Rogue One: A Star Wars Story - SPOILERS

I'm putting this here so you don't find it by mistake. A quick look at the stats for this little known page shows that there have been precisely no views today, nor any since December 13 when one person somehow stumbled across it. No doubt they were looking for something relating to real, actual fire hazards.

The reason for the secrecy and the inevitably lower readership which will ensue is that most people will not yet have seen Rogue One: A Star Wars Story just yet. It was only released four days ago. I was supposed to be waiting until tonight myself but at some point during the last few days I remember waking up sweating having remembered that it is the Merseyside derby tonight (Monday). All of which just meant that I could bring my viewing forward a day to Sunday. I didn't fancy Bournemouth v Southampton much anyway. For now though, please do not continue to read this if you have not seen Rogue One: A Star Wars Story and still intend to.

Set between episodes III and IV of the saga (that's Revenge Of the Sith and Star Wars A New Hope for those confused by the chronology) Rogue One tells the story of how the rebel alliance brazenly lifted the Empire's plans for the Death Star which was destroyed by a Force-assisted Luke Skywalker in episode IV. I don't think that is a spoiler. If you haven't seen Star Wars: A New Hope by now you are probably not all that inclined to. It has been 39 years after all. If you haven't seen it then Rogue One: A Star Wars Story will make very little sense to you. It seems to exist solely to explain how the rebels arrived at a position where they were able to attack and destroy the Death Star. But in that sense it adds something to the saga, unlike the Force Awakens which just blatantly steals from earlier episodes and recycles the same ideas.

The chief protagonists here is Jyn Erso, mostly played by Felicity Jones but we initially see her as a small child (Beau Gadsdon) escaping from white-suited Imperial Bastard Orson Krennic (Ben Mendelsohn). He has come looking for Jyn's father Galen (Mads Mikkelson) who he needs to recapture so that he can force (no pun intended) him to continue his work on a project that turns out to be the Death Star. Galen is reluctant to go with Krennic and his menacing band of black-clad stormtroopers but once his wife is killed and Jyn is safely out of sight he surrenders. Jyn's been given instructions for exactly this eventuality, which involve hiding in a dark hole until she is rescued by Saw Gerrera (Forrest Whittaker). The latter is desperately under-used which is one of the few things about this film that I didn't like. If you are going to hire such a big name actor then at least have him involved a little longer. If not, you would be better off not bothering with a big name and just casting someone that nobody knows. It is cheaper, you know? And anyway one of the reasons Star Wars was so easy to get carried away with is that the cast were unknowns when the first film was released all those years ago. Since then the saga has become a little too celebrity-heavy, though Whittaker does a more than passable job in the role of Gerrera who we are told raises Jyn before losing touch with her. We never see any of this which significantly weakens any sense we might get of a strong bond between the two when their paths cross again later.

The next time we see Jyn after her rescue by Gerrerra she has morphed into Jones. We find out that we have jumped 15 years to a time when she is scavenging and surviving on her instincts (echoes of Rey in episode 7 perhaps?) and has little time for the rebel alliance. You'll remember them? All X-Wing fighters and frog-faced admirals. Yet when news breaks that her father is still alive her ears prick up. Via that timeless Star Wars staple the holographic message she learns that yes he has been working for the Empire to build the still unfinished Death Star but also that he has deliberately placed a small flaw in the system which, he tells her, could see the weapon destroyed if she can convince the rebels to launch a mission to steal the plans. The same plans that Darth Vader is looking for at the beginning of episode IV. See, it all fits.

But persuading the rebels proves difficult. They say Galen is right with the Empire and is only trying to lure rebel forces into an aerial battle they cannot win. All of which forces Jyn to take on the mission with the help of just a few friends, all totally new characters to the Star Wars universe. As well as Cassian Andor (Diego Luna), there is defected Imperial pilot Bodhi Rook (Riz Ahmed), smart-arsed droid and 3PO for the new generation K-2SO (Alan Tudyk), Force-summoning martial arts whizz Chirrut Imwe (Donnie Yen) and some other random they pick up along the way called Baze Malbus (Wen Jiang). With the help of the finally convinced remainder of the rebel alliance they complete the mission (which we know they must because remember Vader is looking for the stolen plans in episode IV) but at a particularly awful cost. Ever wondered why there is no mention of Jyn And The Gang in any of the original Star Wars films set after Rogue One? You work it out....Seemed a bit draconian for me with a high risk of upsetting any children watching, but narratively it was the only way to go.

There has been some controversy about the use of CGI to resurrect a classic and frankly essential Star Wars character played by an actor who has now left this world. The argument is that the audience is quite capable of accepting a new actor in any given role and that it is not necessary, and may not even be all that ethical, to use a CGI version of a dearly departed human being. But the family must have provided consent and may even take a deal of pride in the results. What is not in dispute is that the hardcore Star Wars fan will be hugely delighted at the reveal and to use a new actor would have denied them that pleasure.

Let's be clear we are not talking about Darth Vader here. The much beloved Lord Of Sith has a limited role, appearing in only two scenes, but he doesn't waste his screen time and is not just a CGI image. This is particularly true of his second and final scene near to the film's denouement, the first and only time that we see any lightsaber action in Rogue One. You wouldn't call it a duel as it is far too one-sided for that, but it looks good all the same. The disenfranchised David Prowse is not inside the suit. Nor should he be at 81 years old although if they had wanted to be really clever and authentic about it they could have thrown a huge amount of money at Hayden Christensen to do it. Instead both Daniel Naprous and Spencer Wilding take over the role, with James Earl Jones returning to voice cinema's greatest ever baddie.

There has been some grumbling about whether we needed Rogue One at all. It is fair to say that it exists only to close the plot hole from episode IV, namely how and why did the Death Star get to have what seems like a rather careless flaw that could be exploited later on by the rebels? Maybe you take the view that the why in episode IV doesn't bother you and that we don't need to know. But while that is a valid argument Rogue One is no less fun or interesting for all of that. Certainly an improvement on the wretched homage to the original trilogy that was The Force Awakens. Rogue One might very well be the best Star Wars film outside of that original trilogy.

Creed

Creed is an overly sentimental, overblown and often cringe-inducing fiasco which is not to be taken seriously under any circumstances. But it's no less enjoyable than many of the other memorably demented Rocky sequels for all that.

Acutely aware that nobody is having Rocky VII as a concept, Sylvester Stallone and the co-producing Winkler-Chartoff axis have rather cleverly made Rocky VII and called it Creed. That's because it follows the fortunes of the spectacularly talented and self-taught Adonis 'Donny' Johnson, the illegitimate son of former Rocky rival turned mentor Apollo Creed. In a barely believable and cliched fashion, Johnson's rags-to-riches-to-rags journey sees him hook up with legendary former champ Rocky Balboa and pursue his hobby of knocking people out. He's his father's son alright.

Once Michael B Jordan's Donny leaves the luxury of Apollo's old mansion the tale begins it's relentless homage to the Rockys of the past. Rocky, like his own trainer Mickey, is a reluctant trainer for Donny but agrees to it eventually in a stunning display of what-the-heckery. He's sold on Donny's parentage, although any of the facts that Donny throws at him to prove his origins could have been gleaned by spending a couple of hours watching Rocky III. By this time he's already been fobbed off by the son of Apollo's former trainer in LA and fled to Philadelphia, and his and Rocky's visit to that city's art museum was for me, despite the many Liverpool locations featured (St George's Hall, Goodison Park, The Liver Buildings and the Radio City Tower to name a few) the one exciting 'I've been there' moment.

We'll get on to where Liverpool fits in later but for now Donny's only boxing experience to date are the 15 legally dubious contests he fought out in Mexico. The name of his trainer (and not his father because he's not telling anyone about that just yet, he wants to make his own legacy) is enough to get him a match with the local pro at Mickey's old gym. He's 17-0 in his pro career and if you were taking this shit seriously you might question the choice of opponent for Donny's first official pro fight. But you're not so you accept it, just as you accept it's unlikely outcome.

First step on the road to stardom completed, Donny's life is complicated slightly by his relationship with hard of hearing bar room singer Bianca (Tessa Thompson). She's no Adrian but she's passable love interest fare and a reasonable device for helping us find out more about what Donny's really made of. Which is pretty stern stuff as it turns out, although Jordan's mannerisms fail to invoke the spirit of Apollo for me. He lacks his wit also. When Apollo boasted that he'd retired more men than social security some time in the late 70's or early 80's the writers were deliberately channelling his inner Ali. Donny's too serious for that. He's confident but focused. He's not so far ahead of the competition that he can laugh his way to victory like his father could. And the entertainment value drops accordingly to a degree.

And so to Liverpool. If Donny's first pro fight was a stretch to believe, his second is the kind of match only made in Rocky Heaven. Needing a financial boost after some gun-related tomfoolery in Toxteth (no, really) light heavyweight champ Ricky Conlon gets wind of Donny's heritage and is persuaded by his mockney cardboard cut out manager Tommy that it could be a nice little earner. Just one condition for a shot at the title. He has to use the Creed name. Cue more reluctance and nore what-the-heckery and the fight is on.

Now remember those great Rocky foes of old, including Apollo? Clubber Lang? Ivan Drago? They weren't the most rounded of characters but the use of an actual actor did offer a certain something. Conlon is played by Liverpool light heavyweight Tony 'Bomber' Bellew and consequently the character development is kept to an absolute minimum. Clearly the wooden attempts at thespianism were too weak even for a Rocky film, so Conlon is limited to press conference insults, in-fight trash talking and of course physical violence.

The final fight scene is a horrid mangle of styles. The early rounds are all gritty close-ups until with the fight nearing its conclusion we go back to old school Rocky wide shots in which every punch thrown is a preposterous haymaker. In another nod to the franchise there's always someone who can't be at the fight watching at home on television. That used to be Adrian but in her absence Apollo's wife, who had taken Donny in at a young age but lost him when she forbid him to box, will suffice. Without giving the end away the climax is dying on its arse before it is boldly rescued by the one thing the film has lacked to this point and is the only sure fire way to give it a boost. The Rocky theme. This is now officially Rocky VII, whatever they want to call it.

This being Stallone you might expect his unwillingness to let Rocky go spawn more Creed sequels. That is still possible but the way that Creed explores Rocky's mortality suggests that Sly might just be seeing the end of his most famous incarnation sliding in to view. Rocky VIII to be the last, last, last hurrah anyone?

Joy (spoilers)

Joy is anything but joyful for the most part. Through the narration of her grandmother (Diane Ladd) it tells the almost relentlessly despair-ridden tale of Joy Mangano, divorced mother of two who clearly overcame some adversity (but not as much as the film suggests, surely?) to become one of America's most successful capitalist bastards. I mean entrepreuners.

She did this by inventing a self-rinsing mop with a cotton head that can be cleaned and re-used. Which mundanity is probably the reason why the storytellers decided to have so much go against Joy and to make so many of the people close to her such outstanding piss-hats. A divorced mother of two, Jennifer Lawrence's Joy pays the mortgage in a home which accomodates not only her and her children but also her dad played by Robert De Niro, her mum (Virginia Madsen) and her ex-husband Tony (Edgar Ramiez). Her dad has already ruined her wedding day some years previously and goes on to bring preposterous greed-loving Trudy (Isabella Rosselini) into the house after meeting her on a dating website for widows and widowers. He's not even a widower but he has split from Joy's mother, who spends an unrealistic amount of time in her bedroom watching the same monstrously bad soap opera. Before Trudy, Joy's dad Rudy (I know...) shares the basement with Tony, with whom he gets along with about as well as Teddy Sheringham got on with Andy Cole. Half-sister Peggy (Elizabeth Rohm) pops up less frequently, but is no less contemptible.

Joy's life is perfectly awful, so it's understandable that she tries to find a way out through her invention. She was Valedictorian, which is American for the brightest pupil in her high school, and she puts those brain cells to good use designing her invention with her daughter's crayons. Which is really where the film starts to get bogged down in the legalities of patents and fraud and what-not. Despite attempts to make it dramatic it is hard to get past the fact that it's just a mop. Yes the stakes are high for Joy and even for the rhyming Rudy and Trudy as the triumphs and disasters come at them thick and fast, but it's still just a bloody mop. Perhaps Tony, a wannabe singer from Venezuela who to his credit is a much better friend to Joy than he was a husband, is the one who realises this first as his role is significantly and bafflingly reduced in the second half of the film.

The strength of Joy is in its performances. Lawrence is this writer's definition of watchable but despite that bias I don't think many would argue that she's not the best actress in film at the moment. She even makes you care about Joy, which is going some. It's just a mop, remember. Bradley Cooper delivers a brief but diverting turn as a high powered QVC executive, but despite their best efforts the trio of Lawrence, Bradley and De Niro can't get near the heights of their work in the cinematic gem that is Silver Linings Playbook. I fell asleep during American Hustle which also featured all three, but it was my love of Silver Linings Playbook that persuaded me that Joy might be another pleasant surprise.

It was not, but remained watchable if only for another stellar performance from Lawrence.

Star Wars - The Force Awakens - SPOILERS

If you haven’t seen Star Wars Episode VII The Force Awakens yet then please leave now. Assuming that you haven’t seen it and you still intend to, that is. What follows is positively spoilertastic, and I don’t want your ruined Christmases on my conscience. If you haven’t seen it and don’t want to then feel free to stay, though it is unlikely that you will make it through this paragraph without nodding off if you are going to be that much of a philistine about it.

Still with me? Then we’ll crack on. We’ll start on the bombshell that is the news that I am that one, the only person in a sea of galaxies far, far away who was not overly impressed by The Force Awakens. As someone said recently, the Force could have done with five more minutes. Everything I had read beforehand, and most of what I have read since, has seen nothing but praise heaped upon the seventh instalment of the Star Wars saga so what could I, a self-confessed Star Wars devotee, possibly have to complain about?

Basically, The Force Awakens is a remake or rather an amalgamation of previous episodes, in particular IV and V, A New Hope and The Empire Strikes Back. The plot contains scarcely anything in the way of original thought to the point where it insults your intelligence. Set some thirty or so years after Return Of The Jedi (which is handy because it is some thirty or so years since Return Of The Jedi), The Force Awakens finds us in a universe controlled by fear by the First Order, who let’s be clear are not the Empire. Well they are a bit like the Empire, but not the Empire. The Stormtroopers have changed anyway. Forget everything those miserable prequels told you about clones with Kiwi accents, Stormtroopers in this day and age are snatched from their families at birth and brought up to kill anyone who finds First Order rule disagreeable.

One such unfortunate is the man who soon comes to be known as Finn (John Boyega), whose insider knowledge will come in very handy once he’s freed imprisoned pilot Po Dameron (Oscar Isaac) from the clutches of Darth Vader tribute act Kylo Ren. Ren is played admittedly with a nice mixture of menace and vulnerability by Adam Driver. So enamoured is Ren with the redeemed Dark Lord that he insists on wearing a mask that he has no obvious need for, and on impersonating James Earl Jones’ vocal talents. Amusingly he is prone to temper tantrums that Vader would have found wholly undignified, though not quite as undignified as the flagrant recycling of a classic Star Wars plot twist with which Ren's origins are established. At this point Ren lost some if not all credibility for me, and it was all I could do not to leap up in the cinema and shout ‘noooooooooooooooooo!!!!!!!!!!!!!!’ as Star Wars characters are wont to do. Quite why Ren wants to use the dark side to emulate a man who last we heard had been dragged back into the light is not yet explained. Maybe in Episode VIII....Ren also has to battle Domnhall Gleeson's shouty General Hux for the attentions of the supreme leader and suspiciously Palpatinian Snoke, a dynamic which I found strangely odd. Always two there are, Yoda once told me, a master and an apprentice. Here there appears to be three, and it is not clear what Hux is for other than to shout, shout and shout again in a manner which deliberately evokes images of Hitler and his friends.

At that point I was already struggling with my own dark side as I decided whether or not to allow the film’s other significant plot set-up to stand, or whether to just get up and leave. But this is Star Wars and so I had to stay. No matter how much we Star Wars fans are suffering through another Star Wars foul-up, we’re staying and we’re probably coming back just to make sure that the whole affair is as much of a travesty as we think it is. I’m planning a second viewing as I write. Back to the plot, there’s a cute comedy droid beeping around on a sandy planet, annoying people. But he has important information which only he can access. Now where have we seen this before? But before you can say ‘help me Obi-Wan Kenobi, you’re my only hope’ it is revealed that the droid, BB-8, has a map to the whereabouts of Luke Skywalker who is still, after all these years, the last remaining Jedi Knight. Apparently he had been training some others, but somewhere along the line it had all gone At-At’s up so he just got off, like an inter-galactic Reggie Perrin. Mark Hamill’s contribution to The Force Awakens is significant in terms of where the story might be heading, but in terms of actual time and effort it only just outweighs my own.

BB-8 is not just there for comedy and the re-telling of old tales, mind. He’s used quite well as a comic device also, and to help introduce the film’s female action hero. Rey (Daisy Ridley) is just a mere scavenger on a planet called Jakku when BB-8 insists on following her around and well…….who can resist a cute comedy droid that knows where Luke Skywalker is? This brings Rey together with Finn (remember him?) and in turn that leads to the re-introduction to the Star Wars universe of Harrison Ford, Peter Mayhew and Carrie Fisher, reprising their original trilogy roles as Han Solo, Chewbacca and Princess (now General) Leia Organa respectively. Ford and Mayhew provide the film’s best comedy moments and I will concede the view of most others that their double act outshines any of the clunkingly awful attempts at humour in the prequels. We’re back in original trilogy territory here and refreshingly it feels like a continuation rather than a re-hashing. Excellent performances from Boyega and Ridley add to the chemistry between the whole group. But alas it does not last as the need to move the plot along takes over, and the inability to come up with a new idea paralyses the whole project.

Which brings us to the spew-chuckingly dismal denouement. The First Order may not be the Empire, but they have a very similar view of how to rule a universe and eliminate a rebellion. What you do is you build a huge space station which has the power to destroy whole planets. But crucially what you must also do is neglect to attend to one small flaw in the system which will allow a fleet of X-Wing pilots to swoop in and shoot the shit out of the weak-spot. Of course, you will need to lower the deflector shields on the thing before you can send in the pilots. All that is missing are the fucking Ewoks! The X-Wingers are led of course by the returning Po. He had been feared dead after crash-landing a stolen First Order spacecraft from which Finn escaped (you can’t call it Imperial, I wouldn’t have thought) but here he is rocking up for the glory, a Han Solo for a new generation.

If the original trilogy had never been made then The Force Awakens would have been a highly convincing, thrilling ride, beautifully setting up its inevitable sequels where the destinies of Rey, Finn and the others might slowly unfold. But the awful truth is that we have been here before, twice in some instances. If this is going to convince people that this is how you go about continuing the Star Wars saga, then we could be using the same plot devices for generations, to the point where the great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great grandson of a Sith Lord wakes up one morning feeling a little bit like I used to on a Tuesday when I was unemployed and all of a sudden you have a synopsis for Episode XXVIII.

Maybe it will be better second (or third, or fourth, or fifth) time around.......

Bridge Of Spies (spoilers)

I've been to Berlin. I didn't like it very much. If you were of a mind to do so you can read about it in this column's big sister, Memoirs Of A Fire Hazard. I mention it here because I was reminded of it by Bridge Of Spies, a new Tom Hanks film that is part courtroom drama and part espionage thriller. And wholly and refreshingly good.

It's 1957 and the height of the Cold War. Tensions between the United States and the Soviet Union are at their frostiest. Both sides have developed an intense paranoia about the possibility of being nuked to extinction by the other, and so both use spies to try and gather the information they think they need to survive. Or at least get their retaliation in first. Pick up a paper or turn on your television in 2015 and you will see that levels of paranoia are only just below what they were 58 years ago. Only the list of people we're supposed to fear has got bigger.

Back in '57 one such Soviet spy is Rudolph Abel played by Mark Rylance. Abel's house is ransacked by US police looking for evidence of espionage. They find some stuff, but it turns out that they haven't got a warrant so none of it is admissable. Not that this bothers cranky, Soviet hating, God-fearing, salt of the Earth Judge Byers (Dakin Matthews) when Abel is charged regardless and brought to court. Defending him is insurance lawyer Jim Donovan (Hanks) who seems to know very little about criminal law and appears to have been appointed by the government for that very reason. Never mind due process. There is too much at stake and Abel must not go free. Yet he must be seen to have been given a fair defence, hence Hanks must take the fall. The best he can do is to persuade Judge Byers not to hand Abel the death penalty, successfully arguing that it would be useful to have a Soviet spy in their possession should they ever need one to trade for one of their own.

Lo and....yes......behold that is exactly what happens. While Abel is at kangaroo court a US pilot is shot down over Soviet airspace while on.....you guessed it.....a spying mission. In the briefing before the mission he and his colleagues are expressly ordered to sacrifice themselves to avoid capture if necessary. They don't want secrets about their new technology getting out, nor do they want the Soviets to know that they've been spied on from above with what at that time constituted state of the art camera technology. One pilot, Francis Gary Powers (Austin Stowell) loses his bottle on the whole sacrifice thing and so eventually, after a bit too much deliberation and debate, a trade looks on.

But there's a complication. At around about the same time an American student is captured trying to escape East Berlin as the Berlin Wall goes up. This is where my memories of Berlin come in. It was snowy and -13 and we couldn't get hime for days because English airports had closed. Yet it was an awful lot worse in the 50's and 60's . As the student tries to flee several people are shot dead trying to get over the wall while at Checkpoint Charlie a stream of unfortunates are routinely stopped, questioned, threatened and generally bullied by the authorities. Communism is rising, and suddenly the Americans have two people to retrieve and only one spy to trade with.

As that spy Rylance has been in several Oscar conversations. His performance is solid, even powerful, but the calm indifference of his character has to make things easier. It's surely easier to act indifferent to your fate when it's all pretend anyway. It may have been more challenging for Rylance if Abel had behaved like the gibbering, desperate wreck most of us would be if facing charged of espionage in the US, and then having to worry about what might happen to you if and when you are turned back over to your own side. Will they accept that you did your job well or will it be assumed that you betrayed your country as a bargaining tool?

Hanks is his usual colossal presence in screen while still managing to make you believe he's plain old Jim, while my only real gripe is with the pacing. It becomes fairly obvious what is going to happen at a certain point, but it still takes an awful lot longer than it should to get there. I guess that is what happens when you are dealing with material based on a true story. You have to stay true to it where possible, but a little side-step over the minutae here and there would have made this belter of a film perhaps even better.

The Theory Of Everything (spoilers but come on, it's been ages)

Sometimes I surprise myself. I remember starting a blog about film some years ago, and then giving up on it shortly afterwards due to lack of interest. Both my own and yours. It made sense to me that less of you would be interested in reading about what I think of various films than in reading about me slipping down the slope through Thatto Heath Park and falling on my arse.

But I didn't give up quite as quickly as I'd thought. There are 15 or 20 reviews on the clumsily named Film Musings Of A Fire Hazard, spanning a two-year period. Not all of them are any good but they were interesting to look back on. Having made a tentative return to the subject of film with last week's utterings on Mockingjay Part 2 on my regular Memoirs Of A Fire Hazard I thought I'd take another dip at it. You know? Just for my own interest if nothing else.

So finally arriving at the point the subject of this piece is The Theory Of Everything, the Oscar-hogging biopic of physics boffin and miraculous motor neurone disease survivor Professor Stephen Hawking. Emma never fancied this one, so I never got along to the cinema to see it. I had to wait until just the other day to find the time to watch it at home. Not that I'm always busy particularly, but more that there is always some sports-related material clogging up my planner which needs watching before it becomes history material fit only for Yesterday or Sky One. I'd actually recorded The Theory Of Everything a few months ago, but those Bundesliga highlights continued to take precedence until now.

The other reason I hadn't got to it if I'm totally honest is that I'd kind of been putting it off. I'm always very wary of any film dealing with the subject of disability. So often they are either a massive let down or just downright offensive. I get enough of that in the real world without escaping to it. Yet The Theory Of Everything pleasantly surprised me. It's moving without being mawkish, funny without being patronising, and clever without bamboozling the viewer.

Hawking, played by posh gong gatherer Eddie Redmayne, is perhaps best known for his research into the origins of time and the universe and well.....everything........but it is his almost 30 years of marriage to his first wife Jane that provides most of the narrative here. Lazy people like myself might have assumed that Jane, played beautifully here by Felicity Jones, got the rock out of dodge pretty quickly when the full implications of Hawkings' illness took hold. She did no such thing. Hawking was given just two years to live at the time of his diagnosis in the mid 1960's, yet is still with us some 50 years later. Jane continued to be devoted to Hawking, attending to his every need until 1990 when they eventually divorced. And that wasn't to do Hawking any favours or to show a united front in public. She genuinely loved the great man and yes.....continued to enjoy a physical relationship with him. The youngest of their children was born in 1979, over a decade after his diagnosis and way beyond the point at which his body had failed him. True, she eventually drifted in to the arms of Jonathan Hellyer (played here by Boardwalk Empire and Stardust's Charlie Cox) who she met at choir practice and who had helped with Hawking's care for years, but only after Hawking had taken a shine to his therapist Elaine (Maxine Peake). She had been hired by Jane to help with Hawking with his communication after a bout of pneumonia finally robbed him of his speech. Eventually he would develop the now distinctive speech synthesiser which led a generation to believe he is an American. British accents are available with that technology now, but the shrewd astro-physician knows a saleable trademark when he sees it and has left well enough alone.

What the film fails to explore is just how the blazes Hawking has managed to survive for so long with a disease that does for most of its unfortunate sufferers in less than two years. Perhaps medical science has not deciphered that conundrum yet, or perhaps it really is down to his indomitable spirit and ludicrous work ethic. He's just been too busy to be ill for very long over these last few years. He continues to inspire, and to be 7,000 times more capable than most folk who would offer their pity. To that end, if we really want to educate people about what can be achieved by people with disabilities we should do away with disability awareness courses and international days of disability and just get people to watch films like Inside I'm Dancing and this excellent addition to the debate.

Lawless

The way I go about choosing which films to see at the cinema is pretty basic, truth be told. I look at the cast, decide if I can stand two hours of the participants without wanting to ram a screw-driver through my head, and go from there.

This is how I arrived at Lawless, a mobster flick set in early 1930's Virginia and apparently based on a true story. Historians among you will not need me to tell you that this means Prohibition, the banning of the sale of alcohol in the United States during that era. Trying to get around this and thus make a stack of cash are the Bonderant brothers, Forrest (Tom Hardy), Howard (Jason Clarke) and Jack (Shia Laboeuf). They rule the Franklin County moonshine trade with the proverbial iron fist, which is both the most memorable thing about the film and one of it's major weaknesses.

Some of the violent events in this film are so grotesque that even the director (John Hillcoat) seems to have balked at the idea of actually showing them and instead resorts to strong implication. The censors might have had their say on that also, to be fair to Hillcoat. Amid the carnage is Jack's coming of age tale and big brother Forrest's struggles to hold on to both his power and his life, while Howard runs riot and provides more than his fair share of the psychopathy on offer. Of which there is lots. Chipping in is Guy Pearce as Charlie Rakes, a corrupt police officer trying to geg in on the financial gain and keep the Bonderants in his pocket. The normally reliable Pearce whips up the mania and hysteria a little too much, especially in the film's heavily sign-posted denouement. From the very first scene I had a reasonable idea of what might happen at the end, and I wasn't wrong.

It's not that Pearce can't play a baddie. His turn as Fernand Mondego in The Count Of Monte Cristo was among the most memorable villainous stints I can recount. It just doesn't quite work here. He seems to be trying to emit the same suave, charming nature of Mondego before surprising you with a shockingly murderous act or some foul piece of torture. But Rakes lacks the humour of Mondego aswell as the propensity for betrayal which made the latter so compelling. Betrayal trails in the wake of revenge, greed and thirst for power in Lawless.

Quite what the makers of this film were thinking when they wasted the time of Gary Oldman I am still struggling to work out. He appears as Floyd Banner, a feared mob leader who seems to have nothing much to do with anything. He does business with the Bonderants and the film hints at his violent nature and his feared reputation without ever really making him a factor in the stories of the main protagonists. Following Tinker-Tailor and The Dark Knight Rises I am wondering whether somebody just wanted to keep Oldman and Hardy together for a while longer. Maybe they just really, really enjoy each other's company.

Love interest for Forrest and Jack is provided by Maggie Beauford (Jessica Chastain complete with gratuitious nude scene if you like that sort of thing) and Bertha (Mia Wasikowska) respectively. Maggie is a dancer from Chicago who has run away from trouble and found a whole lot more, while Bertha is the daughter of a preacher who is less than excited about Jack's interest in his little girl. Yet these characters are not much more developed than Oldman's and seem to serve only to distract you from what is really going on.

Lawless is a capable but underwhelming mobster story with some heavyweight actors seemingly below their best form. Which is what I get for choosing my cinematic pleasures by looking at cast lists and virtually ignoring synopses.

The Dark Knight Rises

It seems that Christopher Nolan has dispensed with any notions of calling The Dark Knight a Batman film, and that is not surprising given the relative lack of screen time afforded to the caped crusader (or is that Superman?) in this the third of what is hopefully only a trilogy.

It's not that I didn't like it, more that three films is enough and usually two too many in most cases. Despite this and other minor quibbles, The Dark Knight Rises (not Batman) is an enjoyable yarn which sees our hero called back into action after several years in recluse at his enormous house. This is because Tom Hardy has turned up playing the part of a quite manic villain called Bane. At this point I couldn't get the term Bane v Wayne out of my head, but I pressed on manfully. Even when I heard Bane's voice I bravely refused to give up on proceedings. Bane wears a mask which helps him breathe, owing to some facial injury which may or may not have been very well explained in the lengthy establishing phase of the film. Yet the voice, coupled with the mask, make him sound and look a bit like a Darth Vader parody, and if there is one thing in film that I don't have a sense of humour about it is Darth Vader. Vader is the greatest baddie in film history bar none. You can keep your Michael Corleone aswell. And the Star Wars theft doesn't end there, as Liam Neeson turns up at one point as a wise old sage offering insight to someone about something. Mercifully, there are no light sabres.

But Bane isn't looking to rule the galaxy far, far away anyway. His mission is two-fold but rather conflicting and therefore possibly self-defeating. On the one hand he wants to stuff it up the rich people of Gotham City for their decadence, overthrowing them in the process, but on the other hand he wants to detonate a nuclear device which would blow the whole city to Buggery and back. If he has a plan for how he is going to escape the carnage himself then I'm not totally clear on what it is. And besides I just can't get past the voice and the mask. Get your own villain Nolan.

Romantic interest is provided by Anne Hathaway as Catwoman (she's actually a burgler called Selina who's sole motivation is to get as far away as possible as quickly as possible with as much cash as possible) and Marion Cotillard as Miranda Tate, a rich bitch who helps keep Bruce Wayne afloat when his company more or less collapses following an unlikely raid on the stock exchange by our man Bane. He is also able to arrange for an entire American football field to crumble piece by piece in a brilliantly over the top scene, the best thing about which is that the man carrying the ball merely carries on running, reaches the endzone and turns around to investigate what all that noise behind him might have been.

And another thing about Bane, while we're on the subject, I couldn't help but think of McBain from The Simpsons every time he came on screen. You know the one, the Arnie parody? If only Bane (and Wayne once he dons the cape, for that matter) was as easy to understand as Arnie I might have got a little more to grips with the finer points of the plot.

Batman (sorry Christopher) regulars Michael Caine and Morgan Freeman provide their usual steady turns also, as we move towards a quite breathtaking and undeniably exciting climax. Can Bane's demented plot be stopped or are the citizens of Gotham (including the poor children) doomed to either explode or die slowly from radiation poisoning? You'll have to go and see it if you want to find out but I can, despite my disparaging tones, heartily recommend that you do so. The Dark Knight is fun, frantic, folly, and what could be better than that for a Tuesday night?

The Debt

John Madden's ambitious thriller 'The Debt' spans two time periods 30 years apart using six actors to tell the story through the eyes of it's three main characters.

Did you get all that? It may seem like a lot of numbers but for the most part, 'The Debt' is perfectly engaging. It suffers from a contrived, stick-on ending and some dubious pacing but the acting is strong and the action is plentiful.

It's 1965 and David, Stefan and Rachel are three Israeli Mossad agents given the unenviable task of capturing Nazi war criminal Dieter Vogel, the so-called Surgeon of Birkenau, and bringing him to justice. Vogel has earned his nickname with the mutilation and murder of thousands of people at wartime prison camps but we first encounter him as Dr Bernhardt, trying to go it straight as the gynaecologist helping Rachel overcome her apparent fertility issues. As you might expect it is not long before the not so good Doc has Rachel's legs wrapped tightly around his neck as she delivers the near lethal shot of whatever is required to facilitate his capture.

But before all that we find ourselves in 1997, with Rachel (Helen Mirren) busy taking the plaudits from what everyone believes to have been a roaringly successful mission. Their version of events has even been turned into a book by Rachel's daughter, but what really happened in the days after Vogel's capture? Whatever it was is enough for David (Ciaran Hinds) to step in front of a bus rather than face up to it, while Stefan (Tom Wilkinson) seems equally keen to hide the truth.

And so the film sets about telling the tale. It is during the kidnap of Vogel that the three young actors show us their best. Fans of Avatar and Clash Of The Titans (if there are any of you out there) will have enjoyed the work of Sam Worthington before but Jessica Chastain and Marton Csokas will be less familiar. Worthington plays the young David who it seems has the greatest chemistry with the young Rachel (Chastain), but it is somehow Stefan (Csokas)who gets to the goods first. I hate to nit-pick but I must take issue with this. Moments earlier David had pulled away when he and Rachel were about to kiss, but if she has to jump on the next available bus after every knock-back then she has serious problems. For now it is David and Stefan who have problems, but this being the movie business they were always going to while there was a girl in the room.

Far more interesting are Vogel's attempts to pschologically destroy his captors. His gag is only removed at meal times but that seems to be all he needs to drive a further wedge between the two men and to get under the skin of an increasingly nervous Rachel. Though they may have benefitted from a little more editing, these scenes are the film's strongest. Jesper Christensen is highly convincing as Vogel and the young actors seem to bounce off him during these tense, dramatic moments. But then we find out what really happened to Vogel and things start to head downhill from there for 'The Debt'. Driven so well by it's plot and it's ability to throw up some interesting moral questions, the film's strength gets perilously close to becoming it's weakness as things get decidely implausible and the whole things starts to feel like it has been on for far too long,

If only Madden had known when to stop.

Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy

"Spy on our own spy as he searches for their spy? Yes, why not? -- sounds rather fun."

Some of you may recognise the above. It is a direct quote from General Melchett in Blackadder Goes Forth. Irked as I am by prefacing sit-com episodes with the words 'the one where', I should explain that it is 'the one where' there is a spy among the troops and Blackadder is given the unenviable task of rooting him out.

Such is the task handed to Gary Oldman's George Smiley in Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy, an adaptation of John Le Carre's apparently page-turning novel of the same name which was also turned into a successful television series starring Alec Guiness in 1979. Where Melchett fits in to all this is that frankly, I felt as utterly bewildered and clueless throughout the whole of this drab affair as Stephen Fry's brilliantly portrayed General is throughout much of the Great War. The Oscar talk has already begun regarding Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy, so it is likely that I have got it all wrong and it is the masterpiece that all of the billboards tell you it is. However, I have to report that I lost interest well before the half way mark and by the end, well it is no exaggeration to suggest that I was on the verge of sticking a pencil up each nostril and sticking a pair of pants on my head, such was my delerium amid the tedium.

This film is apallingly, chillingly slow. The basic premise is that there is a mole (and he lives in a hole) among MI6. Oldman is charged with uncovering the wretched traitor before the audience wakes up. In doing this, he has a series of hopefully mysterious and tense conversations with the main players. One of whom is Mark Strong's Jim Prideux, sent to Budapest by 'Control' (John Hurt) to meet Polyakov, who is Russian not Hungarian and has something to do with spying somewhere along the line. Jim makes the schoolboy error of getting himself shot but instead of suffering the altogether more favourable fate of dying there and then, he is sent back to England to teach French to, among others, a fat loner called Bill. At a point inbetween he is strapped to a chair and slapped with a pair of headphones from which only the screeching cries of a baby can be heard. It is supposed to be a method of torture aimed at finding out something or other which I am not quite sure of. If they wanted him to sing like a bird they should have just sat him down and made him watch the rest of this monstrous, excuse for a spy thriller.

Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy never comes close to thrilling. It excelled at confusing, but only due to the fact that the utter banality of the thing had forced me to stop listening to what was being said and start focusing instead on what I might want from the chippy on the way home. It lacks any kind of suspense or tension and the end, while a mild surprise, is hardly likely to have you leaving the cinema with a feeling of 'well I never'. More like 'well I wish I never'. And while we are at it can Colin Firth get any more smug? Every time he appears on screen not only in this debacle but throughout his career I have been overwhelmed with the urge to bash him over the head with a garden spade.

This review may not be of any higher standard than the film that is it's subject. I'm sorry about that but Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy really is quite the most mesmerising rot and it has had a profoundly negative effect on me.

Harry Potter And The Deathly Hallows - Part 2

Will Harry find the remaining horcruxes and/or slay the revolting Voldemort?

Will he get Hermione, or will Ron confound the lazy stereotyping of ginger-haired people by making off with the goods?

And will Emma Watson get any easier on the eye? Could she?

These were the questions I was left to ask at the end of the first installment of Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, the final book in J K Rowling's celebrated child-wizard saga.

To be quite honest if I were to answer those questions on these pages some people might get quite cross. People don't like spoilers and the film is still in cinemas after all. I should know, I've just been. Oh go on then, I'll answer one question now, maybe another later. No, Emma Watson does not and could not get any easier on the eye. There, feel better now?

If like me you are a bit of a casual, Johnny-Come-Lateley Harry Potter observer you might find yourself a little confused at the start of Part 2. We're in a poky little room with a goblin named Griphook, whom Emma reliably informs me has not just been plucked from nowhere but who actually appears in the first film. Maybe some others, she's not so sure. Anyway, we then move from Griphook to John Hurt looking older than it is possible for him to ever be. There's a confusing conversation about something or other but mercifully it is not long until we are back into more comfortable Potter surroundings.

Specifically that means Harry, Ron and Hermione doing what they are reknowned for, trying to get into places they have no rights to be in and magically morphing into completely different entities. It took me more time than I'm comfortable with to realise that Emma Watson is not Helena Bonham-Carter. Regardless, a veritable gala of special effects ensues, sparking a chain of similarly exciting if a little overblown episodes as our heroes make their way to the real endgame.

Which, of course, is killing the once unspeakable Lord Voldemort. It doesn't matter if you say his name, we are told at one point by the wonderful Maggie Smith, he's going to kill you all anyway. Fine, all that you-know-who stuff was becoming a little tedious. You may remember from Part 1 that the only way to kill Voldemort is to find and destroy the horcruxes, or parts of his soul that he has left lying around in some place or other. 'We don't know what we are looking for or where it is?' admits Harry at one point. Sounds like you're screwed, mate.

Without giving away the many twists and turns and the film's very own Empire Strikes Back moment, Harry really should be screwed. That he may not be is thanks mostly to Nevile Longbottom, a man who sounds like he opened the batting for England some time in the 1930's, and more surprisingly good old Draco Malfoy who to my mind last made a significant contribution to this story when he was comically punched in the face by Hermione about four films ago.

If you can get past the argument you will have with yourself over the whole logic of the set-up, the climactic face off between Harry and Voldemort is the stuff of which cinema was made for. Huge bolts of lightning which don't do very much harm to either party abound, while Hogwarts falls to pieces around their very ears. Assuming Voldemort has ears. He only has around a quarter of a nose, so who knows. Nose. Get it? Whatever.

There's a little nose-to-nose between Ron and Hermione somewhere in the midst of all this. Either Rowling or the screenplay writers obviously felt that it was a bad idea to follow up on the possibility of pairing Hermione with Harry. Ron's sister is a reasonable consolation prize and anyway, that means two ginger-haired people win. What do you think of that, lazy stereotypers? A big up yours to you.

Loose ends tied in a mostly satisfactory way, the ending feels unecessary in a film which is already well over two hours long. It seems to be the trend among film-makers these days to steadfastly refuse to give up on a project until they have squeezed every last possible drop of storyline out of it. I remember cringing at and complaining on these very pages about a similar botch job in True Grit, to mention just one.

Deathly Hallows Part 2, for all my cynicism, wet-wit and general air of sneering-ness, is a fine conclusion to this exhaustively long, till-ringing, child-star making series of films.

The Lincoln Lawyer

I have read almost all of John Grisham's novels and seen almost all of the film adaptations that have followed. If you have too, you might be tricked into thinking that you have seen The Lincoln Lawyer before.

And yet it is not even adapted from a Grisham novel. The original text, which I haven't read but have made a mental note to do, is by Michael Connelly. Apparently a lot of it doesn't make the cut here, but that doesn't stop this from being an engaging, entertaining legal thriller.

It stars Matthew McConaughey, seen here on top 'A Time To Kill' form, but this time as smart-arsed legal whizz-kid Michael Haller. Michael gets bad people off, if you'll pardon that kind of expressionism, meaning that he gets people out of jail terms that they really should have to serve. In that sense he's a sort of anti-hero, but trust me by the end you'll be rooting for him in the courtroom.

The film is so titled because Haller works mostly from the back seat of his Lincoln. That's a car for the uninitiated (like me before I knew of this film) and in all honesty, not enough is made of it's use for legal chicanery to justify naming the entire shebang after it. The best use of the vehicle comes when Haller is negotiating with a group of very hairy bikers. It's all set up to project an image of devil-may-care, maverick law practise. You're not supposed to like Haller, yet.

Not that is until he starts the defense of Louis Roulet (like the wheel, he announces wrongly), played by Ryan Phillipe. He's a rich kid accused of the brutal assault and rape of an expensive prostitute. Why does a rich kid need to be using prostitutes? Those with money tend not to need it, don't they? Anyhow, it doesn't take long before we realise that Roulet is guilty, and we start demanding that our man Haller do something about it. At this point I began wondering about Haller. He can't tell anyone that Roulet has confessed to the crime, and a much worse one to boot, because of lawyer-client confidentiality. Yet rather than walk away and let Roulet find himself another defender he carries on, performing brilliantly considering the amount of alcohol he has consumed.

All of which leads to a mildly surprising and slightly less than mildly satisfactory ending. This film is not a classic but there is much to enjoy in McConaughey's return to form, from the all-too-short involvement of William H Macy as the investigator who sniffs out the details of Roulet's involvement in the grisly crime, to the woefully under-used but permanently smiling Marisa Tomei as Haller's ex-wife and mother of his young daughter.

They're still friends. Well, you'd want to stay in Marisa Tomei's good books.

The Adjustment Bureau

Do you ever think that some things were just meant to be, and some not?

Well, mostly not. Yet if you're a believer in destiny then you'll at least be intrigued by the basic premise of The Adjustment Bureau. It stars Matt Damon as New York Senate candidate David Norris who, after flunking badly in the election, happens upon a chance meeting with Elise (Emily Blunt). She's in the gents toilets for reasons best known to herself, and he's talking to himself in preparation for his acceptance speech. Acceptance of defeat, that is. They're a right pair.

Within minutes they kiss. Of course they do. This kind of shit happens to me every day. Regardless, their meeting and the subsequent kiss spells trouble for both, if only they would know it. Enter The Adjustment Bureau. They wear fedora hats, and they do what it says on the tin. They make adjustments to people's lives and events so that things don't deviate too far from 'the plan'. It's all been worked out by 'the chairman'. Are you confused yet?

What you really need to remember here (as if you could forget it) is that The Adjustment Bureau will do almost anything to stop David and Elise from seeing each other again. It's just not part of 'the plan', despite the fact that they think they were meant to be together and seem to care about little else. So determined is David, in particular, that after another chance meeting on a bus he rides the same bus at the same time every day for three years in the hope of finding her, this following another irritating intervention from The Adjustment Bureau. And their hats. Remember the hats, they are important later in the film.

The great problem with all of this is that you probably won't believe that it's so important to the Bureau for David and Elise to be kept apart. They certainly don't. Not that is until the introduction of Thomspon, played by Terence Stamp, at which point it all becomes clear. Clear but still less than convincing. Surely they have caused more trouble than they have fixed with their continued efforts to keep the happy couple apart?

The ending reminded me of one of my novels. Stop laughing now as I tell you that I wrote two (arguably unfinished) novels a number of years ago, but what came between me and becoming the next Nick Hornby (who?) was the fact that I would set up a premise and several subsequent scenes without having any clue as to how it was going to end. It's just possible that that is what has happnened here, although this being an adaptation of a Philip K. Dick novel you might choose to buy into it. After all, Dick was a proper writer, not some journalism graduate with an hour for his lunch break.

Yet to my mind the ending is rushed and unlikely, though it is difficult to criticise a film with a premise as unlikely as this for having an unlikely ending. This is sci-fi. One could question any number of events before the ending (not least of which is how a man manages to pull Emily Blunt within a minute. A minute spent talking to himself. Even if he is Matt Damon). Still, it remains an interesting concept, and could have been a great film had it been blessed with a plot with a little more substance. It should get you thinking about free will and the choices you make, but it probably won't influence them.

I'm off to finish those novels.........

Paul

Emma and I are going to Las Vegas this summer. It's going to be a bit of a road trip, actually. We've hired a car and we're going to travel out to California, spend a few nights in Los Angeles and a few more in San Diego before heading back to Vegas for the second week.

I mention this not to gloat (although......), but because it is similar to the journey taken by the main protagonists in Paul, the latest comedy vehicle of Simon Pegg and Nick Frost. Graham Willy (Pegg) and Clive Gollings (Frost) start in San Diego at the Comic-Con convention (Emma says we'll be starting at the zoo) and several mishaps later end up journeying quite blindly across America in the company of an alien. That's Paul.

Along the way they pick up the fanatically religious Ruth, prompting much creationism versus evolution debate between her and Paul. God botherers may want to look away at the point when Paul appears to prove that all of Darwen's theories are correct and that humanity evolved over millions of years and was not created by a supreme being with an afternoon to kill. Personally, I didn't need much convincing on that score.

As a matter of fact it is the most believable notion in the whole film. But that's alright because this is a film about an alien. Look elsewhere if you're seeking gritty realism. Not that it lacks any attempt at philosophy. One of Paul's 'things' is to impart his wisdom on the otherwise hapless Willy and Gollings aswell as Ruth. He also smokes dope, dances and revives a dead bird before stuffing it into his mouth and swallowing it whole. Paul is not just any old alien. He's a multi-talented alien.

All of which gives you an idea of the kind of comedy you're dealing with. You are either going to like it or you're not. It has been criticised for allegedly paying homage to too many other sci-fi films and while it is true that some dialogue is lifted entirely from elsewhere, it is done with good intentions and will work quite well for sci-fi fans who are prepared to let go and not take the genre too seriously. Assuming such people exist. Paul is good fun but nothing much more. It will not be remembered 100 years from now and may not even bear comparison to earlier Pegg/Frost efforts like Shaun Of The Dead and Hot Fuzz.

The ending is predictable and features a wholly unnecessary cameo from Sigourney Weaver. Why they didn't break the bank for Carrie Fisher I'll never know. Anyway, it does at least offer a final chance to shine for possibly the film's strongest character and best performer, Jason Bateman as government agent Zoyle. What? Didn't I mention that Paul had been working for the government but, fearing that he had outgrown his use to them, had decided to flee back to his home planet with Zoyle in hot pursuit?

Must have had my mind on that road trip...............

True Grit

I'm not a fan of westerns. Actually that's a little unfair, because I'm not sure I've ever seen one in it's entirity until now. I read somewhere that Star Wars - which taken as a whole and nothwithstanding the disaster that is The Phantom Menace - is my favourite film of all time, is a space western. Well, that's as maybe but having never seen anything more cowboy-related than the Dallas cheerleaders, I wouldn't know so I'm sticking to my story. I've never seen a real western, until now.

Indisputably, no amount of gunslinging, shot-swigging or large moustaches has ever convinced me to sit through anything starring John Wayne before, so it might be considered odd that I took an interest in the remake of his 1969 classic True Grit.

Until that is you consider that this particular remake is the work of the Coen brothers, Joel and Ethan. I am a fan of the Coen brothers. The Big Lebowski remains one of the best films I have ever seen, and my appreciation of more recent efforts like No Country For Old Men and Burn After Reading made this a must-see. In addition, I'd been promised that this was a story much closer to that in the original novel than the one played out in Wayne's movie. No, I haven't read the book either but everyone knows that books are better than films, right?

Like Lebowski, True Grit stars Jeff Bridges. Here he plays Rooster Cogburn, a washed up old Marshall who somehow finds himself on a mission to avenge the death of a young girl's father. He engages in this potentially deadly pursuit despite being drunk, unconscious or both regularly throughout. His inoxication, added to his Texan drawl make him rather difficult to understand at times but that's ok because he has help in moving the plot along.

At just 14 years of age Hailee Steinfeld produces a stunning performance as the recently bereaved Mattie Ross. She weighs in with a bit of narration too. Her Oscar-worthy efforts are certainly helped by a snappy and witty script, less quirky than Coen brothers fans may be used to but no less entertaining for that. Yet this should not detract from Steinfeld's excellent endeavours, stealing almost every scene from the acting powerhouse that is Bridges, himself delivering another sterling effort as Cogburn. Academy gongs are handed out just hours after the time of writing, and fingers are firmly crossed for both. Bridges is up for Best Actor, while if there is a better candidate for Supporting Actress than Steinfeld then her's is a performance I need to see.

In support are Matt Damon as rival Chaney-chaser Laboeuf and Josh Brolin in the all too brief but wonderfully dastardly role of Chaney. Damon's Laboeuf keeps you guessing from first sight to last, and is in posession of a moustache that is as impressive as anything else his character manages to contribute. Brolin is criminally under-used but as such retains an air of mystery which adds to the intrigue. This might slightly irk those who need a little more screen time in order to truly invest their hatred in a character, but for this viewer it was enough to know what he had done. I couldn't help but get dragged along by Bridges and Steinfeld in any case.

At bug-bear time I do wish the film would have ended a little sooner than it did. The ending seems somehow tacked on, with some unecessary sadness thrown in for what was obviously a stab at prolonging the drama. If it ain't broke though, cowboy. Or something.

The Fighter

I can't present it as fact, but I'd venture to suggest that all men my age love Rocky films. Before it all got a bit silly, Sylvester Stallone's original rags to riches tale was an inspiration for a generation. Go on, admit it, at the very least you left the cinema belting out the famous theme tune and shadow boxing with your mates.

'The Fighter' could do the same for this generation, but I had hoped for and began to expect so much more. The film charts the true-life rise to prominence of former Light Welterweight champion Micky Ward, who battled all manner of adversities thrown at him by his dingbat family to beat Liverpool's Shea Neary to secure the WBU crown. Yet having fulfilled that aim so beautifully to a point, the film then takes a worrying diversion down Rocky Road. From musical training montages and unrealistic climactic fight scenes, right down to the freeze-framed moment of glory, 'The Fighter' decides at some point that it must pay homage to it's 1976 Oscar-winning predecessor.

And it's unwise to have done so. The better part of this film is a moving, well acted, genuinely human story. While Mark Wahlberg delivers a confident performance as Ward, acting honours are carried off serenely by Christian Bale. The Batman madman turns in a fully believable performance as Ward's half-brother Dicky Ecklund, himself a former fighter. Ecklund's bitterness at having failed to build on knocking down the great Sugar Ray Leonard in a fight he would go on to lose lead him to a life of crack addiction and violent crime. As such, the story is as much his as Micky's. His is the real tragedy.

All of which personality weaknesses mean that as Micky's trainer, Dicky continually drags his brother down with him. He fails to turn up for sessions and promotes impossible fights against men two stones heavier, yet Micky sticks by him for far longer than this viewer was comfortable with. There's further family interference from the pair's mother Alice, who calls herself Micky's manager but is seemingly as manipulative and selfish as Dicky. It's here that the film really starts to examine it's central theme, that of the importance of family and the moral dilemmas that can ensue between pleasing them and doing what is best for oneself.

Pulling Micky in the other direction is girlfriend Charlene, played more than adequately by Amy Adams, of whom there are at least two gratuitous but potentially prize-wininng posteria shots. Notwithstanding that, you are very much in her corner as she struggles to prise her man out of the clutches of the increasingly manic Dicky, Alice and a gaggle of trailer-park trash sisters who make The Simpsons' Patti and Selma look like The Corrs.

Ward's career never really kicked on from his dramatic victory over Neary, though he went on to take part in three epic bouts with Arturo Gatti between 2001 and 2003. In many ways his fate mirrors that of this film, never quite hitting the heights that it could have had it shown a little more focus. Perhaps the director was persistently bothered by some Dicky Ecklund-esque screenwriter, persuading him to take the more sensational path to Box Office glory.

The Tourist

Surely you can't go wrong with Angelina Jolie and Johnny Depp?

Jolie, the searing sex siren and ultimate leading lady of the modern era, alongside the preposterously and irritatingly handsome Depp, the best actor of his generation. So how is that The Tourist is so underwhelming?

Well there's the plot, for a start. Jolie is the classic mystery lady, looking astonishing at all times despite the fact that she is being watched at every turn by Scotland Yard and some very bad, bad guys. It turns out she's the lover of a man who once stole an unimaginable amount of money from both. Following his instructions (by letter) Jolie's Elise Clifton-Ward boards a train to Venice, picks up Depp's Frank Tupelo (a teacher of "math" from Wisconsin), and so begins what should have been a comic farce containing chases, slapstick, sharp dialogue and all around sizzling sexiness.

Yet there is precious little of any of that. Jolie goes all out for the Hepburn-esque movie icon look and, while she is not far short of pulling it off, she seems to forget that her character is in the midst of 'a situation'. Meanwhile Depp's character lacks humour or charm, and instead spends the film in a state of awe and confusion. While few actors can pull off mild confusion as well as Depp, we have seen it all before from him. Isn't it time that this most versatile of actors gave the Jack Sparrow thing a rest? Maybe you think that if it ain't broke and all that.........but I expected a little more.

The baddies are, as alluded to, just that. Lead gangster is Steven Berkoff, a man so bored with his lot that he cannot even summon the acting prowess to unsettle his audience at the point when he promises to re-arrange Jolie's facial features. I'm paraphrasing but he tells her life would not be so kind to an ugly woman, but he also should remember that this film is bad enough without it's redeeming feature being carved into little pieces for the sake of a wedge of stolen cash.

So what's to like about The Tourist? Well, the scene in which Depp is pursued across a Venice hotel roof-top in his pyjamas is half-way amusing, while Rufus Sewell's ubiquitiousness puts one in mind of Waldo from the 'Where's Wally' book series. Only without the stripes. Regardless, you know he's important because he keeps turning up. The film has a few comic moments to enjoy, but it's not certain that they are intentional and you leave the cinema feeling that they could have done so much more with it.

Overall this is not one to recommend unless you are a fervent Jolie or Depp devotee. If the very presence of either on screen is enough to entertain you for two hours then don't let me stop you. Otherwise, you might want to give this one the slip.

Harry Potter And The Deathly Hallows - Part 1

After 10 years and what will eventually be eight films the Harry Potter series is finally coming to an end.

Whether you love J K Rowling's stories or you hate them, you have to agree that it is time. The film's stars have grown up before our very eyes. They're real people now, holding onto only minimal traces of the annoying children they used to be. What started as a mystical journey into child wizardry has now developed into an adult drama, with characters with real feelings and emotions.

And it is so much the better for that. The first of two installments of The Deathly Hallows is by far the best of the Potter movies so far. Perhaps this is because the long awaited denoument is now in sight. This film really moves, and the often contrived and confusing plots of some of it's predecessors have been replaced with one of real drive and purpose. We know where we are with this one, even with only a rudimentary grasp of what has gone before. Yet it still feels like a good time to leave Harry, Ron and Hermione behind. Even to this casual Potter observer everything seems to be tying together nicely. It is hard to see where Rowling would go were she to pick up her pen for an eighth book.

We begin with the bad guys. Fresh from his slaying of the much cherished wizard Aldus Dumbledore, the despicable Lord Voldemort is turning his attentions to Harry and his friends. Visiting with his Death Eaters, Voldemort hatches his plan. Yet not before demonstrating the depth of his evil by feeding a former Hogwarts teacher to his snake for the heinous crime of believing muggles (those ordinary folk not possessed of any magic skills) should be free to mix and indeed mate with wizards and witches. Preposterous. Everyone knows that parakeets don't mate with armadillos.

So with Voldemort's quest established, we turn to Harry's which is basically to stay alive in the face of this dogged pursuit. This is every bit as difficult as you might imagine, with Death Eaters seemingly at every turn despite the fact that Hermione possesses the ability to whisk herself, Harry and Ron away to any location of her choosing. My personal favourite is the Forest Of Dene. Complicating their task further is the knowledge that to end Voldemort's pursuit they must find and destroy the five 'horcruxes', pieces of the evil Lord's soul carelessly left lying around for reasons best known to Potter afficianados and geeks. Dumbledore has left clues as to their whereabouts but not much on how to destroy them. What's more, one of them is a locket which is making it's wearer awfully grumpy. Lord Of The Rings, anyone?

Lockets aside, it is the clash between Harry and Ron over the all-of-a-sudden stunningly beautiful Hermione that is causing the real consternation. Ron's clearly in love and, mad as it sounds, there's even a hint that she might feel the same way about him. 'I'm always mad at him.' she offers at one point, as if any further evidence of being in love with someone were required. Yet her relationship with Harry is also growing stronger and, though the specky dufus doesn't seem to know it, there's every chance he might get the girl by the end. Well that would be only right wouldn't it? He's the hero. It's his name above the door.

Though much of the action is focused on these three and their pursuants, the film's makers are acutely aware that they have a loyal audience to stay faithful to. Thus there are brief appearances from many of the films' weird and wonderful characters and the stellar British actors who have contributed so much to the series. Along with Ralph Fiennes' expert turn as Voldemort you can expect to catch glimpses of Robbie Coltrane, Julie Walters, Richard Griffiths, Rhys Ifans, Timothy Spall, John Hurt, Brendan Gleeson and of course Michael Gambon as Dumbledore among many others. Death doesn't stop wizards from making a contribution. Lord Of The Rings, anyone?

For the first time ever, I left the cinema at the end of a Harry Potter movie actually looking forward to the next film. So many questions to answer. Will Harry find the remaining horcruxes and/or slay the revolting Voldemort? Will he get Hermione, or will Ron confound the lazy stereotyping of ginger-haired people by making off with the goods? And will Emma Watson get any easier on the eye? Could she? Not if her boy's haircut at the official premiere is anything to go by. Almost sacrilege. Even the ludicrously short dress couldn't rescue the situation.

All will be revealed in July 2011 when Harry Potter And The Deathly Hallows - Part 2 finally opens.

Red (Retired and Extremeley Dangerous)

The colourful title refers to the CIA alert level of Frank Moses, a former Black Ops agent played by Bruce Willis in this action comedy yarn. Also starring are Morgan Freeman, Helen Mirren and the always show-stealing John Malkovich along with the love interest provided by the stunning Mary Louise Parker.

It's an hour until we see any trace of Mirren. In the meantime we get to look at Parker a lot, and take a trip down Memory Lane with Willis as he gamefully reprises some of his most treasured Die Hard material. Frank's retired, but he's been calling Parker's Sarah Ross endlessly at work. She works for the company dealing with his pension plan, and he just likes the sound of her voice. Wait till he sees her.

When his house is invaded by CIA assassins Frank has to find out why he is wanted dead. Given her new connection to Frank, Sarah is no longer safe either and so Frank kidnaps her (calling it a rescue). And so begins the adventure as one by one Frank assembles his old team of agents to get to the bottom of the mess. Malkovich is delirious as Marvin Bogg, a man who has become paranoid through the enforced use of LSD, while Freeman plays along with the tired old notion that the black guy gets it first. He tells us early that he has stage four liver cancer, and it's a matter of when, not if, from that moment on.

Mirren has thus far managed to escape the madness but the trail of destruction finally leads to her and she is forced to swap the flower arranging and the 'routine' for a spot of sniping. Between the four old heads(along with former Russian agent Ivan played by the manic Brian Cox) they discover who's behind the plot. I say plot, it's all rather convoluted towards the end as it leads eventually on to the American vice president, running for the top job but soon to be running for his life.

RED is not to be taken seriously under any circumstances. If you enter the cinema expecting mindless and unlikely violence done cartoon-style with the odd wry quip thrown in you will have fun. If you go in expecting a serious political thriller you will be sorely let down.

In such circumstances, just stare at Parker.

Wall Street - Money Never Sleeps

I only saw the first Wall Street film three days ago. That means I'm new to this whole 'Greed is Good' thing. Until Monday the name Gordon Gecko meant very little to me. I knew he was a character played by Michael Douglas wearing large braces and smoking an even larger cigar, but that was where my knowledge of Oliver Stone's shady trader began and ended.

But now I feel I know Gordon a lot more. That is thanks largely to Stone's two intriguing movies in which most people seem to get fat by shouting about money that doesn't exist, before losing it all in some self-fulfilling prophecy of doom. Some get it back again, some end up in front of underground trains. It's the luck of the draw from what I can gather.

Wall Street - Money Never sleeps is mostly set 21 years after Gecko was banged up for insider trading and something called 'Security Fraud' in the denoument of the 1987 original. After which time he has been doing an awful lot of thinking, and writing. While giving a lecture to some wannabe financial players (mostly to promote his own book) he meets one named Jake Moore, his soon-to-be son-in-law it turns out. If that isn't too many hyphens for you.

Moore is played by Shia Leboeuf, last seen rolling around with the octogenaeric Harrison Ford in the needless fourth installment of the Indiana Jones story. Yet here he seems much more comfortable, even if his character tends to lack a bit of focus. Does he want to engage with Gecko to help re-unite him with his estranged daughter, or does he really want to pick up a few tips on how to become absurdly rich overnight? Well, both actually.

Mixed in with all of this is a revenge plot featuring Josh Brolin's Bretton James, mega-rich megalomaniac and big-shit of the monumentally capitalist Churchill Schwarz bank. James will stomp over anyone to make more money and win what Gecko later calls 'the game'. James is something of a re-incarnation of Gecko's character from the first installment. I'd question whether the film needs another Gecko, since it already has Gecko. Yet my main bug-bear with Brolin's greed is that it is at one point illustrated by a motorcycling scene which, though important in one obvious way, is mostly pointless posturing.

It takes an hour for the film to establish Jake's dilemma. One the one hand he knows that his fiancee Winnie (played by the currently ubiquitous Carey Mulligan) will flip her proverbial lid if she finds out that he has been in cahoots with her father. She still blames him for the overdose which killed her brother Rudi. On the other he has this nagging feeling that won't go away that he could learn so much from Gecko. Did I say learn? I meant earn. Either way his idyllic relationship is heading for rockier times.

And so a more human tale emerges than anything seen in the first film. Douglas goes about the business of reclaiming his daughter's love, and it seems that the game and the money no longer matter. Yet leopards are notoriously reluctant to change their spots, so the question is whether Gecko will be lured in again by the rampant, greedy gambler that lies within.

There's no mileage in giving away the ending, except to say that I found it a little disappointing. To my mind Stone goes past the point of no return plot-wise, before slamming on the brakes regardless.

As a character study and morality tale this is every bit as good as it's predecessor. Leboeuf bares favourable comparison with Charlie Sheen's young gun Buddy Fox from the original, while Mulligan and Brolin are very believable and watchable as Winnie and Bretton respectively. Yet it's Douglas who steals the show as expected. Gordon Gecko is back.