Felix Ferndown

Brilliant film; the tip-of-the-spear sci-fi film of the fifties. Nothing else came close until it was finally eclipsed by Kubrick's 2001 more than a decade later. The special effects still look good on afternoon television! So funny to see the all male crew of the space ship; not a woman anywhere in the film apart from the adorable Anne Francis who has to run around in a short skirt or swim naked (obviously non-revealing, because people's brains would have melted in the fifties if they'd seen a naked woman in a major film). Gene Rodenberry would eventually sort out gender and race and take loads of inspiration from this film for Star Trek, George Lucas for Star Wars, and everyone else for every other sci-fi series on TV. But if you want to know where it all came from but can't be bothered with Fritz Lang's Metropolis, this is the film to watch.

I read this on a long aeroplane flight and embarrassed myself by being one of those annoying people who laughs uncontrollably at an unshared joke amongst a crowd of sombre considerate people. Trying to keep the laughter inside just caused me to curl up and giggle insanely until the tears ran down my face. Drug culture - I don't approve. Non-payment of hotel bills - I also don't approve. Wrecking of rental cars - similarly bad. I imagine that if Thompson was genuinely anything like the character portrayed in his small book, I wouldn't have liked him. But I defy anyone to read this book without laughing their head off their shoulders.

The plot is unadulterated rubbish. The cast is wonderful. Great to see Angelina Jolie in one of her earlier films and a bunch of top-flight actors turning this ridiculous gorefest into a just-about-watchable piece of dumb crime drame. The story is horrifically gory and makes no sense whatsoever. SPOILER: The killer's elaborate preparations end with him turning up with a knife to kill the hero. What was the point of all the murders leading up to this? None whatever, other than to indulge in unnecessarily gruesome torture and gore for the viewer. Silly, sad and indulgent film-making of a stupid novel.

Some military killer robots are dropped into the Cambodian/Vietnamese jungle and kill a load of people. A few Americans are there and try to escape. Naturally there are some high-up military rogues involved. Mostly, everyone dies, but it ain't Hamlet. More like a short and violent cartoon. Dialogue is rubbish. Characters are two-dimensional. The baddies mostly get away. Best thing about this film are the robots, but they're nothing we haven't seen before.

Utterly dumb and confused. The beautiful Kate Beckinsale essentially playing some sort of superhero type, empowered by excess cortisol which gives her man-beating speed and strength and a massively violent response to any stressful situation. Practically nothing in this overlong, hopelessly unoriginal film feels credible. What is surprising is that a bunch of very well-known actors had anything to do with it; presumably they just took Amazon's buck and ran. Susan Sarandon appears for a few seconds right at the end, merely to lend her presence to the acting credits, Stanley Tucci's psychiatrist doctor points a gun at his violent client as some form of restraint/defence - this would never happen. His scenes are perfunctory and pointless. Bobby Cannavale adds another mild police detective to his long list of forgettable cop roles, and Jai Courtney phones in a cartoonish performance. If you want to see Kate Beckinsale in something interesting, watch Love and Friendship. It's a costume drama, so no actual fighting, but she is fabulous in it.

Starts off well but the second act quickly descends into a slow moving mess of illogical nonsense. I hope this won't ruin the story, but when the third act reveal occurs, the first question I asked myself was; where is this character sleeping, and why are they sleeping there? And why did it take them so long to intervene? The weakness of the script during the police interview is painful to watch and only stubbornness kept me watching.