ゲド戦記 - (Ged's War Chronicles) - Tales from Earthsea

Although as one would expect from the Ghibli studios, Earthsea looks fantastic - it has everything you expect it to have; dragons, wizards, magic swords, in fact pretty much every fantasy cliche you can think of. What it doesn't have is any of the warmth that make Ghibli movies, those of Miyazaki Hayao in particular, so special. Maybe it's unfair to judge director Miyazaki Goro by the impressive yardstick of his father, but that aside, there is little that is gripping about this film.

Harry Potter & The Order of the Phoenix

This is definitely the best Potter movie, but it still suffers from the same problems - one simply can't make it exactly like the book, and the leading characters seem to suffer from their tongues being too big for their mouths. However, great deal of the world is beautifully realised, notably the Ministry of Magic and Delores Umbridge, quite possibly the most evil character in the series. Great if you like that sort of thing...which I do...

The 40 year old Virgin

In order for character based comedy to be funny, the characters need to have more than two dimensions. Unfortunately, the only one who even comes close is the titular lead, his friends who make up the other three quarters of the main supporting cast offering us profiles of pot-head, fast-talking black guy and angry man who's just been dumped. Aside from a few nicely delivered lines, this is American Pie vintage comedy, which is more excruciating than actually funny.

Clash of the Titans

To a no-longer-in-single-figures-Shining-Love-Pig, Clash of the Titans suffers mostly from a marriage of the very very good, and the truly terrible. Our hero and leading lady are but wooden mannequins to the stop motion wizardry of Ray Harryhausen, and Laurence Olivier, as one would expect, is quite possibly the best Zeus in cinematic history, but he just doesn't appear enough. Still, that's Gods for you. A remake is apparently in the works, but I don't think I'll be hunting it down.

Hot Fuzz

In a strange way, despite being set in, to all intents and purposes, the "real world", without unexplained Zombie plagues, Hot Fuzz manages to be even sillier than its' predecessor, Shaun of the Dead. This could be because it attempts to parody too many films in one go. Moreover, there are some quick-fire gag after gag sections, which makes it feel like a sitcom with a laugh quota to fill, and there are a couple of "this situation is so absurd it simply has to be funny" scenes. However, what elevates the work of Pegg & Wright is that it manages to cram in plenty of laughs as well as offering a decent and well-paced storyline.