all other adaptations from children's book serials (and there's not enough Michael Sheen in it).

The Croods - "Hey, I know that guy!" An odd mixture of humour, i.e. some witty, some utterly lame, but the ridiculously have-their-cake-and-eat-it everyone-lives happy ending is just so schmooey heart-warming, it's bound to leave a good impression.

The Hobbit: The Desolation Of Smaug - the trouble with 'middle' movies is there's no intrigue of setup and no satisfaction of resolution.

The Hunger Games: Catching Fire - "Remember who the real enemy is."  Now that I have read the book, this feels lacking a lot, but it is still enjoyable.

The Kings Of Summer – excellent cast (for some reason all the adults in the movie are played by sitcom actors) in a compelling and amusing movie, but I really could have done without the drawn out killing and skinning a rabbit scene and that pretty much killed the end of the movie for me.

The Lone Ranger – could have been okay if it didn’t have the creepy and pointless framing device, had focused less on Johnny Depp and wasn’t just so nasty all the damn time.

The Secret Life Of Walter Mitty – “I didn’t see the movie, so I don’t really know how it works.” A sweet, uplifting movie (not sure if it would work twice, but certainly enjoyable once).

The World's End - deliberately but painfully predictable, fails to engage at any point.

This Is The End – “That’s embarrassing.” Incredibly juvenile and gross, but if you can get past that, it is entertaining.

Thor: The Dark World - "She wouldn't want us to fight." "Well, she wouldn't exactly be shocked." Dull, confusing gibberish, except (unsurprisingly) for the bits with Loki, who wanders through his brief scenes like a ray of life-giving sunshine. "...you'll kill me? Evidently there'll be a line."

2014

A Little Chaos – there didn’t appear to be a plot.

Big Eyes – I guess this was okay but like a lot of biopics it is totally forgettable.

Big Hero 6 - the sad grossly outweighs the happy and the plot/twists are so obvious they could brain you.

Birdman - unbearably pretentious but also surprisingly obvious and dull.

Dear White People – “Oh I’m sorry, was I supposed to take ‘Free speech, my ass’ as a legitimate suggestion?” Watchable but the ensemble cast left the story feeling a bit unfocused, I can see why it was made into a TV show.

Earth To Echo – highly derivative; the selling point is obviously the ‘found footage/YouTube/phone app’ style of filming, but I actually found that really harmed how interesting any given scene looked, while the plot is fairly asinine.

Edge Of Tomorrow (Live Die Repeat: Edge of Tomorrow) - the cool premise actually makes this very watchable, although the final act lets it down.

Ex Machina - "I turned to Caleb and he looked up at me and he said, 'You're not a man, you're a God.'" "Yeah, but I didn't say that."  The disappointingly horrible ending makes you wonder why you bothered sitting through the rest of it.

Guardians Of The Galaxy - it just didn't engage with me.

Muppets Most Wanted - what idiot changed the title of a film that's opening AND closing songs are about the damn title?

Nightcrawler – “I also like the way you smell.”  There’s no likeable character in this so I didn’t find it compelling.

Noah - despite the pro-vegan message, Noah is a terrible person and this is an upsetting and unrewarding watch.

Paddington - a charming surprise; this adaptation is sweet and emotionally invested (just a shame that the villain plot is upsettingly dark and also illogical - just how old is she supposed to be?).

Testament Of Youth – did you know that war is bad and lots of young men were slaughtered during WWI; this film seems to think this is news, there’s nothing else to it at all, other than being filmed in a mildly pretentious fashion and I feel like they are selling Vera Brittain short.

The Babadook - not what I was expecting (in a bad way).

The Book Of Life - "Kids today, with their long hair and their no killing stuff." Watchable, but it's hard to know what I think since it's such a hodge-podge of ideas, yet the basic two-guys-one-girl story is so tired; would be better without the pointless-adds-nothing framing device.

The Boxtrolls - "We exterminate justice!"  Charming film (except for the villain's disgusting comeuppance). "You bit me. With your mouth.".

The Grand Budapest Hotel - "The plot thickens, as they say. Why, by the way? Is it a soup metaphor?"  Wes Anderson is one of those love or hate writer/directors and having now seen five of his movies, I really don't want to see any more.

The Hobbit: The Battle Of The Five Armies - by no stretch should this have ever been a full movie, it is at best a finale of another movie, and good luck actually spotting the hobbit.

The Hunger Games: Mockingjay - Part 1 - "Do you have any other conditions?" "My sister gets to keep her cat."  This is a perfectly fine first half of a movie, but it doesn’t hold up if you watch it on its own, you have to watch the second part immediately.

The Imitation Game – “Can I have some soup please?” Apparently not very historically accurate, which is weird because it didn’t really have much else going for it.

The Lego Movie - I didn't know I wanted a LEGO movie, but if they were going to make one, this is exactly the film they should have made.

The Monuments Men - the tale of eight men who go to different parts of Europe over the course of several years to protect thousands of pieces of art; as you may guess, it lacks focus.

What We Do In The Shadows – “I was thinking, maybe I just should bring a broom down here for you, if you wanted to sweep up some of the skeletons.” Amusing; Taika Waititi is unbelievably adorable.

X-Men Days Of Future Past - "Wanna pick all that shit up?" The plot is driven by 'we need to make a movie' and not by any semblance of internal logic - a) DON'T free Magneto and b) DO use Quicksilver for everything; the characters act like complete morons or lunatics for no reason, it is infuriating (and don't go out of your way for the Rogue Cut - or 'the same stupid movie but with one scene of Rogue that goes nowhere').

2015

Absolutely Anything - "Biscuits!"  Unbelievably poor.

Ant-Man - the smaller scale plot works really well, making this a refreshing watch considering how weary I am of superhero flicks.

Avengers: Age Of Ultron - it's hard to really care about this ensemble piece because no one gets the chance to shine, plus they're all super miserable now (Coulson and Loki are sorely missed). 

Bill – “That’s a coincidence.” Mildly amusing.

Descendants – “Their children are innocent.” Basically High School Musical coated in Disney cartoon lore.

Home - a lot better than the trailer made it look, this has a great premise.

Inside Out - while the anthropomorphised emotions and control room stuff are fun ideas, the actual plot of Joy wandering around lost is tedious, plus you really can't give two hoots about characters who by their very natures are this one-dimensional.

Jurassic World - sexist.

Mad Max: Fury Road - watchable in that the action never lets up, but not particularly memorable once it's over, due to never getting to know the characters; for all the hoo-hah about it being feminist, the women are little more than objects to be moved about and the only two mildly interesting characters are the two men.

Man Up – toxic.

Paper Towns“What if it is literally anything else?” Watchable coming-of-age/road-trip/teen-flick but very tropey, made worse because the filmmakers would probably say they were trying to deconstruct certain tropes but instead ended up reinforcing them.

Room - "I'm sorry Jack." "It's okay. Don't do it again."  Fairly compelling due to the horrific subject matter, but actually the child's POV, which of course is the selling point, means we skip a lot of interesting stuff.

Spy - enjoyable enough at least once; this is an obvious attempt at promoting female empowered films and it's about time, just a shame that she has to have a romantic dynamic with all three male leads.

Star Wars: The Force Awakens - nah.

Suffragette - "We're half the human race; you can't stop us all." Starts off following an individual story (rather clumsily at times) to show us how lack of vote and rights could affect women on a personal level, then hurries to catch up with historical factual events and totally forgets all about that character it spent most of the films setting up.

The Danish Girl – started this but so far Eddie Redmayne’s performance just hasn’t captured my interest; will probably watch the rest at some point.

The Hunger Games: Mockingjay - Part 2 - "Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to the seventy-sixth Hunger Games."  Like Part 1, this doesn’t really work as a movie in its own right, it is just the second half of a movie, also despite having now seen the film twice and read the book, I am still horrified and annoyed by what happens to Finnick, and it is unfortunate how clumsy the Philip-Seymour-Hoffman-died-but-hadn’t-filmed-the-finale-yet scene is.

The Lady In The Van - watchable despite its pretentiousness.

The Man From U.N.C.L.E. - "I don't think you understand.  It tore the back off my car."  An incredibly slick, over-directed movie that's so charming it completely gets away with it; great fun.

The Martian – watchable but astoundingly lacking in peril; one of those movies that makes you want to read the book instead.

The Second Best Exotic Marigold Hotel - harmlessly watchable.

Tomorrowland: A World Beyond - "You're not funny." How did this even get made, it's awful.

Tremors 5: Bloodlines – they sort of forget to do the cool, scary underground menace and focus too much on the not-as-good flying monsters from the third movie, and it’s a mistake to have the two leads spend so little time together.

Trumbo - "You don't even like me." "I like you fine; you don't like me." A watchable, well made biopic, galloping through time, events and people as they do, idolising and demonising as it goes.

2016

Arrival – “Who is this child?” Not a bad movie, just safe to say this is not my kind of thing; slow paced and heaped with flashbacks that eventually do turn out to be relevant, but unfortunately leading to a really irritating twist and a fairly underwhelming conclusion.

A Street Cat Named Bob – a compelling movie that will horrify you when you see how some people treat the homeless, but doesn’t have a very strong finale.

Ballerina – annoying movie in which the main character is not very likeable and doesn’t deserve the breaks she gets.

Batman: Return Of The Caped Crusaders “Quickly Robin, to the crosswalk.” Having just finished watching all of the TV show, it was fun spotting the references, although weirdly some of it doesn’t seem to match; this is a witty film with pretty much everything you could want thrown in plot-wise, but because of that it doesn’t have enough time to focus on a lot of it. “Holy unsatisfying ending!” 

Being Charlie – “I should probably save my virgin asshole for that special someone, right?” There isn’t really enough plot or that much character development – come the finale, I wasn’t sure what I was supposed to get out of it.

Bridget Jones’s Baby – "I think my lung’s collapsed; but this is not about me.” Mildly amusing but also kind of tired; it’s sad to see Bridget and Mark still failing at love after all this time; it does pick up towards the end.

Captain America: Civil War - I'm getting tired of team-up superhero movies now; Robert Downey Jr is the best thing in it and keeps it watchable, but that seems kind of harsh when it isn't even his movie.

Dad's Army - sure to irritate any fan of the TV show it's 'based' on, but who else is it for?

Doctor Strange - a competent movie that, while trope-heavy, inverts enough to make this a refreshing addition to the tired superhero genre, but that said, I don’t think it’s one for much rewatching – the characters are rather flat.

Fantastic Beasts And Where To Find Them - Colin Farrell gives an excellent performance, whereas Eddie Redmayne just does an impression of Matt Smith; there's not really enough plot to gather any momentum and at least one pointless character getting in the way, but the real tragedy is the absolutely horrific ending: WHAT WERE THEY THINKING?

Finding Dory - weak; the old leads are completely redundant, the grandeur of the ocean is missed by setting it in muddy buckets and by the time you get to an octopus driving a truck I pretty much want my money back.

Florence Foster Jenkins – “They’re not for practical use.” Nice comedy drama.

Ghostbusters - way too heavy on the references.

Hacksaw Ridge – “Help me get one more.”  It’s a decent watch, heroic pacifists always make the most compelling leads, even if the morality is a little suspect, but the battle gore is so extreme that the audience becomes desensitised within seconds, almost every shot seems to be another exploding head, and I can’t help come away from the whole battle with a bad taste in my mouth regarding how the Japanese are portrayed; it just feels full-on racist.

Hail, Caesar! - "It's... complicated." You know it's a Coen when it's all surface style and no character depth; basically just the day in the life of a guy who fixes problems on a movie lot, so there's no actual plot.

Hidden Figures – “Despite what you may think, I have nothing against y’all.” “I know. I know you probably believe that.” This biopic spreads itself too thin, so it never focuses on the characters in enough depth, their home lives are so skimpy that I wished they’d cut them altogether, and dear god stop saying Math terms, I have no idea what is going on.

Kubo And The Two Strings - "If I'm Beetle and you're Monkey, why isn't he called Boy?" Poetic, abstract and sad, i.e. not my kind of thing.

Love & Friendship - "Facts are horrid things." Emulates the Austen style well in that everything of interest happens off screen and we're just told about it later; ultra-frivolous and diabolically frustrating that this heinous character suffers no comeuppance.

Mindhorn – it’s funny, but the plot is maybe too light and obvious and the ending is rather dull.

Miss Peregrine's Home For Peculiar Children - fairly dull and difficult to follow; forgets to set up any interesting characters; standard magical teen fare.

Moana - a nice film; funny with likeable characters, but maybe could be a little more eventful.

My Life As A Courgette (Ma Vie De Courgette; My Life As A Zucchini) – such a sweet (and sometimes dark) story that addresses issues regarding kids in care that you don’t see very much.

Pete’s Dragon – “But I don’t wanna never see you again.” Filled with too many characters, all of whom are dumb, mean and illogical, there’s no one to particularly like and the plot progresses in stupid ways; it falls somewhere between bland and poor, but the kid-acting and special effects are good.

Rogue One: A Star Wars Story - Everybody Dies: The Movie.

So B. It – “Soof.” One of those sweet but weepy movies, although the ending is kinda lame, and then you realise you were tricked into watching a tweenage melodrama.

Sully (Sully: Miracle On The Hudson) – could have done without the dream sequence stuff in the first half of the movie but the second half is exciting enough to make up for it; mostly I appreciate this film because it was so much better than Flight which has a similar plot.

The Edge Of Seventeen – “You know what you need? You need someone to rob you so you can re-enact Home Alone.”  Starts off really well, with a convincing and witty portrayal of the isolation that can come with puberty but slides towards the finale without heightening the drama and having the main character come to the epiphany that she is selfish and magically deciding to fix her life by not being selfish any more, even though that won’t remotely resolve any of the issues the film set up; also the subplot about the teacher, which looks to be the main focus at the start and from the advertising, is in fact so irrelevant and small it could be cut entirely.

The Finest Hours – “That’s regulation, you know.” Enjoyable disaster/rescue movie, although the romance didn’t add anything.

Their Finest – a fairly engrossing film but the shock sad bit towards the end (despite in hindsight the obvious foreshadowing) was too sudden and horrible for me; just as I was beginning to think I’d like to own this movie, I realised that I never ever want to see it again.

To Walk Invisible - well acted, but doesn't feel very authentic and despite the title supposedly referring to the Brontë sisters, it focuses almost entirely on Branwell, while very little happens on screen, so overall disappointing (and it ends as an advert for the Brontë Parsonage Museum).

X-Men: Apocalypse - these X-Men prequels are incompetent and what the hell have they done to Cyclops, stop RUINING him!

Zootropolis (Zootopia) - "Life isn't some cartoon musical where you sing a little song and your insipid dreams magically come true. So let it go."  Such a positive message for children to learn.

2017

Baby Driver – “Every damn song is about you.” Enjoyable to start with, but it just doesn’t know when to quit.

Batman vs. Two-Face – “You know what they say, if you can’t kill them in a horrible lab experiment, join them!”  Lacks the meta charm of the first film, but since it’s the last outing of Adam West’s Batman, it’d be churlish to criticise it harshly.  “Isn’t it past your bedtime?”

Blade Runner 2049 – unbearable.

Bright – a lot more violent than I was expecting, it’s ultimately just three not-hugely-interesting characters racing from one shoot-em-up to the next, all during one ironically so-dark-it’s-difficult-to-see-what’s-going-on night.

Captain Underpants: The First Epic Movie – “Why are the robots shooting each other? Aren’t they supposed to be friends?” “I don’t know. I’m the artist, you’re the writer. That’s why we need each other.” Imaginative use of storytelling techniques means this can be surprisingly charming, unlike when it spends the entire movie stating that if you don’t find ‘potty humour’ funny, you’re brain-damaged.

Carnage - "We are not vegans; they are carnists." Intelligent, funny, moving satire with quite a few moments of genuine footage where I had to hold my hand up to hide the screen, but then that's the point isn't it, if you can't take it, don't support it; should be required viewing for all carnists.

Coco – “Well, you’re cursed.” It’s watchable but the characters aren’t very likeable and the plot is painfully obvious – not sure whether it is intentionally derivative, or just unbelievably trite (on a side note, I wasn’t really sure if I liked The Book Of Life when I saw that, but after Coco, I can’t help comparing how The Book Of Life does a lot of the same plot ideas better).

Darkest Hour – unbelievably pretentious direction that takes you completely out of the story, so all you can see are actors and sets instead of characters and events, but that may also be because there isn’t much of a plot or narrative point: will Churchill surrender to Hitler, um, gee, I wonder.

Dave Made A Maze – obviously visually very creative, but at its heart it fails because I don’t like Dave and his total non-reaction to the fact that he gets a lot of people murdered is off-putting and confusing.

Descendants 2 – “Is it Happy’s son? Coz let me tell you he’s not as happy as his father. Kind of a dark streak in fact.” The bad guys are completely justified in this – how the hell did Ben forget his entire philosophy about freeing innocent children from prison?

Downsizing – unfortunately I only got somewhere between halfway and two thirds in before the film cut out so I don’t know how it ended, but I can’t say it was very interesting up till then – it almost seems to forget its own really cool and interesting premise, never really addressing any of the issues or doing anything particularly visually interesting that you’d expect with a ‘shrunk down’ plot.

Dunkirk - you know the phrase 'Dunkirk spirit', this movie doesn't have any; it looks good and it'll hold your attention, but the non-linear plot is confusing while the little dialogue and lack of depth/background to the characters means you never really connect with them.

Ferdinand – “What could you possibly need that for?” While this has some lovely morals, it’s not a particularly good film, it’s not funny and certain plot elements felt like serious missteps.

Hey Arnold!: The Jungle Movie – “Don’t you give up now. Your blind optimism is one of your most annoying qualities.” It’s finally here, fans, the end of the Hey Arnold story, not to be missed; rewarding the loyal viewer, the first part throws out a whole bunch of references to past episodes and the rest is an adventure story that answers all those hanging questions: what is Arnold’s surname, what happened to his parents, and how does he feel about Helga?

Jumanji: Welcome To The Jungle – “Martha, come look at my penis!”  It’s kinda harmless I guess, but it fails hopelessly at being either funny or exciting, or emotional or having any interesting characters, and it doesn’t even try for creepy or scary, and while the initial idea of the Jumanji game regenerating in order to lure in new generations is quite clever, the rest of the film totally fails to stick to the original logic and this is a poor substitute for the original movie.

King Arthur: Legend Of The Sword – imagine The Lord Of The Rings if it was directed by Guy Ritchie, i.e. boring and annoying.

Kong: Skull Island - "I've never said that name out loud before; it sounds stupid now that I say it." I thought Tom Hiddleston could do no wrong; my mistake.

La La Land – drab singing and duller characters make this kind of tedious.

Little Evil - "I'm the Keymaster!"  Good fun for a one-watch, probably not worth revisiting.

Murder On The Orient Express - while the production is stylish and Kenneth Branagh is very entertaining as Poirot, the movie can't escape Christie's hacky plot twists, which left me cold and irritated.

Paddington 2 - the mixture of celebrating modern multi-cultural London and whimsical wrongful conviction nonsense that seems to have wandered in from a Wallace & Gromit film is gratingly at odds, while the entire plot makes little sense and is rather tired; that said, Hugh Grant is ludicrously entertaining throughout.

Please Stand By – “Oh, I wish my grandson could meet you. He would so get whatever it is you’re talking about.” A nice film.

Spider-man: Homecoming - "Just a typical homecoming, on the outside of an invisible jet, fighting my girlfriend’s dad.”  A sweet and funny movie that puts a welcome spin on the superhero genre by giving us a child lead.

The Big Sick – “You know what I realised halfway through, you’re from Pakistan.” It’s a good romcom, I didn’t know such a thing existed, but here it is.

The Boss Baby – “Staci, read back the notes.” “I can’t read. What’s it say?” A weird but interesting take on the rejection an older sibling feels when there is a new baby, even if the actual plot isn’t great. “Tree! I’m gonna hit it!” “Aim for failure and you’ll always succeed.” “What?” “Aim away from failure!”

The LEGO Batman Movie - "Remember that time with the two boats?" "This is better than the two boats!" "Hmmm." Very funny to start with but quickly becomes so frenetic that it's hard to concentrate on or care that much about what's going on.

The LEGO Ninjago Movie – “Is that Green Ninja still staring at me?” “Yes, sir.” “Eugh, what a weirdo.” A few fun ideas but it’s less interesting than you’d think it would be, given the premise.

Thor: Ragnarok - "Your saviour is here!" A very fun superhero flick, although it can’t relive up to the delightful surprise it was the first time round.

Unicorn Store – “And also, are you going to murder me?” It was all right, I guess, a little bit bland for a surreal film.

Wonder Woman - "I believe in love."  Very dull, with flat unlikeable characters, god-awful dialogue, hardly any heroics and a villain plot that makes little sense.

2018

Ant-Man And The Wasp - “You’re the world’s greatest grandma.” Unfortunately it’s one of those ‘swap the MacGuffin’ movies, which can get a little dull, and while I liked the intimacy of the first move, it would be nice in a sequel if he could actually do some superhero stuff instead of everything just being about the Pym family.

A Wrinkle In Time – “Charles Wallace.” What the hell was this, incoherent and dull nonsense.

BlacKkKlansman – “No C-4 for you!” A pretty good film, although the random arty moments of direction seemed kind of out of place.

Black Panther – decently watchable action adventure superhero movie, although it still has some tired old tropes in there (no I won’t help you fight – okay so see you in the finale then yeah?), while the three awesome strong female leads are all ultimately defined by their relationship to men and are we sure that the most advanced country in the world should have a law where the king is chosen via fight to the death?

Bohemian Rhapsody - “I decide what I am.”  A watchable well-made biopic that’ll make you blub; it has the usual faults of many biopics of too much rush, not enough depth, over-the-top demonising of anyone who got in the way and I could have done without the extremely on-the-nose future predictions/winks at the audience and I’d like to trade the very lengthy Live Aid re-enactment finale for some slower pace earlier in the movie, but if you like Queen music, you’ll enjoy the movie.

Breaking In – “Fear I can manage; desperation – whole different thing.” Exactly what it looked like from the trailer – a less good Panic Room.

Crazy Rich Asians – “Buk-buk, bitches.” Disappointing, this is just every trope in the romcom book and it forgets to resolve its own set up.

Dumplin’ – “I’m doing this for me, not for them.”  Harmless sentimental fluff that never goes into enough depth, and has the lead character seemingly create her own problems rather than face real ones.

Early Man – “Symbol of a game sent from Heaven.” It’s hard to believe quite how bad this movie is – it’s the antithesis of funny, filled with the lamest, oldest jokes you’ve ever heard that can’t raise even a tired chuckle, while the plot is inconceivably dull, focusing entirely on football, with some fairly poor voice acting and several really dumb ideas; the tragedy being that it takes ages to make these movies and they wasted all that time on this turd.

Game Night – “Glass tables are acting weird tonight.” Watchable, with the humour veering wildly between annoying and clever, but the relationship at the heart of the film is really nice; you don’t often see married couples so equally written.

Incredibles 2 – “When was the last time you slept?” “Who keeps track of that?” I never really clicked with the first movie, I think because I didn’t find the Parr family at all likeable and the plot didn’t grab my interest, while the fact that dozens of superheroes had been murdered was too dark; with this one, I found at least some of the characters were more interesting, the baby’s always entertaining, the superheroics were more relatable while it’s refreshing to have a female lead in that area, the plot managed to be creepy without being disturbing and I found the villain plot more rewarding; not saying it was brilliant, but it was fairly enjoyable and it did more for me than the original.

Instant Family – nice heart-warming comedy drama, although it has to rush through the timeframe a bit too quickly for it all to really land.

Johnny English Strikes Again – “Yes, all right, we all know what garrotting looks like.” Harmless, worth a few laughs, if not very hearty ones; recommended for the grandparent generation who don’t understand technology.

Love, Simon – “I thought maybe we could sign up for Grindr together.”  “You don’t know what Grindr is, do you?” “It’s Facebook for gay people.” A really compelling, heart-rending-and-warming story with a wonderful performance at its centre from Nick Robinson.

Mary Poppins Returns – “Nowhere to go but up.” It’s very obvious that the songs in this each represent a song in the original movie and the ‘plot’ has been strung along between them to try to replicate the same feel but all that accomplishes is a pale, charmless replica of Mary Poppins that had me almost nodding off during two musical numbers; instead of a journey of emotional growth, the story is entirely a ‘find the MacGuffin’ quest, all the more boring and infuriating because the film heavily signposts where it is to the audience so you sit there screaming inside your own head for two hours while the characters bumble along like morons, and it has hints of tawdry nastiness completely absent from the original, the lack of Burt is fatal, and then you have to awkwardly sit through Angela Lansbury’s cameo at the end that was clearly written for Julie Andrews; if you’ve never seen Mary Poppins and you don’t mind lazy writing, then you might enjoy this, but I wish I had never bothered to watch it.

Mortal Engines - "Raaaaaaaaarrrrrrrrrrrr!" Just bad.

Mowgli: Legend Of The Jungle – I was really excited when I heard there was going to be a more true-to-the-books adaptation of the Jungle Book, but other than Bagheera, this didn’t feel much like Kipling’s stories at all and it is relentlessly unpleasant and nasty.

Ralph Breaks The Internet – this was so boring, I thought it would never end.

Rampage – braindead.

Ready Player One – I didn’t particularly like the book that much, but OMG the book is so much better than this.

Roma – a compelling, enjoyable movie, although I don’t think I totally ‘got’ what it was trying to say.

Solo: A Star Wars Story – harmlessly watchable as a stand-alone movie, but as a prequel about Han Solo it doesn’t convince at all, plus the dialogue and plot are clunky and it’s way too po-faced; ultimately I didn’t care about any of these dullards.

Sorry To Bother You – I don’t like surrealism or satire, so I was never going to enjoy this (the blurb was misleading) but the structure is also a mess.

Spider-Man: Into The Spider-Verse – “Act dumb. Who’s Morales? Not that dumb!” This is kind of a seesaw, in that the story is really cool, but actually there’s barely any plot, and the animation is really accomplished, but also it gave me a migraine, and the film is really funny, except the most horrific thing imaginable happens early on that I will never get over.

Stan & Ollie – “Do we really need that trunk?” Well made, bittersweet story, although there’s not much to it, spoilt a bit by apparently not being very accurate to life.

Teen Titans Go! To The Movies – this is weird; the humour veers between genuinely witty meta stuff (everything Will Arnett does is gold), to really dark edgy WB cartoon humour that doesn’t seem to have any idea what is or isn’t appropriate (for example, they play a hit and run for laughs), to dumb childish butt gags; who is the movie aimed at?!

The Christmas Chronicles – “Who’s crazy now? I quit!” Pretty dull usual Xmas-movie rubbish about believing in Santa being the most important thing in the world.

The Old Man & The Gun – a lot slower and less focused than I was expecting, I didn’t really connect with it.

Tremors: A Cold Day In Hell – if you don’t have a new idea, don’t make a movie; this is exactly the same as 2, 3 and 5, I am so bored, except this one is supposed to be set in the Arctic but instead is just in a desert compound like all the others, whoops.

Venom – “For a smart guy, you sure are a dumbass.” Eddie is sympathetically pathetic and the split-personality thing works quite well, which makes it watchable, even if everything to do with the villain and plot is dumb and unconvincing and the action scenes are so long they become boring (unfortunately whether I enjoyed it or not, this film represents the fact that they now can’t do the proper Spider-Man/Symbiote story, sigh).

Welcome To Marwen – a really interesting exploration of mental health, makes me sad this was a flop.


2019


1917 – it takes a while to ignore the one-shot gimmick, but otherwise this is an enjoyable a-to-b movie, no particular depth but sometimes it is just nice to watch a character have to achieve a simple goal through adversity.

A Beautiful Day In The Neighbourhood – “I don’t eat anything that had a mother.” Slow and arty, so I was bored and uncomfortable.

Blinded By The Light – compelling in some ways, certainly its disquieting portrayal of racism, but rushes the ending, forgetting to focus on what matters and wastes far too much time watching the main character dance to Springsteen songs.

Captain Marvel – “That’s a ‘yes’ or a ‘no’ question!” In the plus column we have lots of good acting, likeable characters, funny jokes and overtly feminist themes, but in the minus column we have too few jokes, a plot so MacGuffiny it’s hard to care about, a twist so obvious I guessed it from the trailer and an attitude to war so simplistic that it undermines our otherwise awesome hero making her look like a naïve idiot. 

Descendants 3 – “Did someone put a spell on you? Just tell me who and...” “You’ll what? Marry them?” Mal is the absolute worst, and there are multiple scenes in which characters go off on a side mission just to sit around and do nothing like the scriptwriters couldn’t cope with more than one plot strand at a time, but I have to admit I was actually invested by this point.

Doctor Sleep – the infuriating thing is that this film is actually really good for the most part but it completely poops the bed at the end, because instead of ending THIS story, they have completely illogically stuck the ending of the novel The Shining in instead, which makes no sense for the character this film is about and completely ruins all of it. 

Godzilla: King Of The Monsters – I only saw the second half of this, and boy does it have little interest in its human characters, and how many times can you think Godzilla is dead only for him to get better again?

Harriet – “I’m gonna be free or die.” This is watchable, but like most biopics it’s very rushed; it also felt like they didn’t know when to end the story.

Jojo Rabbit – “F*** off, Hitler!” Slightly odd watch, successfully funny, sweet and sad at the right moments but for me the sad overwhelmed the rest of the story by the end; Sam Rockwell steals every scene as usual.

Judy – I really had no interest in the subject matter and didn’t manage to get invested in the story.

Knives Out – “Beafterfore the carved elephant.” Absolutely brilliant.

Last Christmas – sweet, heart-warming (though also sad) Xmas movie, if VERY on the nose.

Late Night – “It’s like you’re in witness protection and your secret identity is an elderly Indian woman.” More serious than I was expecting from the trailer, this is enjoyable but quite formulaic and I wouldn’t watch it again.

Little Monsters – this was quite funny but I quit after a quick glance at doesthedogdie.com – I hadn’t realised going in that this was set in a petting zoo or I wouldn’t have gone near it.

Little Women – “Don’t sit there and tell me that marriage isn’t an economic proposition, because it is. It may not be for you but it most certainly is for me.” The non-linear story-telling definitely makes the plots when they are older feel more important and earned, but also makes the now ‘flashback’ stuff feel kind of irrelevant; mostly I enjoyed it a lot, but then the ending really confused me and undermined how I felt about the rest of it.

Marriage Story – it works better when the story is balanced between the two instead of becoming one-sided, and it’s kind of hard to relate to because it is set inside the rich Hollywood/Broadway world.

Men In Black: International – “What is this? The sequel to The Notebook? I never saw it, but I assume it’s a lot of this type of nonsense.” This was a really fun film.

Missing Link – “There was a nun. We mugged her.” Funny and sweetly charming.

Pokémon Detective Pikachu - “Maybe she can tell us about the long-term psychological effects of being strapped to a baby seat... next to a bomb!” Fairly nothingy, like most action movies for kids; however if you happened to be a Pokémon fan, it must be a geek-spotting dream come true.

See You Yesterday – “Time travel. Great Scott.” Incredibly disappointing due to the lack of an ending and the characters behave in frustrating ways beforehand.

Shazam! – “Get him, Batman!”  The foster kid stuff is suitably heart-warming and the kid-is-a-superhero stuff is a lot of fun, so the film only falls down with the villain stuff, bizarrely opening the film with the villain’s backstory, so that you can’t help but identify with the poor kid, then replacing him with the most boring portrayal they would muster while adding in some gruesome and violent bits completely inappropriate for what is clearly a children’s film.

The Kid Who Would Be King – this is harmless fare, although it really doesn’t make any sense to send untrained, barely armed children to fight demon soldiers.

The LEGO Movie 2: The Second Part – “Ha, ha, ha, I don’t get it.” A good sequel. “Don’t touch me when I’m spaceshipping!” 

The Personal History of David Copperfield – enjoyable while I was watching it, though obviously very rushed as any Dickens adaptation would have to be, but I have almost entirely forgotten it since leaving the cinema; I didn’t particularly like the ‘being written’ directional gimmick (I have no idea how to describe what I mean).

Yesterday – kind of enjoyable but doesn’t focus at all on the terrifying and fascinating premise (that famous things are being erased from existence) and has an absolutely repulsive toxic relationship passing for romance that ruins the film.


2020

An American Pickle – “The scientist explains. His logic is good. It satisfies everyone.” Because this sets up that it relies on nonsense logic you can’t really complain about how absurd the plot can be, but nevertheless it got quite annoying at times.

Blithe Spirit – the really horrible and illogical ending overrides my memory of the rest of the film.

Dolittlean enjoyable family adventure, the editing is a bit weird and the humour varies greatly, but it’s never dull and at its heart it’s about being kind to animals, plus Robert Downey Jr is wonderful.

Emma – enjoyable adaptation but much nastier in tone than the original book.

Enola Holmes – enjoyable kids’ adventure, don’t know what their problem is with Mycroft though.

Onward – so utterly mediocre, the jokes are obvious, the characters dull, the plot irritating, the world-building lazy, and the ending unsatisfying.

Palm Springs – entertaining but I didn’t like the characters so I wasn’t particularly invested in what became of them.

Secret Society Of Second Born Royals – very generic tween adventure movie.

Sonic The Hedgehog – “I know you’re real!” “No, I’m not.” Generic kids’ action movie.

The Secret Garden – this brought nothing interesting to the story.


2021


The Mitchells Vs The Machines – “I found one.” “Me too.” “Yaaaay.” The story balances on the rift between a father and daughter and the audience’s desire for them to work it out, but since the father was 100% THE WORST, I mostly just found this annoying.



2 comments:

  1. The X-Men is one of those films that grows on you. When I first saw it, I was fairly unimpressed. I think the start in the concentration camp was a bad idea because it felt rushed, hollow and exploitative to use the Holocaust as a prologue to a comic book movie. That aside, the film is actually rather accomplished. Wolverine and Rogue get superb introductions (perhaps too good: by now, is anyone not tired of Wolverine movies?), the Doctor X / Magneto relationship uses just a few brush strokes to hint at great depth (which all the prequels now feel a need to fill in), and the cinematography is actually quite elegant and slick.

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    1. Did you see it when it was new? I remember it being a HUGE deal - maybe because most people I knew had grown up on the 90s X-Men cartoon, or maybe because we hadn't seen a large-scale take-it-seriously superhero movie before. The prequels (like all prequels) are filling in what never needed to be said, while both ruining it and getting it completely wrong. I presume they are therefore a parallel universe version of these characters. I like the Holocaust opening, but I get where you're coming from. I think if they did it NOW, I would feel the same (for example when they re-did it in the prequel) but I can still remember how effective it was seeing this for the first time (maybe because I was at an impressionable age) (also hence immediate identification with Rogue). It's an odd tone really - far more serious than what I am used to these days with silly Marvel heroes, but not gritty or dark like all the stuff that is trying to be anti-Marvel.

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