NEWS: Batman Actors Announced!

Anne Hathaway is Catwoman! Tom Hardy is Bane!

I don't know what people think about this but I'm a little unsure of Hathaway as Catwoman. I appreciate she's turned out some good roles, but Nolan's Batman films are pretty dark and I'm not sure if I can disassociate her with her past roles. Rachel Getting Married, Brokeback Mountain and all that might prove she can act, but I'm still left to be convinced. I'm not shooting her down, I'll just be wary until I see a bit more, but then I do trust Nolan.

Tom Hardy as Bane means that he will have to be proper beefed up because Bane was bloody massive. I can't wait to see what he brings to the role!

BELOW IS SPOILER FOR PEOPLE WHO ARE NOT AWARE OF BATMAN COMIC STORYLINE INVOLVING BANE. DO NOT READ UNLESS YOU WANT TO KNOW A POSSIBLE PLOTLINE! PURE SPECULATION THOUGH!

What Bane is really renowned for though is killing Batman by breaking his back. I think he went on to kill Superman or something as well, I can't remember but this could possibly prove an end to Nolan's Batman series if it does indeed end with Batman's death! I'm sure in the comics he came back, but I've no idea how - and at this junction don't really want to know!

Red

Bruce Willis heads up an interesting cast in this comic book adaptation about a group of retired CIA agents who are wanted by ... the CIA. Is it time to put this in a home and leave it to die? Short answer - yes.

Director Robert Schwentke has had a very strange career up to this film. His real break into Hollywood was directing Jodie Foster in the massively average Flightplan and then the ludicrously disgusting The Time Traveller's Wife (which was poorer than the book, if you can imagine such a thing) and now from thriller (if you can call Flightplan a thriller), to drama, to comic book action. I've not seen his first German feature Tattoo which is supposed to be a slightly gory horror neither his follow-up comedy The Family Jewels, but either Schwentke doesn't want to be pigeon-holed, or he can't settle on a genre, or maybe he just doesn't really know what he is any good at. Well let's just say, it ain't this.

Bruce Willis is in retirement getting his kicks by borderline stalking a young woman who is in charge of sending him his cheques (I say young, it's actually played by Weeds Mary-Louise Parker who is actually 46 and looks amazing for it), some agents try and kill him and so he goes on a quest to find out why. The actual plot is ridiculous, I still don't really get the whole picture, something about a cover-up of some mission that has something to do with the Vice President, it's all complete nonsense and the way the characters are introduced is completely lame. Bruce Willis is actually good as his usual cocky yet genuine action hero who oozes charisma, he has aged remarkably well and Parker does a good job as the fish-out-of-water act, in fact you could say the whole film is just her fantasy what with her obsession with romantic pulp novels.

In terms of the rest of the cast, Helen Mirren as a posh British assassin is boring and completely vanilla, the only time she stands out is shooting a massive gun at some cars in an end sequence that is the most long-winded and stupid way of trying to kidnap the Vice President. Who came up with this plan? These guys were CIA? Morgan Freeman who I think could possibly be one of the most overrated black actors ever, apart from maybe Denzel Washington, is a lame duck and the last time we see him can't come soon enough in a rather forgettable fashion. No-one talks about him afterwards thank God. Richard Dreyfuss is some kind of rich businessman behind it all or something, I don't know because I stopped paying attention, but the only real interesting characters were John Malkovich's paranoid schizo (originally to be played by John C Reilly - which would have been terrible), Brian Cox as a suave Russian ex-spy and Karl Urban as the young agent trying to chase them down. Clearly the whole cast had fun shooting the whole thing and this comes across as you watch the movie, but it's a complete disappointment.

The action is okay with the best bits in the trailer and they've tried to flesh out the characters a bit but it doesn't work, instead I thought it was a 'shoot-now-ask-questions-later' scenario where they were never really taking anything seriously. So the novelty of old killers is fun for about 45 minutes, but after that it's hard to keep interested. What with such terrible comic adaptations sprouting up where studios are trying to cash in on the comic buck as soon as possible rather than letting a script evolve for a while, you get fodder like The Losers and remakes of films only recently been made (Hulk/Spiderman/Superman) and unfortunately films like Red.

Retired Extremely Dangerous? More like Really Excruciatingly Disappointing.

Rating: 4/10

Scott Pilgrim Vs The World

Perhaps another title should be Edgar Wright Vs Hollywood ... and wins.

I've never been that much of a fan of Edgar Wright. There I've said it. I didn't really like Shaun Of The Dead or Hot Fuzz - I just didn't think they were that funny. After seeing the trailer for this film, I thought I'd enter with an open mind and see if this was more than a Kick-Ass wannabe.

The story, based on a bunch of comics, is about Scott's obsession with the local New York cool girl Ramona. Problem is, he already has a young girlfriend called Knives, he lives with his gay room-mate Wallace and the only work he does is with his band Sex Bomb-omb and he's not exactly the coolest kid around. However, once he starts falling for Ramona, he has to start fighting her evil ex's so that he can go out with her and that's basically it.

So is it any good? Yes. Very much so yes. Edgar Wright has made this film completely his own; the style is fantastic, it's all short, sharp and punctuated by words on-screen that makes it feel like you are reading a comic book. The effect makes it a hyper-real adventure for real geeks (not fake geek chics) whether it's nods to Final Fantasy or Seinfeld or Sonic the Hedgehog, it's full of sub-pop-culture references that still work in the context of the film that the people who don't understand the homages will still enjoy. It's fast-paced, uncompromising and just dives straight in. It knows exactly what it is and doesn't try to be something it's not. It just works perfectly.

The fight scenes look great, the acting is fun to watch, the script works, the humour is genuinely funny and it's just fucking cool. Saying that, Michael Cera should make this his final geek part as his Scott Pilgrim is the perfect ultimate role for him, it will be time for him to move on to something else now but unfortunately I doubt he will break his geeky mould. Kieran Culkin plays the gay, young layabout perfectly with enough self-knowing and humility to make him almost steal the show in some parts. Mary Winstead looks quite ugly for someone who is actually really hot but she hits her 'too cool for school' character right on the head, however her nemesis Knives is actually the more interesting character played by impressive newcomer Ellen Wong. The ex's, led by Jason Schwartzman, are also equally threatening and entertaining, each one of them relishing in their 'don't-take-myself-seriously' roles - Chris Evans and Brandon Routh being the stand-outs. Even a brief cameo by Thomas Jane and Clifton Collin is short yet funny and even Anna Kendrick is bearable (she's not in it that much).

The style might be amazing with bright, colourful visuals but it's definitely not for kids. I'm not even sure if it's for teenagers. It seems to be aimed at male twenty-somethings like myself but accessible for all audiences, so I might be somewhat biased, but it works perfectly. It's also the first time, probably ever, where a band that is in the context of the film is actually good. The music the Sex Bomb-ombs play I would go out and listen to, it makes a change from shitty indie-teenie-bopper-pleasing bands they usually stick up on stage that would be better suited with the Jonas Brothers in Rock Camp. The Sex Bomb-ombs actually rock and so does the other bands they show within the film - it's worth watching just for that.

I loved this a lot more than films like Kick-Ass, mainly because I felt Kick-Ass had a few flaws and felt a bit more like Spiderman for geekier geeks. This is much different and doesn't hold back, it pushes the idea of a film into a much more Warhol-esque sense of self-referencing that has the balls to try something a bit different and not be up it's own arse. Every minute had a classic moment and I think a lot of brave risks were taken in this film, and thank God they all paid off. It might be too fast for some people, it might be too geeky for others, it might just be a bit too stupid and silly for the rest of the audience, but I sure as hell liked it and it's the most fun I've seen on a cinema screen for a while.

Rating: 9/10