So let’s finish the year with a very quick film review… Transformers: Dark of the Moon.

Shiny.

You know, Dark of the Moon which was at the cinema in July and came out on DVD over a month ago. Yes, THAT Transformers film.

On the downside, it…

• hasn’t got Megan Fox in it.
• goes on for blimmin’ AGES and AGES.
• borders on tedious.
• doesn’t bring much new to the series.

Still, it’s not all bad, as on the upside, it…

• hasn’t got Megan Fox in it.
• kept most of Hollywood’s CGI artists in work for a very long time.
• is (mildly) better than Revenge of the Fallen.
• is Michael Bay’s last Transformers film.

Dark of the Moon is probably about what you’d expect it to be: Loud, long, and ludicrous.

Boom!! 5.5/10.

Happy 2012 folks.

"Have you tried turning..." Oh I know, too obvious.

Wow, another month has flown by and once again my poor little blog is all unloved. :-(

Still, I’m sure we can agree that everyone enjoyed watching girly rom-com Bridesmaids at the cinema a few months ago. Ok, perhaps not. It didn’t exactly receive glowing reviews amongst our small cinema-going collective.

Unhappy, 30-something Annie is finding life hasn’t turned out the way she wanted. Her dream bakery closed down, her boyfriend left her and she’s found herself in a new unhappy relationship. When Annie’s best friend Lillian announces that she’s getting married and wants Annie to be her maid of honour, Annie can’t help but wonder what’s going to happen to their friendship now her lifelong chum is getting married. Annie’s mood doesn’t get any better when Annie meets the other bridesmaids – in particular wealthy and popular Helen, who is just far too perfect for Annie’s liking, which only puts her nose out of joint even more.

What follows is two hours of Annie making a fool of herself and basically cocking things up, all the while becoming increasingly jealous of Helen. Throw in a bit of a love interest in the form of the fella from The IT Crowd and that’s your lot.

Now, I know I said the general consensus amongst our film posse was that Bridesmaids was terrible, but that’s not strictly true. If I remember correctly, the girls generally loved it, the guys generally hated it. Me? I was kinda, indifferent. Some of the scenes dragged on to the point of being tedious, but it still managed to be watchable. There were a few funny bits, but a lot of painfully unfunny bits too.

Someone did say it was supposed to be a female version of The Hangover. I think not.

6/10.

“Oh for the love of God, not more X-Men bollocks!”

It's a Marvel film, therefore the bad guy must wear a silly hat. It's like, the law.

I certainly was.

Imagine my surprise then, when I found X-Men: First Class to be rather enjoyable. I know, I can hardly believe I’m saying that either.

Yeah, the ending dragged on a little, but X-Men: First Class was overall surprisingly good. James McAvoy made a pretty good Jean Luc Picard stand-in too.

8/10.

Now, if I had watched this film a bit more recently than, err, June, I could’ve perhaps reviewed it better. Unfortunately, I haven’t so I can’t…

So here’s a picture of a random hamster instead.

Be honest, who hasn't tried lighting their own farts?

Would you believe there are currently 8 films on my “I really should get around to reviewing that before it’s shown on telly” list? Yep, an eight film backlog is pretty slack even by my inefficient reviewing standards, but meh, I’ve been busy. Again.

I think we can all agree then that I’m no blogging ninja. Kung Fu on the other hand…

Well, I’m no good at that either to be fair. But I know a panda who is. That’s right, I’m talking about Po in Kung Fu Panda 2 (completely seamless segue there, huh).

Po has almost mastered the art of Kung Fu, but he’s been given one more challenge by Master Shifu: to find inner peace. There’s not much time for that however, as Po is soon called into action with the other Kung Fu Masters to defend an attack by evil Lord Shen’s henchmen. The Furious Five and Po fend them off, but not before Po becomes distracted by a strange symbol on the armour of the attackers. Why does it suddenly make him doubt his origins? What’s Lord Shen up to?

As far as reviews go, I’m keeping this one pretty short and sweet (or should that be “sweet and sour”? Skadoosh!). Let’s just say that I enjoyed Kung Fu Panda 2 slightly more than the original. Again, it’s not hilarious, but it’s got a solid story, nice visuals and is very watchable. Plus you can have a pretty good game of putting names to all the famous voices if your mind does start to wander. Bonus.

7/10

Since The Hangover then went on to become a worldwide box office hit, I’ve often wondered whether it was that ladies insane hysteria that unintentionally ruined my enjoyment of the film or whether The Hangover was just a touch over-rated?

Perhaps watching The Hangover Part II would help me answer that.

This isn't going to end well...

Alan, Doug, Stu and Phil are all back, this time all leaving for Thailand to attend Stu’s wedding. A somewhat awkward pre-wedding bash is followed by a few quiet drinks on the beach with the Wolfpack and Stu’s new brother-in-law Teddy. At all costs, there was to be definitely, absolutely no repeat of ‘last time’…

That is until morning anyway, when Alan, Phil and Stu wake up with a hangover in a seedy hotel in the middle of Bangkok. Somehow they’ve acquired gangster Chow (from the original film) and appear to have lost most of Teddy (they do still have his finger). The race is on: Locate the rest of Teddy and get back in time for Stu’s wedding.

Is it better or worse than the original? I’d say about the same. As you’d expect the type of humour has had to be cranked up a notch and everything is just that little bit more extreme. Chow is probably the funniest character and I did genuinely laugh at him a few times, but at the end we’re just left with a slightly darker, slightly cruder, very similar tale.

Does that help answer my question about the original Hangover? Yup. It was a bit of both.

7/10.