Case 39 Review: Problem Child

CASE 39 (15): On General Release Friday 5th March

If you want more proof that children are evil soulless monsters, then look no further, as Case 39 provides more than enough reason to stay sprog free.

Social worker Emily (Renee Zellweger) is buried in work, so she’s none too pleased when yet another case file lands on her desk. But curiosity gets the better of her and she opens the documents to what is apparently another routine abuse claim.

She visits the house of Lilith (horror movie rule #78 – when you find out a character’s name is Lilith, you know they’re going to be trouble), a seemingly innocent girl that’s been subjected to serious psychological abuse from her creepy parents. Read More…

Alice In Wonderland Review: Gone For A Burton

ALICE IN WONDERLAND (PG): On General Release Friday 5th March

People have been enthralled by Lewis Carroll’s Alice in Wonderland since 1865, but it probably wasn’t until the 1951 Disney animation that most people became familiar with Mad Hatters, Cheshire Cats and talking caterpillars.

This should have been the perfect vehicle for Tim Burton’s larger than life imagination but it feels more like a shapeless collage of ideas, thrown together without any thought for narrative.

Alice is now a young woman of 19 and after running away from an arranged marriage to some chinless toff, she finds herself tumbling down the same rabbit hole she tripped down as a child. Wonderland contains familiar inhabitants: Tweedle Dee and Tweedle Dum (Matt Lucas in a wonderful turn), the Cheshire Cat (a scene-stealing Stephen Fry) and the Mad Hatter – given spotlight by a red-barnetted Johnny Depp who flits between genteel protectiveness and a bizarre “see you Jimmy” Scottish accent when roused. Read More…

Motherhood Review: Laboured Laughs

MOTHERHOOD (15): On General Release Friday 5th March

Have I been fooled by the movies or do all American newspaper columnists start their articles with a question? Is this really how they write? Just a series of sentences punctuated by question marks?

Sex In The City’s Carrie Bradshaw made a career doing it and now mum-of-two Eliza Welch is in on the act.

Eliza (Uma Thurman) is a former fiction writer turned blogger who has put her career on hold to raise some kids in New York’s Greenwich Village, and Motherhood follows one hectic day in which she must organise and throw her daughter’s 6th birthday party, mind her toddler son, mend a rift she created with her best friend and battle for a parking space. On top of all that, a dream job at a parenting magazine has come up for which she must write 500 words on “What Motherhood Means To Me” by midnight. Read More…

Ondine Review: Swept Away

ONDINE (12A): On General Release From Friday 5th March

In all honesty, I wasn’t too happy when my editor sent me off to watch Ondine. Personally I find it hard to see anything appealing about Colin Farrell – apart from his roguish good looks of course (I’m only human).

But after watching his latest effort, I’d like to take this opportunity to say that I’ve completely changed my mind – I now love him.

Ondine sees Farrell play luckless fisherman Syracuse, whose life is turned upside down when he catches a woman called Ondine in his net. Syracuse is immediately entranced by her breathtaking beauty and mysterious nature, and decides to put her up in his mother’s cottage by the water. Read More…

Legion Review: Hell On Earth

LEGION (15): On General Release Friday 5th March

Angels are complicated characters to have in a movie, or at least they should be. They’re servants of God, are super powerful and ought to have amassed a millenia’s worth of knowledge while hanging about in heaven.

So an action movie in which two of God’s servants end up battling to the death should be pretty cool, right?

Well anyone who has seen the trailer for Legion might be under that impression, however once you’ve seen the movie you’ll realise how badly you were fooled.

Unsurprisingly, the Lord is really angry at us for not playing nicely with each other and rather than giving us a time-out, he’s decided to kill every last one of us. Whatever happened to the rapture? Anyway, holed up in the Mojave desert, a pregnant waitress named Charlie and the owners and patrons of a diner are set upon by the forces of God. Read More…

The Crazies Review: Truly, Madly, Funny

THE CRAZIES (15): On General Release Friday 26th February

A mysterious toxin in the water supply is turning everyone in a small Midwestern town into crazed killers.

They succumb to an uncontrollable urge for violence, can run really fast and chase after the non-infected like there’s no tomorrow.

We’ve seen it all before right? Well yes, whatever’s infecting the folk in the idyllic town of Ogden Marsh is pretty similar to the virus in 28 Days Later and the like, but there’s a big injection of humour in this George A Romero remake. Read More…

Leap Year Review: Skip It

LEAP YEAR (PG): On General Release From Friday 26th February

If I pay to see a film in the cinema then there’s no way that I’m walking out, but I saw Amy Adam’s latest offering Leap Year at a press screening – so I was there for free.

Yet so dull was the opening to this rom-but-no-com, that If it wasn’t for the fact that I literally had to stay, I would have left inside the first five minutes.

Utterly predictable, Leap Year is a by-the-book romance that has no original elements (whatsoever) to bring to the table. Read More…

Everybody’s Fine Review: The Kids Are Alright

EVERBODY’S FINE (PG): On General Release From 26th February 2010

With a title like that you can be sure that everybody is most certainly not fine.

Well that’s what Robert De Niro is about to discover as he embarks on a country crossing road trip to visit his adult children who have all simultaneously pulled out of plans to come to Thanksgiving dinner.

And as he visits each in turn, he begins to realise that they’ve been carefully managing how much he knows about their lives.

Robert (Sam Rockwell) has told his dad that he’s a big shot conductor but he’s actually a lowly percussionist. Rosie (Drew Barrymore) is ostensibly a dancer in a hit Broadway production but she turns out to be just a waitress and Amy (Kate Beckinsale) looks to have the perfect marriage but in fact has anything but. Read More…

Micmacs Review: Fantastique!

MICMACS (12A): On Nationwide Release From 26th February 2010

For those of you who saw French lovely Amélie and didn’t like it, maybe it’s time to give director Jean-Pierre Jeunet another try. He’s returned to filmmaking after a gap of five years, and boy – it is quite a comeback.

Micmacs follows Bazil (Dany Boon), who was orphaned several years previously when a landmine killed his father and his mother was too traumatised to care for him. As an adult, Bazil is accidentally hit in the head with a stray bullet that ends up lodged in his brain, meaning he could die at any second.

Through further general misfortunate he becomes homeless on the streets of Paris. But things start to look up when an ex-con named Slammer introduces Bazil to a happy bunch of misfits who decide to adopt him. When he hatches a plan to get revenge on the munitions companies that made the bullet and the landmine, his new family decide to pitch in. Read More…

From Paris With Love Review: I See London, I See France…

FROM PARIS WITH LOVE (15): On General Release From Friday 26th February

For a long time, the OTB team have had a question on our minds. Why hasn’t John Travolta fired his agent?

In between passable comic turns, there are just bizarre choices listed on his CV. Deep down we know he’s a good actor, so we were once again collectively dismayed to see his shiny bald head on the poster for From Paris With Love. But in the end this apparently stricken movie wasn’t too bad.

Travolta plays Charlie Wax, a wildcard CIA special-ops agent who gets partnered with straight laced Reese (Jonathan Rhys Myers) to stop some terrorists blowing up half of Paris. But Reese struggles to adapt to Wax’s unpredictable methods and anyway, he’s just trying to make it back to his girlfriend, Caroline.

This movie is basically the opening sequence of Team America; brash Americans blowing up Paris, shooting everything that moves and spouting utterly ridiculous dialogue. Read More…

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