I’ve heard a thing about Batman that I’d heard a lot before, but I’ve heard it a lot recently since the new movie came out, and that’s in a nutshell that “Superman is how America sees itself; Batman is how the rest of the world sees America.” Well, with Hancock perhaps we’ve found a rival superhero for the U.S. to identify with, lol. There’s a sequence here where Hancock meets the PR man played by Jason Bateman as Bateman’s car gets stuck on a trainline. The classic superhero setpiece, right? Yet just about any way Hancock can screw things up, Hancock does screw things up. We see glimpses of similar “rescues” early on the movie – H sure gets the job done, but usually at the cost of mucho avoidable carnage. It kinda reminded me of the opening of Team America. It’s very funny, but just a little frighteningly true.

I’m in severe catchup mode right now (I’ve actually had to force myself to skip a bunch of reviews including Son of Rambow, Zohan and Harold and Kumar just so I can start writing again – I’ll watch them all again and review them later in the year, I promise) so I’d heard plenty about this movie and the gist was pretty well summed up on Mark Kermode’s podcast in that apparently it’s “half a good movie” – the bad half allegedly coming when a “second superhero” shows up (avoiding spoilers).

Well, I was really enjoying the movie for a good hour or so till I began bracing myself for this revelation. What can I say but I was pleasantly surprised; and I really can’t see where the last third of this movie resembles such mindless knockabout finales as Transformers etc, the story is surprisingly bracing right to the close – I found the movie following the “revelation” closer to a good Mr. And Mrs. Smith than anything else (if that’s too much of a spoiler then I apologise – if you haven’t seen it by now then phooey :-P).

The only thing that really would’ve made it better for me would’ve been a little more of French Daegy, lol – what you see of him in the trailer/promo clip is just about all there is, and hilarious though he is, I don’t think that quite warrants the cuties tag

I have to start this one by saying, despite for the most part sharing Mark Kermode’s sighing response to most recent spoof movies, I thought this one could work. The genre is certainly ripe for a ribbing, especially after Spider-Man 3 and I love Drake Bell, it’s awesome he got a lead role even if it was just this, not to mention the swarm of names that flash onscreen during the opening credits.

Well …

For twenty minutes it does so well.

Then Stephen Hawking shows up. Serious head in hands time, not funny at all, and I apologize profusely for actually watching beyond that scene and, worse, winding up enjoying it overall. The movie then parodies few superhero movies other than the Spider-Man trilogy (and only the first two parts at that) which is not only a little letdown but kind of suggests the movie, or at least the script, might have been on the shelf for more than a few years.

But Drake just about gets through it all and retains his cool, at least to me. And hey, if this is what’s paying for his music, then that’s fine by me too. And, I don’t know if it was just like some kind of hysterical response to watching my first movie in nearly a week, lol, but I nearly peed laughing at the whole “excuses” scene lol (“I … met a guy on Craig’s list …”) and kinda couldn’t control myself thereafter. It drops slightly when Hawking shows again amidst other entirely unfunny political lookalikes – but, y’know, overall, I can’t fault it for what it is.

Grr. The recording of this cut off just a little before the end but I think I got the idea … I’m not too great at finding things to say about films like this anyway. What I do know, what matters, is that I kinda liked it and would certainly (especially since I missed the end lol) watch it again. Michel Legrand’s music is really gorgeous.

I’m up for just about any horror movie, even the recent teenage remakes that can’t even manage to be gory enough to get a scary rating, lol; and from what I’d heard of this one, I was even more excited than usual. When Jena Malone’s name appeared in the opening credits, wow. This has a familiar set-up and story in the end, but its real selling point that, yes, it’s proper scary, proper nasty, to the point where I almost actually had to look away in places, all that cracking bone etc. Jena Malone is absolutely fantastic throughout, and as a horror movie in this day and age … you just couldn’t hope for more. Short review, but hey, it’s a simple movie

I really cringed at the start of this, I’d been looking forward to it ever since mid-May when I started reading the two books by Lewis Carroll and it happened to be on TV early one morning. I decided to save it till I’d actually finished the second book, though. First of all, obviously, Kate Beckinsale at 25 is way too old to be Alice. But that in itself didn’t worry me – I loved, for example, Fiona Fullerton in the Seventies version of the first book (okay, she wasn’t quite so much older, but she was still no pre-teen). What made me cringe is that she’s presented here at first as a mother reading the Looking Glass story to her daughter (who, incidentally, is far more suited to the Alice role though you don’t really get a great sense of her acting ability).

But despite the inexplicable bookending (which, I’ve gotta say, even that’s saved by Beckinsale calling the little girl “Humpty” in the end like Alice in the book calls Dinah, though it doesn’t have the same tight connection to Humpty’s line about looking upon a King, re: “a cat may look at a King” from the first book – sorry, can you tell I’ve been reading the annotated version much? lol), and despite the at times awfully cheap and shaky TV production values, this is stunningly faithful to the text – in fact to the point where I genuinely wonder who it was made for. Virtually none of the nonsense and talk is diluted, and it’s a kind of blessing and curse at the same time.

But whether I enjoyed it or not (the jury may still be out), it still deserves a lot of respect – and that it even ends on that mesmerising acrostic (“A boat beneath a sunny sky … Still she haunts me phantomwise … In a Wonderland they lie, Dreaming as the days go by, Dreaming as the summers die … life, what is it but a dream?” – I’m absolutely crazy about this poem right now), read alternately by Beckinsale and the little girl, really almost made me want to go and read the book again.

A major point of reference for a lot of the reviews of this has been The Da Vinci Code so it’s a real wonder I even sat through it in the end, let alone that at best I found it far more enjoyable than the Dan Brown adaptation. It’s still a ridiculous pile of nonsense whose only real conclusion is “nobody knows anything” and which outstays its welcome long after you’ve said, “Yeh, I get it,” thirty times – but I was pretty hooked on the screen for at least two thirds of the duration. John Hurt is typically fantastic (the opening monologue is a true indication of how the rest of the movie will be and it’s down to him alone that I didn’t burst out laughing over it), Elijah Wood is okay outside of a few very weird accent and dialogue slips (he’s actually American in the movie, it should be easy enough, but it’s like the Oxford setting and co-stars are getting to him or something, and not in that believable way that his character has just been there awhile), and I quite liked the music. Nothing special but if you like the genre you’ll no doubt be happy enough.

This is certainly cute enough, from the outset more Lemony Snicket than Harry Potter, but I couldn’t help but realise once the weird and wonderful creatures appeared just how ridiculously simple the story is – there’s a whole series of these to come? Freddie Highmore does a typically impressive job of portraying twins, the illusion only enhanced by the only other real screen presence, the sister, also being played by a non-American, Sarah Bolger from In America, who always shocks me when she shows up in movies these days with how she’s grown lol. James Horner’s score sounds very James Horner ish but I liked it, even though one of the themes is hideously like Casper’s Lullaby – I know, I probably hold that score too much to heart but what can I say, it hurts me when he reuses that music more than when he reuses any other, lol. Anyway, overall, again compared to most of what I’ve seen so far this year, not bad at all. The ending in particular really lifts it up, so beautiful.

This will most certainly require a second viewing some time because I definitely think I like it but I couldn’t for the life of me tell you what it was all about. There’s something Wag the Dog-ish about it, something massively Grosse Pointe Blank ish about it too, and not just due to the presence of two Cusacks and Dan Aykroyd. Let it be said that any movie starring John and Joan pretty much has me at hello anyway. Hilary Duff is surprisingly watchable here too, I didn’t even recognise her at first. It’s very weird, very varied, and at times very funny. Like I say I can’t wait to see it again.