The Eagle - 12A - Kevin MacDonald - 114mins

Braveheart meets Last of the Mohicans in this ripping yarn based on the 1950s children's novel The Eagle of the Ninth by Rosemary Sutcliff (which I well remember).
Marcus Flavius Aquilla (Channing Tatum) goes north in the company of his slave, Esca (Jamie Bell) in search of the Eagle standard that was lost in battle to indigenous tribes 20 years earlier in which the entire legion, led by Marcus's father was wiped out. The story is essentially about honour and the relationships between master and slave (there is an intriguing role reversal later in the film), and occupier and the occupied. The bleakness of the unknown north of Hadrian's Wall, with its mist, rain and glens, is perfectly captured in the Scottish locations. The mysterious Seal People however, all woad, mud and  punk hairstyles, seem to be cast as a cross between the  Huron from Last of the Mohicans or miserable refugees from the Glastonbury Festival - either way, not the sort of people to meet on a dark night.
Interestingly all the Romans are played with American accents and the enmity between Roman and Briton is not shirked - possibly a deliberate analogy of the situation in Iraq.
The film eschews CGI (hooray!) in favour of set piece action sequences and shaky cameras and is all the better for it. It has a gritty realism that lazy use of CGI can never hope to match and the clash of sword on shield, up-close and personal, brings meaning to the word testudo.
The film is without any female roles and therefore has no love interest but there is  none of the home-erotic nonsense that is in say, The 300. 
As with all historical yarns however the dialogue can be laboured and jerky but hey, get over it. All in all not a bad film and a good way to spend a couple of hours. Just don't take your girlfriend.

Paul - Greg Mottola - 15 - 103 mins

'Hilarious', 'funny', even 'mildly amusing': this film is none of these. If I hadn't already seen Gulliver's Travels this would be the worst film of the year. I  expected much more from Simon Pegg and Nick Frost from their latest take on cinema genres than this flabby piece of scriptwriting that is really only half-hour sitcom material.  Our eponymous hero Paul is a foul-mouthed, pot-smoking alien E.T. dude voiced by Seth Rogen (so no need to get into character there then) who, having escaped from Roswell captivity and being pursued by the MIB, enlists the help of sci-fi geeks Pegg and Frost in getting back to his home planet. O.K. so maybe I wasn't expecting originality and to that extent the film does ewhat it says on the tin but the film is largely about  in-joke sci-fi referencing (and given what goes on before,the 'shock' entry by Sigourney Weaver in the final scene is so obvious)  and far too little about actually making the audience laugh. The other problem with this film is that it's vehemently anti-Christian sub-text is relentlessly rammed home with all the subtlety of Jeremy Paxman attempting a frontal lobotomy with an exocet missile. All in all, hugely disappointing.

Battle: Los Angeles - Jonathan Liebesman - 12A - 116min

 All the major cities of the world have fallen, "we cannot lose Los Angeles" says the voice-over. Oh peeeeerlease!!!! If ever aliens do one day invade and colonise the planet I'd like to think that the last place humanity will choose to make our last stand will be the bastion of world cultural heritage that is Los Angeles. This is all too familiar territory for the shoot-em-up X-Box generation at which this film is squarely aimed and consequently the plot, such as it is, is limited to set piece episodes as our group of weary cliche ridden caricature U.S.Marines battle their way to the next game-level of safety. This is Transformers meets Call of Duty - black ops, only the CGI isn't as good. You're average 12-year-old boy will love it however.

Sanctum - 108 mins - Alister Griersont

Adverised as James Cameron's Sanctum (he is the Executive Producer) this is essentially a 'painting by numbers' story of the relationship between teenage angst ridden son anxious to find himself and the emotionally retarded father trying - but always failing - to put matters right.

Set in a caving peril backdrop it is lazily directed and the actors seem only to be going through the motions. Full of one-dimensional stock characters that we have seen before in dozens of this sort of film (the faithful native servant, the loud-mouth wealthy American financier, the honourable buddy, the woman determined to outdo the men in a man's world etc etc) its only redeeming feature lies in being proved right in working out the order in which each character meets their demise (its really quite easy). The dialogue is laughable, the acting is woeful, the story line is as predictable as the top four in the Premier League and lacking the tension of a Thomas the Tank Engine plot the film lumbers along its all too wearisome 108 minutes of tedium. I'd rather sit through a month of Matins than watch this.

The plot has our protagonists exploring the deepest cave in the world in the middle of a storm (the words forecast and weather spring to mind) until there's only one left (in the audience). Oh and by the way it's shot in 3D - what a waste.

Let The right One In (Lat Den Ratta Komma In) - 115 mins - 15 - Tomas Alfredson

Having missed this film when it came to the cinema I was delighted to pick it up on DVD recently. This 2008 Swedish film breathes new life and energy into a vampire genre emascualted and sanitised by the teen erotica Twilight frnachise.

Set in a wintry dystopian and bleak dormitory suburb of Stockholm (think Milton Keynes without the charisma) and against a backdrop of 1980s Sweden/Russia Cold War tension, Oskar is a lonely, shy and serious 12 year old boy whose life is made a daily hell by bullies. Alone outside one evening he meets Eli, a 12 year old girl who has moved in next door with her 'father' Hakan. "I'm 12 but I've been 12 for a long time" she tells him. Together they form an unbroken touching alliance.

The symbiotic relationship between the  unspoken terror experienced by Oskar in the bullying scenes and the equally  harrowing and the graphic violence of the blood letting vampire scenes is clear and throughout the film our natural human sympathy for the helpless Oskar is matched by that for the vulnerable Eli. The tension of the swimming pool climax is a Hitchcockian masterpiece.

This is a visually poetic and wonderfully crafted story of hope and love against adversity.

 I commend this film.

Gulliver's Travels - 85 mins - PG - Rob Letterman

This is not a bad film - it is a very bad film. Billed as a comedy it is an offence under the Trades Description Act. It was the first film I saw this year and I guarantee I will not see a worse one. OK I should have known better but it was a wet afternoon in January and with no grass to watch growing what else was I supposed to do? This film is simply an excuse for Jack Black to assail our senses once more with his wearisome pseudo social misfit, camera-gurning, eye-popping, double-taking, cool 'rock dude' act. When is he going to stop playing Dewey Finn - I mean, how old is he now; mid 40s?

Very loosely based on Swift's novel, the plot - such as it is - has our eponymous hero sent on a travel assignment to the Bermuda Triangle where his boat is caught in a maelstrom and he fetches up on a beach in Lilliput, a backward, class-ridden Ruritanic kingdom ruled by an oligarchy (so naturally most of the actors are British) to which JB introduces the values of Truth, Justice and the American Way thus becoming an enlightened and better place: (yes I am being sarcastic).  I could just about endure this film if were not for the final insult to my intelligence in which JB outlines to the Liiliput/Brobdingnag people the futility of fighting by his cartwheeling rendition of Edwin Starr's War. 

If your idea of a good film is an 85 minute subtext of U.S. cultural imperialism littered with  mindless MTV-culture references and product placement then I recomend it. If you do have a brain however, then like the plague and cliches this film is best avoided.