The funniest scene not in Iron Man 3. On the promotion trail Downey manages to make a small child cry trying to convince him he is indeed Iron Man!

The first iron man film was mildly interesting. The second Iron Man film was absolutely barking mad and strange, Iron Man 3 takes us back to a semblance of slightly plausible science.

Robert Downey Jr. is as usual building bigger and better, newer metal suits with super powers that mostly defy logic. Gwyneth Paltrow is Downey’s love interest and carry’s off her role reasonably well. Downey plays up the moody, dark and depressive sides of his character with rapid bipolaresque leaps back to normality. Whether this was the intended effect or a script with poor continuity, we are left guessing.

If you saw the first film, you have pretty much seen this one, not too many very interesting new twists and turns here.

The films saving grace..lots of wanton meaningless destruction.

With oh so obvious comparisons to the transformers franchise of films, tv shows, toys (Yes the Pacific Rim toys are out now) etc. etc., pacific Rim actually was not a bad film in its own right.

I found the whole mind melting with the machines built especially to fight the massive Gamera-like monsters that invade the cities of the world, pretty interesting. I wouldn’t say it was anywhere near as interesting as the mind-melts of Avatar, but nevertheless a bit interesting!

There are so many movies I can probably compare Pacific Rim to..really the whole history of action Sci Films are in their somewhere…but all in all if you like the genre this will kill a few hours for you, even if like me you just like seeing ginormous creatures flattening US cities!

Disconnect is a very good film, despite being American and despite having some big name stars in it (yes I think Hollywood should stay away from Canne!). In a lot of ways Disconnect talks about the disconnection between human beings that has occurred because of Internet communication.

Told through three stories whose characters interact at the edges at times; We experience an interview that becomes a romance of sorts between a reporter and an Internet sex room performer, the bullying of a socially inept teenager by his peers and the theft of identity and money from a young struggling couple.

A common theme running through the film also seems to be loss: each of the main characters seem to have suffered the death of a significant person in their lives. The main characters cope with this in different ways, variously disconnected either from reality or each other by technology. This film is full of people spending their lives on phones (texting at the dinner table!) and other Internet technology rather than relating to each other. This of courses changes through experience (be no point in the film otherwise), but I won’t spoil the ending for you.

Chucky is the one on the right..

Yes Chucky is back for his usual revenge against anyone and everyone, transported from the 1980’s into 2013. He’s certainly very durable after being burned and chopped many times before, but just like Freddy Krueger we can’t let a good sequel get spoiled by a little thing like continuity!

All in all just the standard Chucky fare, nothing quite as insane as say The Bride of Chucky where we were treated to Chucky trying to reproduce or anything, just lots of blood splattering murders. Chucky turns up one day in the post and sets about his business.

I will be very curious to see if Chucky can connect with a new generation of fans, the films, dolls and hype were certainly a big thing 20 years ago.

Forbidden Ground is a very interesting film about three British Soldiers trapped in no-mans land during World War I. Starring and directed by Johan Earl (indeed watching the credits its apparent he did everything except make the tea) with a cast of little known actors giving very good performances.

The film tended to veer more towards the action of the piece, rather than the futility we are used to seeing in films about the futile World War I conflict. There was certainly enough mud and dismemberment to hint at these things but little development was gone into on this theme.

Running alongside the main story we find out that one of the soldiers wives has been a bit naughty while he is away and is busily shopping around trying to get an illegal abortion. I guess I can sort of see that this was an attempt to show that the war affected everyone in bad ways, but I frankly found it a bit annoying alongside the heroic battlefield story they were trying to tell. The final twist is interesting of course, I won’t spoil it for you.

A fairly standard cops and robbers piece with Dolph Lundgren actually giving a pretty good performance. Also unlike too many of his films we are not “treated” to 20 minute fight scenes where suddenly everyone in the melee becomes an Olympic standard martial arts expert.

Instead Lundgren’s trademark fighting is kept to a minimum and the film concentrates on an actual story with characters. Without trying to say it is anywhere near as good, I can see a lot of Casino in the film stylistically and that’s hardly a bad thing.

Perhaps a tad violent at times and a few deaths that resulted in a remarkable lack of any discernible bleeding, but all in all if you enjoy the genre you will enjoy Ambushed.

The Host: Its brilliantly original because Stephenie Meyer “Wrote” it

Recipe: Take the original invasion of the body snatchers from the fifties, add the remake from the eighties, maybe even the Hidden from the late eighties a couple of bad remakes like the Invasion with Nicole Kidman, a couple of seasons of Stargate SG1 and a famous American author of twilight who no-one has the courage to say “by the way you’ve stolen every idea in your novel” too; and there you have The Host.

Don’t get me wrong The Host is not such a bad movie, actually I enjoyed it, but the fact that Stephenie Meyer got accolades for writing it instead of multiple law-suits is simply just appalling.  Yes I know she wrote the Twilight series (not very original either, ever heard of a film called the Lost Boys Stephenie?) but this doesn’t excuse completely misplaced pats on the back.

It kind of asks the question: is there any originality left in the United states? If you liked all of the films I have mentioned you will probably enjoy this one, even if it does steer a bit towards soppy teen romance at times. A very good performance from Irish/American actress Saoirse Ronan who many would remember from her rather chilling role in Hanna missing everyone’s heart..

You might wonder why my response to a film I admit enjoying is somewhat critical when its just a question of who wrote the thing, but the precise problem is that no one seems to be mentioning where the story was ripped from. What got my heckles up here was Meyer produced the film herself and not once mentioned the other classic films she borrowed from. Instead in her interviews we are treated to a George Lucas style lets-talk-about-me-and-how-talented-I-am as if she had just published Gone With the Wind.

This was a very offbeat film from Seth Rogan, featuring an all-star cast of Hollywood greats playing themselves. With lots of cameo’s from people like Rihanna (obviously trying to build on her film career after running from explosions like a runway model in Battleship) and James Franco, Jonah Hill, Emma Watson.

Every actor made hopeless fun of their Hollywood persona’s I think using it as an opportunity to have a snap back at the paparazzi and their constant rumor-mongering.

Without giving too much away the film is about the end of the world and a house full of dysfunctional guys trying to cope with it. There are some really funny moments in this flick, although I don’t think it was quite as hilarious as it could have been.

Apparently based on a short film Seth and his mates all made in a drunken blaze, I think a lot of the jokes are in-jokes and were probably a lot funnier at the time. Unfortunately unlike THX-1138 this was not a film that turned out better from a short film to a major motion picture! Still well worth watching for a few belly laughs.

In my experience Australian films are either very good or extremely bad. This film fell towards the later category.

A bastard in action…well in this scene it was

Careless Love was all in all a bad remake of the french television film Student Services with a quasi-feminist diatribe thrown in your face throughout. Evidence I suppose that Australia still only has soap-opera script writers who can’t change their approach when writing films.

The film drew heavily on the tragic legacy of Jane Champion: the only good men are father-figures every other man is an evil-in-some-way-complete-bastard. Of course in fairness it is hard to find too many redeeming men in a film about Asian prostitutes being exploited and maybe redeeming men would have been inconsistent with the sordid little world they were trying to paint.

The film lacked all the emotion and psychology of the original and its sex scenes were quite unbelievable due to the contrived feminist discourse in play (but then you only have to watch Underbelly to see the same problem). In its sordidness the sex scenes in the original film found a beauty and some artistic interplay, Careless Love was far too busy applying middle class feminist values to what is commonplace in Vietnam today and Vietmanese culture, to try and be artistic or ask questions about sexuality in such a situation. The central character represented as a hardcore working prostitute throughout, a far cry from the French film in which the central character is an awkward, wary amateur forced as a last resort by circumstances.

Student Services left the viewer feeling nothing but sadness for the central character and even somewhat for her protagonists, Careless Love left me feeling completely indifferent toward pretty much all of the characters.

If like me you are a big fan of Asian horror ghost stories this is one for you. The film is not Asian, but American and to an extent independent.

I say it is Asian-Horror-like because it is made in much the same style as films like Ringu or other greats with sudden twists, shakes and violet scares. It might be a bit of a stretch to compare it to Ringu as I guess most films tend to borrow from everything good that has gone before it but I could see elements in there.

The only thing I probably didn’t like about the film was the ghost getting around in a sheet at times (spoiler alert) which bordered on comedic. One is also left with the feeling the young couple sort of deserved what they got after carelessly inviting harm on themselves at the films beginning.

Still all in all a great ghost flick with lots of seat-leaping screams.