A story of poetry, obsession, mania and high wire performance art. It’s what happens when French philosopical dreaming collides with America’s hard nosed culture. It’ll move you to tears believe me.

This has the worst dialogue I’ve heard in a film for some time. It could easily stand as a case study of how NOT to make a film. Poor plotting, characterisation and pacing add up to a great big mess.

Watch out for the scene where Mark Wahlberg talks to a plastic plant:

Elliot Moore: [to house plant] Hello. My name is Elliot Moore. I’m just going to talk in a very positive manner, giving off good vibes. We’re just here to use the bathroom, and we’re just going to leave. I hope that’s okay.
[Elliot touches leaf]
Elliot Moore: Plastic. I’m talking to a plastic plant. I’m still doing it.

The plant actually out-acts him in this potboiler of a movie. Meanwhile Zooey Deschanel delivers her lines like she’s on heavy medication (what’s with the mad staring eyes?) and there are some unintentionally hilarious scenes where someone feeds himself to the lions and another person mows himself to death.

As supposed fear and panic breaks out in America because the plants are triggering human suicide genes, we get to hear clunking chunks of exposition like:

Nursery Owner: This woman’s talking to her daughter. She’s talking to her daughter in Princeton. Isn’t that where your friend went?
Elliot Moore: Come on!
[they run over to the woman]
Woman on Cell Phone: [speaking to her daughter at Princeton] It’s OK, honey, honey, it’s OK.
[to the fellow survivors]
Woman on Cell Phone: She’s so scared… You just stay in that room, you don’t open the door for nothing. Just keep watching out the window with the tree, baby, someone will come and get you soon.
Elliot Moore: Tell her, tell her not to go near the window with the tree, just tell her!
Woman on Cell Phone: Baby, don’t go near the window with the tree!
Elliot Moore: Ask her if Princeton’s been affected.
Woman on Cell Phone: Honey, someone wants to know if Princeton’s had any problems… she says everyone’s dead outside.
[they all gasp.]
Woman on Cell Phone: You just stay in your room… Honey, honey you’re talking funny, what’s wrong with you?
Elliot Moore: What do you mean? Everyone’s dead?!
Woman on Cell Phone: What? Stacy, you’re scaring me, I don’t, I don’t understand what you’re saying. What, baby? She’s just not making any sense.
Young Woman Voice on Phone: Calculus, I see… in calculus. Calculus. Calculus.
Woman on Cell Phone: Stacy… Stacy…
[loud noise, then silence on Stacy’s end of the line]
Woman on Cell Phone: Stacy Ann?
[woman starts weeping]
Woman on Cell Phone: Oh no no no no no Stacy, Stacy, oh no no no… Oh, Stacy!

This could well be a camp classic in the making. It’s supposed to be a paranoid thriller but it doesn’t thrill and the only thing to be paranoid about is that someone will catch you watching it.

Oh God, he’s doing it again: exquisite sadness, mutant soul music, goose bumpingly lovely noir jazz that settles in your heart and sends tingles up into your brain. This music is a distillation of all the bruises you’ve ever had in your whole life, and it’s wonderful.

Ghastly road movie featuring three obnoxious mall rats on the loose as they journey to pick up a chair one of them bought on ebay. They journey, have an argument about relationships, stay in a hotel, journey, have an argument about relationships, stay in a hotel, have an argument about relationships then arrive. Oh, and in the middle, one of them has a tantrum because the chair isn’t ready in time. I kept hoping the man in the hockey mask would turn up and slay them all but sadly it was not to be. Avoid.

So campy, so gay, but oh so very, very right! Two hours of tip top showtunes, emoting Rufus and a ragtag bunch of guests to up the melodrama factor by ten. Kick off your ruby slippers and let your eye make up slide for two hours of full on entertainment. I did it once and y’know if they asked me I’d do it all again too…

Along with ’’Robinson In Space’’ Patrick Keiller has made two unique films which explore the relationships between the urban environment and the human soul. Beautifully shot, London portrays the city exactly as it is to live in: dilapidated, shabby and reconstituting itself from a hybrid of ideological nastiness and poetic bohemianism. It’s a lovely, funny film which also makes a number of serious points about the hidden forces that underpin our own understandings of Englishness – marv!

This one’s a gem. Take a journey around post-industrial Britain in the company of Robinson (an unseen reclusive academic partial to sexual encounters on the internet, good coffee and Marks and Spencer lunches) and the unamed narrator as they explore the way in which globalisation and the shift to the information economy has altered the landscape. It’s very funny and very acutely observed – like Laurie Anderson meets Antonio Negri on the set of a 1950s information film about nuclear power.

Ever wondered where anarchism came from? Ever wondered what anarchism is? Is there more to anarchism than black-clad face covered window smashing? What’s the history of anarchism and what’s the link between ancient Chinese philosophy, rave culture, mutualism and the necessity of abolishing private property and the state? All these questions and so much more are answered in this highly readable and extrememly entertaining book. Tells you some of the stuff that your politics prof. may have forgotten to mention. Give it a read and then you too will be able to quote Emma Goldman with confidence and poise…

Gorgeous to look at but a little light on characterisation and plot. A little dull to be honest. Watch it with the sound turned down and enjoy the masterful use of light especially in the opening shot. Pales into insignificance compared to Wong Kar-Wai’s previous two films. Could do better.

Snotty punks, 70s hair, skateboarding, attitude, aerial poetry, revolutionary acts of swimming pool liberation – this is a blast!