Pirates of the Caribbean - At Worlds End

Perhaps film makers of the future will ensure an audience with the cliff-hanger technique. It worked for the abominations that were the Matrix sequels, and it worked for this. What I really loved about the first film was that it was unselfconsciously fun. The last two films take themselves too seriously by far, and they are full to the brim with stuff that simply never gets used, like certain characters, or plot, counter-plot, double-cross, double-double-cross, but none of it actually matters because it gets washed away in a roaring maelstrom of CGI and swashbuckling. Also, if you kill a major character off, it's sure to resonate in the minds of the viewers as a moving piece of cinema...however that didn't work for me in this film...and not in Moulin Rouge either...

Harry Potter & The Goblet of Fire

All the Harry Potter films do is remind me how much I like the books, and that I should be reading them instead. Characters of the written word don't display the kind of speech impediments showcased here. Although this is one of the better Potter movies, it still feels abominably rushed, but then again, even the beloved books seem to be trying to do too much in too little time. Attractive eye candy (as opposed to literary candy).

The Departed

The hardest part, for me, about this film was watching it whilst trying not to compare it to the original, Infernal Affairs, which didn't exactly blow me away in the first place. I seem to have failed in this endeavour, as I find Scorsese's remake wanting. Unlike it's Asian predecessor, I thought The Departed plodded a little bit, and the violence is just gratuitous and far too inevitable to be menacing. Moreover the ending is a colossal cop-out.

Disney's Alice in Wonderland

As far as Disney goes, Alice earns points for not needlessly Americanising the source material, except for one sequence whih owes more to Seuss than Carroll. The casting of mostly English voice artists also stands in its favour. However, this is a very specific vintage of Disney, liable to burst into song at a moments notice, and the near constant reign of incidental music is merely the serving dish for a cartoon that may even be noisier than Akira.

A Scanner Darkly

Based on the book by Phillip K Dick, the most interesting thing here is the Bakshi-esque style of animation over previously shot live action footage. This technique is particularly useful for depicting the very worst of bad trips, and in some cases it enhances the performances of the cast (for better or for worse, as Keanu Reeves demonstrates in his all-too imitable fashion). Looking past the striking animation, what is left is a confusing jumble of drug fuelled psychobabble, which, as is all too often the case with Phillip K Dick adaptations, is suddenly and succinctly explained in a few lines at the end.