In a dystopian alternate future, Chicago is divided into five different factions, based on personality traits; Abnegation for the selfless, Amity the peaceful, Candor the honest, Dauntless the brave, and Erudite the intelligent. When you choose a faction at 16, you’re stuck with it for life – unless you’re kicked out, and you become “factionless”,…
Read moreDrinking Buddies
Olivia Wilde is the gorgeous, earthy, uproarious Kate, the marketing and events director (and only female employee) at a artisinal brewery in Chicago. She’s one of those permanently game, bloke-ish gals, who drink and swear and party the equal of any man, all the while looking like, well, Olivia Wilde. Although Kate has a boyfriend,…
Read moreMan of Steel
Man of Steel is just awful. It’s a busy, loud, incoherent and unsatisfying mess of incomplete ideas, smugly self-referential homilies, bombastic (but dull) set pieces and too, too big a budget. The story is pathetically shallow: General Zod, banished from the planet Klingon, arrives in Kansas to reclaim an ancient codex that’s been stored in…
Read moreSource Code
There’s a bomb on a commuter train heading for Chicago. We know this because, in Source Code, we see it explode. And then we see it explode again. And again. And again. And each time, an army pilot Colter Stevens (doe-eyed Jake Gyllenhaal) who’s working for a secretive new military time-travel program, is sent back…
Read moreTraitor
Traitor is a subdued little story about a Muslim soldier called Samir (Don Cheadle) who’s deep-deep-deep undercover as an explosives expert with a ruthless terrorist cell. When his government handler – the only one who knows he’s one of the good guys – is shot dead, Samir must avoid being clapped in chains by the…
Read moreEagle Eye
Remember that movie where the bad guys made Will Smith chase through the streets with his shirt flapping open?………. Um, OK, maybe not specific enough? Enemy of the State, it was called, and in it a shady government agency used its superior surveillance technology to snoop and meddle and basically frack up someone’s life. Eagle…
Read moreBatman, The Dark Knight
OK, let me start by saying; 1) Heath Ledger is as good as the hype and 2) the latest three hour Batman movie isn’t – at least not quite. Batman may have hoped to inspire goodness in mankind, but at the start of Christopher Nolan’s latest saga, it’s kind of backfired. Vigilantes and bad guys alike have…
Read moreWanted
Scrappy tyke James McAvoy butches up nicely in Wanted, the first American movie by Kazakh director Timur Bekmambetov. Bekmambetov previously made the partly-brilliant, partly-poor Night Watch / Day Watch vampire movies and this latest opus is equally patchy; sometimes it is edge-of-the-seat thrilling, other times it’s just dozy. Although it’s apparently based on a comic book, for…
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