Review

Ballistic: Ecks vs Sever - Antonio Banderas is Jeremiah Ecks, former FBI agent with a stupid name mourning for his lost wife, and Lucy Liu is Sever, disaffected ‘DIA’-trained assassin with an even stupider name. The first thing you need to know about this movie is that it is possibly one of the worst movies ever; secondly, that there was probably more money in the pyrotechnics budget than the scriptwriting, costume and casting budget combined, despite the apparent star power of the leads. Thirdly, it’s based on a video game. ...

Charlie Wilson’s War: Amusingly told story of how Charlie Wilson, a smokin’, drinkin’, womanising politician from Texas got the Afghan war of the 80s off the ground. A bit too light-hearted given the relevance of the subject matter today, and unrepentent - the argument being that “it would have been alright if we allocated more money to follow through after the war had been won,” which looks a lot like retroactive re-writing of facts to my cynical nature. ★★☆ ...

Where to begin with Batman? The franchise has, after all, been going for nigh on 20 years now, and now we come to the 6th installment, The Dark Knight. When you think about it, the number of Hollywood A-Listers who were in Batman and Robin, the entirely forgettable Batman movie of the mid-ninties, it is a bit of a shock that between them they managed to turn out the pile of crap that was. I mean, Clooney, Thurman, Schwarzenegger, Sliverstone, and sure, Macpherson even, and with Bruckheimer directing, you’d really hope you got something more for your money. Between that and Batman Forever (Kilmer, Kidman, Carey and Lee-Jones? No?), you’d have thought Tim Burton’s dark and brooding vision of Gotham was lost entirely in a chase for easy money that big names bring. ...

Get Smart: Bloody hilarious. Unless you came to see Get Smart the TV show replicated on the big screen, or were expecting something with a bit of substance, you won’t be particularly disappointed. Steve Carrell is no Don Adams, but his straight-man is nigh on perfect, and Anne Hathaway with her gorgeous eyes is … well, a different take on Agent 99, but sexy as hell in any case. Don’t watch any trailers though, as it’ll kill some of the better jokes. ★★★★ ...

Hancock: This isn’t going to get great reviews in the media, because (a) it mixes genres and (b) it’s got some moral ambiguity, which could be like, confusing and stuff? But don’t be fooled, because it’s… uh… really not that bad. Honest. Will Smith is John Hancock, a superhero who doesn’t know why he’s a superhero. He’s a drunk and generally in need of some anger and image management - after all, what kind of superhero is hated, told to go away? - until he meets Ray (Jason Bateman), PR whizz attempting to sell his world-changing ideas. ...