To be honest we bipassed most of the hype surrounding Quentin Dupieux’s killer-tyre adventure on its release, partly because we’re lazy bastard and partly because… well, because it’s a film about a killer tyre.
Seriously, it’s the cinematic equivalent of hanging round Camden tube station in new rock boots. The premise screams “Look at me! Am i blowing your mainstream mind with my weirdness?! I bet I am yeah?!”
And that kind of thing can.. well, fuck off in general. No one cares.

So, seeing as the movie has now burst onto home screens as well (get it? Tyre.. burst… you see… sigh….) we thought it was well worth a revisit, judged entirely on it’s own charms rather than any surrounding hyperbole.
Surprisingly, there are a few Mitchelin stars to be had here…
Part of the fun comes from the meta-meta framing devices. From the off we have sheriff Stephen Spinella revealing that he knows it’s all just a movie, while we get lots of fourth wall bothering dialogue (The cops wondering what the audience is thinking work wonderfully), and the director isn’t averse to telling us about some of the challenges he faced making the film (Well – you try giving character to a Dunlop).

Surprisingly, it’s these challenges that are overcome most successfully. ‘Robert’ amazingly becomes a character to root for, and there’s tons of fun to be had watching the weirdest take on a superhero origin story you’re likely to see this decade.

There’s also some fun character elements as we see the titular tyre peeking in on girls and having some very black humoured fun with his powers -cue tons of exploding heads and mutilated cops. Luckily they know that “Hey, it’s not real life…”.

Overall there’s a lot of positive things to say for Rubber. it’s funny, and there’s actually some rather lovely landscape photography going on from time to time, the tyre rolling endlessly down deserted desert roads gives the whole thing a surreal ‘Mad Max by Wim Wenders’ aesthetic.

Unfortunately there’s only so long a nice sunset can sustain your attention. There’s clunky dialogue to deal with and things start to become repetitive halfway through (although maybe that’s the point in a film about a wheel). Released as a short, this would be a fantastic calling card, but it’s a little too trying even for hardened midnight movie-goers.

Worth catching on cable, but not shelling out for yet, it definitly points out Dupieux as one to watch.

BY THE HAMMER OF CROM! THIS IS THE MOST AWESOMELY MACHO TRAILER WE’VE SEEN IN AGES, SO MACHO WE’VE DECIDED TO USE CAPSLOCK, THAT MOST BARBARIAN OF ALL TYPOGRAPHIC TECHNIQUES TO PROMOTE IT.
TO BE HONEST WE REALLY CAN’T TELL IF IT’LL BE CLASSIC OR ‘KULL THE CONQUROR’ FROM THIS, BUT IT’S SO REMARKABLY GRUFF WE HAD TO SHARE.

YOU CAN THANK US IN HELL, OUTLANDER!

Wow, the hype from Tron: Legacy sure died down quickly didn’t it? For the record, we thought it was pretty awesome, if a bit talky -read our review here -but Disney certainly aren’t the type of company to let FIVE YEARS of extreme social marketing go to waste, as shown by this leaked preview from the upcoming Blu-Ray release of Tron: Legacy. Taking place right after the film’s closing credits, the short revives the Flynn Lives meme and drops a few ‘Clu’s (see what we did there, damn, we should be on TV) about possible sequel storylines.

What do you think, are you up for more Tron, or are you all pixelled out?

Far be it from us to make any ‘hammer time’ jokes at this point, but Thor really is shaping up to be our favourite movie of the year. God only knows if Brannagh can make any of this seem even remotely realistic, but to be honest who gives a shit? Giants, hammers, an eight foot tall killer space robot and Natalie Portman. That’s how you make a movie my friends!

Yet more superheroics on STS today, as Thor and Cap are joined by the less well-regarded (at least, inside the Marvel Universe) mutant heroes The X-Men. Here’s the first trailer for upcoming X-Men: First Class (we covered it before, but frankly got a bit distracted by a certain ex-MadMen star..), and it looks -not nearly as bad as we’d thought.

Sure the uniforms are dorky, but have enough 60s flair that they feel real enough, and Magneto’s younger cape/buckethead combo really does resemble his 60s comic counterpart -as does the storyline. Longtime comic fans will recall that the X-Men first encounter the deadly master of magnetism as he invades a missile base…

Whether or not this will work sans a certain razor-clawed mutton chopped killing machine remains to be seen, but based on this it could be some fun classic era espionage action.

Slashing The Seats knows bugger-all about sport, but this Sunday’s Superbowl between.. oh, I don’t know, the Arizona Mongooses and the New York Serengeti Gazelles… did cough up a few interesting bits and pieces. Not, unfortunately another Janet Jackson wardrobe malfunction (although we did notice that Christina agulera missed out a whole verse of a certain national anthem -top work there Chris), but rather a bunch of trailers for this summers biggest movies!
While Pirates of the carribean 4 made a strong showing, STS is way more dorky than you, so here’s some new sneak peeks at Marvel’s mighty Avengers -Thor and old wingnut himself -Cdaptain America!

These days Pixar movies often sum up everything that’s missing from Disney’s mainstream releases – plot, characters you can root for, a distinct lack of songs about dreaming/the pain of being Miley Cyrus.

If only the two studios had linked up earlier…

The Fighter is one of those movies that’s production echoes it’s script, to the point where it’s less seconds and more months out for Marky Mark’s punishing and passionate pugilistic effort, but despite the nebulous involvement of a galaxy of stars (Matt Damon and Marty Scorcese can take a bow) it turns out to have been well worth the wait….

Many sporting flicks have an ‘underdog makes good’ tale at their core, but it’s rare that those dogs lie as low as Chrian Bale’s Dickie Eklund, a crack addicted mess, bragging about a comeback as he become’s ever more strung-out and desperate. As usual with sports films there is a glimmer of hope however -here found in the iron resolve of Dickie’s younger brother Micky Ward (The aforementioned former-Funky Buncher).

Downtrodden and exploited by the rest of his extended family and in particular a truly poisonous mother (played with true bile by Melissa Leo), Micky is a poor-to-middling middleweight, constantly taking some horrendous punishment in the ring in order to fund his awful relations.

So, terribly dysfunctional family with a former hero at their heart -sounds like it would make a great documentary doesn’t it? Enter HBO, following Bale’s creepy, crawly Dickie around as he comes apart at the seams (and neatly disposing of huge gobs of complex exposition in the process). As usual, Bale is deeply method, with skin stretched over hollow eye sockets, his now-familiar dedication to physical transformation used to startling effect.

So what? We’ve seen Bale get fat/skinny/batman before haven’t we? Is this just going to be a Rocky take-off?

*insert 'punch in balls' gag here*

Fortunately, not at all, even taking into account at least four training montages (Sadly, not one of them is set to ‘Eye of the Tiger).

Although the first act focuses heavily on Bale, there’s still time to weave in plenty of Wahlberg moments, a blossoming romance with a surprisingly rough n’ tough Amy Adams providing a soft-hearted counterpoint to some truly brutal action in the ring.

The sheer naturalism on display throughout is what makes The Fighter stand apart. The plot may be riddled with Hollywood clichés, but there’s some very genuine humanity struggling to stay on top of it, meaning this is less a ‘boy done good’ story and more ‘the boy triumphed over a really shitty upbringing.

Sure, some of the acting is overwrought. Bale becomes ever more twitchy-showy, but just (just) manages to get away with it, and frankly a few of the East Coast accents are fucking diabolical, but director David O’Russell keeps on top of things, adding enough grey realism to tamp down the majority of the ‘TV Movie of the Week’ moments and make things truly compelling.

The family may be a collection of nauseating assholes, but they’re exactly the kind of assholes you’re likely to see in any low-rent local bar, and there’s a working class humour (and a very non-working class overarching wryness) that consistently makes you warm to the sheer ridiculousness of some of the characters.

They may be shitheads, but they’d sure be fun to have a pint with.

It may be hackneyed and overly complicated, especially as we enter the final straights and there’s a multiple character pile-up, but Russell knows exactly what he’s doing, weaving in and out of the action with hand-held cameras, but never letting things get out of hand.

There’s a measured pace and a very effective refusal to revel in the more gratuitous side of the sport throughout -things get messy and painful, but never gory, something that’s partly a tribute to Wahlberg’s extreme likeability. He’s a regular, nice guy stuck in the middle of a shit storm, and you really do feel genuine sympathy for him.

Like it’s protagonist, The Fighter emerges as a champion against all odds, defying cliché to spar with the very best of them. Sure to be a heavy hitter come awards season, get yourself a front row seat early.

Strangely enough, the web has been full of discontent about Andrew Garfield’s distinctly undernorished look as Spidey recently, but judging by this peek at shooting, he (or his stunt double) are certainly going to provide an action packed take on Marvel’s wall-crawling everyman.

Slashing The Seats had it’s editorial trolls whipped long into the night, but even they couldn’t come up with a witty pun based around January Jones’ bosoms and the phrase ‘you can’t make an omelette without breaking some X’. Instead, you’ll just have to settle for this first peek at her in a ridiculously saucy Emma frost outfit, along with the rest of Matthew Vaughn’s super-groovy 1960’s X-Men.

Although Ms.Jones does a fine job on her own, the line up is filled out by Michael Fassbender as ‘no need for Grecian 2000′ Magneto, Rose Byrne as the frankly crap character Moira MacTaggert, Jason Flemyng as Azazel (nope, we don’t know either), Nicholas Hoult as Beast, Lucas Till as Cyclops’ brother Havok, Zoe Kravitz as Angel, Jennifer Lawrence blueing-up as Mystique, and a surprisingly hirsute James McAvoy as Professor X.

Whether or not the slightly off-canon mix of characters will add up to a great movie remains to be seen, but those old-school jumpsuits have got our hopes up for something a little better than The Last Stand.

For all their many ecccentricities, no one could ever accuse the Coens of not being fine filmmakers. Indeed, it’s testament to their singular talents (and long-tail box office returns) thet True Grit was made at all.

Seriously, would any major studio really budget a western (let alone one so strongly tied with John Wayne’s 1969 version -very much a product of its time) if they weren’t betting on the jingle-jangle of Oscar gold in the future?

Luckily for the execs, the Coens pull off their first fully-fledged western in spectacular style, Charles Portis’ indulgently cinematic novel represented perfectly through Ethan and Joel’s penchant for subtle sepia hues and singular, often bizarre characterisation.

Jeff Bridges continues his long run of laid back, supremely naturalistic acting as drunken US Marshall Rooster Cogburn, and it’s truly astonishing that he takes a role previously indelibly stamped with The Duke’s mark and makes it wholly his own.

As the ‘One eyed fat man’, his irascible character slowly thaws, revealing a history of heartbreak and hard times through anecdotes and actions. Bridges is comical, wry and deeply, powerfully human, and will surely be heading towards more nods come awards season. It’s hard to imagine another actor managing to make kicking two small children off a balcony both funny and charming, but The Dude manages it with aplomb.

Backing him up, Matt Damon continues to provide value for money, alternating between amusing, annoying and honourable as vain Texas ranger LeBeouf, his poor shooting and hyperbole a perfect counter to Rooster’s solid, earthy charm.

Likewise, a special nod goes to newcomer Hailee Steinfeld as Mattie Ross. Out to avenge her father’s death she is initially cold, practical and precocious, but brings a winning and natural charm to a wordy role that could easily be jarringly theatrical in the wrong hands. Her coldness finally breaking towards the end of the film when, despite aloofly witnessing terrible violence on the trail, she breaks down and cries at the death of her horse Little Blackie and reveals the vulnerable child beneath her businesslike exterior.

Here, Mattie still comes across as slightly rehearsed, but that’s entirely down to the Coens penchant for precise screwball wordplay, delivered in a wry and affected manner that brings an arch humour to proceedings without ever detaching you from the story or the people.

Likewise, the cinematography is superb. Oddly,at first glance many scenes appear as though they’ve been shot with the small screen in mind, coldly lit forest scenes recalling nothing so much as 90’s TV filmatography. At first it’s a little disturbing -this is supposed to be a western after all, a majestic retelling of the Birth Of America. As the film progresses however, you see this convention is being slyly mocked, the TV styling actually a return tto classic 1960’s Hollywood framing, the directors making a concientious effort to shrug off the shadow that ‘Unforgiven’ has cast over ’serious’ westerns for so long. True Grit may be built on a mythical framework, but it’s skin is resolutely small, detailed and human.

Effortlessly amusing, relentlessly engaging and intelligent and not afraid to show very adult themes while remaining a childlike sense of fun, True Grit is a deserving film that never feels try-hard or worthy. It’s fun, and it can be enjoyed as a Sunday afternoon tea-time TV flick or a massive, tense and moving Oscar contender -and just about everything inbetween.

A fantastic film that kicks off 2011 in real style.

Despite all the shouting about cheese, surrender and Freedom Fries over the past few years, there still seems to be a touch of inferiority lurking in the minds of the great American public when dealing with the French. Despite plentiful evidence to the contrary, they are still regarded as sensualists, romantics. Aloof, sophisticated figures capable of infusing even the most mundane of situations with an inherent sexual frisson.

Which is why a great, honking, shouting, uncoordinated, stinking Vincent Cassel (a man whose brother refers to himself as ‘Rockin’ Squat’, lest we forget) can continuously be cast as a leading man despite a predilection for making utter, utter shite.

And so to Black Swan….

First of all, the good bits:
1: Natalie Portman
2: erm….

Let’s move on shall we? To be fair Portman does her best with uneven material, and there are some arresting images on display here. Unfortunately the whole thing is mired in enough inky black to put the willies up Voldemort, and the plot is frankly laughable.

I understand that Aronofsky deals in dreamscapes and surreal imagery, but here the characters are just too cartoonish for you to engage emotionally with any of them.

Babara Hershey is particularly odious as Portman’s mother, living vicariously through her daughter’s success, while Mila Kunis is utterly ridiculous as ‘Bad Girl’ Lily, downing whisky and copping off with a bunch of complete morons at regular intervals. We’re supposed to believe that Nina is attracted to her as part of a dark awakening, but frankly, she’s a squashy-faced idiot, hard to like and certainly not the ball of burning charisma she’s portrayed as.

Finally there’s Cassel, providing a performance that can only be summed up as ‘French As Fuck’, all rolling R’s, turtle-neck sweaters and nihilistic pretence. He’s awful, bellowing lines without a trace of subtlety or restraint. He’s supposedly a sensualist, but again, appears as a chauvinistic screen-hog. He’s basically very easy to hate, even when he occasionally transforms into a Black Swan that resembles the bastard spawn of Howard the Duck and the Muppet’s American Bald Eagle.

Oh –and Winona Rider takes a break from her duties as Spock’s mum to play ‘aging’ dancer Beth, cast aside by the rotten Cassell in favour of Portman’s younger model and driven to mutilation and suicide attempts by the rejection. Unfortunately she gets about four minutes of screen time to portray all of this.

Final complaint: For a film about Ballet, there’s remarkably little dancing on screen. A bit of warming up, a few shots from the side of the stage, but nothing to help us understand the extreme, life-consuming importance of the role of Swan Queen, and unfortunately the whole plot pivots on this callously dismissed point.

Oh, and of course, young Nina does finally manage to dance the Black Swan convincingly. Then she dies. It was he ‘Swan Song’. DO YOU SEE??

A steaming, honking turd of a movie for idiots, its dirty protest plot vaguely iced over by some nice visual touches. Please don’t go and see this.

If you like huge great spoilers, then you are definitely the target audience for this review (not to mention the trailer posted above -do try to resist clicking play). If on the other hand you are one of those oddballs like me who wandered into ‘From Dusk ‘Til Dawn’ on first release and were completely taken by surprise when Salma did the lizard-lady thing, then it’s probably best if you just ignore this and head off to check out Russel Crowe’s latest first hand.

Right, now that the ‘Warning -Spoilerz’ is out of the way, let’s get down to business. STS wandered into a preview screening of The Next Three Days early on a Saturday morning, with a frankly banging hangover. All we really wanted to do was sit in a warm dark room, sip our Omniscience-size pepsi and allow pretty shapes to float around the screen in front of us.

For the first half of the movie, we were well served…

Crowe and Elizabeth Banks make up slightly unconvincing husband and wife team John and Lara Banks, a go-getting suburban couple with a cute as a button kid and high aspirations. Lara’s got a few problems at work sure, and a chip on her shoulder when it comes to her new sister in law (the ‘hey, my eyes are up here!’ Moran Atius -convincingly annoying), but nothing major. They go out, they make love, they’re happy people.

Movies about happy people suck. Sure enough, come the morning a huge team of amped-up SWAT members crash into their perfect home, swinging guns about, kicking things over and eventually…arresting Lara for the recent murder of her boss! DUN DUN DERRRR!!!

There’s blood stains, motive and fingerprints to prove it too, and we’re off on a courtroom/prison/family TV movie of the week. All overbaked emotion and tear-jerking plot points (Son Luke won’t kiss mommy while she’s in prison, dad has a tentative relationship with a fellow single parent). It really wouldn’t look out of place on the Hallmark channel.

So why did we enjoy it so much. Because it’s worth remembering that Haggis may well have managed to cough up Million Dollar Baby and The Last Kiss in the past, but he’s also responsible for the rip-roaring tension and action of Casino Royale, something that stands him in good stead when we reach the midway point. Crowe is determindely rifling through the library legal section, repeated appeals have failed, he’s running out of money, and after a suicide attempt he’s convinced he has to prove his wife’s innocence or lose her forever.

Enter Liam Neeson. here the one-time Jedi is a criminal turned author, who’s book deals with his repeated escape attempts and the mindset needed to survive behind bars. OK, So Russel is looking to help his wife deal with the psychological effects of confinement yes?

Nope. He’s breakin’ her out man!

It’s a totally unexpected twist, the entire movie cranking up several gears as we go instantly from TV weepie to masterclass in slightly-ridiculous tension building. Crowe’s teacher assembling the supplies he’ll need by trial and error, testing out bump-keys (made thanks to outube tutorials) on prison locks, getting brutally mugged while trying to procure fake passports (and yes, the criminals do come to regret it), and slowly flogging his furniture to fund a daring escape plan.

Haggis is clearly enjoying himself here, keeping things real but ladling tense twist upon tense twist into the mix: At one point Crowe runs out of cash. His solution? Trace the aforementioned criminals to their meth lab, burst in and shoot the hell out of them, stealing all the cash and burning the place down in a great set-piece of confined action and brutal solutions. If only he hadn’t damaged his sensible family Prius while escaping.

With the police closing in, but as yet unwilling to believe that a mild-mannered school teacher would carry out sucjh an audacious plan, Crowe is caught between pursuing detectives, concerned parents and a ticking clock. And it’s worth remembering that his wife is still completely ignorant of any of his plans until the final act.

It may be bloody ridiculous, but this is a fun, fast and stupid/inspired take on two tired formulas by Haggis. The action is rooted in the real, the twists are all well within ‘if something can go wrong, it will’ laws, and there’s tremendous fun (and a surprising amount of humour) to be had as Crowe tries desperately to keep his spinning plates from toppling, while the early family drama actually helps you give a shit about the characters, fleshing them out far more than they have any right to be.

Family drama, love, loyalty and speeding car-chases add up to make this a thoroughly enjoyable ride that belies it’s not inconsiderable two hour running time, with Crowe as a likeable hero you can root for, and genuine thrills as the ‘will he/won’t he’ plot twists and turns towards the end.

It’s Christmas! And, try as we might, we couldn’t quite shoehorn in an article about Cliff Richard movies, so instead, here’s a classic Yuletide tale narrated by one of STS’s very favourite people – the always dour, but never non-festive Werner Herzog.

Sure to keep you awake on Christmas Eve….

Over the past year Slashing The Seats has watched about 8000 movies (and even got round to reviewing a few of them), some good, some bad, some ‘Whip It!’. Last year we wrote a full-on end of year review (at least, i think we did, I spent my NYE drinking whisky and crying under the kitchen table, so anything is possible), but who’s got time for that kind of thing -I’m a busy man!

Instead, here’s your entire 2010 year-in-the-movies-in-review-thing…in under three minutes. Turns out most of the year was narrated by Michael Cira. Oh, you poor, soon to be outmoded hipsters you.

We’re all about convenience round here -you can thank us (and excellent video masher-upper GenRocks) later.

So, looks like Hugh Jackman’s latest ‘Real Steel’ has a trailer then. Jackman will be playing a meatsack who trains giant rock ‘em sock ‘em robots to punch each other’s lights out, eventually facing off against the unstoppable ‘Collosus’. Why is he unstoppable? Well, I can’t imagine it will be anything like the extraordinarily similar short story by Peter F. Hamilton, and turn out that there’s a human brain inside the robot or anything.

It’s already been a whhole week since comedy legend (and occasional 50s Hollywood hearthrob) Leslie Nielson sadly passed away. Unfortunately we forgot to mention it at the time because we were too busy hiding whoopee cusions around our bosses office. Don’t think we’re disrespectful however: Once we realised Steve Martin wasn’t funny anymore Leslie became our go-to guy for white haired comedy and occasional glimpses of Pricilla Presley’s arse, which means we’re glad to see the excellent folks at London’s Everyman cinema are putting on a tribute to the great man himself this Friday, 10th December.

If you’re at a loose end in Islington tomorrow night, head on down to the Everyman screen on the green at 11.30pm, and bear witness to the film that changed Nielsons career altogether (All: That changed Nielson’s career).

Let’s be honest, you were planning on watching wrestling girl scouts anyway, so why not have a few laughs at the same time?

Tickets start at £11 and are available now from the box office -give ‘em a buzz on  0871 906 9060 or online at www.everymancinema.com

We haven’t mentioned much about it, mainly because everything Michael Bay has ever done has been complete and utter wank, but apparently those fucking awful Transformers films did quite well. So well in fact that there’s a third helping of robo-shite about to be heaped onto steaming cinema screens everywhere. You should be ashamed of yourself.

Anyway, here’s the first trailer for Transformers: Dark of the moon, wherein we find out that Hasbro’s favourite son’s (and daughters -can’t forget the fashionably pink Arcee after all) have been lurking about on the moon for years. For some reason…

To be honest, Slashing The Seats gave up on computer games after a particularly tricky level on Sonic 2 saw us kicking a hole in our mum’s TV cabinet, so it was with some trepidation that we prepared to re-enter the digital space for Tron: Legacy.

It’s already obvious that this is a going to be visual feast, but even after the multitude of trailers and music videos, the immersive lengths Disney have gone to are impressively realized.

Even the company’s iconic fairytale castle logo get’s a pitch black Tron-style makeover during the opening credits, and then we’re straight into the action.

The story initially is a simple one: A digitally de-aged Jeff Bridges telling young son Sam all about ‘The Grid’ and his dream of a world where information is completely free, before promptly disappearing and leaving our hero with a convenient excuse to be mildly dysfunctional (remember, this is mouse house stuff, so dysfunctional means ‘a black jacket’ rather than ‘addiction to prescription medication’).

Sam spends his time taunting the newly corporate-ised Encom company with annual ‘pranks’ (such as putting their new OS live on the web before launch) that would get you a hefty spell in white collar prison in real life.

Yep, seems things aren’t so great at his old dad’s company these days, with a bunch of smarmy cookie-cutter suits eyeing the bottom line, and Bruce Boxleitner’s prick of a son as head designer…

Basically, they’re Microsoft, if it was run by profit-hungry corporate wolves and put out terrible products. Oh, wait….

Anyway, you don’t care about that and neither do I, we want to see glass motorbikes exploding, so it’s a handy bit of exposition when the former Babylon 5 commander visits young Sam in his designer low-rent home with a message –he’s been paged (remember when US kids thought pagers were cool because gangstas used them?) from Kevin Flynn’s old office.

An office that’s been closed for 20 years…spooooky.

Yeah so anyway, Sam heads on down, finds a hidden door behind a Tron arcade machine – not to mention a jukebox that pumps out some truly bangin’ Journey tracks – and heads into his father’s secret office. And you guessed it; gets sucked into the world of Tron via his dad’s still functioning de-rezz laser.

Now, a fair few of you probably won’t really remember the original Tron, so it’s a shame this isn’t fleshed out a bit for n00bs (it also makes you wonder why, given the events of the first film, Flynn hadn’t pointed the loaded interdimensional transporter’s barrel somewhere a bit safer. Or at least, you know..put up a sign or something.)

So Sam’s on the Grid. Cue ladies in white plastic shoes, huge flying space invaders and programs wandering about rocking a suspiciously ‘Twilight’ aesthetic, before coming face to face with ‘Clu’, a digitized avatar of Jeff bridges whose gone rotten to the core processor, taking over the entire grid and reshaping it in his image, while desperately looking for a way to enter the real world and continue his nefarious business.

Exposition over, Sam is quickly plonked into ‘The Games’, a superbly realized and surprisingly exciting version of Aerobee (remember those kids? No? sigh…). If, of course, Aerobees were designed to chop your block off.

Of course, because he’s a lazy, feckless teenager, Sam is superbly equipped to deal in hand to hand gladiatorial combat with seasoned professionals, using unfamiliar weaponry in an anti-gravity arena.

I digress.

It’s flashy and exciting, the visuals again superb and immersive, although the sound design does occasionally suffer from a touch of the Phantom Menaces.

Facing off against a mysterious black-clad program armed with two disks, Sam is fortunately rescued by Quorra and whisked to a secret lair where Bridges senior spends his time contemplating the nature of the universe and ageing while all around him remain static.

And this is where things get interesting.

Bridges dream’s of free information and self-adaptive programs actually skim the surface of some extraordinarily deep thinking, particularly unusual in a big family film, and his temporally-displaced hippy talk provides some of the few light moments in what’s otherwise a rather ponderous script.

Sam and Quorra (Olivia Wilde reaching almost Deschanelian heights of kooky adorability) rush about the place, fighting in nightclubs (complete with digital versions of Daft Punk on the decks and blowing shit up, while Bridges remains a calm God/Buddha/Santa Claus figure, occasionally using unseen and unknown powers to reshape the grid.

As plots go, it’s not much to go on, and you definitely get the impression that there’s a lot of excised material waiting for the special edition.

The fate and redemption of Tron himself is surprisingly glossed over in a couple of lines, leaving you desperately wondering what went so wrong for the one-time great hope, while Bridges and Sam as Jesus and Jehovah analogues don’t ring as true as they might thanks to lack of exploration.

It’s moments like this that unfortunately transform gravitas into unconvincing bombast.

Otherwise, this is a triumph.

Fast-paced, deep, exciting and genuinely thrilling. Particularly during the climactic air battle, which never quite crosses the line between ‘Awesome!’ and ‘What the fuck is going on?’ which is tribute to the steady hand newcomer Joseph Kosinski keeps on the digital tiller.

It would be ridiculously easy for this to fall into Batman & Robin territory, so it’s a relief that camp is kept to an absolute minimum, only Michael Sheen’s ‘Castor’ flirting saucily with the edges of annoying.

And then there’s the look.

The entire thing is absolutely stunning. Kosinski has made comments about doubting the CGI used to de-age Bridges, and during the early ‘real-world’ sections it does come across as jarring, and is wisely kept to a minimum.

Once we’re plunged into the 3D Grid however, his slightly off-kilter ‘digital botox’ look works a treat, making CLU just real enough to emphasise with as a character while never quite letting you forget he’s actually a creepy evil AI.

The effects are seamlessly blended with physical sets, and using practical costumes and weapons rather than CGI proves a great move, meaning you really feel every bump as characters fly from Lightcycles, fall towards fans and leap from ledges dressed as digital Dragonflies.

When programs die, smashing into a million glass fragments, it somehow remains poignant –look out for the grieving widow sifting through the sand that’s all that’s left of her lover.

Overall this isn’t without its flaws –something that fits well with the underlying philosophy incidentally.

As mentioned some events are glossed over, while there’s an unnecessarily talky mid-section that could have been trimmed, leaving the pace uneven, a flaw which robs CLU of much of his menace.

The film also suffers by association. There are a few too many nods to the (second) Star Wars trilogy and The Matrix here, meaning the religious undercurrent doesn’t carry the weight it should.

On the other hand, this is a grand spectacle that demands viewing on the big screen, pushing the boundaries of effects work while never allowing them to become unhinged from a linear narrative.

Fun for all the family, it’s thrilling without being scary, drips with eye-porn at every turn and certainly beats the crap out of most large franchises currently doing the rounds – here’s to version 3.0.

Unfortunately not a tribute to the late, much lamented Leslie Nielson, this is the new trailer for Mel Gibson’s ucoming nutjobbery The Beaver.

Frankly it’s pretty much Gibson’s perfect role, art reflecting life as a once-loved successful dude goes off the rails. Of course, in real life the erstwhile Mad Max can’t rely on the psychological attentions of a hand puppet with a voice like Ray Winstone (well, he could, but that would be fucking mental).

We haven’t quite decided if this is the best or most ludicrous thing we’ve ever seen (and less ye forget, we’ve seen O.C & Stiggs), but what the hell, we won’t begrudge a washed up alcoholic with anger control issues a fair chance round here – if we did we’d have no staff left.

We first spoke about the notrious BiffCo waaaay back in our evil Mega Corporations list when we were first starting out here at STS. At the time there was little information available on the man, nay, the legend that was alternate evil Biff Tannen, but today we did get a glimpse into what might have been, as this complete footage from the Biff Tannen museum finally popped up on YouTube.

Biff Tannen, we salute you!

This time last year, Slashing The Seats was proud to unveil the very first Harrry potter review in the whole wide world.
Of course, we’ve long since been banned from hanging around Emma Watson (despite a sound defence argument resting on the key fact that none of us have identifiable genitals or human emotional drives) by the powers that be, so we didn’t get to go to the premiere. Instead, we had to rummage through the bins round the back of cineworld. We got there first though. This time round, well, we weren’t so lucky.

Actually, it’s fair to say we weren’t actually that bothered. we had a weekend filled with rum, rollerskates and questionable sexual encounters with troglodyte cannibals to plough through, so we didn’t have time to write about boy wizards. Frankly, unless it’s a miraculous hangover/rash cure magic can fuck right off.

Anyway – I suppose now we’re here you’ll be wanting a review of some sort won’t you? Very well, gather about me now, and I’ll begin….

The fun part about this is that I don’t have to go into the plot (which is good, because it’s all over the shop). If you’re reading this, you probably already know what happens, but that doesn’t make it any less boring. The decision by the money bags at Warner to split the film in two is understandable, but frankly the best thing here would have been to edit out Rowling’s interminable exposition and deliver a breezy magical chase movie. With judicious editing we could have been sitting down to Raiders of the Lost Ark with wands. Instead we get a gloomy, droopy and largely structureless mess that loses an awful lot of the good will built up by The Half Blood Prince.

The problem is, with our three heroes doing a bunk from Hogwarts to go galivanting about the Scotch countryside looking for McGuffins Horcruxes, there’s a distinct lack of form that thoroughly undermines the pace.

Alongside this, the admittedly lovely scenery isn’t the only thing that’s exposed. Reduced to a small group, the cracks in Watson, Grint and Radcliffe’s acting are writ large. That isn’t to say they aren’t game, but being surrounded by so many fine stage actors has obviously had an effect, leading to misplaced volume and stilted delivery that just isn’t suited to the small, intimate personal dialogues we’re meant to be involved in. The acting here isn’t bad per se, just slightly unsuitable.

On the upside, things aren’t quite so dark this time around. Sweeping away the dusty school halls has given returning director david Yates a chance to wash off the oily blacks that so dominated his last crack at Potter.

The only problem is he’s replaced them all with frosty blues.

Previously we were drawn in by the hissing, aquiline menace of Death Eaters swarming like smoke underwater, unseen terrors crowding the previously warm and welcome halls of Hogwarts. This time we’re left..well, a bit chilly.

That said there are some good things lurking (often quite literally) in the mix here. The occasional horror elements work well, jolting but well executed and not forced (there really is nothing more upsetting than a dead owl is there?), and the occasional moments of levity are welcome, warm and natural.

Finally, despite the occasional shortcomings of the leads, there’s are some splendid performances by the adults. Ralph Fiennes in particular is clearly enjoying his chance to finally hog the limelight, slitthering across the screen like a jellied ham, while Bonham-Carter reprises her superbly unhinged role, ethereal and bewitching in every sense of the word. Oh, and let’s not forget Alan Rickman. His duplicitous, calculating turn is short but pitch (black) perfect. Laying terrible plans with not a hint of maniacal pantomime evil or glee. Here, he’s simply rotten to the core, and his performance shines because of it.

Overall this is an overlong money-maker, rambling and too adherant to it’s source material. Full of meandering asides and false trails that lead around in circles while the real action gathers over the next hill. Taken on it’s own, it’s unsatisfying (yes yes, I know it’s ‘Part One’…) and muddled, but has flashes of a fantastic finale to come.

Not the best entry in the series by a long chalk, Deathly Hallows is unfortunately an overstretched if solid preamble.

We were actually supposed to put up our Harry Potter AND Skyline reviews today. But unfortunately I was too lazy/had real work to do, so you’ll have to wait until tomorrow. Stop whining you feckless dogs, and instead bask in the magnificence of the few morsals we do charitably throw you from our gilded movie castle – here’s the new trailer for awesome explody alien-dfest Battle:LA for starters.

What’s the odds on the Hollywood sign getting blown up at some point then?

Yeah yeah, we know, you’re suffering from Tron:Legacy overload, but the hell with it, here’s the new trailer anyway – only a month to go!Oh, and just for fun, here’s the last banner ad which we forgot about, mainly because I had it on a flash key that I dropped down the side of my wardrobe. Betting Kevin Flynn never has that problem…

Yet more lovely TRON:Legacy stuff from Disney ahead of this Thursday’s IMAX preview screenings – time for a trailer thats harder, better, faster and longer….

Going in to former BBC visual effects guru Gareth Edwards’s first big screen foray, it’s forgivable if audience and reviewer alike are amped up in expectation of this year’s ‘District 9′, so it comes as a shock when we get a rambling, very human drama that meanders along at a pace that matches it’s protagonists long trip across central America towards their comfy suburban homes.

In terms of plot, there’s a fairly straightfoward setup that’s efficiantly dealt with in the opening credits. At some point in the past a space probe is sent to investigate possible alien life, on it’s return, the probe breaks up over Mexico, causing strange new life-forms to arise and spread. In the panic the US and Mexico wall off much of central America and begin a long running (and possibly futile) battle to halt the spread.

Cast into the middle of this we find photographer Andrew (a rangey and able Scoot McNairy), tasked with escorting his boss’ injured daughter Sam (the elfin, and frankly too-sexy-by-half Whitney Able) home from South America. With no ferries or air travel available across the ‘infected zone’, they find themselves forced to cross the heavily guarded no man’s land, first in the company of gun-weilding mercenaries, then finally trekking up to a mile high wall erected as protection by the US.

Of cours, the US has resorted to walls and violence to keep the alien invaders out – anyone miss the metaphor?

And that, in a nutshell, is the biggest problem here. The heavy handed preaching unfortuantely becomes grating and patronises the audience, while the central characters lack empathy – Sam is a spoilt little rich girl, Andrew is..well, a bit of a dick really, meaning scenes which could have been emotionally stirring are rendered isolated and quickly dismissed. The characters (of course) begin to fall for each other, but they never develop in any noticable way despite the horrors they witness on their journey.

Edwards litters the script with wishy-washy liberalisms too. The soldiers in the jungle talk about the wall with Sam who agrees “hey, yeah, it’s like, we’re fencing ourselves in…man…” while on reaching the wall Andrew pipes up with the oh-so-wise 2 it’s so weird, looking into the US from outside, you know? And tomorrow it’ll be so easy to forget all this…”

Wow man…like…mind. BLOWN!

or not. If you’ve a modicum of intelligence you’ll recognise these as first year student ramblings, poorly formed and ill-advised. The underlying message here is that hey, even if things seem different, we’re all the same deep down man,. Can’t we all just get along? A point hammered home as the pair witness a bizarre alien mating ritual once they’re over the border. Hey man, they tried to stem the flood of illegal aliens into the country, but they got in anyway dude, and hey – they’re a lot like us really aren’t they? (apart from being 80-foot tall photonic Octopusephants obviously).

On the plus side Edwards has a superlative eye for cinematography, catching the startling latin scenery in awe inspiring detail. Magnificent ancient ziggaruts contrast starkly with scenes of urban decay and genuinely realistic military destruction, while the waters on an ill-advised river trip are magical, calling to mind Eric Gautier’s wonderful work in The Motorcycle Diaries. The quiet beauty is wonderfully realised.

As a nature documentary, this would be stirring stuff, but as a movie, it’s meandering, overlong and misguided. it’s crass to say so but the film fairly cries out for a few good action sequences. Instead we get a mish-mash of ‘Blue Planet’ with splashes of Jurassic Park and Schindlers List, minus the excitement or emotional heft of either.

Overall, this is a good looking but unrewarding watch.

Tired of driving that clapped out Ford Rocket-submarine you got back in ‘82? Maybe it’s time to consider an upgrade…possibly to something like: The S.H.I.E.L.D Helicarrier!

Once MArvel get’s done with Thor and Captain America, those two bstions of four colour freedom are set to team up with Iron Man to fight ‘a threat no single super hero could vanquish’ in Joss Wheedon’s The Avengers. Marvel’s super-secret S.H.I.E.L.D organisation (led by the one-eyed Samual L. Jackson, will also have a major part to play as the hero’s ‘handlers’, which means they’ll need a pretty nifty base of operations -seen here in this leaked design by movie artist George Hull.

it’s Friday. so what better way to kick off the weekend than some..erm…doom-laden, muffled electronica. Yet more TRON:Legacy coolness in the form of Daft Punk’s awesome soundtrack. Here’s a picture of the be-helmeted boys in some blue tracksuits as well – and they say French people are stylish….

When we aren’t drinking martini’s and sunning ourselves aboard our private space station, at least two of the STS writers make a living from the social media game, so there’s been a bit of buzz surrounding this in the office – will David Fincher’s unforgiving portrayal of Zuckerberg bring our burgeoning careers crashing to the ground?

Of course not, don’t be stupid.

Remember ‘Quit Facebook Day’? No, neither does anyone else.

Facebook is too ubiquitous, too widespread, and just occasionally to gosh darned useful to be troubled by a mere movie. Even the Zuck has seen it apparently, but he’s too busy compiling lists of every ex-girlfriend you’ve ever stalked to give a crap.

Given this invulnerability, in many ways this becomes a fairly amusing TV-Drama take on the formation of the world’s first billion member website. Some of the dialogue is too pat, and there’s plenty of hand-wringing drama and staring out of rainy windows (also: Asian women giving blow jobs like they’re going out of style), but given Fincher’s consummate medium mastery, there’s also a deep dark point about conformity and rebellion buried under the mountain of ‘Likes’ and ‘Pokes’.

There’s an interesting take on Zuckerberg himself here, and it’s a fantastic performance by Jesse Eisenberg (not a sentence I ever thought I‘d find myself using) as an aloof and icy yet oddly likeable charlatan and opportunist, stealing his friends idea and improving on it as he tries desperately to become popular among Harvard’s cliquey elites.

The exact accuracy of this is open to debate, but it makes for some great courtroom drama as he faces down intellectual-ownership enemies the Winklevoss twins ( both solidly played by Armie Hammer thanks to some double-shot fun), and alienating roommate Eduardo (Facebook’s original financer) as he pursues an ill advised friendship with Justin Timberlake’s strutting Sean Parker (you may remember him –founded a small site called Napster, arch enemy of Metallica).

Fincher isn’t afraid to show off technically here either, splitting the narrative into three different timelines, giving the piece a fragmentary, flashy sheen that perfectly echoes the split focus of the internet social experience.

All the information is available but you’re never quite given time to assimilate things in their entirety, instead getting a confused picture as the college years unfold alongside future recrimination and accusation.

It’s a brave move and pays off handsomely, winding the what would otherwise be kitchen sink stuff up to insane levels of vitriolic hatred, guilt and blame throwing.
On the downside this stylistic trickery means that we never truly get under the skin of the characters – like a friend on Facebook, we know the poses but the reality (whatever that is) is always slightly hidden behind performance and fleeting appearance.

Overall this is a sharp, technically superior and narratively brave movie, Eisenberg managing an oddly magnetic turn that presents Zuckerberg as a sympathetic, identifiable personality weighted down by the consequences of his success, rather than an all-out villain or hero and it’s all the better for it.

It’s a complex story so you’ll need to pay attention to get the most out of this, but ultimately it’s a rewarding and surprisingly involving movie.

Likes all round.

UPDATE: As I’m a high-fallutin social media type, I got to go to the premiere for this, but that means I have a vested interest doesn’t it? As a balance, here’s a special bonus review by the lovely Lauren Mullineaux:

The Social Network

In case you haven’t heard Facebook has a movie. It also has 500 million users as of July. In case you don’t know what Facebook is…oh wait, that person doesn’t exist. Glad we settled that and if you could just get used to the pop-culture references now this whole experience will be much more user friendly.

Apart from David Fincher nobody thought “I know what the world needs, a movie about Facebook.” Now everybody is just bloody glad he had the idea. Even though it wasn’t technically his since it’s based on the book by Ben Mezrich (21), but intellectual property rights aside this is a great movie. It’s not just about Facebook either, it’s about a skinny Jewish kid with lots of social problems who may just be a genius and now happens to be the youngest billionaire in the world. Not a bad premise if you ask me.

From the first scene this is unlike anything David Fincher has previously done, it’s not very dark and it’s not very alternative, but it is a film buffs film. That may seem like a contradiction, but that’s what is so brilliant about The Social Network it perfectly treds the line between mainstream and clever. Aaron Sorkins’ dialogue was word-perfect. Everything that was said had clearly been thought about and was said for a reason. It all seems so easy you will be annoyed you didn’t think of it first. While Fincher may have took a step back to let the film shine Sorkin stamped his name all over it.

As much as the script strives and probably should be the star it isn’t, Jesse Eisenberg is and he has picked his films beautifully. Adventureland, Zombieland, and now The Social Network. Hollywood has a new leading man. Eisenberg has awkward and funny down to a tee yet he’s never really tried real and arrogant. For a possibly biased portrait of a cold person his performance was emotional and almost certainly worthy of an Oscar nomination. Even though the world hasn’t heard much good about Mark Zuckerberg it is hard to hate him and very easy to sympathize with why he acts the way he does. The supporting cast was just as good, with Justin Timberlake as the ‘entrepreneur’ founder of Napster and Andrew Garfield gives a moving performance as co-founder of Facebook Eduardo Saverin which is enough to make you excited for the revamp of Spiderman. Another character in the film was its music. With a soundtrack by Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross it’s hard not to mention it. At points you may forget about it, but it’s always there looming in the background and what may at first seem slightly unsettling grows to reflect the tension between the characters.

There really is nothing to not like about this movie it looks beautiful and sounds even better. I guarantee that if you watch this film you will go home, start a blog, and research how to do coding because you just never know when an angry mood will give you that billion dollar idea.