kellow

The Hobbit is being slated in many reviews for being excessively long and convoluted, due to Jackson's over-indulgence and the addition of too many subplots that turn a simple children's story into a fantasy epic along the lines of Tolkein's other great masterpiece.

Jackson should be commended, not criticised. Rather than produce a family-sized Christmas package for the popcorn munching crowd, he has done full justice to Tolkein's work. There will probably never be another movie version of The Hobbit in our lifetimes, and if a job's worth doing, then to hell with Hollywood tradition, and do the job well! The true Tolkein fan is in for a treat, because rather than rush the story to suit filmic convention, Jackson shows every detail. This creates pacing issues for the casual film-goer, but is an absolute delight for those of who have waited most of our lives to finally see a live-action version of one of the most popular books ever written.

Tolkein himself had many issues with The Hobbit. It was only later that he started creating the true complexities of Middle Earth, and even made an aborted attempt to rewrite the book in the true context of his imagined world – in which we know the true significance of Gollum, the ring, the Necromancer, the backstory of the dwarfs and elves and so much more. In many ways, Jackson's Hobbit is the one Tolkein himself wished he had written, a much darker and more complex visitation without the talking animals or the Enid Blyton-esque feel to the elves and goblins.

Every scene and piece of major dialogue from the book are included, the issue for Tolkein traditionalists will be the additions. 'Less is more' is not an expression in Jackson's vocabulary, the stone giants and chase in Goblin Town were so over-the-top that they drown out more subtle moments and serve to remove much of the dramatic tension. As our heroes escape unscathed time and again from the most ridiculous of perils, these situations start becoming more comical than foreboding.

The ending was the only departure from the book that perhaps spoiled it. As in LOTR, we have Jackson's gimmick of trying to make us believe that a major character has died, followed by an uncharacteristic bit of swashbuckling heroism from Bilbo that leads to his redemption with Thorin – which book readers know should really happen under far more emotional circumstances much later in the story.

This would have made for a reasonably decent TV documentary, but just how it made it into the cinemas is beyond me. I guess it's because anything to do with McDonalds sells, and ironically, although this film criticises the multinational fast food joint, at the same time it owes its success to it.

Most of the arguments against Super Size Me have been covered in other reviews, but what irritated me is the way this guy's 'crusade' is presented as some kind of life-threatening mission. All he does is eat McDonalds for a month while also getting next to no exercise. Anybody can do that! I can't stand the Jackass movies, but at least there is some sense of admiration for what those fools do, but as for this pointless mission? Me, and just about anybody else for that matter, could quite easily go a month eating only at McDonalds (perhaps not forcing food down to the extent that we are sick, which is just plain stupid). Other than working out very expensive, I'd hardly call it an achievement worthy of being documented in an Oscar nominated movie! So, what happens? He puts on a bit of weight and feels a bit queasy now and again, and even when this is exaggerated for the cameras and the doctors tell him his sugar levels are a bit high, you're hardly on the edge of your seat wondering if he's going to make it through his incredible ordeal. It's not as if his skin turned green or his limbs started falling off.

I don't have a particularly healthy diet, spend my working life in sat at a computer, smoke a pack and half of cigarettes a day, and go out and get drunk on beer and whisky at least three times a week. He probably feels like I do every day of my life, and I can tell you it really ain't that bad. I don't exactly pass medical check-ups with flying colours, but I'm not exactly fighting for my life and still manage to play football with fellow veterans once a week and perform well enough both at that and in the sack with the lady.

So, what's his message? Eating lots of food and not doing exercise isn't the best way to go about things? No, it isn't. We all knew that, and his adventure tells us nothing new in that respect, but the movie does punctuate the tedium of scene after scene of watching him eat McDonalds with other nuggets of information. Most of these we've all seen the likes of many times before, and although the none-too-subtle message is that fast food is bad for us, all this movie did was leave me with a bit of a craving to go straight to McDonalds and pig out.

When they made this movie, they were forgetting a fairly major point. If some distant planet is in danger of exploding, we might just identify with the few humans that happen to be there while it's happening. But this is not a distant planet. This is Earth in just a few months time from now.

The special effects in this movie are enough to make the viewer at least consider how awful it would be if this were really to happen. We see the planet fall apart before our eyes, and the realism is strikingly brilliant. The problem is, any concern we feel is for our own countries, our own people, our own families and loved ones. In my case, that's mainly western Europeans and South Americans. I feel for them as I see their homelands washed away under a sea of lava.

But that is not what this movie wants. It doesn't want me to feel concern for the annihilation of everything I have come to know and love. It wants me to care about Cusack and his nauseating family. I have very rarely seen a film in which I have desperately wanted the hero to die, but in this one I did. I want to know where I am, where my mother is, where my dog is, where my friends are... Cusack's silly little plastic Hollywood family is the least of my concerns right now as the world is about to end... I suppose we are meant to 'identify' with the lead family and imagine it was our own. But we don't. I would never want to wish my own family dead. Only Cusack's.

Major, major spoiler alert, because I'mm going to be talking about the ending. Deja Vu has all the makings of a classic, a sort of Memento meets Back to the Future, with twists as iconic and unexpected as the 6th Sense, Shutter Island or The Crying Game. But it all went wrong.

I can suspend my belief enough to cope with the sheer implausibility of the science. Of course it's ridiculous - but this is sci-fi, although just why this amazing technology only works in central New Orleans is somewhat beyond me, presumably only as a pretext for the daft car chase scene, in which our hero manages to kill about as many people as died in the terrorist attack he is so intent on solving! And the way the pieces started fitting together was excellent. As Denzel explores the world of 3 days before, there are plenty of 'ah, now I understand' moments as we discover why his partner's car was on the boat, why his fingerprints are in the girl's flat, etc. The message is clear - no matter what Denzel does, he can't change the past, for his 'past' actions have already happened.

The tension is knowing that no matter what Denzel does, the girl is going to die and the terrorist attack is going to happen. But then, for the sake of a Hollywood feel-good ending, Denzel does manage to change the past. But for the real cinema fan, the happy ending is really a disappointing one. Yeah, it's lovely to see the happy couple drive off together at the end, but that happiness is destroyed by the fact that in order for it to achieved, the whole film no longer makes the slightest bit of sense. A potential cinematographic masterpiece is suddenly no more than Hollywood trite.

Being a huge fan of the fantasy genre, I knew this series would be right up my street, and I was in no way disappointed. The intertwining story arcs tell a compelling story, in which there are no definitive goodies or baddies, although British viewers might pick up on the annoying pattern whereby the more northern somebody's accent is, then the more likely they are to be noble (and will also be a bit confused at how people in the same family can have randomly acquired Manc, Scouse or Geordie accents…). Also, despite the fantastic sets, you do sometimes feel a bit short-changed with the visuals. Viewers groomed on the visual splendour of the likes of the lord of the Rings may feel a bit let down by the made-for-TV feel of supposedly epic scenes. Rather than fearsome armies, most of the troops and 'battle' scenes sometimes don't fool us into believing we are watching anything other than what they really are, namely a small group of extras on horses and holding cardboard shields in a field in Northern Ireland. And the sex? I love a bit of porn as much as the next man, but in GoT it does sometimes seem a little gratuitous. In one scene, where Bran is talking to the wild woman, a naked 'giant' appears from the bushes, before he is told to go and put some clothes on and runs off. What on earth did that have to do with the story other than the chance for us to see another penis? And it does get very confusing at points. The first episode introduces so many different characters that when it gets to the key scene at the end, I was so lost that I had no idea who the two people were in the tower, let alone that it was a queen having sex with her brother. The series does a great job of explaining everything, but even so, for those like myself who never read the book, it's hard to follow who the various hangers on in the court in the south and the seemingly eternal string of Stark siblings are. Names like Jaime, Theon and Tyron keep cropping up, but it all happens so fast that the less informed viewer ends up not having a clue who they are talking about. But these gripes aside, what a terrific series and I can't wait for the second. Unlike so many series, in this one it really is hard to see what's coming, helped by the fact that a number of central characters get killed. In GoT, you never feel the dramatic tension lost because you know there's no way so-and-so is going to be killed. I was dreading a similar fate would befall Daenerys … one of the most delightful pieces of eye candy ever to appear on TV. And the underlying message for me at least is how so many real battles were fought not for the good of the people but to satisfy the whims of royalty. It is the growing threat from north of the wall that these people should really be worrying about, but instead they continue to shed blood in the name of their petty family feuds. A nice allegory for how the world today sees nations vying with each other rather than fighting for the things that really matter.

So just why is it that we are meant to side with this ridiculous American jerk? This is the guy who apparently has the looks and charisma to have a neverending stream of the kind of gorgeous women most of us can only dream of, yet he treats them like dirt. Just what his lifelong pal Hannah is doing wasting her time hanging out with him, heaven only knows, and finally she meets a decent Scottish man, Colin, and they're going to get married. Good on her is what you should think, yet this film steers you around into thinking that the womaniser jerk is the one she should have been with. He may shag around, but hey, he strokes dogs. Off they go to Scotland, but not the real Scotland, but the stereotypical one in which the people speak Scots, toss cabers, live in castles and generally everything is a bit scary and weird. A couple of cheap shots suddenly make us feel that perhaps Colin isn't quite the Mr Right we were led to believe (the cake bit was just plain corny, and though I am no fan of hunting, at least Colin's meat is won naturally and not factory farmed), and along comes our womanising pal to walk straight into their wedding and declare his undying love for Hannah. I mean what is it with these romantic movies and people walking in on other people's weddings and declaring their love for one of the supposedly happy couple. Is that the kind of thing we should be encouraging? Coz I know I wouldn't appreciate it too much if it was my weddding. Yer man had his chance and he blew it, tough s**t, and should never go ruining a supposed friend's wedding with his fit of jealousy. I was so much hoping that Hannah would tell him to p*ss off there and then, but sadly that's not the kind of ending Americans can deal with, and so we get the clichéd happily ever after nonsense. At least Colin managed to get one punch in - he should have killed the guy. It's just so annoying. The guy is a complete and utter pillock, and basically this film is an insult to all of us guys in the world who actually do know how to care about the women we are with, and who don't just bed as many as we can for the sake of... well for the sake of what I'm not really sure. I'm not sure what kind of values this film is trying to portray, but it's got it all wrong. The only thing I can see is that regardless how much of a scumbag you are, if you are American, you are still going to be a better partner for anybody than a Scot. I just found it irritating, sadly the girlfriend thought it was hilarious and immediately made us sit through it all over again.

It is refreshing to see a movie that approaches the sex industry from a matter of fact point of view, neither presenting a case for or against the profession, but merely letting the women (and men) speak for themselves. It's a shame that what is essentially a documentary had to be interlaced with the frankly pointless nod at the commercial market of including the uninspiring fictional Hannah/Richards subplot, something which ruins rather than enhances a movie that has very little technical merit of its own, but solely succeeds through the testimonies of the people that live and work in the industry. Some of the reviewers here have commented on the glamourising of prostitution, and this movie offers only a short glimpse of the sad underworld of the ladies that are forced or cheated into selling their bodies. But although this movie does acknowledge that aspect of prostitution, what it does better is explain how, despite the concept being unconceivable to so many 'normal' people, many if not most women that go into prostitution do so of their own free will, find it a very financially (and often mentally and physically) rewarding profession, and the only misery they really suffer is not directly from their work, but from the rejection that society thrusts upon them. Those that are involved in prostitution find it governs their lives, for good or for bad. Those that are not, ignore or condemn the practice. What this movie offers is a cry from sex workers not for help or pity, which is something only those in the most desperate of cases need, but a cry to be respected and accepted for what they do. Yo, Puta is no cinematic masterpiece. Essentially all it offers is a series of sex workers (and some clients) speaking about what they do. Where it succeeds is that despite the simplicity of the production, it is dealing with a subject that naturally enthralls - and that includes women that may never dream of ever having sex for money, but can't help but have a curious fascination to know what it would be like. It's one of the easiest ways in the world that a woman can make money, but at the same time one of the most difficult. This movie is worth 5 points at best, but from somebody who is trying to cope with the fact that his own girlfriend is an escort girl, and has learned so much that is both good and bad about a world he never knew, this was essential viewing for understanding what goes through her mind, and therefore gets a full 10.