Well, yeah, it happened and it’s called Dark Shadows – a big screen adaptation of a popular 1970s TV series (which never made it to the shores of the UK but can be roughly equated to The Munsters). Johnny Depp plays Barnabas who, in 1752, is a rich playboy with the world at his feet living in a decadent mansion in the American town of Collinsport. Unfortunately, his latest conquest (Green) happens to be a witch and, after messing with her heart, she turns him into a vampire and buries him underground in a coffin. Fast-forward to 1972 and Barnabas is inadvertantly released and returns to a now ailing mansion and family business filled with his disfunctional descendants.

As an idea and an entity as a whole, Dark Shadows is not that bad and it’s certainly an easy, fairly entertaining watch. It’s basically a pleasant time-filler that would be okay to rent but would make you feel hard done by if you actually left your house, got a bus to the cinema, paid an exhorbitant entrance fee and then sat next to a overly-loud idiot who laughs at everything. The main flaw is that it’s quite poorly written as much of the plot is just random sketches with very limited connection and the whole thing feels very disconnected and cobbled together  The humour is pretty hit and miss – when it hits it forces a chuckle and when it more frequently fails it requires a lot of effort to stifle a groan – not really a balanced payoff.

It does look good though with a nice feel – both the gothic, oldy-worldy scenes and the Seventies – and there are a few good performances with Depp being pretty stable as the lead and Eva Green nicely over-the-top as the scorned witch.

John McClane (Willis) is washed up and having woman troubles again but there’s no time to get over his hangover as he’s unwittingly dragged into a deadly game of cat-and-mouse. This time it’s an anonymous meanie (Irons) who is forcing McClane and Zues (Jackson), an agitated member of the black community who happened to get in the way, to undergo a series of mental trials around New York in order to stop a series of bombs from going off.

So how did John McTiernan manage to do the unthinkable and create a third part that some would argue comes close to the Christmas classic original? For a start, they didn’t try the usual and leave the storyline behind whilst upping the ante a thousand fold with the special effects – frankly how could you get bigger than crashing a plane in Die Harder. The casting also represented a few coups by getting Samuel L. Jackson onboard as McClane’s bickering partner fresh from his defining role in Pulp Fiction and having Jeremy Irons successfully do an Alan Rickman as a (Spoiler!) thespian Germanic villain.

Die Hard 3 is an original, enjoyable ride from the first explosion during the credits, throughout the corporate teambuilding weekend tasks, to the unfolding evil masterplan and its inevitable scuppering.  For the best part of the film the usual thriller formula is turned on its head as the cops aren’t trying to find the bad guys but instead McClane and co. are very obviously in their pockets which gives it a much-needed refreshing feel. There is also genuine character progression, a quirky soundtrack and plenty of impressive stunts plus it’s even interactional as you can shout out the answers of the IQ-type tasks at the screen all you like (although they ignore you most of the time).

The bad guy of the piece is the pale, slimy adopted demi-God Loki (Hiddleston) from Thor who decides to take one more bite of the cherry and invade earth with the help of an otherworldly army. Trying to stop him is a motley collection of God’s superheroes and humans – called The Avengers and headed by Nick Fury (Jackson), - including Captain America (Evans), Iron Man (Downey Jr.), The Hulk (Ruffalo), Thor (Hemsworth), Natasha Romanoff (Johansson) and Clint Barton/Hawkeye/who? (Renner).

Surprisingly, Jess Whedon has come up with a plot that is actually fairly well developed with the relationship between very different characters taking centre stage for much of the scene setting. Although the politics can be slightly confusing to a new-comer, the build up is measured and progresses clearly throughout out as it culminates in a predictably explosive finale. The climax is certainly not a let-down and goes to show that when some care is taken, an epic CGI battle scene doesn’t have to end up as a massive computer generated mess.

A nice touch is that the tone of the movie rarely gets too serious and there are always a varying quality of laughs to be had. Somehow, most of the funny moments come courtesy of The Hulk in angry mode whereas free-quipping Tony Stark tries his best but eight out of ten times comes across as rather irritating – yet more of an argument against an Iron Man threequel.

Whedon has done well to take a couple of average comic book movies and welded them together to make one that’s better than its constituent parts. A bit like the Newcastle United football team.

Max (Gibson) is still mad as hell and he spends his days in the post-Apocalyptic world endlessly wandering, keeping himself to himself and generally looking out for number one. He chances upon a community who’ve barricaded themselves into a compound surrounding a rich store of precious gasoline and after a lengthy bit of persuasion he agrees to help them against a ruthless (and once again, super camp) gang who are beseiging their home.

George Miller really steps things up in Mad Max 2 but without losing the stripped back feel of the original.  The story is well developed, there’s plenty of character progression and the story focusses more on the bigger picture of the post-apocalyptic world and the hunt for gasoline with many new protagonists added to the mix. However, like the original, this sequel is primarily about the action. With a very compact 95 minute runtime, not a minute of screentime is wasted and it’s full of memorable scenes and stunts which comes to a climax with a climactic, tense and perfectly choreographed break-out chase that remains one of cinema’s truly great action scenes.

Now, just pretend the series ended here and the awful Tina Turner tainted Mad Max: Beyond the Thnderdrome never happened.

The theme of Sleeping Beauty seems to be pointlessness. Julia Leigh’s movie is crammed full of pointless things – pointless dialogue, pointless monologues, pointless scenes, pointlessly dragged out scenes, pointless digressions, pointless nudity and a storyline that in the end has no point. The final scene should probably have come half way through to give the movie some hope of progression and purpose but instead we are subjected to not a lot happening in an excrutiatingly extended time. The structure is also very disjointed and the film feels poorly edited as many of the scenes are poorly connected and a sense of continuity is just not there.

On screen we have a very pretty lead actress who seems to have more personality in her boobs than her personality as she goes through most of the movie with a neutral expression (bar the child birth noises at the end) and one who solves most problems with a flash of her chest. But to be fair, she’s not given too much to work with except a nihilistic character who gives nothing away and she does easily outshine some of the peripheral characters, including a very creepy old guy who acts like he’s doing Shakespeare in the West End (Carroll).

This based-on-a-true-story movie is set in 1915 on Devil’s Island (Bostøy), home to a centre for unruly boys overseen by a strict Governer (Skarsgård). Most of the action centres around a new arrival, Erling (Helstad), who immediately begins to shake things up by being a pain to the wardens with his desire to escape. At the same time a weaker teenager Olav (Nilssen) arrives on the island and is subjected to a cycle of abuse from one of the wardens (Joner), a tragic tale that only serves to incite the other inmates into a one-island revolution.

Marius Holst’s terrific movie gives us a fascinating, multi-stranded story that’s intriguing throughout and will leave you hanging on to the end as no part ever lags or leaves you disappointed. This is not just an average story of escape but one that covers child abuse, life in a harsh regime, friendship, redemption, revolution and a bit of escaping too, all in an authentically depressing setting. King of Devil’s Island looks great, feels like an event and is beautifully acted, especially by Skarsgård and Helstad, Nilssen and Langlette, the three main young protagonists.

The clever and measured storytelling and sparse but well-used dialogue keep the interaction between the main characters believable and the atmosphere constantly tense. The moral lines are blurred and the subtle characterisation is really impressive as Holst stears away from cliches. Governer Bestyreren is not completely evil as you have the feeling that he has the boys interests at heart but his weakness of character stops him from acting when he’s obviously on the wrong side. We also never learn whether Erling did commit murder that he is accused of but on the island in this situation it doesn’t really seem to matter.

Dr. Robert Ledgard (Banderas) is a successful plastic surgeon perfecting a new synthetic type of skin that’s fireproof and potentially indestructible with the use of a human guinea pig (Anaya) who he is keeping locked in a room in his lavish house. From the beginning we are left wondering who this woman is - his wife who died in a flaming car crash or someone completely different who the doctor is changing to resemble the deceased woman?

The Skin I Live In is a stylish thriller oozing with an enjoyable absurdity as it has a plot that keeps you thinking and intrigued, if not blown away by any hard-hitting surprises. Almodavar uses a non-linear time structure to good effect as we are drip-fed each past deed and shown its consequences in the future. The layered and complex characterisation helps as we slowly learn more about Dr. Ledgard as the film progresses and Almodavar leaves the viewer hating none of the characters no matter what horrific things they do. Antonio Banderas excels as the charismatic doctor and brings a suaveness and likeability to him which leaves us respecting an utter lunatic. Furthermore, as usual, the excellent set design and expert direction always keeps everything on screen looking clear, crisp and classy.

The Skin I Live in will not be to everyone’s taste as Almodavar does go a little too far for some (like a rape scene that’s possibly a little too lighthearted for comfort) and the ridiculous nature of the plot may seem laughable if you’re not in the right mood.

The Great Escape is the kind-of-based-on-a-true-story retelling of a mass escape attempt by Allied Prisoners of War at a German Camp in 1944. The Germans have rather foolishly put all the troublesome escape artists – including Hilts ‘the Cooler King’ (McQueen), Bartlett ‘Big X’ (Attenborough) and Danny ‘Tunnel King’ (Bronson) - into an apparently escape proof camp. Something about eggs and a basket springs to mind here. Inevitably, the prisoners come together to formulate a plan to get out of the camps using tunnels and a lot of time and effort goes into the preparation and execution of the plan before the big day arrives.

The entertainment value of TGE is massive and it needs to be to carry the film for the huge nearly three hour runtime. The tension builds throughout the detailed preparations, then the frenetic escape takes place and is over like a flash, and finally multiple what-happened-next strands are nice and diverse and focus on a range of experiences of short-lived freedom. Furthermore, the brave finale is no sugar-coated cop out and Sturges has to be given credit for taking this risk.

Obviously, Steve McQueen’s loose-cannon has always stolen the limelight but The Great Escape is about the group of characters as a whole. Each one brings something to the piece – the stiff-upper-lipped British Officers, the escape artists, the work-horses – and, a concept that has been used in countless prison break films since, each person has their defining job or characteristic. This mix of characters share a great chemistry and lots of amusing and enlightening moments come out of it.

Wuthering Heights Part One, as it should be known, deals unsuprisingly with the first part of the novel and Andrea Arnold does so with admirable intensity, atmosphere and thoroughness (it still stretches over two hours). But in doing so she misses out argubly the best part of the book where it becomes less of a mere love-square and goes much further and darker and even includes ghosts. The acting also left a lot to be desired as it came across more of an amateur theatre production than a piece of work you can take seriously. Plus on a personal note, the Yorkshire accents put on made me cringe and grated on the ears. It sounded more like a incestual social club in a rough area of Leeds than a classic novel adapted for the big screen. I know the characters aren’t landed gentry but I think they went a little too far.

The bleak landscapes of Yorkshire are used excellently to capture the depressing realities of life on the farm and how Cathy is the only ray of light in Heathcliff’s miserable life. A jolt from the blue that, when distinguished, forces a massive change in the child.

With many failed flourishes and all the how-to-make-a-successful-thriller boxes ticked, Mabrouk El Mechri’s movie has basically managed to create a vastly inferior Bourne installment. It has too many implausilbe moments that take away its credibility,  ridiculous action scenes and a really amateur plot that gives us an incredibly poor twist at the end and a complete lack of tension. Poorly written and poorly directed.

As he often does, Brucie carries the film for the first section and you think the movie might just pull through but unfortunately he’s not Superman. Unlike Brit Henry Cavill who will be the Man of Steel in 2013 and his American accent stands up perfectly here to do his Yankee credentials no harm at all. Sigorney Weaver on the other hand is shockingly poor and turns a supposedly intelligent character into one that’s seemingly high on ketamine. But the acting is far from the worst thing about this movie.

It has such a forgettable feel that in-between writing the first word of this review and now I feel like The Cold Light of Day has already been wiped from the annals of history.