Once is an Irish love story that isn’t really a love story at all, combined with a musical that isn’t really a musical…confused? Hate musicals? Hate love stories? (Even love stories that aren’t really love stories based in Ireland and produced on a minimal budget with shaky camera work and less than perfect lighting?) There’s no need to be. It may be an indie but even those who have spent their entire lives avoiding singing and dancing on the screen – and have never been to Ireland, shame on you – will find something touching in this impressive feature by John Carney.

Before Once, Markéta Irglová (who plays the nameless lead girl) and Glen Hansard (from acclaimed Irish band The Frames) had barely done any acting. Both had considerable experience performing and writing music, but that was where it ended. Add to that the fact that the screenplay for Once spent years being tossed around by various foundations, unable to garner enough credibility for funding or even dvd duplication, and you have a recipe for a film that very well might not have made it to our screens, let alone been a standout success.

But it did, thankfully, and with solid acting and a surprisingly intricate plot that will keep you guessing, Once will warm even the coldest of hearts.

In short it’s like this: a busker who is also the son of a vacuum repairer meets a young foreign woman, they get to know one another, play music together, record a CD and learn that…well…life doesn’t always turn out how you wanted.

No, there are not any special effects in this film and Yes, it is small budget, but don’t let that put you off. Once was a surprise that is sure to last well in to the future and inspire future film-makers to make indy films on a budget that can rival anything the studios can come up with.

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Notting Hill is one of the ’absolute classics’. In fact, say that short phrase in a lilting Welsh accent and people will know that you’re quoting the film’s affable Spike, flatmate of Hugh Grant’s character, William Thacker. And it’s one of those films which, once you’ve seen it a few times, provides an extraordinary number of brilliant quotes.
Apart from the volume of sound-bites, there are a few factors which make this such a great film, the strength of the characters being one of the main ones. The characters played by Hugh Grant and Julia Roberts are not only great in their own right, but they also gel so well together that the burgeoning relationship between them seems very realistic, despite how unrealistic the storyline is (seriously Anna may as well been going to buy sofas from Grant’s character at the beginning of the movie). When the man who runs a tiny travel bookshop in London spills his orange juice down the top of America’s most famous movie star you might think it is setting the scene for one of those films which you have to take tongue in cheek, but that’s not the case. The wider cast, too, is filled with characters you can recognise from your own friends and acquaintances. There’s Thacker’s little sister, who is star struck by Anna Scott (Julia Roberts) but delightfully charming at the same time; she’s a slightly zany girl who works in a record store. And there’s Bernie, the unsuccessful stock broker - who ambles through his job, not entirely sure what he’s supposed to be doing, and is entirely grudging about it when he eventually gets fired. And of course Spike, who calls himself an artist, but seems to spend most of his time sitting around in an odd assortment of clothes, reading loot, and genuinely, but without great effect, trying to help Thacker when things with Anna aren’t working out too well.
This cast, plus a few other strong characters, create a brilliantly entertaining film, and even though you know that things will work out in the end, when they seem not to be going Thacker’s way, you find yourself really rooting for him. The film creates tension in the way that all good films do, even though this is just a romantic comedy!

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Repo men is a science fiction thriller taking place in the near future -directed by Miguel Sapochnik and starring Jude Law and Forest Whitaker. Full of action and complicated scenes, the movie promises great deal of adventures and a mixture of battle scenes and moral consclusions.

Released in March 2010, the movie gathered much of the film fans love and became a leading production in the new season’s cinema. The plot is centred around the future of mankind -a future where due to the diseases and the health problems people have, an innovative but decisive company develops methods of creating and implanting artificial organs thus saving people’s lives, however peoples bodies are only storage units for the organs which still belong to the company.

The company has strict rules -the prices of the organs are huge so people need to regularly pay their monthly payments, which at some point become impossible to bear. This is when the repo men interfere -they collect what has been given by the company but not repaid. The two main characters are best friends working together on the collection of property for the company -their ways are brutal, often end up with the death of the customer. Everything seems to be going on well for the team of collectors but then Remy (Jude Law) receives an organ after an accident and becomes the one who has to pay the company.

From that point the whole movie changes -Remy loses his family, being followed and wanted by the company, he has to run and hide for his life just like he used to do with his victims. He will have to face the brutality of the real world, the consequences from not paying back the organisation, the wrath of his own friend and… a new love that he finds.

A movie both realistic for its moral lesson and fictious because of the world it presents, Repo men is one of the summer blockbusters and promises a great deal of enetretainment for all filmlovers.

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On Saturday night I flicked through the channels to find that one of my favourite movies was on. I’d watched Flightplan once before and loved it, so I was happy to watch it again, a change from all the revising that dominated my days at the moment. It was a great film, with an interesting plotline, and an explosive ending.

Jodie Foster takes on the role as Kyle Pratt, who is a propulsion engineer and knows her airplanes as well as being a mother to her daughter Julia and a wife. Her life takes a dramatic turn when her husband dies after ’falling’ off a building, she and her daughter Julia are flying to Long Island to bury him. However Jodie’s situation just gets worse. After taking a brief nap, she wakes up to find that Julia has disappeared. Her journey now revolves around finding her daughter, thinking she may have got lost on the plane, however the flight attendants say that they have no record that Julia even went on the plane, prompting Kyle to look for Julia’s passport and tickets, which have also mysteriously vanished. The tale just gets more interesting when Gene Carson, an air marshal is assigned to look after her, as he has a hidden agenda.

Flightplan has a satisfying ending, and takes a spectacular twist during the middle of the film, when Kyle supposedly gets unhinged and sabotages the electrics of the plane, releasing oxygen masks and cutting the power, in an attempt to stall the plane so she can look for her daughter. The real shocker in the end is that Carson plotted a terrorist threat for a ransom for $50 million dollars with a flight attendant and the coroner who dealt with the death of Julia’s husband. An elaborate plot is revealed, as these are no ordinary conspirers.

Kyle begs Carson to do something about her daughter, to allow her to search the plane, Carson speaks to the captain but actually goes to the freight hold, to Kyle’s husband’s coffin, retreives explosives rigged with the biodiesel from the plane and it is revealed that Julia is actually drugged in another part of avionics meaning that Kyle’s pleas were true. Carson then goes to the captain and tells him that Kyle is a terrorist who wants to blow up the plane unless she is paid $50 million dollars by the airline, who promptly wires the money to save the aircraft. Once the plane lands, well, it looks like you are going to have to rent the movie to find out.

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It was an unfortunate fact that werewolves had always looked rather naff in movies. The first attempt at the subject had been 1941’s, ‘The Wolf Man’ (great for its time) and most subsequent hairy-lunatic films had been created by the Hammer/Amicus studios. The werewolf was a great movie monster, but presenting it in a believable and properly scary manner was quite a big challenge. Even if you could get away with not showing audiences the actual transformation, then the beast itself could all too easily end up looking like a rabid poodle that had been rather cruely put through a round of cheap liposuction…

However, ‘An American Werewolf in London’ completely changed the cinemagraphic image of the werewolf. By making use of Oscar-winning special effects and make-up, John Landis managed to scare the pants off horror fans. Things had progressed in the world of film and ‘An American Werewolf in London’ showed us just how credible a creature such as a werewolf could be.

The film is just as popular with horror fans today and it has gained a large cult following since the year of its release. There was a brief wave of excitement back in the nineties when it emerged that a sequel was being planned, but it all proved to be a massive disappointment. None of the original crew were involved and the subsequent film turned out to be a bit of a shaggy dog story. Instead of using clever make-up and special effects, ‘An American Werewolf in Paris’ resorted to boring old CGI’s for its action and transformation scenes. When will filmmakers ever learn? It is best to see ‘An American Werewolf in London’ as a fantastic stand-alone movie and to forget about the inferior sequel altogether.

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The little known Jacob’s Ladder starring an excellent Tim Robbins was a great horror film. For several reasons. Firstly, it effortlessly blurred and bent the line between reality and the kind of dream-like state that makes sweat spring from your body when you wake in the night, overpowered by a terrifying nightmare you’re sure really happened. Secondly, it pulled off what all films, no matter what genre, struggle to do: uncover a truth at the end that makes everything that came before it seem untrustworthy and also justifiable. A truth you should have seen, but could never have predicted.

Here’s the thing: Shutter Island, the Scorsese film we have been waiting a seeming age for, tries the same thing and fails miserably. It’s predictable, flawed to the hilt and about as unjustifiable and ridiculous as they come. Now we’ve got that out of the way we can concentrate on the good parts.

Oh, wait, there aren’t many. So don’t expect too much.

Well, there is one, actually: Dicaprio is good in this. Standard Dicaprio that may be, but he certainly does enough to carry the film. It’s not his fault that the script probably reads like the mangled wreckage of a mental-patient’s post traumatic fit in a chock-a-block china shop. And the opening is good, too. Broody and sinister, the first hour of the film is passable and the set-pieces are more than up to scratch. As for Ben Kingsley’s acting, we all know he doesn’t do bad stuff. Playing the role of the island’s chief psychiatrist, he comes in to his own in the latter part of the film. It’s just a shame there was no plot to accompany him…

So, that’s all you’re getting with this film, really. A return to top form it is not for the acclaimed director. Those who have seen Jacob’s Ladder are advised to stay completely clear or risk being offended, because this film is about as interesting (and long) as shopping for luxury bathroom accessories with my girlfriend.

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Fans need wait no longer. For the last year or so there has been news that the Hobbit will be translated into a film and it will be done so by the same team that did Lord of the Rings. The fact that Lord of the Rings was done so perfectly is great news for Hobbit fans. Peter Jackson, although involved in the movie, will take somewhat of a back seat as a producer and let Del Toro of ’Pan’s Labyrinth’, a man known for his fantastic vision, direct.

It is an interesting combination and, considering the past accomplishments of each of them, it can only be a winning team. There has been some concern recently that the production has stalled due to and unsatisfactory script, however, we have also heard some good news in that Sir Ian McKellen, who played Gandalf will be back to reprise his role, as will Viggo Mortensen (Aragorn) and Hugo Weaving (Elrond).

The plan for ’The Hobbit'seems to be that there will be two movies made. The films will not only cover the story that occurs in the novel, but also some of the other events surrounding the novel and those leading up to the events of the Lord of the Rings. This is an interesting move and one that should satisfy Tolkien fans who are enthralled by the myths and legends of Middle-Earth.

’The Hobbit'parts one and two should hopefully be in cinemas by the end of 2011 and 2012 respectively.

By the way, I think I have a solution for what we should plan for Jayne’s party. Who would be up for a abrupt trip and spending a bit of cash on some chalets? Please get back to me if you like the sounds of it!

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