theOneliner.com: Handling the Truth

Clearly, the time has come for a remake of Rentaghost. Boffins, go to work. In the meantime, you'll have to content yourself with out reviews of the following film-o-movies.

The Chronicles of Narnia: Prince Caspian follows on from t'last one, with our little kiddywink Kings and Queens returning years later to a very different Narnia. Overrun by a ghastly bunch of humans, it's up to the remnant Narnians, the deposed rightful heir Caspian, said kiddywinks and Jesus Christ The Lion to sort it out. The darker tone taken by this installment makes it harder to forgive the concessions it makes to its classification during the pitched battle scenes. Lacing focus and overlong, while it remains an entertaining enough way to spend a few hours it's a lesser film than the earlier effort.

The Forbidden Kingdom sees a young lad transported to a mythical China in the evil grip of the Jade Emperor, and must battle through some silly plot or other to restore justice to the land. While Jet Li and Jackie Chan provide able support, they end up completely overshadowing and being much more interesting than the ten-a-penny 'chosen one' narrative. Again, it's not a bad film and almost worth watching for the Li/Chan fight alone, but it's not a patch on the Wushu classics it tries to imitate.

City of Men returns to the favellas scene in City of God with another tale of life on the mean streets, albeit one that's a shade too convoluted to be condensed into this paragraph. An awful lot is going on in this film and at times it threatens to rather run away with itself, but just about keeps a handle on things. With decent performances all round, it's only a complete lack of having anything remotely similar in my life that stops me fully rooting for these guys. Mildly recommended.

Wall-E. Little robot. You know the score, I presume. It's an enjoyable diversion, and it's worth watching. What it most certainly isn't is the best film of the year, as some are claiming. But, let's not go there.

Puffball. My embargo on writing recaps on extraordinarily terrible horror film starts here.

Mad Detective sees a mad detective (funny, that) who can see people's personalities as... actually, if I think about this for any length of time I'll go bananas. I think this film is worth watching, but then again I would, wouldn't I?

Meet Dave. Actually, don't Meet Dave. He's not very funny and is mildly irritating.

The Dark Knight is a very serious candidate for the best film of the year, and while you can feel free to think otherwise, or that it's been overhyped after Ledger's death or that it's in some other way disappointing, you'll be relaxing in the sure knowledge that you are completely wrong, and smell funny, and have a stupid face. I do not have enough nice things to say about this film.

Enough for now, but just like a case of herpes, we'll be back soon enough.