It is a strangely disquieting moment when I recognised the dulcet tones of Home by Edward Sharp and the Magnetic Zeros drifting over the opening sequence of Stuck in Love. I begin to sink down apprehensively into my seat. It’s not that I dislike the track; I love it, but therein lies the problem. I’ve become almost fearful of films harnessing my favourite tunes because they seldom live up to the song. It feels as if the filmmakers have kidnapped a popular artist, forcing them to provide some essential indie affectations for their quirky dramas. I sink lower and start to fold myself away in the hope that this seat den I’m constructing will make an effective quirk proof shelter. I think I’ll be safe here unless characters begin arbitrarily playing music to each other or someone attempts to smoke me out using The Shins. So whose stuck you ask? Well other than me, in my cinematic cushion fort, we have Bill Borgen (Greg Kinnear) acclaimed novelist and hopeless divorcée still pining over his ex-wife Erica (Jennifer Connelly). Adding to the ensemble is Bill’s daughter Samantha (Lily Collins) who is publishing her first book, the content of which reflects...

We all feel like the bad guy sometimes. Unloved, unappreciated. Why should we be denied the princess just because we’re green, spiky and lack any basic plumbing aptitude? Or allow some yellow berk to steal all the fruit? How are we supposed to get our 5-a-day with that guy around? (That’s probably how we came to be ghosts in the first place. It was the scurvy, you selfish puck!) But I digress. Ralph (John C. Reilly), a video game baddie tired of playing the villain, abandons his game and sets off across the arcade world to prove he’s more than just the bad guy. We meet our eponymous protagonist amongst the computerised clientèle of his local game character support group, the Antagonists Anonymous of the digital world. Bowser (Super Mario), Clyde the ghost (Pacman) and Zangief (Street Fighter) are the first to swell the ranks of the cavalcade of popular gaming characters Ralph meets along his journey. The maelstrom of video mascots and genres is doubtlessly fun but somewhat frantic. It flies by so swiftly that at times you wish the movie would follow its own advice and take just ‘one game at a time’. As the story unfolds...

The civil war rages on for its 5th bloody year. As the conflict draws to a close, President Lincoln (Daniel Day Lewis) battles against members of his own cabinet for the emancipation of American’s slaves still in bondage. No small task for any President, least of all one who spends his nights battling hordes of vampiric undead who threatening the safety of… … What? No vampires? So who does he use his shotgun-axe on, congress? No shotgun-axe either? … Let’s start again. To suggest Day-Lewis loses himself in the portrayal of this iconic character would be a profound disservice. He is Lincoln incarnate. From the tread of his wooden gait to the tips of his ostentatious eyebrows the actor’s mastery of the role is marrow deep. The action of the piece centres around the House of Representatives, a small political theatre in its own right. Members of congress speak like players on a stage, dispensing venomous Shakespearean diatribes beyond the wit of even the most caustic drama student. Amongst the linguistic combatants is republican Thaddeus Stevens (Tommy Lee Jones) whose exquisitely savage tirades are an unequivocal joy to behold. Unfortunately these sizzling debates are far too infrequent. The dry...

Jackson makes his jubilant return to Middle Earth, but with his new three movie visa to Tolkien’s fantasy kingdom has he overstayed his welcome? The film opens, after several false starts, to our protagonist Bilbo (Freeman), an unwilling host to a cavalcade of unexpected dinner guests. The 13 dwarves that flood the screen are each haphazardly given a miscellaneous persona, amongst them Greedy, Stabby and Irish. Even Snow White’s housemates were more thoroughly characterised than this rabble. Given the runtime the audience are provided with some impressively slap-dash exposition. Such as Bofur (James Nesbitt) obligingly informing us that dragons breathe fire and that fire is hot. In this opening scene alone the tone judders wildly between the dwarfs’ meagre attempts at levity and portentous exclamations from their leader Thorin (Richard Armitage), ostensibly a shorter, hairier Aragorn. In a desperate endeavour to maintain some semblance of coherence the score climbs and plummets with a disturbingly hectic frequency, mirroring the jagged topography of our heroes’ ensuing adventure. This dissonance chimes with Jackson’s reluctance to abandon the grand scope of his original vision of Middle Earth. At its heart, The Hobbit is a simple tale, a much more personal journey than that...