I’m well-versed in Smith cinema, and I’d say all of his work up to Red State has been easily identifiable. This time around, however, only a few lines of dialogue in the film struck me as typical of the New Jersey-born director known for crafting crude humour and talk-heavy cinema. There are short moments of humour, each an island in a sea of blood and religious extremism. Red State is not a film I’d recommend to those seeking yet another Smith comedy.

The main issue some viewers will run into is that there are little-to-no likeable characters. Everyone is either enacting immoral orders from a higher power, or acting in a way that renders them vile and unappealing. The plot, however, is a curious mix of Smith and serious cinema, and that’s what’s likely to keep you engaged after the initial fifteen minutes.

Three boys living in a southern state of the US have a Friday night plan – to meet a woman off the internet who has offered the school kids the opportunity to get a little intimate with her, all at the same time. This being Kevin Smith’s script, they are without reservation in how crude and single-minded they become, and this leads to their inevitable downfall. The woman – who happens to live on land owned by local Christian fundamentalists – turns out to be part of the group.

They’re Westboro. Let’s not mess around here. From the homophobic signs to the chanting, to their leader – Abin Cooper, played by the talented Michael Parks (of Kill Bill vols. 1 and 2, and From Dusk Till Dawn). At one point, government agent Keenan (John Goodman, of every film this incredibly talented man has been in) comments to his boss that “no, they’re not like Westboro,” but this feels like a get-out clause for a director who, thanks to Dogma, has already suffered death threats from religious individuals incensed by his parody of their beliefs and lifestyles.

Once these crazed individuals seize the boys, a police officer is shot and the government rolls in,  you’re torn between which faction to identify as the villain of the piece. But really, the only hero in the film is Keenan, the government agent torn between his orders and need for his salary, and his morality. Everyone else is perverted in some way, and their faults lead them straight to a dark finish, in short order.

It’s a hard film to discuss simply because it’s so negative and nothing good comes of the entire narrative, but that’s the point. It’s not supposed to highlight the good in the government, the pervy schoolboys, or the fundamentalists. It’s a tale of domestic terrorism and the flaws in character that will lead one to ruin if the wrong mistakes are made. If anything, it definitely proves that Smith has a whole lot of serious-story talent up his sleeve, and I look forward to other offerings from him in future without the religious undertones, just to see how well he does without dogma and his God-fearing childhood as a springboard.

The film follows Russell (Tom Cullen) a softly-spoken, likeable young chap over the course of a weekend. After a slightly boring house party at his (straight) best mate’s house, Russell heads off to a gay club to get properly pissed and pick some one up. The guy he ends up with is Glen (Chris New), an artist who records interviews with everyone he sleeps with, including Russell. The two hang out together for most of the rest of weekend, peaking with a long Saturday night of coke-fuelled conversation and a bit of sex.

Early on Glen explains that he is leaving on the Sunday to go and live in the US. This imminent departure creates a question hangs over the film and their relationship. The two men form a bond that could lead to something more than just a two night stand, but will it last and does it matter? The tension set up by the probability of imminent separation holds the film together satisfyingly.

Although still in his thirties, director Andrew Haigh is no stranger to film. He has made four shorts and one feature length movie (Greek Pete, about the year in the life of a London rentboy) and also worked for eight years as a film editor in London on films including Black Hawk Down, Gladiator and Mona Lisa Smile. The time he has spent building a story behind the camera and honing it in the editing suite are both evident in Weekend.

Haigh has said that Karel Reisz’s Saturday Night and Sunday Morning is a key influence. Starring Albert Finney, the film was of the earliest British kitchen-sink dramas of the 60s. According to Haigh, “its exploration of the ‘outsider’ battling the mainstream is a theme essential to both the queer experience and to the kind of stories I want to tell.” Both films are also set in Nottingham, cleave to a social realist attitude and feature working class protagonists working out who they are.

It’s undeniable that both characters in this romance are gay and they spend much of their time discussing gay concerns, but the film is more than simply a ‘gay film’. Haigh stays true to the kitchen-sink ethos of creating real characters. Both Russell and Glen are very much people that you could imagine meeting down the pub or at a party.

So, they get together and start to fall in love and argue and shag and we start, not just to like Glen and Russell, but like them together. Glen is angry and articulate, Russell is sweet-natured, but infuriatingly timid. They could both learn from each other, and possibly they do.

In America Weekend is being hailed as a cinematic saviour. After its screening at the Tribeca Film Festival in June, the New York Times film critic A.O. Scott said the film was ‘perfectly realised‘. That was after the positive response at South by Southwest in March. All this was just a foretaste of the love fest to come. By September, Mary Pols in Time magazine wrote the film was “one of the loveliest romances of the year” and then in October Bret Easton Ellis tweeted that Weekend was not only “a pretty remarkable movie anyway you look at it”, but “might be the greatest film about gay men ever made”.

In an essay in the New York Times Dennis Slim pointed out all the various pitfalls faced by so many gay films, or at least by films with gay story lines and characters. Not only are characters notoriously one dimensional, but their stories are often tragic. Not so with Weekend. Glenn and Russell are possibly more believable than Arthur Seaton, Finney’s character in Saturday Night and Sunday Morning. And while the film has a melancholy edge, it doesn’t veer into tragedy.

Part of the film’s attraction has to be Tom Cullen’s self-effacing character. Yes, he should stand up for himself and his sexuality, but he’s a delightful romantic who is hard to resist. The film compellingly plays out realities faced by gay men and gay artists, but the bitter-sweetness of a short relationship will resonate with young straight people too. Don’t believe the hype, but do go and see Weekend.

Read our interview with Andrew Haigh, Tom Cullen, and Chris New.

Set during the bloody final years of Apartheid rule, The Bang Bang Club follows the careers of these four young South African photo-journalists working in the townships as their country teeters on the edge of civil war. The based-on-fact film powerfully recreates the fraught political situation at the time, while sketching out the competing motivations, bonds and rivalries of the group.

Ryan Phillippe puts on a passable South African accent to play Greg Maronovich, the man on whose book the film is based and the film’s central character. He’s an apt choice as the slightly headstrong, intrepid rookie of the group. His colleagues include the skinny, long-haired, dope-smoking Kevin Carter (Taylor Kitsch), magnetic Ken Oosterbroek (Frank Rautenbach), and Portuguese João Silva (Neels Van Jaarsveld). Malin Åkerman plays Robin Comley, their picture editor at The Johanesburg Times and later Maronovich’s girlfriend.

All of them want to show the world the horrors taking place and win acclaim for their work. One of the men, sounding like a South African Robert Capa, advises Maronovich early on to “forget the long lens Bru, the stuff only looks good up close.” This could stand as the defining motto of the club. Getting close means endangering yourself, but hopefully coming up with pictures that don’t just look good, but define history. It might be a buzz doing it too.

Their early rivalry softens to friendship, a necessity in this toughest of environments: a poster on the wall of their favourite bar has an image of Picasso’s famous Guernica with the caption “A Civil War is Not Very Relaxing”. That puts it mildly. Over the course of the film it becomes clear that these guys are just too close to the action, a feeling that is later terribly borne out.

As well as the relationships of the group, the film shows us Maronovich’s journey from ballsy beginner to seasoned pro and Kevin Carter’s struggle with his demons. It’s probably fair to say that the characters of Oosterbroek and Silva not so fully realised. They are earnest and likeable, but somehow less distinctive than the ambitious young Maronovich or the troubled Carter.

The emotional heart of the film lies tapping the motives of these men. They are all moved by a burning moral outrage at the bloody injustices of the apartheid regime. As Kevin Carter explains of the photograph that wins him a Pulitzer prize, “a great picture asks a question, it’s not just a spectacle”, but he then returns to the fray from the relatively peaceful Sudan where he took the shot because “there’s no bang bang over there.” Getting published, winning prizes and risking your life are also a kick.

South African born director Steven Silver [read our interview with the director] stages the riots in the townships on a huge scale: fights featuring thousands of spear and gun wielding warriors facing off against each other to horrifying effect. He does an equally good job recreating some of the famous, and often gruesome, photographs the Club manage to capture.

The Bang Bang Club contains some strong performances and believably conjures up the high emotion of the times. It is all the more relevant now when we see similar images from Africa and Asia every time we open a newspaper. The film serves as a timely reminder of the physical and psychological damage inflicted on those who bring us these pictures.

Read our interview with Steven Silver, the director of The Bang Bang Club here.

Yusuf is an innocent Pakistani engineering student who moves into an Islamic centre/house share in Buffalo, New York State after getting fed up with the (presumably pissed up) antics of his fellow students in the college dorms. This student house is like no other however, they may be Muslims but they have a very unusual approach to their faith. These guys are Muslim punks or Taqwacores; Taqwa being the Arabic word for God-fearing or pure of heart (I’m sure a scholar could go on explaining it indefinitely), while the core comes from hardcore.

The walls of the house are covered in graffiti, punk posters, Islamic slogans and grime. “Is everyone here a Muslim?” asks Yusuf. “From a certain point of view” he’s told. The man who gives him this answer is Jehangir (played by Iranian-American actor Dominic Rains), a mohican hairdo and studded leather jacket wearing punk who is the character at the centre of the film. Jehangir is the spiritual force inspiring and voicing the questing spirit of the Taqwacores, he’s warm hearted, deeply concerned with his faith and not afraid to take a chance.

The rest of the house are no less interesting. There’s Fasiq, an American of Indonesian descent who is never seen without his hash pipe, and Amazing Ayyub, a wire thin joker who never wears a shirt, even in deepest winter. Rabeya wears an Afghan burkha she has doctored with patches and badges expressing her feminist and anarchistic sympathies. The more orthodox side of Islam is represented by Umar, a brick outhouse, straight edge, deadly serious kind of man who desperately tries to keep the house from descending into anarchy and his friends souls from ending up frying in the fires of hell. That’s just a few of them, and this disparate group would be the makings of a pretty wild drama even before Islam was added to the mix.

Rather than relationship trouble, funny capers or plans that go awry, much of the drama in the house is provided by debate. The Taqwacores is filled with fascinating discussion and philosophical rumination, and deepening of personal understanding drives the film along. But we’re not talking My Dinner with Andre here. The Koran, and possibly other Islamic scriptures, are quoted regularly – the characters see their lives in light of their faith, as Jehangir puts it “that was my jihad man. My struggle between me and my nuts.” So where do Mohicans and safety pins come into it? The characters’ restless, questioning vitality takes the form of punk.

Such story as there is revolves around the daring idea to hold a concert with all the Taqwacore bands. As well as a whole load of fun, this gig will give the guys the chance to wear their punk Islamic colours with pride and provide them with the challenge of accepting a broad variety of other interpretations. This means welcoming in ‘the hate mongers’,  a very stern, po-faced band called Bilal’s Boulder, who don’t approve of all this liberalism. This laugh-a-minute lot have to be invited or Jehangir and his friends will be shown to be as closed and narrow-minded as them.

Before the party, there are a couple of spiritual excursions. The group visit the local mosque to stand face to face with their God and Jehangir gives a very moving sermon before the Friday prayers. It is Jehangir’s speech which serves as the film’s manifesto: “Islam is a fuckin’ surrender…Allah is too big and open for my Islam to be small and closed.”

Directed by Syrian American Eyad Zahra, The Taqwacores is based on a 2004 novel by an American convert to Islam, Michael Mohammed Knight. Brought up a Roman Catholic with a father who used to beat him, Knight ran away to study Islam in Pakistan aged 17, but by the early 2000s felt stuck between the strict teachings he learned there, his American upbringing and the truth he felt existed in Islam. Writing The Taqwacores was his way to resolve it. The film might have some patchy acting in parts, although Dominic Rains is a magnetic Jehangir, but overall it does Knight’s vision justice. With only a small knowledge of Islam, I was shocked by some of the scenes. I can’t think of many films I’ve seen recently with such unusual and sympathetic characters. This could be the most punk film since Jubilee, and as far as the Islam goes – Allahu Alim (God only knows).

Read our interview with Dominic Rains and the director of The Taqwacores Eyad Zahra.

Kaboom follows a boy who has just arrived at college as he approaches his 19th birthday. It begins pretty much as you would expect from an independent film with the theme of sexual awakening. Think Bret Easton Ellis and the film adaptation of The Rules of Attraction. But it’s not as slick as that and the dialogue seems rather hackneyed. And then it gets weird.

In between having sex with various boys and girls, Smith (Thomas Dekker) the main character and his best friend, kooky lesbian Stella (Haley Bennett) start to notice some unusual things going on. The girl she is hooking up with is actually a witch with rejection issues who keeps psychically taking command of her body. Smith starts having  dreams where people in masks run around killing recurring characters in the dream. Smith, who describes himself as sexually ‘undeclared’ starts sleeping with London, played by Brit actress Juno Temple. She is, to use a quote from the film, ‘nuttier than squirrel shit’, as is the whole film really.

The overall feeling of the film was that it felt like a film student in their first year knocked it together and put in all the things they thought would make an edgy film – a blue tinge, sex on the beach between two men, threesomes, a general casual attitude to sex with vaguely indie music playing throughout. By the time the film moves towards its final twist I was bored and couldn’t care less what ridiculous thing was about to happen to the young and vapid cast.

To be fair I do feel that I may have totally misunderstood Kaboom, but I think you’ll understand where I’m coming from if this is your first Akari film. I am now off to find his back catalogue…

Buy the Kaboom [DVD] on Amazon

If you’re into the New-Burlesque (look it up on Wikipedia), you may like On Tour and if you don’t you may find it interesting, but not quite so much fun. It stars real life burlesque performers, including Dirty Martini and Mimi Le Meaux (what names!), who perform their acts for our delectation. Almaric told The Guardian that the stage performances were left up to them, while the off-stage sections were scripted. Using genuine burlesque performers might account for the slightly wooden acting. After all, a stunning turn on the stage with little more than a couple of ostrich feather fans for protection does not guarantee the ability to emote on camera.

The film is written and directed by, as well as starring, Almaric, who plays a weaselly spiv with a ridiculous moustache and a penchant for velvet suits. The man looks like he’s walked out of another era altogether. He’s a bit of a smoothy, but not quite trustworthy. The guy never stops smoking – that means never, even when he’s in a petrol station and visiting a friend with cancer in hospital. Slightly bulging eyes lead the girls to call him ‘frog’.

If the disastrous 1996 film Striptease is anything to go by, it’s difficult to make a successful film that involves women taking their clothes off on stage. Carl Hiassen’s hilariously over the top, satirical novel Strip Tease was turned into a humdinger of a movie. Like Striptease, this film also tries to go behind the scenes, but without getting encumbered in the cartoonish high jinks of political life.

On stage all is glitzy-glamour, but as we know, off stage is gritty reality. Joachim’s job involves making sure the girls don’t go to bed too late after a show so they can get up earlier enough to catch the train to the next venue, finding venues, tinkering with acts and arranging payment. Life is a string of hotel lobbies, long nights, booze, bad food, trains and more hotels. That makes it sounds a more interesting than it is – no one seems to get particularly drunk or lose the plot. Boredom of life on the road is apparently one of the film’s main themes.

Part of the trouble seems to be that we never really get to know the girls very well. Joachim drives off to Paris (a road trip with a train trip movie) to find a venue in the city and also pick up his children, but all this somehow isn’t very involving. Who knows how the performers got there or what their stories are? Almaric doesn’t seem to. He told the Guardian that this film focuses on ‘real’ burlesque which involves humour and intimacy and can be appreciated by both female and male audiences. This, he said, is different from the ‘glamorous’ burlesque of acts like Dita Von Teese who perform mostly for men.

For Almaric true burlesque is an “anger against time” and “a struggle against perfection”. These women certainly don’t have the size-zero bodies of Hollywood actresses or the teeny weeny perfection of Dita, and that must be a good thing. Their performances are also mind-blowing. However, the rest of the film is somewhat under dressed.

The film premiered at the 2010 Cannes Film Festival where it won the FIPRESCI Award, the festival’s main prize from film critics. Amalric also received the Best Director Award.

On Tour will be released on DVD on 25 April, 2011.

Unfortunately their poster sums it up perfectly, minus the ‘achingly beautiful’ bit. I wouldn’t go as far as to call it beautiful, but it did leave me with a dull ache (and I like a good love story). When researching the film however it became clear that a lot of people have nothing but praise for it and they honestly believed that the backdrop was beautiful and that it was moving. The film did well on the American film festival circuit, it even won the the Grand Prize Jury Award at the London Independent Film Festival.

So am I missing something? The film is set in just 24 hours and tells the story of two people. Will Fletcher, played by Tobias Menzies, who is a musician. It is his livelihood, and despite the fact he appears to gig in his local pub he has a huge beautifully furnished home in central London. The film opens with Will playing in this pub, while flicking between scenes of him contemplating committing suicide in various ways.

He receives a call from Eve, Genevieve O’Reilly, who we last saw earlier as she starred longingly at Will while he played in the pub where she works. She is calling to say he left his guitar there. At the prospect of getting some booze down his throat, he returns to the bar. Eve awkwardly tries to make conversation with him but he isn’t interested and heads off, abandoning her to the resident drunk.

Conveniently Will’s lovely flat is opposite the pub so he can see and hear Eve getting hassled by the drunk after closing time. He, of course, comes to her rescue and walks her to the tube station, which is shut. They begin what becomes an all night journey across the city, stopping at an iPod party (yes, very modern) on the way.

Somehow we reach morning and Eve needs to visit her Grandmother (Gemma Jones), who is in a home. It turns out the Grandma and Will are more similar than Eve could possibly ever imagine.

The film is set in London but it seems as if the directors Alexander Holt and Lance Roehrig have never been there before. There are huge inaccuracies regarding distances between one place and another. Clearly this alone doesn’t make the film bad, but it is distracting for a viewer who knows the city. The characters also talked about London in a completely unconvincing way, using expressions that stood out like a sore thumb and again distracted from the story.

It was probably the script that let the film down most of all. The film was stuffed with so many clichés, it could barely move for the cheesiness. There were various times in the film were laughs were stifled in the audience, such as when Will meets Eve, he says: “Eve? Eve of Eden?” Cringe.

The acting on the whole wasn’t terrible, although the casting was perhaps slightly off. Eve for example spoke in perfect Queen’s English, despite the suggestion she was from a rough family.

The final nail on the coffin for Forget Me Not, was the twist at the end. I won’t give it away, even though you’re unlikely to watch it after this, but it was a tagged-on, half-hearted revelation that added nothing to the film other than confusion and disbelief. It was far too serious an issue to be just tagged on at the end, and by doing so completely belittled it and its impact. The audience was given no time to digest the information or connect it to the character affected, so we struggle to feel anything for them. Instead of feeling stricken by the attempted poignancy as the credits ran, I felt an enormous sense of relief that I could step out of that cheaply romanticised view of London into the far more enjoyable reality.

Buy Forget Me Not on DVD on Amazon now.

A film student, starts shooting Terry for a college assignment, presumably thinking he’ll be great documentary material. Charlie, the film student, is right and it doesn’t take long to see that Terry is the sort of peanut butter (nutter – innit) who is just waiting for a film crew to settle on him. From the moment he wakes up we wonder what on earth is he going to do next?

As wide as the Westway, Terry has two things on his mind – getting pissed and then getting high. If there’s a bird about he might have her too. And if anyone gets in his way, well they better not, but if they do they’ll probably get beaten up. In a white t-shirt and shaved head, Terry seems to make his money from dealing drugs, but as he says “I ain’t a gangster. I’m Terry.” Terry is too disorganised and selfish to join a gang.

The film was made on a tiny budget of £500, this accounts for its strengths and weaknesses. The hand-held, shaky camera work not only makes Terry feel authentic, but gives it pace. The violence is  almost always shown off screen, this not only saved Nevern money on tomato ketchup, but allows our imagination to work overtime.

It’s true that Terry is great character, wild and unpredictable – Maxim magazine has even got Nevern to make weekly dispatches as Terry. Overall, however the film doesn’t quite do him justice. After being introduced to Terry and his mates, which is initially entertaining enough, the second third doesn’t have quite enough action or story to pull the film along.

Charlie the student follows his subject on an endless cycle of getting pissed up and chopping out lines, and although this is undoubtedly realistic, it might be nice to have used some artifice, in the form of a story to keep the audience amped up. Only in the final third does do things pick up again, in a way that almost seems hurriedly tacked on. This could be down to the trainer-string budget.

Nevern and his mates have done a lot of work publicising Terry through Facebook and it seems to have built up something of a cult following. In a personal statement he says, “I hope to show people in the UK that you do not need a big budget and big name actors to make a movie. This film was made for less than £500 and shot on a hand held camcorder and hopefully will inspire up and coming film makers to go out and make their own films.” Noble motives it would be hard to argue with.  The film has a lot of potential, and even if it doesn’t quite live up to them, it will probably leave you with one lingering thought: what a geezer!

The Coen Brothers, you either love em or you are a bit odd. It’s true they have made some less good films, but their successes have shone so brightly that we can forgive them the odd fumble. Besides, an off day for Joel and Ethan probably has more to chew over than most Hollywood fare. Will Self writes in The Guardian that their movies are so likeable, resistance is difficult. Most of us look forward to an acclaimed Coen brothers movie.

This film has generally had lots of positive press and was nominated for 10 Oscars. They didn’t win any, but that could be because Hailee Steinfeld was nominated for Actress in Supporting Role and Jeff Bridges was nominated for Actor in Leading Role. Although Steinfield’s Mattie Ross employs the support of Bridges’ Rooster Cogburn in her endeavour to hunt down her father’s killers, hers is certainly not a supporting role. It would have been a shame to give her such an Oscar for a film in which she is central.

In firmly laced pony tails and felt hat crammed on her head, Steinfeld embodies a steely heroine with an almost Jane Austen-like priggishness. Her father has been shot dead by a villainous farm hand while travelling to a buy ponies. Now, as well as finishing up her fathers affairs, which involves some amusing bargaining with a horse dealer, Mattie Ross wants to track down her father’s killer. The murderer, Tom Chaney (Josh Brolin) has fled from Arkansas into the wilds of Indian territory – set in 1872, this was an area not ruled by the laws of the United States.

In order to bring Cheney to justice, Ross needs help. This comes in the form of Rooster Cogburn (Jeff Bridges), a US marshal who possesses both the authority and experience to capture an outlaw in a lawless land. If you’re more familiar with Bridges as The Dude, this is a completely different transformation. True, he has a penchant for a tipple, is somewhat ornery and dishevelled, but this character is believably violent, stubborn and not entirely likeable. Ross hires Cogburn, someone with ‘true grit’, to track down her man.

Rooster rides with Matt Damon’s LaBoeuf (pronounced La Beef), a charming but slightly drippy Texas Ranger, also after Chaney, and Mattie Ross in tow. Crossing the river into Indian territory, they leave behind the laws of civilisation and reason – the film takes on a somewhat fable-like quality.

From the beginning the film is enlivened by the Coens’ love of curious detail. From the last words spoken by men before they are hung and Cogburn’s performance in court before they set out, to the man roaming about in a bear pelt and a hilarious shooting competition between Cogburn and LaBoeuf, the film is built from marvellous little scenes.

You might think that this True Grit is a remake of the 1969 John Wayne film. Not so, say the Coens, who maintain that they sought to make a new adaptation of the 1968 book by Charles Portis. It is a book that American author and script writer and producer for The Wire, George Pelecanos has called, “one of the very best American novels“. The film certainly contains some fairly unusual language for a movie. “It astonishes me that Mr. LaBoeuf has been shot, trampled, and nearly bitten his tongue off, and yet not only does he continue to talk but he spills the banks of English”, being an example of the great, authentically Victorian dialogue. The only trouble is that Jeff Bridges’ Cogburn often sounds like he has one of his holey old socks in his mouth and is sometimes quite difficult to hear.

The Coens are also quoted in The Guardian as saying that rather than setting out to make a Western, they just wanted to make “a story set in Arkansas in 1872.” Whether the film they ended up making is a Western or just one that happens to be set in the appropriate time and place (a non-Western?), it is definitely made by two of the most distinctive voices in cinema today.

Some films are made without the director intending it to be enjoyed purely because it’s just that bad. The Room and Troll 2 are great examples – those involved think it’s a masterpiece. Those watching think it’s the funniest failure they’ve ever had the pleasure of not managing to quite sit through.

However, some films take it upon themselves to be deliberately cheesy. Films made by directors with a sense of humour. Films that will make you chuckle at their sharp satire of Hollywood and its constant overflow of low-quality movies that seep out around the big releases. Films, perhaps, like The Lost Skeleton of Cadavra, which has made it to DVD after a ten-year waiting period.

Crash-landing aliens, foreboding log cabins in the middle of nowhere, broken soundtrack incorporation, a troubled scientist unleashing a talking skeleton who could bring about the apocalypse, a mutant on the lose, Animala, the half-animal half-human woman who happens to enjoy a beatnik lifestyle – there isn’t much this film isn’t taking the whizz out of from the get-go.

I suppose that’s one of the main advantages of this film – there’s never any fuss about whether or not this is actually going to be good, because its sole intention is to be as enjoyably bad as possible without actually falling into the dangerous territory of, well, just being bad. There’s something almost adorable about their arts and crafts spaceship, or their romantic allusions to “touching other things, like… the lips”, and the wilful ignorance and almost self-aware nature of the ridiculously clichéd characters.

It’s also been a while since I’ve seen a film in black and white, and it must be said, it really helps you appreciate how much more difficult it is to communicate anything remotely otherworldly. Avatar‘s Pandorans must look the same shade as someone with a deep tan in greyscale, and it’s a credit to writer and director Larry Blamire that everything looks odd enough to still stand out despite the old school approach to modern cinematography.

“Quaint” is definitely a word that springs to mind when watching this film. It’s old, comfortable, and it’s not a film you’d realistically need to watch from the start. Although I recommend giving this your full attention, as the plot is so surreally funny that if you don’t focuss throughout the 90-minute train-wreck of a narrative, you’ll miss out on some genius tangential storytelling.

It’s stupid. It’s weird. It’s completely awful. But please, get ten friends, a lot of pizza, or booze, or whatever brings you to gatherings in terms of consumables leading to social interaction on a grand scale, and stick it on. People go to see The Room in large groups, much akin to The Rocky Horror Picture Show, because it’s something you can enjoy as a mob of film fans. This is another such film, so don’t let it slip through your fingers.