Solipsis

If you thought Air Force One was ridiculous, jingoistic, pro-American tub-thumping nonsense, you ain't seen nothing yet.

Still, it is somewhat interesting to see Morgan Freeman in a role demoted for president, galactic president or god. As it happens, Freeman is one of the bright spots in this painting by numbers movie. His performance is just a sequence of monosyllabic utterances, accompanied by a looks of grave concern, but it is better than anyone else in this film manages. I hope he was well paid.

Mike Banning shows promise as an understudy when Russel Crowe is not available.

Special effects are generally well done, without flair or anything particularly memorable.

If you are American, a bit simple, with a strong sense of national pride, you will probably enjoy it. For anyone else on Netflix, your time is better spent elsewhere.

Not the most stupid film you will ever see, but definitely a contender. The first half of the film tends to be pretty dull, padded with unrealistic accounts of training amateur astronauts. The second half is disrupted by overly tight editing which surrogates for genuine action. The film is on a par with Air Force One and Deep Impact, and is similarly filled with gung-ho American flag waving - the pastiche, token Russian character is positively insulting.

Armageddon is somewhat reprieved by its special effects, but I still found myself rooting for the asteroid in the hope that it might wipe out Hollywood and save us from any more films like this.

Much of this film didn't make sense until I watched some of the associated documentaries on the second features DVD. Now I see that many of the scenes are recreations of documented events in Hughes' life.

Visually the film is attractive and DiCaprio does a credible job of living the role, but there is little plot or story and overall it tends to drag. I'm fascinated by planes and the history of aviation, so halfway through the film I was surprised to find I was completely uninvolved with this narrative. The story wakes up a little during the congressional hearings, with DiCaprio sparring against Alda - just sufficiently to keep me hanging on to the end.

Its clearly a film made for kids, but somehow I doubt that many kids would find it particularly engaging. As an adult, you can guess its going to be pretty bad from the title... and you would be right.

The script sometimes takes a quirky diversion, but on the whole it is too predictable and unfunny. You would expect more scatological humour, but surprisingly its not there. All you get is a lot of fart noises, some good shock wave special effects and plenty of references to baked beans.

I could find some things to like in the art direction and retro styling; the use of green as a signature colour, the fact that all of the cars on the housing estate are identical drab green minis (I'd suspect the influence of Cox's 'Repo Man' here). But you are clutching at straws if these are the best things you can notice in a film.

Not many films can make a scene where a sado-masochist couple slice each other with razor blades appear beautiful, but Mishima pulls it off with plausible insight to a life style which is difficult to imagine. The film is intercut with lavishly produced scenes from Mishima's plays, but even the main biographic scenes of the film are highly theatrical.

John Bailey deserves a lot of credit for the lustrous visual quality of this film.

Today's adult TV animations such as King of the Hill, South Park and Family Guy have learnt that you can economise on the quality of your drawing if you have a wacky storyline and witty script. Les Triplettes de Belleville does without dialog transcending the script with frame after frame of fluid animation creating its own visual language with style and bold caricatures.

The story of the French Wine Mafia abducting contestants in the Tour de France is as bizarre as it is irrelevant. It reminded me of the Coen Brothers' O Brother, Where Art Thou - in that the story is largely a vehicle for a collection of songs and situations for bold graphics. The treat here is the imagination with which every caricature and background is drawn. The film is full of unnecessary detail, such as the reflection of Bruno the dog's belly in a polished tile floor. The film combines traditional hand drawn cell animation with computer graphics, but it is so subtle there were only a few scenes where I could spot that 3D CGI was being used.

Almost as impressive is the attention paid to the soundtrack. With almost no dialog, the music and sound effects become all the more prominent. At times it is hard to tell whether the audio track leads the visuals or vice versa.

For better animation I could look to Nick Park's A Close Shave and Frédéric Back's The Man Who Planted Trees - and that is about it.

Rather derivative painting by numbers attempt at a coming of age/teenage angst film. I can only imagine that the folks rating this a ten are too young to have seen any of the better films on this territory. Try 'Heathers', 'If...', or 'Dead Poets Society'.