ben-812

"Porno" wasn't a great Irvine Welsh book, but at least it introduced new characters and updated us on the whereabouts of the original Trainspotting crew. The "prequel" Skag Boys was to my mind much much better.

The problem is, Porno couldn't really be filmed, as it concentrates on the filming of pornography. So instead, some elements (but not many) of it have been lifted to make T2, but most of T2 is "original". It's around 5% Porno if that.

However, I'd estimate that maybe 10 minutes in total of T2 is direct samples of the first film. Sure, have a bit of it in there, but we all know that T2 is a sequel of a film famous enough to have stuck in our memories. And I felt that constant referring back was after a while unnecessary, and intrusive.

There wasn't a single scene in "T2" that could hold up to anything in the original. Not one.

Look, I'm glad I saw it, but it's not something I'd really watch again more than once. Some films are classics because they are of their time: Trainspotting; Pulp Fiction; the Big Lebowski; Withnail and I. Trying to do a sequel for any of them is going to be a pointless exercise, you could never do one that holds a candle to the original.

What Boyle and co have tried to do in "T2" could have been much worse; but it couldn't have been much better either. The past is the past, and we should leave it there.

OK, there's a great opening sequence in Mexico, which was classic Bond. Then it all went downhill, and never recovered.

Bond infiltrates, with ease, a new shadowy institution, that talks about prostitution rings, whose leader recognises Bond. Before this, Bond "has" his first older woman, in an improbably brief scene.

He discovers from a dying Mr White that the institution has people everywhere; they've suddenly gone up from prostitution to a threat to the world, but what exactly this threat is, well, no-one knows...something to do with everyone viewing our data, which post- Snowden is somewhat old hat - guess what, everyone can see it anyway, and the world still turns.

The leader of the organisation claims he's been behind all Bond's misfortunes, but does the classic "slow torture so you can escape" routine that was getting old in Roger Moore's day. Later he sets a trap for Bond, which we know he's going to escape.

The concept of Spectre as a threat to the world doesn't really exist. The link to its leader and James Bond's past, which could have been so well handled, was lame and under-utilised.

The actors do what they can with the script, but it's a terrible waste of their talents. There were a few - only a few - great Bond style moments, but ultimately - what a waste.

Apparently 7 people wrote this. One half-decent writer could have come up with something much, much better. Far too much of it involved concepts, ploys and mechanisms done to death too many times before.

"Casino Royale" sadly remains as the best Daniel Craig Bond by far. This film would be great if you could remove your intellect at the door. It's a dreadful shame that given some great locations, good actors - I think Craig is one of the best Bonds ever and certainly the finest actor to ever play him - they come out with a storyline that could and should have been so, so much better.

Like a few other reviewers of this film on this site, I've logged into a dormant account to give this a review. When I did so, of course now I log in via Facebook, which of course then wants permissions to do lots of things on my behalf; a straightforward illustration there of the way that software is already pretending to be us.

Many of the negative reviews on here focus on how unreal it seems that people would accept that the main character is in love with a piece of software. Well, given that new words for virtual interactions like "cyber", "Facebook friend" and so on have entered our vocabulary, just how unlikely this this scenario ? Not that much.

However, the film is much more than just boy meets Operating System. Look behind that and you'll see the cities in smog, you'll notice a lack of older people, you'll see people using a proxy service to create what are meant to be personal statements of love.

Holding off on whether the AI capabilities of "Samantha" are realistic, the fact that more and more people now live alone and rely on virtual relationships can't be ignored.

Bottom line, you might love this film, you might hate it, which makes it worth the risk of seeing it - you won't be left without feelings about it either way, and in world of endless sequels and prequels thank God for something truly original.

I've logged onto IMDb for the first time in a long while to put this review up; so the film "moved" me but not in a good way !

With the combination of cast and source material, I thought this film would be excellent. I'm in my 40s so more than happy to watch something that isn't riddled with CGI and has scenes lasting longer than 5 seconds...

...however, this was like watching some existentialist French movie from the 60s. Far, far, far too many scenes that drag on with sparse (if any) dialogue. Once you've seen Oldman looking pensive once, you've seen it a thousand times.

The final scene set to music was an unbelievably poor way of finishing the story.

Incomprehensible, pretentious crap. 2 stars for the evocation of the 1970s - no stars for the director / producer who managed with the materials at hand to create an absolute stinker.

for worst film of all time.

This film is incredibly bad. If you've seen "Team America" - well, this is it with robots in, taking itself seriously. I was amazed they didn't have the Middle Eastern characters in it saying "durka durka".

Honestly, it's awful. 2 1/2 hours that felt like 4. And I quite liked the original, but if your IQ is in the 3 digit range and you are over 14, give this a miss.

It's also racist - "jive" robots for God's sake - and sexist, with the female lead doing nothing more than not wearing a bra in endless slo-mo shots.

Avoid at all costs.

This film's predecessor was such a good re-invention of the franchise that I went to the cinema to see a Bond film for the first time since my childhood. It's a shame then that the re-engineering of 007 has now been taken many steps too far, so that I left the cinema wishing I'd waited for the DVD. Thanks to madly frenetic editing, it's difficult to know where the story is in this film. Bond jets around from place to place, staying for as long as is required to kill another handful of people in ever-more implausible ways. There is little ability to be thrilled at the amazing stunts, because everything happens so quickly that you haven't got time to process the mise en scene before it is taken away. Several key action sequences are also spliced between peripheral backgrounds, so you see a horse race / opera for a second, then it cuts back to an action scene, and back again... I could forgive the lack of humour, gadgets etc as they had been taken too far in previous incarnations of 007. However Bond himself should be present in the film; this time, Bond was absent and replaced with a dour killing machine. Sadly, given the success of "Casino Royale", I'd have to mark this as a failure to build on what went before.

Goodness me, but this film is dreadful. What Mr Coppola was thinking attaching his name to not one, but two of these films, is beyond me. I am someone who is fairly sensitive to scary films; so when my girlfriend suggested hiring this, and on the cover (UK) it has "will give you nightmares for weeks" I was really apprehensive and ready to be scared. And the beginning of the film is good, hence the 3 stars I've given it - but oh my, once the two main stars (who frankly look so stupid as to be worthy of slaying - remove them from the gene pool, please) reach the diner, the scariest parts of the film are over. As another reviewer has written, horror works best when you can imagine the incidents occurring in real life. In this film, any semblance of credibility is long, long gone before the final third starts; and it ends - thankfully quickly - in a flurry of illogical and badly-acted scenes. Only scary if you are in your early teens and still half-afraid of the bogeyman under your bed.

Like most of the planet, I loved the original Pirates film. This film however was not a worthy sequel. Plot ? There isn't one. I could put spoilers in this review, but it would make no difference as the plot is essentially a device to go from one CGI scene to another. It's a shame when there is acting talent available, big budgets but the most important thing - a story - is completely missing. I would advise anyone with more than 2 brain cells to avoid seeing this film; and as for other reviewers who have compared it to "The Empire Strikes Back", I'll have some of what you are on, because you must be out of your mind. This is at least as bad as the second Matrix film, which says it all; if I could have walked out without upsetting my 10 year old daughter, I would have done. She'll have to go and see PotC 3 without me next year; life's too short for this bilge.