Film Review: Movie 43 (2013)

Halle Berry (pictured) discovers that Catwoman is no longer the biggest mistake she's ever made.

There are many different kinds of bad film, with no single genre being immune from producing absolute crap, but far and away the worse kind of bad movie is a bad comedy. This is for the simple reason that if a drama or a horror film is bad, you can at least laugh at how badly it fails to function on even its most basic level. Mystery Science Theater 3000 spent a decade demonstrating that fact by turning bad horror, science fiction and drama into comedy. On the other hand, if a comedy doesn't make you laugh, then there's really no good way to respond to it. All you can do is sit there and pray that it ends soon.

Film Review: Carnage (2011)

To say that Carnage is a minor work in the oeuvre of its director, Roman Polanski, is a statement that I feel needs a little qualification. After all, when we're talking about the man who made Repulsion, Rosemary's Baby and Chinatown, it's arguable that pretty much every film he's made since could be considered minor by comparison. Yet even with that qualifier, Carnage remains a  fairly trifling enterprise, despite - or possibly as a result of - the tremendous pedigree of its director and cast.

Film Review: Contagion (2011)

It is perhaps only fitting, given its story of a deadly pandemic and the efforts of scientists and officials to contain it, that "clinical" is the only appropriate word for Contagion. It sets its stall out very early on when a business woman named Beth Emhoff (Gwyneth Paltrow) returns from a trip to Hong Kong, falls ill, then dies coughing and spluttering. The seizure that marks the beginning of the end of her life is treated in a cold, distant and silent fashion that is deeply unnerving, as is the scene in which her husband Mitch (Matt Damon) is informed of the tragedy. There's something painfully real about the efficient, calculated way in which the doctor informs him of the news, as well as Mitch's complete inability to comprehend what is happening to him.