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dir: Bryan Singer
How is this supposed to help with my crippling back pain?
Nerds. Does God love them? Or hate them? Are they the saviours of this world, or are they a plague upon the rest of humanity? Are they the result of unpopular childhoods, or a genetic mutation unto themselves, blessed with incredible memories for the most trivial of data and a pathological ability to hyperfocus on the most worrying of details?

At the very least, nerds and geeks in their pupal stage (where they are invisible and mostly benign) or adult stage (where they can be lethal: look at Micro$oft Overlord Darth Bill Gates, David Letterman and Henry Rollins) are friends to capitalism. Their pool of disposable income is vast and desirable, vast because we are talking about people that will spend their last hundred bucks on a DVD boxset of The Prisoner or a Boba Fett lunch box signed by Jeremy Bulloch instead of paying the rent. They have what is known in cognitive psychology circles as "low impulse control" and a yen for collecting. They want this geeky thing, they must have this geeky thing; no amount of arguing or sex can dissuade them.

So, it makes you wonder; if the ranks of the geeky are made up of the socially inept, the unpopular and the disenfranchised, why is it that there are so many films, books and magical bits of merchandise aimed at them, trying to fulfill their nerdy needs? If they truly are a section of society that is neglected and despised, then why does everything seem to be aimed at them? Truly, they must be the sustainers of markets, they make so many things possible. Without them the cinemas would be filled exclusively with films starring Kate Hudson, Jennifer Lopez and Freddie Prinze Michelle Gellar Jnr.

And the rest of you normals should thank us for it.

Honestly, for nerds this is a Golden Era. Spider-Man last year, Hulk this year, three Lord of the Rings films released over three years, two Matrix sequels in the one year, multiple adaptations of comic book licensed filth (Blade II, Daredevil, this film), a third Terminator film, Gulf War II etc. Who says that Hollywood doesn't love you? Excluding George Lucas of course, who whilst being a very powerful and technically proficient (and let's not forget immensely wealthy) nerd hates all of you. Hates you all with a passion that would melt the polar icecaps if we gave him half a chance.

dir: Richard Curtis
Actually, I hate this fucking film with the burning passion of a thousand dying suns
This is a singular work of staggering banality. Now, that’s an achievement and a half. From the makers of such romantic classics as Four Weddings and a Funeral and Notting Hill to make a film that eclipses those in terms of superficiality and mawkish sentimentality takes a phenomenal amount of skill, money and enough ham to cover the Tower of London three times over in order to achieve their goals. And goddamn them, they get there in the end.

I hate to say it, but this 2 hour commercial for whatever the hell it is that director Richard Curtis is ineptly selling made me want to destroy Christmas forever. If anything, despite the clear intention set out in the movie’s title to be a concentrated explosion of goodwill and love towards all men and women, this film, I believe, has decreased the amount of love that was previously available in the world. If you are a person for whom there is no more love, for whatever you thought was the reason you could get no love in your life, this crappy flick is responsible.

dir: Gaspar Noe
Please don't walk through there, please go back.
The film's tagline, one of the first lines of dialogue and the film's final epigram is 'Le temps détruit tout', or 'time destroys everything'. Well, even after watching the film in its entirety, I don't agree. In enduring this film, I think there is greater accuracy in saying that it is not 'everything' that gets destroyed, it is we the audience. And it is not 'time' per se that does the damage, it's this film and its sadistic director, Gaspar Noe.

dir: Andrew Jarecki
Playing happy families
And I thought I came from a fucked up family…

What is true in life is rarely shown with such clarity in films: sometimes in the pursuit of ‘truth’, the more information we are given, the more sides we try to understand regarding a conflict, the more elusive that ‘truth’ becomes. No example is as representative of that essential conundrum as this film by Andrew Jarecki, who has managed to make a compelling and disturbing documentary on his maiden voyage.
I know, using the words “compelling and disturbing” about documentaries is about as usually appropriate as saying “intelligent and life affirming” about a film with Adam Sandler or Melanie Griffith in it, but at least in this case it is appropriate, or at least accurate as far as I’m concerned.

Cutting through the meat of the story to its bare bones: a father and son are accused of abusing some kids in a quiet, bourgeois suburb called Great Neck, in New York. There is much conjecture as to whether the people concerned were guilty of the horrific array of crimes they were alleged to have committed. This film gives us pause, as viewers, forcing us to question that which we’re shown on a continual basis. At least, for those of us who find the story and the way in which it is told interesting. Someone bored by it would probably find it excruciatingly dull, but that certainly doesn’t apply to yours truly.

dir: Patty Jenkins
She read a bad review
This isn’t a story about the redemptive power of love. It isn’t a story where everything will work out all right in the end. It is, in essence, a sad love story all the same.

It would seem to contradict the advertising and many of the reviews already written about the film. Its two main selling points were the fact that Charlize Theron won the Academy award for Best Actress for 2003 in the role, oh, and she happens to play a serial killer. And seeing as it is based on the life and times of Aileen Wuornos, convicted and recently executed killer, you’d think the focus would be more on the killings than any other elements. At its heart, however, it’s about a horribly damaged woman and her desperate attempts at finding some happiness in a world that had guaranteed her thus far a life of ceaseless misery.

For all those people that claim the film excuses her actions and seems to justify them when it attempts to humanise the character that Theron embodies, I have to say, they’re trying really hard to be deliberate fuckwits. I don’t mean people who didn’t like the film itself. I’m never going to criticise a person for not holding the same opinion about a film as myself, that’s just idiotic because film, like everything else in existence, is so subjective. I mean those people that have tut tutted and clucked their tongues because they claim the film is an exercise in apologetics giving justifications and excuses for a person that doesn’t deserve them. I feel like asking them how they manage to read or write anything when their blinkers are strapped on so goddamn tight around their heads. Doesn’t it cut off the circulation?

By humanising her, by making her worthy of our pity it does not imply that we should absolve her for her crimes or her sins. I have nothing to forgive her for, and she certainly doesn’t need my absolution. Perhaps all she is asking for is my understanding, at least a moment’s consideration. That isn’t beyond me, and it certainly isn’t beyond the filmmakers and the performers involved in terms of evoking that remarkably well on the screen. But let’s not forget the apparent crucial facts: she killed seven men, one at least the film clearly imputes was in self-defence, but all the others were what we call “innocent”. We’re under no illusions about her actions, even if she is. We are privy to her choices, her decisions, and we see her for what she is. That doesn’t mean we approve of what she’s does. In fact whilst watching it, despite knowing what I knew about the story, I still desperately hoped at certain points that she wouldn’t do what was clearly inevitable. To watch a person do the unthinkable again and again, and to be okay with it, it’s shocking to any reasonable audience member, which is also why it’s so compelling.

dir: Prachya Pinkaew
Can't act. Can fight.
The main point that’s supposed to be in Ong Bak’s favour is that it’s a brawling action film which rejects the use of CGI and the wire-work that has become (apparently) sickening in its ubiquity. In other words, the fights are supposed to be more grounded and realistic; none of this airy-fairy floating on bamboo crap for our beef jerky munching friends.

When you think about it, on its own it isn’t really that much of a selling point. Are there lots of people hearing about or seeing the ads to flicks that are coming out, who see the edited highlights of people perched atop a mountain top or balancing on top of a lake having-at one another with swords, icicles and passing school buses, see the films and then say ‘Wait one gosh-darned moment: this prancing Asian malarkey ain’t my cup of Bonox?’

Surely if there’s a bunch of people that hate that style of genre filmmaking there’s also at least two other groups of people: a) the ones that are the market for these fantastical delights who are grateful and appreciative and b) people who don’t really go in for these kinds of films, and choose as consumers to exercise their George W Bush-given right to NOT purchase a ticket. It’s basic economics, by my reckoning. Niche marketing, even.

That being said, a flick like Ong Bak, whilst a throw-back to an earlier era of trashy cinema, is somewhat refreshing. The story has clichés so, um cliché that you wonder how people can still use them and face themselves in the mirror each morning.

dir: Takeshi Kitano
Oh Takeshi, is there nothing you can't do
Do you remember the 80s? More importantly, before you get all
nostalgic tripping down memory lane remembering ra-ra skirts and dumb
haircuts that seem to be making a comeback, do you recall that classic
of the cinema called Blind Fury? It starred one of the undisputed
kings of the 80s; the multi-talented, extraordinary auteur Rutger
Hauer. He brilliantly played the part of a blind guy who could fuck
shit up old school with a sword. No-one could stand against him, but
then he would still confuse alligators with dogs due to his being
differently visually-abled. Blinded in 'Nam, if I'm not mistaken,
fighting for Truth, Justice and the Iraqi Way.

He didn't let his blindness mess up his life. He still got to be a
bad-ass, make stupid jokes and get laid. In fact he gets to lead a
better life than most of us schmucks. It's enough to make you want to
blind yourself in a rage just so that you too can sample the sublime
delights of what being blind must truly be like.

If you remember it, then you'd see what a shameless rip-off of Blind
Fury and Rutger Hauer this here Takeshi film is. It's an outrage,
without question. Despite not being dead I'm sure than Rutger should
be spinning in his grave. Perhaps he needs to be killed and put in a
grave just so he can spin in it. Perhaps that's going a bit far.

Kitano, who wrote, directed, starred and probably did the catering for
this film as well, even dyes his hair blonde so he can match the
rugged good looks of Rutger Hauer in that earlier film. It's both
shameful and shameless. And whilst I wonder how being full of shame
and being totally without shame are equivalent condemnations in the
same context, you'd think that Takeshi could come up with something of
his own.

dir: Clint Eastwood
Two guys, hanging out, contemplating murder
Such a film growing up in the shadow of Mystic Pizza necessarily must
have a hard furrow to plow.

Even in paying for my ticket at the cinema I inadvertently asked for a
ticket to Mystic Pizza. It's a film and a title hard to eradicate from
one's mind. Who can forget the horse toothed caterpillar eye-browed
Julia Roberts playing the town slut? Lili Taylor playing the same
character she's played in practically every film she's ever been in?
Vincent D'Onofrio not playing a psychopath for once? There's a lot to
recommend it. You could only hope and pray that Mystic River, clearly
trying to capitalise on its successful forbearer with the similarity
of its title, can match its artistic and commercial success.

dir: Ed Zwick
Not. Fucking. Likely.
Well, well, well, a film with Tom Cruise in it is a joy to review, surely. The review practically writes itself: "Flashes teeth a few dozen times, flicks his hair around, acts all good an' noble, show's over, nothing to see here".

Well, not quite. You see, in this film, Tom Cruise has a beard.

That's got to be a whole other level of acting right there. I can't remember another film where he's sported a real beard (which is why Born on the Forth of July doesn't count, that beard was as fake as a
pornstar's breasts). You can see his commitment to such a role by his decision to grow some facial hair. In fact, this film is a delight for people interested in facial hair. Of course it's not about facial hair explicitly, but, you know, subtext and all that.

What this film does have is wonderful locations, a formulaic script, and great big dollops of man-love. Not the sweaty, hairy, prison-inspired, Queer as Folk kind, but the brotherly "I can cry because you're dying and no-one's going to think I'm gay" kind of love. It's the kind of man-love that makes men consistently call The Shawshank Redemption one of their favourite films of all time. Here in Australia, whenever footballers are interviewed and asked what their favourite film is, 9 times out of 10 it's the bloody Shawshank Redemption. Men. Big Manly Men. Having relationships with other men untainted by the presence or existence of women. Rousing stuff.

Cruise gives what is for him something of a subdued performance for most of the film's duration. There aren't many sequences where he screams at the top of his lungs. He does have one of those scenes where he makes his face go all red and makes the veins stick out in his forehead, he loves doing that. But all in all he does okay in the film by not doing too much. For a man tortured by his conscience, though we hear about it many times, at least we don't have to watch him overact about it ad infinitum.

dir: Paul Hunter
Chow may be a god, but even he cannot save this heap of shit. Even when glowing blue.
People have different definitions of what a B movie is. People have different definitions of what a decent Friday night is as well, but that's another story. I've always known what a B movie is, but I had difficulty articulating it clearly. The IMDB defines the B Movie thusly:

"a low-budget, second tier movie, frequently the 2nd movie in a double-feature billing. B-films were cheaper for studios because they did not involve the most highly paid actors or costly sets, and were popular with theatre owners because they were less expensive to bring into their theatres while still able to draw revenue"

But the phrase 'B movie' has altogether different connotations for me as well. B movies can be cool, there's the odd B movie cult classic out there, but generally I like to think of generic B movies as being, as we used to say at the orphanage in between coughing up blood from consumption and fighting over rat meat, "shitehouse". As most films are mediocre at best, and downright awful at worst, you have to wonder how it's possible to have an entire other stratum of film which is worse than the vast majority of product that's out there simply by budget and definition.

Surely budget isn't the only decider. There must be some other dark arts at work. Personally, I think that there are certain actors and stories that can, regardless of and often in spite of the budget, be held up as the paragon, the quintessence, the nadir of B movies.

Bulletproof Monk is a stupid film with a laughable plot, bad acting, an overdose of cliche and a lack of innovation or original thought so profound that you'll think that you've been transported back in time
to the 80s. Remember the days of The Last Dragon, Double Dragon, anything with Dragon or Ninja in the title or with bad actors and worse fighting? This film remembers the love we have for those days, and brings it all back up in a manner reminiscent of watching a cat weakly throwing up its cookies all over your favourite rug. Which, in the words of The Dude from The Big Lebowski "Really tied the room together, man."