Prometheus is a prequel to Ridley Scott's Alien (1979), opening with a creature disintegrating itself into the Earth. Forwarding to the year 2089 and archaeologists Elizabeth Shaw (Noomi Rapace) and Charlie (Logan Marshall-Green) discover that a map has been left by the alien as a signal to another planet. A few years later and both archaeologists are onboard the spaceship Prometheus. The ship is sponsored by the rarely seen Weyland (Guy Pearce) but is captained by Janek (Idris Elba) and manned by the tough talking Meredith (Charlize Theron). There is also an android on the ship named David (Michael Fassbender), who is occasionally taunted for not being human. Interest arises when the group lands on a moon and discovers that there is a direct correlation between human and alien DNA. Problematically however, some of the crew become separated from Shaw and the rest of the group, forcing the others to retreat from the safety of the ship to find them.

Prometheus is bigger, louder and flashier than Alien ever was, but not as effective. Where director Ridley Scott once relied on pure minimalism, including the use of silence, deep shadows and selective glimpses of the alien creatures, he deters instantly from the 'less is more' approach from the very opening of this disappointing prequel. The immediate vision of an alien badly in need of a suntan, with a UFO hovering above him, is the result of the impatience of both contemporary films and modern audiences. After all, Prometheus was delayed to make way for the likes of Alien vs. Predator (2004). Interestingly, that Razzie Award-nominated feature became the highest grossing film between both franchises worldwide. What has followed is a lack of restraint in Scott's film, particularly in the visual design, which compromises his unique styIistic imprint. The clear, white, sterile tones of the ship's interiors, along with the tight fitting grey uniform of Meredith, hint at a fascist regime. But the emphasis on digital technology upsets the mood and the isolation. The ship is comprised of see-through computer screens and sophisticated touchpads, while in the caves the crew can use flashing red scanners to search through darkened areas. If this is a prequel to the retro, low-tech Alien, how is it that they have access to such advanced gadgetry? The illogical choices in design also flow through to the narrative, which is unresolved and emotionally hollow. Potentially fascinating ideas surrounding destruction as a form of creation and facing our creators are squandered by deliberate obtuseness. Rather cynically, the film's main questions, specifically the relationship between humans and aliens, seem purposely unanswered if only so audiences will have to tune in for the next episode.

Furthermore, the characters in this film are noisier and more talkative than in Alien but still have little to say. The film is painfully short on characterisation and the cast is underused. Rapace is perhaps the strongest because she's intense and visceral but she is not much of a conversationalist. Idris Elba, Guy Pearce and a barely seen Patrick Wilson, are all fine actors but they aren't well served by the script because they're largely excluded from the action and substantial details about their characters are scarce. The plot struggles around the midpoint because the motives and the goals of many of these characters feel sketchy. Similarly, there are few actresses better at playing ice-cold than Charlize Theron but she's unusually heavy-handed and the part feels underwritten because it limits her range of emotions. The most elusive member is Fassbender's David, who seems to recognise when he is being taunted, which adds some much-needed tension, but his bizarre actions make it difficult to tell whose side he is on. These characters are also drawn into dumb plot points, courtesy of even dumber actions by the expendable side characters. There are moments where you'd like to scream 'don't split up' and 'don't touch that alien' but these events unfold with predictable outcomes, thanks to an intrusive music score that cues us in on when to be frightened. The thrills are meant to be amplified but everything is performed with little self-awareness for the genre. There's a laughable scene where a character undergoes the world's fastest caesarean and after the alien came out all I wanted to hear was Agent K say: "It's a...squid." The aliens, including but not limited to an enormous tentacle beast, might be more visible and more violent but that doesn't mean the film is more exciting or enjoyable because of it. After the screening, I wondered why Scott had taken so long to make the film. On top of a proposed Monopoly movie, based on the board game, and the recently announced sequel to Blade Runner (1982), I questioned whether Scott was officially short on new ideas. Watching Prometheus, the answer seems simple. In terms of design and direction, it is a product of our times and not in a complimentary way.

NOTE: I watched the film in 3D but aside from Hugo (2011) I am now convinced that there are few films being released that can justify the additional costs, including this one. If you must see it, watch it in 2D. Or better still, rent Alien again.

Margot (Michelle Williams) is a freelance writer who meets Daniel (Luke Kirby). There is a quiet attraction between the two of them as they travel home together. Yet Margot reveals that she is actually married to Lou (Seth Rogen), an author of cookbooks. Daniel also surprises Margot when he announces that he is actually her neighbour, living right across the street from her and working as an artist and a rickshaw driver. When she is not spending time with Lou's sister Geraldine (Sarah Silverman), Margot finds herself caught between both Daniel and Lou but in a very subtle way. Her relationship with Lou veers between affection and boredom and when she meets up with Daniel their experiences are entirely passive. Neither she nor Daniel can act on their feelings, even though the admiration between the two of them remains.

Sarah Polley is the Canadian writer-director of Away from Her (2006) and her new film is strange, moving and very funny. I love its uniqueness, in particular its view of love as an intoxicating and dislocating experience. Through Polley's eyes as a director and through her talented cast, love has the ability to disorientate one's personal identity and even their sense of geography. It can inspire uniqueness, joy, addiction but also the fear of isolation too. The screenplay and the design of the film find clever and interesting ways of expressing this. A lot of the dialogue, ranging from staccato speech patterns to long monologues, is cryptic and bordering on self-conscious. Yet critically, it always has a purpose towards addressing a theme. "I'm scared of connections...In airports," Margot says. She's reflecting on being trapped in an empty void in her life, loneliness, in the absence of a relationship. Mirroring Margot needs to fulfil her life is Geraldine, who is a recovering alcoholic. The addictive habits of both women, drunkenness and love, are viewed collectively because they free them from themselves. Consider a moment where Margot is on a spinning fun ride with Daniel. In one of the most joyous scenes I can remember, flashing lights, booming music, courtesy of the song "Video killed the Radio Star," and dizzying camerawork takeover Margot's life. Yet this moment of bliss is disrupted as the lights come back on to reveal a sad, grey place and a maintenance guy opening the doors of the ride. Is there a more hysterically funny or ironic vision of someone plummeting back to reality than that? It's a wonderful scene because it's a metaphor for Margot's view of disorientated love. For a brief period, she's freely transported, without having to think about whom is she or where she is going. It perfectly asserts the film's relationship between intoxication and infatuation.

One of the other unique ways that Margot's idealism for new love is expressed is through the film's sumptuous visual design. The look of this film is gorgeous. It's somewhere between an expensive postcard and a fairytale. Smartly, its picturesque qualities are never incidental. Polley's selection of primary colours deliberately illuminates Margot's moods and experiences. Look at the textures of her yellow clothes, the red paint on the rickshaw or the blue water in the pool. These are all deliberately lit with bright tones and high saturation as a means of showing how happiness is bred from what appears to be organic, new or free. As Margot's life becomes gloomier, like after a verbal argument with Lou, Polley selective resorts to darker shadowing to illuminate Margot's unhappiness in her life. Consider how dully lit a restaurant scene is when Lou and Margot sit opposite one another with nothing to talk about. One of the other successes of the film is that Polley's script avoids the pitfalls normally associated with Hollywood love triangles. The characters here aren't judged with simplicity. Lou, a restrained and sometimes very funny performance by Seth Rogen, is not demonised. He's just a bloke who knows what he is good at and doesn't feel the need to change his life or make any extra effort. He's comfortable with cooking and writing about just chicken and that's how he views the rest of his life too. In the restaurant scene, for example, he can't see the point of talking for the sake of talking. In a lesser film you could imagine a cliché scene of him ready to stand over Daniel. Yet the gentility of Polley's direction, deftly focusing on aching facial expressions, instead of huge verbal stoushes, makes the unspoken tension of the love triangle more intense. The unpredictability of the film's trajectory too, and there are some surprises, means that its resolutions are real and occasionally moving.

As a character Daniel is slightly more elusive than Lou but no less charismatic. He's more in love with Margot as fantasy because he talks in possibilities rather than asserting himself through his actions. His monologue where he expresses everything he would do with Margot is written in such a sweet way that we can't grow to dislike him because his desires seem so earnest and true. In between both blokes is Margot, beautifully played by Williams. Both the character and the performance are equally fascinating. Williams is so convincing in creating a visible degree of conflict in her all characters and here Margot is distracted and fidgety in such a way that we understand how desperately she is trying to avoid her true feelings. There are very strange details to Margot too, like the little verbal games she plays with Lou and the childlike noises they make together. Their banter, and a hilarious pool scene, constructs an image of a woman who finds growing up to be so frightening that she must rely on fleeting relationships as a way of providing uniqueness and direction in her life. It's such a strange little movie but beautifully acted and undeniably fascinating. Position yourself as Margot: strap yourself in for the ride and don't wait for the lights to come up.

A man known only as Driver (Mel Gibson) is fleeing in a getaway car from the US Border Patrol. In the back of his car is a haul of several million dollars and his accomplice who is bleeding to death. When Driver crashes in Mexico he is arrested and thrown into the prison 'El Pueblito'. The place has the look of a filthy, rough prison but it is also populated with children, shops and drug dens. The place is overrun by organized crime, meaning that the wealthy and the cunning stand at the top of its hierarchy and the guards are bought. Driver has a military background as a sniper and uses his vision to assess the area. He befriends a ten year old boy (Kevin Hernandez) who is being targeted by a crime boss because he is the right match for a liver transplant. Driver looks to protect the boy and his mother (Dolores Heredia) but there are people who are still keen to take back the money that he stole.

Get the Gringo is from first time director Adrian Grunberg, who was an assistant on Mel Gibson's Apocalypto (2006). Gibson helped him co-write the screenplay and was also a producer himself, which suggests that he must have thought this film was a good idea. The only redeeming feature of this appallingly savage and unpleasant film is its setting. The way that it is visualised here, as a free roaming compound overruled by gangsters, I could hardly believe that such a place would exist. Driver's voice over, narrating the film, asks us: "Was this a prison or the world's sh!ttiest mall?" Yet according to reports, 'El Pueblito' was actually real. Prisoners could shop freely and the drug trade was so viable that it became pertinent in upholding the facilities economy. The prison was shut down back in 2002, after it was raided by two thousand law enforcement officers. I think it would make for a fascinating documentary to explore how such an institution could be so morally and politically bankrupt. The setting is undeniably intriguing but it's wasted on a subpar crime story that is increasingly implausible, stupid, cliché ("He killed my father!") and derivative of better films, including Gibson's own Payback (1999). The direction of the film is as careless as the spatiality that is depicting. The look of the film feels right. It's grubby, sweaty and ugly: the textures belong to a hardcore prison block. Yet the potential for a realistic and detailed prison drama is undone by immature writing and meaningless styIistic decisions. Gibson and Grunberg are interested in selling an attitude but with little reasoning. They try their hardest to shock. Take an early freeze-frame on Driver's friend as he coughs up blood in the backseat of the car. The image is paused momentarily so that we can see the blood spurting out of his mouth. What's the point?

Similarly, Gibson now in his mid-fifties, is intent on pushing himself as an action hero with a chip on his shoulder. It's like he's joined forces with Liam Neeson, determined to prove that geriatrics have still got it. He willingly throws himself into embarrassing slow-motion gunfights and commando rolls but gives us no reason to care whatsoever. Most of the personality in his dry, one-note performance is derived solely from his voice-over, which offers a handful of quips to lighten the mood. The one question I have about Driver is concerned with his athleticism. When he was in the army, how regularly did they practice the move of diving in midair to catch a grenade to throw it back? Did he learn this from fielding in cricket matches? The film would like to be Robert Rodriguez's Desperado (1995) but it's missing the fun. Some of the gunfights are cartoon-like, which is at odds with the violence that is offensively harsh. The boy and his mother are abused in the most heinous ways, forcing us to endure moments of torture that only the disturbed or easily amused could enjoy. I found it utterly repulsive. Violence can be brutal, as it is in any Tarantino film, but it must always have a purpose. Relying on shock value, like Gibson and his director do here, is the cheapest and laziest way of drawing a reaction from people. Interestingly, it must have been decided that the film would not bode well with American audiences as it is not seeing a theatrical release there. Wisely, it's going straight to video-on-demand services. I've already called the film a rehash of Payback but it seems as though Gibson's career is retracting in so many other ways.

Dave (Joel Edgerton) and his wife Alice (Felicity Price) are on holidays in Cambodia with her sister Steph (Teresa Palmer) and her new boyfriend Jeremy (Antony Starr). They party together and even take a number of ecstasy tablets. We see a shot of Dave walking around, looking distressed and we suspect he's done something terrible. Returning back to their home in Sydney and it is revealed that Jeremy went missing overseas and that the others returned home before they could find him. While trying to balance their everyday lives with their kids, Dave and Alice are increasingly stressed by their attempts to help the police with the investigation and also Steph's neediness. There is deep conflict between Dave and his wife when he admits that he slept with Steph while they were on holidays. In flashback, we gradually learn about the traumatic fate of the night that Jeremy went missing.

Wish You Were Here starts as a minor thriller but descends into a compelling nightmare, powerfully concerned by social decay and the pressures of modern life. The film was written and directed by Kieran Darcy-Smith, in collaboration with Felicity Price, and confirms that Australian films are untouchable in their representation of a fractured domestic environment. The division between the domestic and the foreign is represented through the contrast of two different worlds. The scenes in Cambodia take place on beaches and in the streets at night. They're spatially open and set to loud thumping beats on the soundtrack. The night skies are faintly lit up by red lights from lanterns and fires. These scenes are organic because the environment isn't structured by rules or boundaries. Law and order is regularly defied. Relationships are broken down, elicit substances are taken and there are nastier surprises to be discovered at the back end of the film. By contrast, the present day scenes are tightly framed to reflect their highly ordered nature. They're restricted by physical boundaries made of glass and brickwork, and many of the environments like the houses, hospitals and government buildings are cold and sterile. There is a certain order to how the domestic life must be run, with the characters bound by times as they have to pick up their kids, go to work and be faithful in their relationships. There's a great high angle shot late in the film of Alice sitting in her car in the middle of a car park. The height of the shot makes the car seem like a singular capsule, caught in the middle of an urban concrete prison. It skilfully reflects how restrictive contemporary city life can be.

Prior to returning to Sydney, there is a fascinating scene where Dave wakes up almost caught between the two worlds. He appears to be in the wilderness because the area has the look of a post-apocalyptic environment, with itsgreyskies, muted colours, and wild dogs running on the loose. By choosing to step back into the domestic zone, the boundaries between both worlds are removed, leaving the emotional consequences for Dave's actions in Cambodia. From this point we discover that there is genuine skill in how the screenplay opts to tell the story. The film is concentrated and the pacing is leisurely. It feels much longer than its meager ninety minute running time. This is because the secrets of the narrative are exposed gradually through the present day scenes and flashbacks to the past. The payoff is thankfully a tremendously moving one. Adding further excitement and discussion to the story are the more ambiguous touches that are never explained, only hinted at, like the nature of Jeremy's business. The film is also strengthened by three powerful performances. Joel Edgerton is perhaps the best he's ever been, visiblytraumatisedwith guilt and touches of paranoia too as he desperately tries to hold his family together. Despite its modesty, the power of this thriller comes from the naturalistic performances and the gradual layers of the story that are revealed. As with a lot of local films it takes us fearlessly into dark and challenging places, which is why it is so haunting and memorable.

Based on the board game of the same name, Battleship opens with a washed up loser Alex Hopper (Taylor Kitsch) and his brother Stone (Alexander Skarsgard) sitting in a bar together. Alex spots a girl that he likes in Samantha (Brooklyn Decker) and is determined to impress her. He breaks into a store to steal a snack for her but is taken down by the police. Stone is already in the Navy and after this incident he insists that his brother is going to clean up his act and join him. Meanwhile, NASA is sending out satellite signals to detect whether there is life to be found in outer space. Sometime after Alex's mistake, he is not only in the Navy with his brother but he is also dating Samantha. She is pressuring him to talk to her father Admiral Shane (Liam Neeson) and ask for his permission to marry her. This is interrupted when alien crafts appear out of nowhere and start attacking the Earth. It's left to the Navy to try and stop these alien ships and for Alex to live up to his potential.

Battleship is here to recruit you. It's disturbing to think that a major toy company like Hasbro, whose studio produced this film, has invested into what is essentially a propaganda movie. Hasbro's involvement comes as Hollywood looks to increasingly commoditise its industry by adapting toys into films, rather than seeking to develop new ideas. I've done my very best to avoid all of the Transformers movies so far (also backed by Hasbro) but seeing the moronic Battleship, which shares very little in common with its board game counterpart, reveals a willingness to aim pro-military messages shamelessly at 'Little Johnny'. Not unlike Battle: LA from last year, the level of patriotism and flag waving is laughable. The film would like you to believe that if the disabled, the elderly and dim-witted can save the world so can you. It's a mixture of embarrassing clichés and fantasy. Why is it that in movies as dopey as this a character with titanium legs must fight or run again? Isn't it enough that the veterans of combat have served their time and put their bodies on the line? Even more cringing is that after a defeat Alex and his men resort to using an old battleship and out of nowhere a group of old seamen appear to help them man the vessel. Where did they come from? It reminded me of a Monty Python short film called 'The Crimson Permanent Assurance', where a group of old men take over an insurance company designed like a pirate ship. This wasn't meant to be funny but I still laughed. Equally condescending is that despite Alex breaking and entering, damaging property and evading arrest, he is still able to date a model and be promoted in the Navy. I find that even more ludicrous than our extraterrestrial invaders.

Everything in this movie is designed to appeal to young boys and its messages are to me cynical and irresponsible. I respect that there are a lot of hardworking people in the Navy and its emotional toll in being separated from their families would be devastating. Yet current and former servicemen would have a hard time keeping a straight face watching this because there is no reality. There's none of the isolation, bullying or intensity that occurs at sea. Instead, the film sights are set low. Ultra low. Alex's story is really just two bookends at the beginning and end of the film. The rest of the film is deliberately comprised of monotonous action and even at that level it's a colossal failure. Some will argue for the quality of the special effects. What does it matter though when all of the sequences are so indistinguishable from one another? Set pieces are fine so long as they progress the story rather than become a substitute for it. The action is bloodless, repetitive and purposeless, leaving huge gaps in the story. The jump between Alex's crime and naval career is so large I wondered whether I was watching the same character.

The rest of the characters are dispensable and under-written too. Brooklyn Decker and pop singer Rihanna seem to have been cast by a marketing committee rather than for their acting abilities. While Liam Neeson is under strict guidelines that say he must play nothing else but that angry admiral who barks orders at people and doesn't think anyone is good enough for his daughter. If Decker is twenty-six in real life and her character is an established physiotherapist isn't she a little old to be asking daddy's permission to get married? The cast can do little with slabs of boring exposition and unimaginative lines ("Hit 'em with all we've got!") that are a substitute for adult conversations and dialogue. Also, if the aliens are intent on blowing up the ships with men on them, why do they bother using their special vision to scan humans and spare some of them? The aliens are mostly unseen but when they are visible they're laughably bad. Their design is straight from the video game Halo, which reiterates the focus of this movie: young boys who I sincerely hope know better. Dismissed!

In this stop-motion animated feature the Pirate Captain (voiced by Hugh Grant) is preparing to enter himself into the Pirate of the Year competition. Having failed over a number of years to take the prize, he is laughed off by his competitors including Cutlass Liz (Salma Hayek). Supported by his crew including Number Two (Martin Freeman), the Pirate Captain sets off to plunder as much treasure as possible and become a serious contender for the top prize. When he and his men aboard a ship they stumble upon scientist Charles Darwin (David Tennant). He only has animals and body parts so to save himself he tells them that the parrot Polly they are carrying is the last living dodo and convinces them to attend a science show where they will collect a prize. Number Two remains suspicious of Darwin and his trained monkey who is trying to sneak off with Polly. The group is also pursued by Queen Victoria (Imelda Staunton) who is intent on hunting down all pirates.

The Pirates! Band of Misfits is regularly funny and colourfully written, but not everything I had hoped for. The film carries great expectations given the success of Peter Lord's previous film Chicken Run (2000) and his work as a producer on the animated shorts Wallace and Gromit. Due to the film's frequently witty screenplay, Lord and co-director Jeff Newitt make the intelligent decision of focussing on humour instead of action. The film is modest, never reaching the spectacle of How to Train Your Dragon (2010) or the emotional peaks of Up (2009), but there is fun to be had both visually and aurally through the script's wordplay and sight gags too. I am always astounded by the minute details that animators impose on a single frame or image. In one of the film's silliest moments the Pirate Captain's crew ride a bathtub down a flight of stairs and if you look closely you can see one of the men rowing with a paddle. This brand of ridiculous humour is complimented by an enthusiastic and well-chosen set of voice actors. The leads are outstanding. Who better to play a know-it-all, self-absorbed dummy than Hugh Grant? He's well serviced by funny, blink and you'll miss it dialogue like: "We didn't evolve from slugs to stand around!" By his side is the sensible, reassuring voice of Martin Freeman, who rather cleverly brings the same sense of maturity and reasoning as his interpretation of Watson from the TV series Sherlock.

Some of the other actors voicing the side characters are underused, including Salma Hayek, and just seem to be included for a name on the poster. In terms of narrative The Pirates! has a few turns and gimmicks that separate it from the usual coming of age animated stable. How many animated features would be willing to include the likes of Charles Darwin? Or references to Jane Austen? There's a nice mixture of silliness and more sophisticated jokes for adults here. It's disappointing that the story lets itself down in the final quarter because the gears of the narrative grind to the sound of predictability. No matter how clever the jokes are there's an air of familiarity about the story arc and the situations towards the end. Also worth noting is that the film is in 3D but the stop-motion animation is finely detailed on its own, meaning that the extra dimension seems unnecessary and mostly superfluous. Overall, the film is a pleasant and harmless distraction but it reiterates that there is still a sizeable gap in the mainstream animated circuit between what is light, funny and charming and the more involving, multidimensional works from the likes of Pixar.

An ageing, softly spoken gothic rock star named Cheyenne (Sean Penn) is bored with his life in Dublin. He opts to wear full makeup everyday and lives in a huge mansion with his wife Jane (Frances McDormand), who is a fire-fighter. He is also friends with Mary (Eve Hewson), an unhappy Goth girl who has been separated from her mother. Cheyenne tries and fails to set her up with someone in the mall who is interested in her. He also regularly visits the grave of a boy because he feels responsible for his death, even though the parents tell him not to visit. One of the other major threads in Cheyenne's life is that he has not spoken to his father in thirty years, who was a holocaust survivor in Auschwitz. When he learns of his death, Cheyenne decides to travel across America and with the help of a man named Mordecai (Judd Hirsch) he works to find the Nazi war criminal Aloise (Heinz Lieven) who humiliated his father.

This is a confused rare misfire for the ever reliable Sean Penn, due to a hopelessly muddled screenplay. It is the first English language feature of Italian director Paolo Sorrentino, who also co-wrote the script with Umberto Contrarello. The film starts promisingly because Sorrentino's first major theme, isolation, is a successful one. He resorts to giving Cheyenne's house a cool, sterile look through a white colour palette scheme. This is deliberately at odds with Cheyenne's gothic appearance. He's been compared quite accurately to the lead singer of The Cure, Robert Smith. He is always dressed in black, with dark eyeliner and red lipstick that characterises him deliberately as feminine and therefore misplaced against any lighter tones. People stare at him in malls and supermarkets, either to take pictures or just to laugh at his appearance. Further visualising his stasis and isolation is Sorrentino's camera, where the tracking shots are purposely slow in their movements to show how this bloke is drifting rather aimlessly through life. Unfortunately, the same can be said about the film itself. The script is so overloaded with strange details, side characters and threads that its almost an impenetrable movie. There's little clarity about who exactly these people are, how they relate to each other and why they're in this film other than to project an idea, rather than a personality. I found the relationship between Mary and Cheyenne, who he insists is not his daughter, to be quite bizarre since they regularly hang out together.

Even more unlikely is the brief time he spends with a waitress who recognises him and then lets him stay with her and her son briefly. It's equally frustrating that many characters, including the wasted talents of Frances McDormand, fade out of the story for so long that there is no continuity in the plot, leaving the film without a focus. The misguidance of the narrative is apparent is just how long it takes to reach the film's main revenge thread. It's close to an hour into the film and ends on a whimper. Adding further confusion is the film's reliance on self-conscious dialogue that is infuriatingly cryptic. When he's told that his burger is overcooked, Cheyenne replies: "We go from an age when we say 'My life will be that', to an age when we say 'That's life'". I'm all for Wes Anderson-like quirkiness but lines like this really test your threshold for pseudo-intellectualism. At most one can praise the bravery of Penn's performance, one of the strangest of a distinguished career, even if his character's motives are unclear and implausible. 'Remote' is not a word you normally associate with Penn but he succeeds in making Cheyenne cold and distant and sometimes funny, through his small whispery voice, followed by an occasional outburst that is true to his passive-aggressive nature. In spite of the lead performance though, it's a very unsatisfying and unmoving film that shares all too much in common with its central character.

To commemorate the one hundred year anniversary of the sinking of the RMS Titanic in 1912, director James Cameron is rereleasing his blockbuster film in 3D. The film begins in modern times when a group of treasure hunters, including Brock Lovett (Bill Paxton), are using technology to try and extract objects from the wreckage of the Titanic. Luck stumbles upon them when they are contacted by an elderly woman named Rose (Gloria Stuart) who says she is the woman in one of the drawings they found. When they ask her about the whereabouts of a diamond called the 'Heart of the Ocean', she recalls her time on the ship to them. Boarding the Titanic as a young woman, Rose (Kate Winslet) feels smothered by her family, including her dogmatic fiancé Cal (Billy Zane) and her mother Ruth (Frances Fisher). Staying on the lower decks is Jack (Leonardo DiCaprio), an artist who won his ticket in a poker game. One night Jack saves Rose from throwing herself off the back of the ship and they start to fall in love with each other. Their affair is disrupted by Cal and his bodyguard and the collapse of the ship after it strikes the iceberg.

How did he do it? When James Cameron's film was first released in 1997 it was regarded as one of the most lavish and expensive films of all time. Yet despite winning a record number of awards its reputation as a great American film has been tarnished. Titanic's most iconic moments have been imitated and mindlessly parodied so frequently that it is easy to forget that the film is not only a great love story but also one deeply critical of capitalism, self-interest and ambition. Watching the film today and it has not aged in the slightest. There are sequences so extraordinary that they continue to defy our comprehension for what is possible in modern cinema. Yet this is in no part thanks to the superfluous 3D conversion. Unlike Cameron's Avatar (2009), this film was not shot for 3D, which means that there are very few scenes that standout as being significantly enhanced. The limited use of 3D means that it is easy to be cynical about Cameron rereleasing the film as a cash grab, rather than a tribute to the century marking the ship's collapse. However, Titanic warrants another viewing, not only because it is spectacular on the big screen but also because the film's powerful moral core has been sustained, elevating it above the conventions of its love story and into timeless critique of human indecency.

The film documents how there were so few lifeboats available on the Titanic that only half the ship's passengers could be saved because there was little thought of aiding the lower-cIass decks. Watching the film again after the GFC, where the wealthy showed equally little compassion and it is apparent that nothing between 1912 and 2012 has changed. The way the film damns the wealthy upper-cIass, harking back to the Capra-era of filmmaking, means that Cameron could quite rightly be accused of being hypocritical. He is a director deeply embedded in the Hollywood system and has made two of the highest grossing films of all time, one of which is Titanic itself. Yet when people rewatch this film they will be reminded of just how much anger and guilt Cameron shares between himself and the screen.

Consider for example the way that Cameron has chosen to frame the narrative to project his own self-refection. Brock and his team are treasure hunters, who initially seem only interested in the valuables and the technology, exploiting the ruins of the vessel. When he demonstrates the dismantling of the ship on the computer one of the men says to Rose: "Pretty cool huh?" Yet by the end of the film Brock and his crew are unexpectedly moved by Rose's story because they have a greater sense firsthand of what a terrible experience this was for her. Assumedly, this is a mirror of Cameron's own experiences in researching and creating this film, appreciating it as far more than just a commodity. Overcoming blind idealism is therefore one of the film's central themes and is visualised spectacularly through Cameron's sophisticated formalism. Before stepping onto the ship, the low angle shots looking up at the Titanic heighten its grandeur. This is to show how people foolishly believed that it was indestructible because of its size and its power. The fluency of the camera as it sweeps across the decks is also significant because it leads one into a false sense of liberty, believing that there is great freedom and spatiality to be found onboard.

This is contrasted with the interior rooms, where cabins, dining rooms and corridors are tightly framed and shot. The delicacy and elegance of the camera movement on the upper decks is used to show how controlled and suppressed Rose's life is as a woman. Her mother even mentions that she doesn't need to go to university because she is already engaged. There is also a clever moment where slow motion is briefly employed to further show the contained, mechanical nature of her upper-cIass lifestyIe. Smartly, Cameron's best films have subverted the female role, where women exude more masculine qualities over the course of the narrative. It's visible in Aliens (1986), the Terminator films and here too. As Rose defies her family's orders the formal elements change, like in a scene where she is dancing on the lower decks with Jack. The rapid panning of the camera asserts her freedom and her independence, which she will later use for her own survival.

As pure entertainment, the first two hours of the film are close to perfection. My favourite moments are shared between the scenes at dinner, the exterior shots and those extraordinary early moments where Cameron films the actual wreckage of the Titanic. Fulfilling many of these cIassic scenes are touches of wit and humour and two charismatic, star-making performances from DiCaprio and Winslet, both of whom have gone on to have distinguished careers. It is surprising that Billy Zane never had bigger opportunities because he makes his character so deliciously wicked. Cal is a man who lives solely through money. Everything can be bought for him, except love. The other side characters are well cast with actors who give their small roles noticeable weight too. The most poignant is the ship's architect Thomas Andrews (Victor Garber). There's a chilling scene where he is reduced to a zombie, watching a clock as his dream collapses around him, weighed down by helplessness and guilt for designing the ship. Frances Fisher as Rose's mother is also fascinating because although her character postures as being wealthy, and excludes others for not being in the same league, she is aware of own family's struggling financial situation and is determined to force her daughter to marry into wealth to save herself.

Although Cameron retains a masterful grip on the action, the film falters marginally as the ship begins to collapse. The scenes of Rose running down long white corridors are so isolating they could be straight from a horror movie. But these sequences could have been leaner and there are contrivances that see the narrative veer unnecessarily close to melodrama. Did Rose really need to jump back onboard the ship? The film recovers strongly because the final moments alone in the cold black water are deeply moving. With nothing to save these people, the sense of loss and despair is palpable and haunting. The film favours moral complexity over simplistic emotions of physical suffering too. Cameron unflinchingly shows us the cowardice, the arrogance and self-interest of people who opt only to save themselves, while the others are left to freeze to death in the icy water. Thus, although the 3D is underused and underwhelming, this might be the last chance to see this terrific film on the big screen again. Other than being visually stunning, it is compulsive viewing because of its intelligence and willingness to explore cIass, ambition and gender politics. However Cameron did it, this is a great American blockbuster.

This is based on a science fiction novel called A Princess of Mars, part of an 11 volume series of books from author Edgar Rice Burroughs. In the film a Civil War veteran named John Carter (Taylor Kitsch) is meant to have died in the late 1800s on Earth. His body is said to be in a locked away and instructions are given to his nephew Edgar (Daryl Sabara) to protect it. This is because John has actually been transported to the planet Mars, or 'Barsoom' as it is called here, while his real body remains on Earth. Two human groups are fighting against each other on the red planet for the city of Helium. The baddies are led by Sab Than (Dominic West) who has been given a powerful weapon by some mysterious teleporting men, including Matai Shang (Mark Strong). With this powerful device and some massive airships Sab says that he will spare the city if he can have the hand of the princess Dejah (Lynn Collins). Meanwhile, John Carter also finds himself on 'Barsoom' too with increased agility that allows him to jump great heights. He also meets a talking alien species, Barsoomian warriors who are barbarians that take him in. Carter finds an ally in one of them named Tars Tarkas (voiced by Willem Dafoe) and with the help of these aliens Carter has to try and save the princess.

Confused? The director Andrew Stanton, the man behind such Pixar films as Wall-E (2008) and Finding Nemo (2003), opts to throw you into the deep end here. The film holds your head underwater, all the while boring you with its own philosophical ramblings regarding time travel. Or maybe not. This level of self-importance masks what is essentially another 'save the princess' story. The film, which was a Disney production, is rumoured to have been passed on from several directors, undergone length reshoots, hedged back from a rough-cut that was said to be three hours long and the victim of an inflated budget too . I have little doubt about the authenticity of some of these rumours because as shown John Carter is ridiculously bloated, running unjustifiably over two hours long, with fleeting strands that make little sense to the uninitiated. I am not familiar in the slightest with the 11-volume Barsoom series and after this film I don't have any great desire to read them. As somewhat of a safety net and a relief, the film reminded me a lot of Thor (2011). Both films mix magic and technology and take place in contrasting worlds. But what's missing here though is clarity of theme, purpose and the playful self-referencing. The fans of the graphical novel are likely to take this film, and perhaps this review, apart as they will know the ins and outs of what this film is about. I wish the film had the same insight because I could make little sense of its existence, particularly in terms of styIe and character. The film shifts not only between time and place, which is confusing enough, but also drastically in tone as well. It is at times cartoonish, as Carter flies through the air and lands with a thud, but then incredibly melodramatic as characters rattle off long-winded speeches.

There is no consistency to the film's art styIe either. At one moment the film is playing cowboys and Indians, then cowboys and aliens (it was going to come up eventually) then opting to mix time periods together. People are flying around on these airships dressed what looks like Roman soldiers. Why? There are even some gladiatorial references as the aliens seem to be a barbaric lot that enjoy public spectacle. If they were cinemagoers that might enjoy a film like John Carter and perhaps make more sense of it. On top of all this the characters, announcers rather, are incredibly elusive, particular Mark Strong. They are unaided by paper thin characterisation. Physicality aside, John Carter is not much of a hero because he favours growling over genuine personality but this is less important when Dejah is introduced as she is far more active and driven than most female characters of this kind, which is pleasing. Dominic West is still yet to find a cinematic vehicle that gives him the same level of charisma and hilarious smugness as his character in The Wire. A lot of his talents go to waste here when he could have had a lot of fun as the villain. On the plus side the film looks great, though in no part thanks to the 3D. Once again the extra dimension servers to line the pockets of Hollywood, rather than adding anything significant on the screen. It suffers particularly in the dark scenes because the glasses absorb any of the light from the screen. But at least the large open plains look outstanding when the film is in its cowboys faze, with high contrast lighting giving warmth and some visible depth to the screen. Superior animation also gives the creatures both expression and weight too. If I had to use my film critics powers of analyse and deduction, I would say that at its core the film is about the timeless nature of global conflicts, shared between man and...never mind, let's just cut to another spaceship blowing up.

Brandon (Michael Fassbender) is a man addicted to sex. Living alone in his New York apartment, his life is entirely circular. He meets with hookers, women on the Internet, women in bars and then goes to work in his office, where his computer is also littered with pornography. However, the careful order of his life is disrupted when his sister Sissy (Carey Mulligan) comes to stay with him. He has tried to ignore all her messages but she lets herself into his apartment uninvited. She is extremely messy and also finds company with Brandon's sleazy boss David (James Badge Dale), which upsets him too. The unspoken past between the siblings adds further damage and tension to their relationship. Brandon must decide whether he is going to continue with his own lifestyIe of no commitment or make more effort to help his sister.

When I went to see Shame what surprised me was the number of middle-aged women watching the film in the audience. On paper Steve McQueen's film sounds like a blokes movie. The title 'Shame' is said to be a reference to the feeling a man experiences once he has ejaculated. Yet the subject of sex here is not for casual exploitation. McQueen is too intelligent for that. He is a trained visual artist and a director who has already challenged us with films like Hunger (2008). Everything in this film, including the sex, has purpose and intention. This is courtesy of the director's unique formal properties and composition that build a world of stasis, followed by an unwilling removal from that safety zone. Brandon's apartment and office are both filmed with white, sterile tones and large panes of glass. These are the cold, physical barriers that disconnect him from sustainable human connections. He is a character who is not interested in making long-term relationships with women but is content with brief sexual encounters and fleeting moments of pleasure. His cyclical nature is reflected in the opening scenes as he walks past the same still shot naked, the steady framing showing his stability and control.

Outdoors, he is much the same because he wears one grey coat for most of the film, showing his repression and unchanging ways, but perhaps also an attempt to mask his shame too. His intensity is both an attraction and detriment towards women. His unflinching gazes makes a girl on a train deeply uncomfortable but there is also a very funny scene in a bar where he and his boss meet a group of women but only he succeeds. After trying and saying absolutely everything, his boss David fails because he lacks Brandon's control and self-assurance in knowing exactly what he wants and finding people who match that desire. Fassbender, unlucky to not be nominated for an Oscar, is astonishing in the haunting and intense qualities he gives this character, followed by savage outbursts of anger to counter his repression.

Sissy is Brandon's polar opposite and provides the perfect contrast to the controlled and isolated lifestyIe. Mulligan in her brief career has proven to be an actress of great emotion and innocence. She is one of the most promising young talents but we've never seen Carrey Mulligan like this before. She gives us something unique to her personality: flamboyance. Due to her entirely erratic nature Sissy is completely disruptive to Brandon's structure. Inviting herself in unannounced, she has a bath and plays records at full blast, drinks straight from a carton out of the fridge and becomes blindly entangled with Brandon's boss. These details build a picture of someone who is subconsciously disruptive of other people's spaces, which is a lot like Brandon, only in a different way. Her character is not a bad person, just one who has the desire to be noticed in this dynamic city. The most poignant representation of this is a cIassic moment in cinema where Mulligan, who sang live no less, provides a leisurely but soulful rendition of 'New York, New York', emphasising her character's desire to adapt.

As with Brandon, Sissy is defined by her costume too. There's a great two-shot in a train station photographing the pair of them together. We see her clothes, a leopard print coat and a bright red hat, juxtaposed against his dark, gloomy outfit. That one shot perfectly reflects what contrasting characters they are. A gutting climatic scene further shows this contrast in colour but under the most dramatic and powerful circumstances. Smartly, as she disrupts Brandon's life the formal qualities change as well. When she brings David to the apartment McQueen switches to a handheld camera, and makes the framing tighter so that the action is intensified and shows that Brandon no longer has control of his whole life. Countering this is a wonderful sequence where Fassbender is photographed running down the block in a single tracking shot. It looks beautiful but also servers to restore stability to his character. What amounts from these formal techniques is a film that has to be read because it is subtle and beautifully understated, visualising its characters with balance as flawed human beings. The film is marred only by a few extra endings but when the last one comes it is not cheap or overly ambiguous, just perfect. And who can argue with that?