Brent Keane

Make no mistake, this is not high art by any stretch of the imagination. The plot is bog-standard, and makes no effort to hide its points of reference. The direction and camerawork is shoddy at best, while the acting ranges from adequate to sub-par. Some of the VFX is pretty good for a film of this scale, but the accompanying sound design grates after a while. Really difficult to recommend watching this 'mockbuster', but on the flip side I didn't feel my time was wholly wasted. I really have to single out lead actress Jessica Chancellor; she carried the film easily (no small effort!), and it's clear the camera loves her. Here's hoping she gets a more substantial role in the future (or, at least, a better agent!).

Watching Allen:Romulus was akin to being subjected to a pastiche of better films, a veritable greatest hits sizzle reel of recycled plot beats and dialogue. And yes, bringing back that one character is distracting as hell. Very disappointing, but hey, the sound design was great!

I have lost many a late night to Doom64; more than any other entry in the Doom series, this made me a fan of the games. The foreboding atmosphere, the sound design, the color palette - all contribute to a singular gaming experience. The only real drawback is the finicky level design (too much puzzle solving for my tastes), and compared to modern FPS games the weapon load-out can seem underwhelming. But stick with the game past the initial levels and a challenging, rewarding game can be found at its core, beating in sinister time like Poe's eponymous tell-tale heart.

While I enjoyed Superman/Batman: Apocalypse in parts, the whole thing feels undercooked. First, the source material wasn’t that great to begin with (sure, it looked pretty, but if you thought about the plot too hard…); Jeph Loeb’s work on SUPERMAN/BATMAN was where his talent started to falter, and although we now know in hindsight why that was the case (namely the passing of his son Sam due to cancer), the fact that he went on to do ULTIMATUM and HULK over at Marvel speaks for itself. Yes, the characterization was sloppy, particularly where the female characters were concerned. Supergirl/Kara only seemed to have two default personality modes, 'perky’ (cf. that godawful shopping scene) and 'angsty’ (almost every other time she was on screen). Summer Glau didn’t bring a whole lot to her performance either, I’m sad to say. Wonder Woman, insultingly, was depicted as being a one-note warrior princess (uh, no). Harbinger was given only one scene where’s she shown as “OMG Kara’s BFF!”, only to be thrown under a bus for the sake of dramatic tension. Thankfully, once Barda entered the story the film picked up a bit, but I wish they’d done more with her (and her back-to-back battle with Diana against the Female Furies is the true highlight of the film). Also, Andre Braugher as Darkseid…I like Braugher as an actor. I used to watch Gideon’s Crossing just for his performance. His narration for Standing In The Shadows Of Motown is terrific, and adds a certain patina to what could’ve otherwise been a dry recitation of facts and trivia. He’s the only reason I’ve seen Duets twice (Paul Giamatti aside). Braugher, honestly, was wasted here; the lord of Apokolips is meant to be damned scary, and I got no sense of menace from Braugher’s Darkseid - at all, which is a true shame. Yeah, the story is a misfire, truth be told. There are a handful of scenes that make Apocalypse worth watching, though, and the animation overall is pretty good. If you're a diehard DC fan it's worth your time if you can get it cheap.

This slice of pitch-black noir from the brothers Coen is not as instant as Fargo or as funny as The Big Lebowski, but The Man Who Wasn't There has a surreptitious charm all its own. The star-making turn by Scarlett Johansson is a wonder to behold, as well. Highly worth your time if you're wanting something darker and more substantial in your movie watching.

Admittedly, I never was a huge fan of the the original TRON. I’d seen it once or twice on the teev on a Sunday afternoon, and found it diverting, but still a Disney film (which, throughout my youth, was a synonym for ‘bland and unchallenging’). Nostalgia for a film that had come out when I was all of five years old didn’t enter into the equation. If anything, TRON had become pop-cultural shorthand for 'quaint & outmoded’ in the intervening years (as evidenced by the, uh, phenomenon of Tron Guy). Between 1982 and 2010, though, the realm in which Tron and his fellow programs inhabited had, by and large, become a fact of life. (The fact you’re reading this right now is testament to that.) Cyberspace is a reality, and one we tend to take for granted; indeed, when one loses their connection to the internet due to technical failure or force majure, it can be akin to losing a much-valued sense. Given that, what would a film like TRON: LEGACY have to offer in the 21st Century, where the likes of Steve Jobs and Bill Gates are lauded and vilified in equal measure? Quite a lot, as it turns out. The film’s themes are obvious, admittedly: the nature of father-son relationships; the eternal struggle of chaos vs order; the evils of big business. However, there’s one low-key thematic strand that’s played quite subtly here, stemming from the fraught realtionship between Flynn and Sam, the nominal hero of the film. In LEGACY, Bridges plays Flynn as a zen Obi-Wan Lebowski - at first, cowed into hiding on the fringes of the Grid by the efficency of the program he made into his own image, CLU, he slowly reasserts his power over his life and, by extension, his life’s work. In effect, changing the game to suit him, his errant son Sam (Garrett Hedlund, who makes of the best of his “Hero’s Journey” template writ large), and sentient program Quorra (Olivia Wilde). The weathered, more experienced Flynn that Bridges portrays contrasts sharply with his younger iteration from the earlier film, and even more so with his doppelganger CLU; indeed, much of the dramatic tension in the film (such as it is) derives from the dichotomy between Flynn the 'flawed creator’ and CLU, continously striving for perfection at all costs. For all the flash-and-sizzle - the lightcycle races and disc battles (as terrific as they are) - the heart of the film (for me) is the gradual self-actualization that the Flynns (father and son alike) undertake to realize their potential, and that of the Grid/Encom. They have to exceed the parameters of their programming; as highlighted in the previous film, Users are - in their own way - programs too. As a piece of entertainment, the film is enormous fun, if over-familiar at points, with nods both obvious and subtle to films that have cast a long shadow before and since the original TRON. That said, it’s a 'ride’ film par excellence, and it must be pointed out that the Daft Punk soundtrack is fantastic. I found it to be a genuinely thrilling experience that had me whooping and hollering (in my own way). Thoroughly recommended.

I became a fast fan of Carey Mulligan after her one-shot appearance in ‘Blink’ (i.e. the one Doctor Who episode everyone likes), and she’s reunited with her Pride & Prejudice co-star Rosamund Pike (who I’ve been a fan of since Doom) in this 60’s-era bildungsroman. From the opening bars of “On The Rebound” I was engrossed, and thankfully the film refuses to take the easy way as far as the plot goes. Peter Saarsgard (as the older man for whom Mulligan’s schoolgirl falls for) and Alfred Molina (as her father) are excellent, Emma Thompson plays against type wonderfully, and Dominic Cooper is a suitably handsome rogue.

Star Trek Into Darkness is a lazy, uninspired self-referential rehash of older Trek stories given a post-9/11 dramatic undercurrent. There are occasional moments that spark or awe, but all the fun, wit & charm of the 2009 reboot has been otherwise sucked out. A film experience to endure, rather than enjoy (and boy, does it drag in the last 45 minutes or so). If you like any of the actors involved (and no doubt fans of Benedict Cumberbatch will get ther money’s worth), it works on that level, but all the lens flare J.J. Abrams could muster can’t hide the fact that - for the most part - it’s a disappointingly joyless & predictable slog.