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How do films like this get made? Who puts up the money? Or are they just vanity projects from spoiled rich kids ? I only ask because this must have looked rubbish on paper. I think I recognized one name on the cast list. The others were totally unknown. They should stay that way. Especially the leading lady. Dreadful beyond words. And the production values? Let's saturate all the colors and have a palate of primary hues. Everything about this movie is a mess and you should avoid it like the plague. It doesn't even fall into the "it's so bad, it's good" category. It's just plain bad. You have been warned.

Vice Ganda's Christmas offerings are considered a family treat here in Philippines. There was zero to celebrate here. A truly dismal offering with nothing to smile at. Some risky jokes and swear words like "motherf**cker" hardly make this suitable fare for children. And VG's lazy use of gay friends is a mistake. They can't act. Neither can VG's partner/bf. He had an extended period of time because of Covid, to come up with an original idea and a truly entertaining script. But what we got was 10th grade Mr Bean/Benny Hill minus the jokes. It's sad that this was an entry for the Metro Manila Film Festival. It's a million miles from cinematic excellence.

So here's the premise - a rich lawyer adopts the son of his best friend following a murder and brings him up alongside his own daughter. Roll on a few years. The boy is a star pupil and has grown to be the spitting image of his late father. We find out that the rich lawyer had an affair with his late best friend and now finds his adopted son sexually attractive. Trouble is - the adopted son has fallen in love with his 'sister'. This is a delicate storyline and requires some expert acting. Herein lies the problem. The two main leads are very wooden and unsympathetic. And the film drags its heels at a snail's pace. The only saving grace is a star turn from Dimples Romana as the tortured wife. A disappointment.

The queues for this movie were massive on the day I went to see it. Perhaps not surprising given Vice Ganda's popularity and the fact that he heavily promotes the movie on 'Showtime' - his daily show on TV. But the truth is - there is nothing merry about this movie. It is tired, way too long and just not funny. The audience started walking out in the last half hour at the showing I attended. I get the feeling Mr Ganda is just cashing in on his popularity and has scant respect for his fans. He needs to up his game for Christmas 2020.

What went wrong? Series 1 to 4 was superb television but the fifth outing was just appalling in every way. If you're a fan l of Luther then steer clear of this mess of a series.

In spite of sweeping nearly all the awards with a total of 11 prizes, including Best Picture and Best Director for Joel Lamangan, and grabbing the major acting honors - Best Actress for Gloria Romero, Best Supporting Actress for Aiko Melendez and Best Supporting Actor for Tony Mabesa, this was a hard film to find at the local movie complex. Thank goodness I managed to track it down. It's a joy in spite of the sad central theme of an elderly man dying of cancer. It is an affirmation of love and the power of the family. And it's nice to see a movie where all the leading characters are in their eighties.

If you manage to track this movie down - go and see it. It's different and it's real. Such a treat when so much fare on offer is fantasy.

Unless you live in Philippines, you may not know the name of Vice Ganda - but he is practically an institution in that country. He appears on the daily show 'Showtime' and has his own late-night talk show. In recent years, it has also been a Christmas ritual to see the Vice Ganda Christmas movie. These are always low-budget light hearted comedies with a fair degree of slapstick. Ideal family fare. So what went wrong with Fantastica? Just about everything. A wafer-thin plot and a bored looking supporting cast not helped with a dubious script made this a tedious 2 hours. And it would appear the writers didn't know how to end the movie which went on and on and on .... and carried on through the end credits. The best laughs come right at the very end when they play the bloopers reel. Don't waste your time.

Yet another example of a stellar cast being wasted on a nonsense movie. It reminded me of Unlocked. Both 'spy' movies. Both highly unsatisfactory. What upset me about this movie was the lack of tension. It seemed that the movie was made to fit a soundtrack on the director's iPhone. Insanely unrealistic fight scenes. A few lesbian sex scenes to keep the lads happy and that was it. A total vacuum. Don't even bother to rent it.

This film is a joy. I'm a long way from age 13, but this film reminded me of the ups and downs of teenage relationships. Two boys, one shy, one feisty thrown together by circumstance. They form a strong bond just as their respective parents grow apart. The boys don't have the emotional experience to understand the reasons why there is a rift between their respective parents. They resort to childish ploys to restore the status quo. Clearly this doesn't work. I won't give away the ending. But please go and see this film for the two outstanding performances from the two boys. Just breathtaking. And familiar. And a brilliant light touch from the director. I just want to see it again.

If you like to mindlessly waste an hour or two of your precious existence, then possibly this cinematic garbage might be for you. However, if you want your cinema to be entertaining, then stay well away. This movie could (and should) have had at least 30 minutes cut from the running time. The pacing is so slow and not helped by the overuse of set CGI pieces that somehow were not thrilling at all. There was better stuff in The Mummy.

This is lazy film making. And the response from the audience I was part of? A considerable amount of audible yawning.

One of the worst films I've seen this year. Let's hope the plug is pulled on this franchise. It's overstayed its welcome.

If you liked '4 Weddings and a Funeral' (and who didn't) then you will love this film. The premise is simple: a collection of Brits of a certain age decide to spend their early retirement at a dubious, run- down hotel in Jaipur, India. This decision obviously involves a physical journey but more importantly, an emotion journey too. Gradually we learn the back story of these characters, and these stories are very fascinating indeed.

An absolutely stellar cast are well served by an intelligent witty script with some killer one-liners which are guaranteed laugh out loud. Only occasionally does it get sentimental, but somehow this doesn't matter, because the seductive nature of India weaves its spell not just on the characters but also on us.

It's good to see a film that doesn't treat retirement aged people as idiots. These people are intelligent, funny, curious and I would willingly share a g&t with them. An absolute gem of a film.

It must be that logo for the National Lottery that rings the death knell for certain movies. Remember the so-called comedy 'Sex Lives of the Potato Men'? Well this is the so-called horror equivalent.

The films lasts around 94 minutes. It feels like days. There is no need for the first 30 minutes. No character development, no sharp dialogue, no style, no decent acting, no tension, no plot.

It makes me ashamed of the British film industry. If this is the best you can do, then clear off. Saying f*ck a lot and hitting someone with a hammer does not make a good film.

If you want to see 'violence' with style, you need to look to the Far East. 'I see the Devil' released last year was inventive, stylish and highly watchable. 'Revenge - A Love Story' from Hong Kong also pushed boundaries.

This was a low budget disgrace.

So what was in the director's mind when he started this movie? Forget Guy Richie ...let's make yet another London gangster flick .... so lots of swearing .....like c*nt and f*ck but that's alright because they're said by some good looking actors. Not much of a plot ... but a great soundtrack from the 60's that has nothing to do with the time line of the movie. So who could think of such a thing? Only the screenwriter from the wildly over-rated film The Departed. - Hollywood's shallow remake of Hong Kong's brilliant Infernal Affairs. Colin Farrell deserves better material than this. The charismatic and engaging gangster from In Bruges is here hijacked by a senseless and shallow screenplay. A waste of the actors' time ... and a waste of ours too.

I doubt very much whether this film will be released in the UK in the near future as we sadly have a very high profile child abduction case in the news at the moment. However, this film is extraordinary. Based on a true-life (unsolved)case from 1991, Han Kyung Bae (Sol Kyung Gu) plays a successful, yet ruthless news anchor with a beautiful wife (Kim Nam Joo) and a nine-year-old son. But suddenly his successful life comes crashing down when his son gets kidnapped. In the next 44 days, the parents continuously receive calls from the kidnapper with instructions and requests for ransom. The police are determined to find the kidnapper, but he effortlessly eludes capture; not only is he a step ahead at every turn, he seems to enjoy toying with the police in this cat-and-mouse chase. As the kidnapper keeps walking free, Kyung Bae becomes increasingly desperate and frustrated with the police, as he knows time is running out for his child. This is an uncomfortable subject but the acting from the two leads is quite astonishing. And given the title of the movie, we know the outcome of the case from the start. But that doesn't detract from the grip the film has on the viewer. Not surprisingly, this film has been the highest grossing Korean film of 2007 to date. And wait for the end credits to hear the actual voice of the murderer. That's really chilling.

This was akin to looking at a very poor student film. A vacuous plot, terrible acting - no sorry - TERRIBLE acting and direction so loose and indulgent that you wonder why this director ever got funding in the first place.

How do British films like this ever get the big screen? There was nothing of merit here. Our director was just trying a cheap trick with a movie building to a supposedly 'shocking' extended final rape scene. But even this was badly done.

What was the point of this film? There was no character development; it had nothing profound to say about British youth. It was just a bad exploitative film where the excessive use of four letter words were used in place of well written dialogue.

Let's hope this is the last we hear of director Thomas Clay.

First things first. This is not so much a dramatic heart-wrenching film, more a self-indulgent melodrama. I have just had the misfortune to sit through the director's DVD cut of this movie. 159 minutes of self indulgent twaddle. One thing's for sure - the distributors sure got it right when they axed nearly 30 minutes from the running time for the cinema release.

Why is this so bad? 2 major factors - the writing and directing. Please put your hand up Patrick Tam. If you're going to make a film that centers on a father/son relationship, please make the father 3-dimentional and believable. Here we had a total loser from the first minute; one who railed at his own (self-inflicted) misfortune and had an on/off loving relationship with his 8 year old son.

Can I quickly say that this little boy was by far the best thing in the film and acted everyone else off the screen and is the ONLY reason to watch this film.

The great mystery is why this nonsense garnered so many awards? Somebody called Roger Garcia is quoted on the back of my DVD copy as saying that "After This Our Exile is the first masterpiece of Hong Kong cinema of the 21st century ..." I think he's wrong. And if he's right - then God help HK cinema.

This is not so much a film more a docudrama. Nick Broomfield chooses to tell the story through the experience of one girl. Whilst it is certainly shocking to see innocent people manipulated by heartless people-traffickers and exploited (in this case by British Chinese as well as British Caucasians), I couldn't help but feel that I was being 'hectored' by the director.

Strangely, in spite of the awful outcome of this sorry episode, I felt little compassion for the central character. This was in part due to the lack-lustre acting by the ensemble cast. Much of the film had the feel of improvisation about it. And there was so much repetition - endless shots of our illegals being driven in a mini van to yet another low-pay employment opportunity. The pace of this piece is funereal.

What really irked me though were the end captions. Nick Broomfield informs us that most illegal Chinese immigrants never make it back to their homeland. Fair comment. But then he declares that the British government have refused to pay off the debts of the Chinese cockle-pickers that survived this tragedy. Does he really expect the government (of whatever colour) to pick up the tab for debts incurred in other countries by people who are working here in the black economy? I think the story of the Chinese cockle-pickers is a story worth telling. It's a pity this film didn't do a better job of it.

To judge from the plethora of glowing reviews on this site, you might be lured into the idea that 'Hot Fuzz' is quite the funniest film made this decade.

It's not. It's quite appalling. And very very dull and predictable. I can only surmise that all those 5 star reviews were written by friends of the production. I have just come from my local cinema where the substantial audience grew more and more restless as this tedious film wore on.

The cast reads like a who's who of British acting talent. Sadly you see very little of most of them. Bill Nighy must have had no more than 6 lines to say and Martin Freeman and Steve Coogan even less.

A truly bad cinematic experience.

The English title of this movie is lament and I suspect that's what most of the cast do when this movie is brought up in conversation. The problem lies with the story. Kwang Su (Shin Hyun Jun) has struggled his whole life to shake off the stigma of a shameful family history. He lives in a state of perpetual despair. By contrast, Jong Man (Lee Byung Hun) works as a bartender and spends his days dreaming of becoming an international movie star and his nights filming himself and contacting top Hollywood production companies in the hope that one day he will get his lucky break. Then there is the shy girl Se Hee who works in a music store. When Kwang Su stumbles into the music store, blind drunk, but still able to bash out a tune on a piano, Se Hee falls instantly in love. When Kwang Su stumbles into the bar where Jong Man works, he finds himself arrested for his brother's murder. But fortunately he manages to escape from the police, bumps into Jong Man who instantly lets him stay in his apartment. Shall I go on? The director Kim Hee-Cheol allows the cast to overact to their hearts content and the result is an utter mess. Fans of Lee Byung Hun however will be pleased to learn that there are a couple of steamy love scenes and a moment when he flashes a very smooth bottom.

'Running Wild' stars Kwon Sang Woo (Love So Divine) as chain-smoking jaded homicide detective Jang, who has lost faith in the judicial system and now pursues a maverick line of police inquiry. He's after a cruel crime lord called Yu, but thus far he's been unable to pin the guy down. Also after Yu is an elite prosecutor, Oh, played by Yoo Ji Tae (Old Boy). In contrast to Jang, this character is obsessive that rules and procedures must be obeyed. I think you can guess the next bit! Jang and Oh's paths cross and this mismatched pair form an uneasy alliance to bring the bad guy down. But to do this, they have to fight fire with fire and break the rules.

This sounds quite good on paper but sadly it doesn't work on screen. Maybe it was too ambitious as a directorial debut from Kim Sung Soo and most certainly it was miscast. Kwon Sang Woo is best known for light romantic comedies and a host of tear-jerking TV dramas in which he excels. I can't blame the actor if he wants to break away from that mould, but somehow he's just too handsome. So having unkempt hair, sporting an incongruous moustache and shouting a lot doesn't convince me that he's been through hell and high water in a police department.

There are a lot of action scenes, most of which sadly fail to impress. Apparently, director Kim Sung Soo is a protégé of Park Chan Wook. He still has a lot to learn. If you want to see a great Korean film about a maverick cop, then check out 'Public Enemy'.

It's really sad that the gay community comes to the defense of such an appalling bad movie as Raspberry Reich. This film has no redeeming features. It does have non-event actors; a rubbish script and a truly irritating habit of superimposing quotes from George W and Blair over scenes of graphic intercourse. That doesn't make it a cutting-edge alternative movie. It's just facile and boring. It is quite the worst movie you will see this (and any ) year. Life is just too short and precious to give time to this unmitigated rubbish. And now IMDb want me to write 10 lines minimum about a film which deserves a two word summary. Hey ho.

If you're reading this, then you're probably a fan of Park's previous films and like me have seen the first two films in his revenge trilogy (Sympathy for Mr Vengeance & Old Boy). Mr Vengeance was good; Old Boy was just brilliant and so expectations for this final episode were sky high. Sadly this film misses the mark big time. The plot is confusing and lacklustre; the flashbacks are badly handled and when you get to the end of the movie you feel like saying 'so what?' It lacks any tension whatsoever. Maybe I was expecting too much. If you want to see a really stylish Korean film from 2005, check out 'A Bittersweet Life' instead.

I've just watched the DVD of this film. It ranks as one of the most awful films I've seen over recent years. The look of the film is dreadful - if you gave someone a cheap video camera and told them to film in a high-rise block of flats with a bunch of amateur actors, then you get some idea of what this film delivers. I don't think there was a sound man either - in an early office scene they were clearly using the mike on the camera - horrible echoes. But it's the pace of the film that really gets to you. It's so slow. No it's very slow. It's like a sloth on Valium. If you play the DVD at 16x then it becomes watchable. It's a remarkable thing that this film feels like its been going on for hours, when in fact the credits roll after only 75 minutes. Avoid at all costs. This film is complete pants.

First of all, let's get one thing straight. This film is in no way a follow-up to the excellent 'Public Enemy' film of a few years back. This mess of a film has a couple of good (but not great) action scenes and a whole warehouse of padding in-between. This movie lasts an incredible 148 minutes. The story could have been told in half the time. Kyung-gu Sol plays a public prosecutor with such lack of expression, it was hard to believe that he was the riveting star of the original film. His adversary is an old school pal called Han, played by Jun-ho Jeong who obviously learned his craft at some Victorian school of melodrama; such was the the sneering and lip curling that made up the core of his performance. It was as if he had 'Baddy' etched into his forehead. I was only sorry that he didn't sport a large curly moustache because he could have twirled that between his fingers magnificently. As the minutes limped by, I waited for the big finale. And waited. And waited. When it eventually came, it was the 2 lead blokes having a fist fight in a garden water feature. Good guy wins, bad guy goes to prison. Good guy says to bad guy as he steps on the prison bus: 'I'll see you in 20 years'. Roll credits. Not one of Korea's finest movie moments!

I hate to be the dissenting voice amongst this sea of adulation, but I cannot understand what the other contributors see in this film. For the first 36 minutes in this wordless drama, we see mother and father collect water from the mainland and then row back to their island and totter up steep steps with the precious cargo in order to irrigate their crops. I know art films are often slow, but come on! 36 minutes of seeing the same thing? What else happens? Not a lot. We see the family eat, take a bath, catch a fish. Riveting stuff, eh? This is one film that I feel has not stood the test of time. On one aspect however I do concur with the other reviewers: the music is wonderful.