Released: Out now
Certificate: 12A
Director: Mathieu Kassovitz
Screenwriter: Eric Besnard, Mathieu Kassovitz, Joseph Simas
Cast: Vin Diesel, Michelle Yeoh, Mélanie Thierry, Gérard Depardieu, Charlotte Rampling
Distributor: 20th Century Fox
Running Time: 90 mins

In the early Nineties, a young, first-time feature director by the name of David Fincher set about shooting the third movie in the Alien franchise, Alien 3. Following from the genre-defining instalments by Messrs Cameron and Scott, he was determined his movie would do the blossoming franchise proud. Before the film could be completed, though, he had abandoned the movie, the set, the whole production. Why? The studio had him hamstrung at every turn, undermining his decisions and rewriting the script as it went along. The studio in question was Fox, and with Babylon A.D. comes clear proof that it’s not concerned with changing its methods, with French director Kassovitz this time feeling the wrath of a studio unaccustomed to not getting its own way.
There is a decent movie buried somewhere in Babylon A.D., admittedly very, very, deep within, but the actual film here is a rambling, befuddled mess of bad acting, bad writing and well, just bad execution full stop.
Vin Diesel, who for the most part appears unsure of whether he is coming or going – understandably such was the film’s prickly shoot – delivers a mumbling, bumbling performance here as Toorop, a gruff mercenary in a gritty dystopia who’s tasked with transporting a precious cargo, a young lady (Thierry), from the depths of Russia to New York. It is a dystopia defined by deprivation, overcrowding and omnipresent advertising and, as such, is a fairly well realised backdrop, but the events that unfold are not so much a film with a beginning, a middle and an end, but more just a ramshackle collection of action scenes that appear to have been somewhat randomly knitted together. And to make things worse, they’re poor action scenes, too.
A story that is unsatisfactorily, and lazily, explained away in the final act; villains, portrayed by Rampling and Depardieu, that are underused; wasted support, most prominently Yeoh; an aimless narrative that wanders to and fro with little to no purpose, and which is loaded with crass dialogue; this film is scuppered at every conceivable turn. Kassovitz has openly distanced himself from the whole thing in the media, chastising Fox for having no guts and for refusing to allow him to work to deliver the film he intended. It’s not hard to see why he’s so peeved.

Released: 15 August ’08
Certificate: TBC
Director: Dave Filoni
Screenwriter: Henry Gilroy, Steve Melching, Scott Murphy
Cast: Matt Lanter, James Arnold Taylor, Tom Kane, Ian Abercrombie, Ashley Eckstein, Catherine Taber, Anthony Daniels, Christopher Lee, Samuel L Jackson
Distributor: Warner Bros.
Running Time: 97 mins

Do you remember playing with your Star Wars figures? Do you recall if the plots of those play moments matched anything resembling the movies you loved? Chances are they probably didn’t. More than likely they revolved around continual dust-ups between stormtroopers and Jedi. It’s clearly something that the makers of the new Star Wars movie, Clone Wars, remember only too well, yet unlike the rest of us, they decided to make a movie of their figurine playtime.

Set awkwardly between not only Episodes 2 and 3, but also between the two halves of the Cartoon Network animated mini-series that spawned it, Clone Wars continues the story of the campaign between the Separatists and the Republic, with the Sith manipulating everything in a massively convoluted power play that will pay off in Revenge Of The Sith.
The opening story revolves around the kidnap of Jabba the Hutt’s previously unmentioned son by Count Dooku, in a bid to destabilise the outer rim systems and stir up a second warfront for the Republic. Anakin Skywalker now with his own “sassy”, valley girl Padawan, must venture off to locate the “Huttling” before Jabba decides to side with the Separatists, turning the tide of the war in the process.
After the initial establishing of the plot and the stakes involved, director Dave Filoni hunkers down and sets about giving you 97 minutes of the CGI equivalent of those figurine dust-ups from yesteryear. The action, which initially starts off in spectacular fashion, quickly becomes dull and numbing, with swathes of droids and clones falling beneath a hail of laser fire and lightsaber hack-‘n’-slash combat that has you yearning for something, anything, in the way of meaningful dialogue to give you some respite.
When the dialogue does eventually arrive, it quickly slips into two very distinct categories: the first, childish action dialogue mostly cribbed wholesale from the original films; the second, huge lumps of leaden exposition, bringing those who may have dozed off during the 15th clone/droid stand-off in the past 5 minutes up to speed with exactly who is fighting who, where and why. The script by Henry Gilroy, Steve Melching and Scott Murphy removes Anakin’s whining and petulance, transforming the character in to a dull straight man to his hip young Padawan, but the effect is one that removes the series from the films that bookend it both in tone and content. Other characters fare little better: Padmé, 3P0 and Yoda get little more than cameos, while Obi-Wan is effete, consigned to being little more than Anakin’s backup where the story demands.

The action is certainly eye-popping in places, most notably a vertical assault up a cliff face by Anakin and his clones, yet it’s very hard to engage with. Partly this is due to the fact that the clones and the droids, who make up the majority of the cannon fodder, are utterly faceless and wiped out with monotonous regularity; partly it’s to do with the visual overload of what amounts to 90 minutes of the 97 being a constant fight. But ultimately the real problem comes with the innate knowledge that nothing that takes place on screen is going to have any impact at all.

The original animated Clone Wars series consisted of two volumes; the first took place directly after Attack Of The Clones, the second preceded Revenge Of The Sith, ending on the very opening shot of that movie, and so both halves felt relevant to the overall story. Unlike these, though, the new Clone Wars series feels redundant from the outset. It’s a feeling that increases as the film, an amalgam of multiple parts of a forthcoming TV series, moves forward. Only Anakin’s new Padawan, Ahsoka Tano, stands any chance of being interesting due to her introduction to the saga here, but even so, given her master’s actions in Revenge Of The Sith and her lack of appearance outside of this new series, her future isn’t exactly looking rosy.

Beyond the story, such as it is, the production of the film adds a lacklustre feel to everything; from the frankly dire score by Kevin Kiner  – who re-enforces the majesty of John Williams’s original work by turning in a rendition of the epic opening theme that’s so abysmal, that it sounds like a demo preset on a cheap electric organ – to the majority of the voice acting, which wavers between competent impressions to decidedly dodgier representations of characters and races. The one exception to this being Christopher Lee’s booming presence as Dooku.
The visuals fare little better. By turns striking and certainly iconic in places, the animation at times gives too clear an idea what the galaxy far, far away would look like had it been handed to Gerry Anderson in the Sixties. At times it’s dramatic and interesting but for the majority of the time the characters are lifeless, lacking in weight, pacing and empathy. In these CGI/DVD-extra savvy times, audiences will find very little to wow them, especially when the latest DreamWorks or Pixar beautifully-animated extravaganza plays in the theatre next door.

The overall result is one of profound apathy for all but the most hardcore (or undemanding) Star Wars fans who need to know the minute surrounding events between Volumes 1 and 2 of Genndy Tartakovsky’s original stylish series. For the rest of the audience, it will be hard to shake an overwhelming sense of cynicism that this is simply product to keep balance sheets looking healthy.

Lee Medcalf

Released: Out now
Certificate: 15
Director: Chris Carter
Screenwriter: Chris Carter, Frank Spotnitz
Cast: David Duchovny, Gillian Anderson, Billy Connolly, Amanda Peet
Distributor: 20th Century Fox
Running Time: 104 mins

There is a point towards the start of Mulder and Scully’s comeback flick where they’re waiting outside a door in a faceless corridor in the FBI offices. On one side of the door is a picture of President George W Bush and as our two believers look at it, then at each other, the show’s signature note refrain rings out. Is the commander in chief an alien? For one horrible moment it looks like we’re headed down the same history-debasing route as Jones and his Crystal Skullage… Thankfully, this is the only throwaway moment director and writer Chris Carter indulges in and the rest of the film adheres strictly to the X Files casebook. The problem is that it adheres a little too strictly to it.

Opting for an enclosed story that eschews the convoluted conspiracies of before is a wise move, it has been six years since the X Files were officially closed, but the case that Carter and co-writer Spotnitz have come up with is surprisingly rudimentary. There’s a kidnapped FBI agent and a slapdash of psychic prophesising from Billy Connolly’s paedophile priest, but the resultant investigation struggles to fill the feature-length running time. Indeed, it all feels too much like a prolonged episode, something the limited 30 million budget fails to disguise, which is closer in tone to a police procedural and which bears surprisingly little of the supernatural at all.

There are nods to the past, especially in the Mulder and Scully relationship, but the film appears confused as to how much fidelity it should demonstrate. There are too few links to the series’ previous goings on for the diehards, but newcomers will be lost in places, and it is hard to see who it is really aimed at – fans or non-fans. As a result of this confusion, the film mistakenly retreads too much familiar territory – do we need to be told that Mulder wants to believe because he wants to save his sister?

In casting itself adrift of the series’ convolutions too, the film is stripped of some of the show’s potency. With the real world stymied by a lack of faith in the government and the powers that be, you’d think there would be an appetite for a spot of conspiracy theorising. Carter, though, thinks otherwise and as a result, this new X File feels wholly irrelevant and disappointingly unnecessary. Time has moved on, and it is hard to find a reason to believe in what is presented here.

Released: 25 July
Certificate: 12A
Director: Christopher Nolan
Screenwriter: Christopher Nolan, Jonathan Nolan and David Goyer
Cast: Christian Bale, Heath Ledger, Aaron Eckhart
Distributor: Warner Bros
Running Time: 152 mins

It’s very unlikely we’ll ever give a six out of five, but had The Dark Knight lived up to the hype we may well have had to. The truth is Heath Ledger’s Joker is an admirable creation but not mystically brilliant. Equally, the bank heist doesn’t come close to Heat’s; the drama is not on a par with Godfather Part II; the action is smart but within boundaries already set; and the debate for best superhero movie is still open. But that’s not to say The Dark Knight isn’t excellent – it is.
With David Goyer given less involvement this time around, the brothers Nolan have been set free to construct a tale that’s clearly a separate beast from every other superhero movie that’s gone before it, even, to a degree, 2005’s Batman Begins. This is an ambitious crime thriller in the vein of Michael Mann that intermittently features a man dressed up as a Bat. This isn’t simply a comic book adaptation, it’s a tale of corruption, justice, heroism and terrorism, a story where a maniacal criminal affects a city’s change so much that progress is reversed and those who watch over it become lost. And it is unrelenting. From beginning to end, the pace never lets up, the narrative chasing one pulse-racing scene after the next. There are moments that widen the eyes and ones that will have you covering them, there are sequences that will leave you surprised and some that will leave you sad. It is a film without a singular high point but instead with many, each equally as impressive and technically assured as the one before it.
The Dark Knight is a universe away from Superman catching a helicopter and Spider-Man stopping a train, it is a serious film about serious things with serious performances. Whenever a tongue threatens toward the cheek, it’s unceremoniously stomped on with razor-tipped shoes. As a result, it hinges a great deal on the performances and they are uniformly excellent. Bale is a comfortable Batman and an entertaining Bruce Wayne; Ledger is terrific as the darkest of anarchists; Oldman typically superb as the tired Gordon; and with what is arguably the hardest job in this undoubted ensemble piece, Eckhart excels as the DA-turned-madman Harvey Dent, giving the film the emotional centre is so clearly relies on.
This is not a superhero movie that will have you cheering and neither is it one that will leave you with that feeling of awe precious few others do, it is a superhero movie you observe, consider and say well done to. Well done indeed.

Released: 12 June ’08
Director: Louis Leterrier
Screenwriter: Zak Penn, Edward Norton (uncredited)
Cast: Edward Norton, Liv Tyler, Tim Roth, William Hurt
Distributor: Marvel Studios, Universal Pictures
Running Time: 112 mins

Marvel Studios launches its second assault on cinema screens this summer with the return of the big green one. A sequel to Ang Lee’s 2003 take on the character, this Louis Leterrier-directed incarnation restores Bruce Banner (Edward Norton)’s anger-management-requiring alter ego to its ‘Incredible’ status with an explosive and eye-catching extravaganza of rippling green muscles and super-strength-infused carnage.
From the opening credit sequence, which brings the uninitiated up to speed with Banner’s gamma-experiment gone wrong and his ensuing exile, Leterrier serves up a high-octane thrill ride that doesn’t let up. A pulsating Army-Hulk encounter in Brazil is followed up by a bruising face-off Stateside, and the climactic New York smackdown between Hulk and the Abomination is a bone-shuddering beast of a scrap. Screenwriter Zak Penn injects enough comic book references to keep the fanboys happy too (Banner dismisses a pair of stretchy purple pants/“Hulk Smash!!”/the obligatory Stan Lee cameo), and initial anxieties over the effects have been put to rest with a convincing rendering of the Hulk and his Blonsky-gamma-ed nemesis. The pace, too, is frenetic, so much so that it almost disguises the fact that underneath all the CGI-bombast there is precious little going on. Almost…
The problems arise from the fact that there is not much for the Hulk to do. We meet Bannner, he’s on the run, and events unfold but the initial set up is never rectified or furthered in any way. The emotional drama that underpins the Hulk’s plight, is lightweight to say the least, and is not helped by the weakness of the two central performances by Norton (too bland to anchor the action) and Liv Tyler (faceless as Betty Ross, the object of Banner’s affection) upon which it hinges. An enigmatic turn by William Hurt as the dastardly General Ross and even Robert Downey Jr’s sequel-leading final-reel cameo as Tony Stark, serve only to highlight these weaknesses further.
The main stumbling block, though, is that the script delivers neither the drama nor the story to match the action that Letterier orchestrates to such devastating effect. Characters are underdeveloped, Tim Roth’s Emil Blonsky in particular, and too little time is spent on the emotional turmoil of Banner as he battles the beast inside of him (Norton’s much publicised wranglings with Marvel over the film’s length suggest that a longer, director’s cut would flesh out these areas). It’s still an energised, and by turns spectacular, return for the tetchy one though, which suggests, particularly by its open-ended finale, that there is a healthy future in store for its temperamental protagonist.

Released: 22 May 2008
Director: Steven Spielberg
Screenwriter: David Koepp
Cast: Harrison Ford, Shia LaBeouf, Cate Blanchettt, Ray Winstone
Distributor: Paramount
Running Time: 122 mins

It’s been 19 years since Henry Jones Jr last cracked the bullwhip in the misleadingly titled Last Crusade, and his return to he big screen has been fraught with setbacks. Writers have come and gone and there have been script tinkerings aplenty before Lucas, Spielberg and Ford could all agree. But now, with Indiana Jones And The Kingdom Of The Crystal Skull, everyone’s favourite archaeologist is back. Only he isn’t really.

Harrison Ford is back as Indy, but Kingdom Of The Crystal Skull is no Indiana Jones movie, or rather, it’s not a Spielberg Indiana Jones movie. He may be the credited director but Kingdom has Lucas’s grubby mits all over it, the man responsible for the Star Wars prequels taking the reins to yet another of his other beloved creations to deliver the family-friendly over-the-top romp he’s so intent on peddling these days. And how over-the-top it is…

From the opening salvo where we’re introduced to the now pensionable Dr Jones, the stage is set. Outside a warehouse at an American military base in Nevada, Indy and best bud Mac (Ray Winstone) are hauled from the boot of a car by a bunch of Commies, (it’s the Fifties now and the US Cold War enemies replace the Nazis as the evildoers of the piece). He picks up his fedora, dusts himself off, and, under duress, complies with the Ruskies who want him to point the way to a rather important item in the warehouse they’re after. One haphazardly orchestrated set piece later, and he’s escaped their clutches, only for him to wander into a nuclear testing site, the detonation of a rather large nuclear bomb decidedly imminent. With the countdown nearing zero what does our hero do? He jumps into a lead-lined fridge in one of the empty dummy-populated houses. The bomb drops, everything’s incinerated, and Indy plus fridge are rocketed off across the sky like a shooting star, crash landing moments – and miles away – later uninjured save for a couple of bumps and bruises.

As the story kicks in, the levels of credibility are stretched to breaking point. New sidekick, Shia LaBeouf’s be-quiffed Mutt, rocks up to deliver a letter to Indy from an old archaeologist pal, kicking into motion this instalment’s escapades: racing the red menace to return an ancient crystal skull to its Peruvian jungle home, whereupon the Mayan relic will impart some form of divine knowledge or another (if the commies get it, their ‘armies of darkness’ will march all over the world, you see?). Tombs get raided, with Indy and Mutt encountering all manner of cobweb-drenched caves and passages and obligatory boobytraps, but with Lucas and Spielberg aiming to trump what’s gone before, both in the series and in the earlier scenes of the movie, the stunts and action Indy is known and loved for is ditched in favour of an escalating succession of ‘jumping the shark’ moments. Spielberg’s proclamations, too, that he would be keeping things old school – CGI free and stunt heavy – prove somewhat misleading, as Lucas’s ILM infiltrates every pore of the film, right from the opening shot’s bemused little desert ferret to Mutt’s swinging through the Peruvian jungle Tarzan-like with a group of screeching monkeys.

Previously, Indiana Jones movies were action adventure fare, driven towards a supernatural McGuffin. This time round, though, the emphasis has shifted with the sci-fi nature of the eponymous crystal skull tipping the balance in its favour. The shift in tone for the dusty archaeologist is in itself no bad thing, but it is the lack of flair with which it is carried off that breaks our hearts. The recreation of the Fifties is nicely handled, but the characters that populate the movie are one-dimensional pastiches masquerading as real people and this goes some way to explaining the toothless performances on show by the usually reliable thesps who turn out here. Cate Blanchett as psychic soldier Irina Spalko, John Hurt as the crystal skull-crazed Professor Oxley and Jim Broadbent as Indy’s dean at Harvard are all underused, Spielberg missing opportunities left, right and centre with the talent at his disposal. David Koepp’s screenplay (from a story by Lucas, of course, and Jeff Nathanson) misfires too, with too many jokes falling flat, and it lacks focus and direction; it charges out the blocks but loses momentum quickly, ambling when it should sprint, and the McGuffin-encounter finale is an anticlimax for Indy and his slapstick band of cohorts who’re along for the ride this time, which is an achievement in itself given the star-struck nature of its unveiling.

When the focus is back with the film’s two stars though, Ford and LaBeouf, there are shades of former glories with the interplay between the two recalling the best buddy-pairings of the previous films. Shia too holds his own, despite his Harley Davidson-riding greaser’s identity being one of the worst kept secrets in recent memory and the rather heavy-handed suggestion to Mutt-shaped adventures to come. Ford, though, about whom there have been grumblings aplenty regarding his ability to pull off the action hero role in his Sixties, settles the debate once and for all. Trim and in shape, he looks the part but, more importantly, he delivers the Indy we know and love; his hair may have greyed, but he’s still the rugged hero we remember and really he’s the film’s raison d’etre. The tone may be off, but when Indy plonks the fedora on his head and dons that leather jacket, it’s as if he’d never been away.

Lucas, Spielberg, and Ford had pronounced long before the film’s Cannes debut that Kingdom Of The Crystal Skull was a movie for the fans, and not for the critics. If truth be told, though, it is anything but; rather this latest Indy outing is a film for Mssrs Lucas, Spielberg and Ford. If only they had refrained from indulging themselves quite so much, perhaps they could have delivered a film that was more in keeping with the standards that previous Indy outings had set.

Release Date: 2 May 2008
Director: Jon Favreau
Writers: John August, Mark Fergus, Hawk Ostby, Arthur Marcum, Matthew Hollaway
Creators: Stan Lee, Larry Lieber, Don Heck, Jack Kirby
Starring: Robert Downey Jr, Gwyneth Paltrow, Terrence Howard, Jeff Bridges

Based on the popular metal-clad Marvel character, Iron Man follows the story of Tony Stark, the hyper-intelligent scion of an enormously wealthy weapon manufacturing family and the heir to the multi-billion dollar company that his father built. Irresponsible, rash, amoral and something of a womaniser, his life is turned upside down when he’s captured by the not-Al-Qaeda forces of terrorist supremo Raza, who wants Stark to build him a devastating weapons system that will enable him to wage war on a catastrophic scale. Needless to say, Stark has other ideas and ends up making himself into a walking tank that decimates the prison. His return to the USA sees him vow to take on people who would cause massive suffering to others, and perfect his design of a suit that will turn him into the Iron Man.

Although the film can drag at points, a witty, refreshing and entertaining script breaks up any threatening tedium during the points between the jaw-dropping action sequences. However, the lead actor is what makes Iron Man transcend the Fantastic Four stable of effects and humour, and launches it into its very own league. If there’s ever a man that embodied an action hero, it’s Robert Downey Jr as Tony Stark. This film proves that he should have been one of the great actors of his generation – a consummate performer that not only makes the film, but also carries it on all levels. Unfortunately, the supporting cast isn’t as impressive. Gwyneth Paltrow seems out of sorts in a film of this kind, and while she certainly has chemistry with Downey, her character, Pepper Potts, changes quickly from being a strong and focused female lead to being another one of Tony’s floosies. As a result, we disengage too completely with her to ever fully sympathise towards the end. Likewise, while Jeff Bridges does put in a decent performance as a distasteful corporate veteran, his rapid transformation to homicidal villain is not as convincing as it could be.

A few minor flaws with casting and pacing aside, the real joy of Iron Man is its humour. Laughs are frequent and widespread and overall you get the sense that this film is one that knows exactly what it is, exactly what it wants to achieve, and has a real go at it without ever taking itself too seriously. Yes, this may not appeal to the post-Killing Joke crowds who may be more in tune with a Nolanesque vision of comic book films, but for those of us who just want to see Tony Stark being Tony Stark in the most sophisticated armoured vehicle known to man, Iron Man is our film.