Pixar have actaully scored pretty well with WALL•E by actually making a kids movie that has all of the ingredients for a movie that will also appeal to adults. It includes great animation and has a pretty respectable science-fiction plot as well. 

The film itself it set 700 years in the future. We think we have arrived at a city, but as we get closer we find that the entire city is constructed by garbage. Amongst the garbage is one single creature. We learn that he is WALL•E and he is a solar powered garbage collection robot (that is funnily enough powered by Apple). He spends his time scooping up trash, and compressing it into need cubes before adding it to the piles of trash. He intersects this by conversing with a solitary cockroach and watching human TV and collecting knicks and knacks as he cleans up the planet. 

It becomes obvious to us that WALL•E is lonely. As he watches old romantic movies he obviously wants to meet a potential mate. We learn that all the humans have evacuated the earth because of the garbage levels. They are supposed to have gone for 5 years while the planet is cleaned up - but shortly after they go the world is declared uninhabitable and the human race just stays in ships in outerspace. 

One day WALL•E's world is disturbed when a sleek new spaceship arrives. He investigates and finds himself face to face (after almost being destroyed) with a girl robot called EVE. EVE is there to investigate if the earth is inhabitable - and WALL•E falls in love and follows her back to her ship in space. Here we find that the human race has become very lazy in their luxury lives and are all enormously fat - a mix of low gravity and the fact that they don't need to do any work. 

The adventure really starts after WALL•E gets onboard and I won't give anymore detail lest I spoil the plot. 

The film is fun to watch - that great mix of exaggeration and realness. The storyline has an environmental message as well, a bit like Finding Nemo and a message for the kids like Kung Fu Panda. Neither story will be lost on school age kids I reckon. Anyway, this is well worth checking out when it gets a theatrical release in Australia.

Hmm. Three middle aged women contemplating their twilight years. Sounds appealing fodder for a road movie doesn't it? Well.. despite the obvious issues with plot it was actually surprisingly better than I ever would have expected. That said.. it could have gone so much further than the Hallmark moments that are put together for this film.

So what is good about this film? Well for starters the western USA landscape for the road trip is gorgeous and well shot in big expansive scenes. You should also be on a winner with casting like Jessica Lange, Kathy Bates and Joan Allen. But unfortunately the lack of anything new here just seems to be underscored by the calibre of the talent on show.

So what happens? Lange plays recently widowed Arvilla. There is a family squabble going on which means that Arvilla has to transport her husband's ashes from Idaho to Santa Barbara to be laid to rest alongside his first wife. She goes a bit crazy and decides to do this as a road trip in Joe's lovingly maintained 1966 Bonneville convertible. She can't go alone - so she takes along her two mates Margene (Bates) and Carol (Allen).

She knows that Joe wanted his ashes sprinkled in places they had visited together and she heads off sprinkling bits of him as they cross the country. It is transforming, not only for her but also for her companions. Conservative Carol gets to let her hair down and realise some independence while Margene cracks onto a trucker. There is also a nice scene with a young hitchhiker (Victor Rasuk) who tells them about how he is searching for his own father.

All in all this is full of sweet moments, but in the end it is fairly unsatisfying. I just wish it could have pulled a few harder punches.

I quite enjoyed the previous Hellboy movie - which was stylistically a gorgeous flick - even through I knew nothing about the comics at all. It is obvious that Guillermo Del Toro manages to put together the fairly obscure serious into something pretty impressive. Hellboy II does not disappoint in that it is also a great visual movie.

The film begins with a young Red (the son of Satan) hearing the story of the Prince Nuada and families Golden Army. Who would have guessed that adult Red (Ron Perlman) would soon be in a battle with the Prince (Luke Goss - yes of Bros fame) for the future of the earth. We still work for the Bureau of Paranormal Research and Defence, lives with his flammable girlfriend Liz Sherman (Selma Blair) and with the fishy character Abe Sapien (Doug Jones). In pursuing the Prince they come across some fairly interesting and odd ball characters in the troll market (at the east end of the Brooklyn Bridge) and then on to Ireland.

Del Toro has a fantastic eye of fantasy - up there with Peter Jackson - in fact it could be better sorted for this kind of sarcastic humour attached to this movie. I didn't know it until I started reading about this film - but Del Toro and Jackson are collaborating on the Hobbit films. 

The best thing about this movie though it that it is just good fun. Corny dialogue, wacky creatures, wisecracks and the surliness of Satan Jr makes it a total laugh. Well worth checking out.

I'm not quite sure how to take all of this. Liam Neeson just doesn't strike me as the ex-military type in the first place; let alone such a cluey vengeful one. It just seems too big of a stretch for me.

Anyway.. what happens in Taken? Neeson is Bryan who has sacrificed his marriage for the service of his country and now works personal security just to make ends meet and to buy presents for his 17 year old daughter Kim. He is a nervous creepy type that his ex-wife clearly hates having around. He has just learnt that Kim wants to take a holiday to France unsupervised. Her mother is all for it; but Bryan is deadset against it - offering to go along to provide protection. It seems bizarrely paranoid; but this of course is a set up for what is going to come.

Of course once Kim gets to Paris she is targeted by a people smuggling operation and snatched into prostitution. Bryan sets out to find her and sets up a number of chase scenes that any action director should be proud of. He starts off just being righteous, but predictably this turns into rage; just to add to the effect. Afterall, this is just about revenge - and if anything this film does revenge bloody well.

Neeson is very wooden in this film (but perhaps he is supposed to be); and we only get to see the seedy side of Paris. These are not bad things - but I wouldn't want anyone going out to see this expecting beautiful Parisian streetscapes. Perhaps wait for the DVD.

This movie is just odd. The storyline seemed enormously fanciful to me and I found it dragging on a little - but I absolutely loved its sense of style. The slow melodic music and the narration of Pierce Brosnan as Richard was just sublime. So why did I leave the cinema not entire satisfied by what I had just seen?

We start with Harry (Chris Cooper) meeting his friend Richard (Brosnan) for lunch. It is one of those long liquid lunched that were probably common in the 1940s and 1950s. Harry has come to tell his bachelor friend that he is no longer in love with his wife and plans to leave her for a new woman named Kay (Rachel McAdams). Richard had never thought Harry's marriage was a bad one - but he realises why Harry is smitten when the bottle blond with bright red lips arrives to join them for lunch. Richard soon desires Kay too - and we set out on what will be a little rollercoaster ride for this group of friends.

Richard sets in motion his plan to take Kay away from Harry, and also to undermine Harry's resolve to leave his wife Pat (Patricia Clarkson). Harry is working out how he can leave her - to the point where he considers murdering her to save her the pain of a divorce - a mercy killing with some bizarre logic. Oddly enough, Pat is also carrying on an affair with family friend John and wants out of the relationship just as much - but she doesn't want to hurt Harry.

The performances are mixed. Brosnan is excellent as the smarmy Richard; although Harry seemed a little too wooden for my liking - but there is every possibility that he was supposed to be portrayed in this light. The one thing that does stand out is the amount of passion that is portrayed in this story without anyone ever raising their voice. Check it out on DVD when it gets released.

Head down to Mexico and hang out at the beach resort the whole time? Of course not, you need to head out and check out some of the Mayan ruins don't you? Especially when you get invited by some cute German dude. So you head off with him into the jungles, by bus, taxi and then foot until you find yourself at the foot of this temple which isn't even on the map.

You are there along with your boyfriend, your best friend and her boyfriend and two European backpackers. You are not too sure about all of this - but things go badly very quickly when you arrive and local villagers shoot one of your number and the cute German plunges to near death into the temple. You are stuck at the top of the temple trying to work out how to get out of here - with no idea what is going on.

There are plenty of shocks in this film and while it does a great job of scaring without actually having to take you through blood and gore there is plenty of that too. A scene where a young American medical student has to hack off the disintegrating legs of one of their party to stop infection spreading is just far too graphic for my liking. The film also has to be a little bit offensive to the indigenous Mexican people who are portrayed as these cold blooded killers in the film.

That all said, the film was actually shot in Australia - and even though I didn't know that when I went to film - I kept seeing sandstone cliffs in the background which made me think that something wasn't quite right here. Now I know why.

This film is seriously only for those who are into the thriller/horror genre - it just wasn't my cup of tea.

Martin Lawrence is trying really hard to take his brand of comedy seriously to the mainstream. No swearing, perfect Disney material, but the result is actually rather bad and quite clumsy. Add to that, the more grown up but still odd Raven-Symone and you have a perfect recipe for something quite creepy.

James (Lawrence) is the police chief in a small town outside Chicago. He is a total control freak when it comes to his daughter Melanie (Raven-Symone) and has decided that she must go to College at Northwestern because it is just down the road and he can keep an eye on her. She has other ideas - she wants to go to Georgetown.

Most of the movie revolves around a road trip taken by James and Melanie to visit various campuses in the local area. He plots through various mechanisms to keep his little girl close to home which are mostly mortifying to her. But of course like any road movie the ultimate outcome is that dad and daughter come to understand and respect each other more.

The problem is that the journey is actually full of very silly and ridiculously unfunny scenarios. The only good part of it is the stupid cameo by Donny Osmond as a dorky dad making a similar journey with his equally dorky daughter. He is perfect in this role sending up his own image.

A definite don't bother.

This is golden Tina Fey. It is all about the humour and not really about truth. The people and characters in Baby Mama are such take offs of themselves that you would struggle to find anything real about them. The problem with the film is that it is attempting to tell a story that is about an essential emotional issue without any of the real emotion.

Fey plays Kate. Kate is a 37 year old business exec who wants to have a baby. She wants to have a baby now. The problem is she has an odd shaped uterus. Adoption seems to take too long, so she heads down the path of finding a surrogate - a Baby Mama. So she finds herself a working-class incubator (Amy Poehler) who ends up moving into Kate's apartment and starting to spend her days eating junk food and watching TV. There are lies and mistruths and in the end far too many stereotypes - but realistically this is the kind of fodder that Fey is used to dealing with in her gigs with the likes of 30 Rock. They are great for a while but then they die a horribly quick death.

Two very odd bits however. Steve Martin as Kate's boss with a ponytail and a very weird sense of self awareness. The wig is just ridiculous - but maybe that is part of the sight gag. Then there is Sigourney Weaver as the boss of the surrogacy agency. In her 50s and yet still fertile - and the butt of all the jokes. They just drag that gag on a little too long.

All in all Baby Mama has some very funny scenes if you are willing to suspend all believe and just enjoy it for what it is. But I fear many people will take the whole topic of infertility a little too seriously (and not surprisingly so) and be a little horrified by Baby Mama.

Check it out on DVD.

Hmm. Action. If you want lots of action then Wanted is the movie for you. It is based on comic books and revolves around an anxiety ridden and overworked character names Wesley (James McAvoy) who gets an opportunity to avenge all of his tormentors when he realises that he has hidden powers as a skilled assassin. All of this happens after he is picked up by Fox (Angelina Jolie) who tells him he is now a member of the Fraternity, a secret society of assassins who kill bad people.

He leaves his office job for series of training in which he works on his fighting skills. He learns to shoot around corners and learns from Sloan (Morgan Freeman). Wesley is told by Sloan that his father was a member of the Fraternity, who was killed by a rogue agent who Wesley is now destined to kill. The film is full of special effects and lots and lots of action. That raises a few issues. The plot and the action are entirely preposterous - but when has that ever stopped a film based on a comic strip from being successful? The other problem is that both the film and all of its characters have no heart and soul - they just remain as two dimensional as the strip on which they are based.

The only way to watch this film is to suspend all logic and immerse yourself in the action.

Hrm. I don't like Colin Firth. I never have (I don't think). This movie just provided to make me dislike him even more - it his usually overly bland way.

Here we have the story of Blake Morrison (Firth) who is heading home to Yorkshire to be with his father who is dying. This is based on the 1990s best seller by Morrison which is not a terribly happy tale. We realise that the answer to the question that Morrison poses is that he never really saw his father because he was always angry with him - there was never really a moment where they saw each other face to face.

In the film Morrison's father is Arthur (Jim Broadbent) a doctor who shares a practice with his wife Kim (Juliet Stevenson). Arthur is this amazing character (Broadbent does a great job). He is in your face, cheerful and a joker. He charms his way through life and this is part of the reason that Blake dislikes him so much. But we get to go back to Blake's childhood through flashback where Matthew Beard does a good job of bringing Blake's character to life. As Arthur gets happier - it would appear that Kim and Blake get sadder.

It doesn't help that just at the point when Blake wants to start getting off, he is constantly interrupted by his dad, who himself seems to get away with anything, including an extramarital affair. There is plenty to cry about in this film, its sad, its about the deathbed, it has a mournful soundtrack and a fairly dark (but beautiful) landscape.

Essentially this is supposed to be a film about reconciliation - but I never really found it to be so. Blake might have gotten the reconciliation and answers he needed; but for me the questions just seemed unanswered. Perhaps that is just real life.