Cody Cameron & Kris Pearn | 95 mins | Blu-ray | 2.40:1 | USA / English | U / PG
A sequel to the suprisingly-good-in-spite-of-its-name animated comedy, Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs 2 (innovative title; though better than its original moniker, Revenge of the Leftovers) begins mere minutes after the first film ended; so closely, in fact, that someone decided it would be wise to begin with what is essentially a “Previously on Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs…” montage. Well, it has been four years in cinema-time.
Following the worldwide effect of Flint’s invention in the first film, the clean-up operation is being spearheaded by Californian mega-company Live Corp, founded and run by our hapless hero’s life-long idol, Chester V (can you see where this is going already?) The island of Swallow Falls has to be abandoned for the clean-up, but things only get worse when it turns out Flint’s machine wasn’t destroyed and is still churning out food. When his teams fail, Chester V persuades Flint to return to the island to destroy the machine (again); and, naturally, Flint ropes in all his friends — read: “your favourite characters from the last film!” Hijinks ensue.
That’s the quick version, anyway; though the film isn’t exactly slower: it moves at a restless rate of knots, much as the first one did. That’s not something to be sniffed at, as it throws plot and humour at the viewer with wild abandon. Sometimes such a methodology is a recipe for “chuck everything at the screen and see what sticks” — with the latter usually being “not a huge percentage” — but here it creates a pretty fine hit rate. It helps that new directors Cameron & Pearn (the original pair of Phil Lord and Chris Miller off furthering their career with 21 Jump Street and The Lego Movie) don’t just rehash the best-remembered jokes from the first film, instead forging into largely-new territory. The humour is mostly of the “silly” variety, never missing an opportunity for a pun or bit of daftness (including breaking the fourth wall, very briefly, but quite neatly). The result could be groan-inducing, but instead is quite delightful.
The villain this time is a thinly-veiled riff on Apple and its messianic founder, Steve Jobs. Here they become the aforementioned Life Corp, whose logo (and headquarters) is a giant lightbulb, and the equally-aforementioned Chester V, Flint’s childhood hero. As with almost all hero-since-childhood characters, you can guess where that’s going from the moment he appears at the start of the opening montage. Nonetheless, his storyline and relationship with Flint mostly works — it does take Flint a long time to reach the point of realising The Truth, but for viewers the reveal comes earlier and isn’t treated as an inappropriately big shock. Again, kids less familiar with movie tropes will be even more accepting of it. Plus there’s a Moral Message there for said kiddies (naturally), this time about trusting in your friends. It’s all familiar fare to an adult viewer, but doesn’t dominate to the point of boredom.
Elsewise, the film is visually and conceptually inventive, particularly in its array of Foodimals. There are far more racing around than the film can hope to feature in major roles, which creates the impression of a rounded world and boundless creativity to match the boundless energy. There’s also a nice array of nods and references to other movies — nothing too overt, we’re not in spoof territory, but you can spy bits of everything from Jurassic Park and its first sequel to Predator, and probably several other jungle-set adventure flicks to boot. Such things go over kids’ heads, I’m sure, but it’s another element for grown-ups to enjoy.
In the end, Cloudy 2 isn’t quite as good as the first film, but not in a “notably inferior” way. It remains relentlessly entertaining, with an admirable energy and drive, which is in part a desperation to not be boring, but not in a shallow way. It may lack the extra little something that the first one has, but if that was an 8-out-of-10 then this is a 7 — which, because it’s fun rather than disappointing, rounds up to:
Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs 2 is available through Now TV and Sky Movies On Demand from tomorrow, and comes to Sky Movies Premiere a week Friday.
Before he brought the disquieting underbelly of small-town America to television audiences with 
But… is it, really? The white-picket-fence-dwellers are pretty clean; it’s the people inhabiting the scuzzy apartment blocks and industrial estates nearby who are the problem. Those characters are as corrupt and degenerate as their abodes might lead those with regular prejudices to suspect. It’s a less subversive point of view, and I don’t think it’s what Lynch was actually going for. Anyway, the entirety of his moviemaking technique is so outré that you can’t help but find the whole twisted nonetheless.
“It’s not a movie for everybody,” Lynch himself said (to Chris Rodley for the book 
These days largely sold as a horror movie (the old Collector’s Edition DVD is branded as part of a “Masters of Horror” series), probably thanks to its cast (Christopher Lee and Peter Cushing), director (Terence Fisher, of many a Hammer Horror, including five with Cushing and Lee), and rating (an X originally, a 15 now), Night of the Big Heat is not really anything of the sort. Well, maybe a little; but you’re more likely to get scared by a contemporaneous episode of 
the pair were brought in to redraft because the original screenplay’s dialogue was “unsayable”. Anyone familiar with their ’80s work on Doctor Who, and their associated reputation, will find that highly ironic.) However, when the sci-fi stuff does roll in it’s a bit of a damp squib, leaving the scenes relating to the affair, whether it will be discovered, and what various characters do about their various feelings, as some of the more unique and interesting elements.
which considering it was shot in February and March is a real achievement. During night shoots the cast had to suck ice to stop their breath being visible, while running around in wet clothing to look like they were drenched in sweat. Poor sods. Said night scenes are a mess of genuine and atmospheric nighttime shooting, alongside the kind of day-for-night filming where everything’s extremely dark except for the sky, and also the kind of day-for-night filming where it’s day and… um… shh!
Originally produced for the 2010 FrightFest film festival, horror director Jake West’s feature-length documentary with the unwieldy title explores the ‘video nasty’ scare that gripped early-VHS-era Britain. Starting with a primer on the birth of home video, and what it was like to watch movies in those days (because, ladies and gents, we’ve now reached a point where even fans of that (second-)most adults-only of genres, the gory horror flick, are young enough to not recall a time before DVD), West uses archive news clips and a wide array of new talking head interviews to take the story from the UK’s first video recorders in 1978, through a newspaper-led panic, up to the infamous Video Recordings Act of 1984, which irrevocably (thus far, anyway) changed the face of home entertainment releasing in the UK.
Focusing on the scare rather than the films embroiled in it makes this less a “horror documentary” and more a social history/pop culture one, though the liberal use of extreme clips from the movies in question shuts out anyone without a hardened stomach. (If you did want more on the films themselves, the DVD set that contains the documentary — Video Nasties: The Definitive Guide — includes 7½ hours of special features discussing all 72 ‘official’ video nasties alongside their trailers.) There’s room for little asides amongst the main narrative, though. One of the highlights is the story of an interviewee who was invited on to Sky News in the wake of the James Bulger murder and asked if the film many were holding responsible, 
There was some counterargument, however, which leads us to the film’s best interviewee, and surely a new hero to many: Martin Baker. Baker was one of a few (certainly the first, and for a time the only) critical/intellectual-type voices to speak out in defence of the films that were outraging so many. He’s to be commended not only for his valiant defence of, essentially, free speech at a time when his views were immensely unpopular; but also because he remains one of the most lucid and fascinating commenters in the documentary. He makes the clearest points about the need to not forget both what happened and how it was allowed to happen, lest it occur again.
that force ISPs to attempt to censor what we can and can’t see on the internet, and just yesterday rushed through anti-privacy legislation without proper debate. Sad to say, many of the valuable lessons of the ‘video nasties’ brouhaha — lessons made explicit with superb clarity in Jake West’s excellent documentary — have not been heeded.
“20 Elite Cops. 30 Floors of Hell.”
instead of ending with our hero duelling our villain, a fight with the top henchman is followed by a bit of plot clean-up between the villain and a supporting character. It’s the very definition of anti-climactic.
Another way it’s pleasingly unlike its current American counterparts is the lack of focus on gore. There are plenty of stabbings (of a blood-stain-on-shirt variety), and a couple of sliced necks, but none are lingered on. Things like a hammer beating or repeated machete strikes take place either just off screen or just after we cut away. It’s unquestionably a violent film, but it doesn’t revel in the gory aftermath of that violence in the way many US films increasingly seem to.
to make for a much more rounded experience. The fights in The Raid may have blown the minds of people who haven’t seen enough Asian action flicks, but I’d argue Dredd is the better film as a whole. And if you still insist on accusing one of plagiarising the other… well, let’s put it this way: Dredd had finished shooting, and its screenplay had leaked online, before The Raid even entered production.
Remembered largely thanks to the involvement of Orson Welles (he has a supporting role, produced it, co-wrote it, and reportedly directed a fair bit too, though he denied that), Journey into Fear is an adequate if unsuspenseful World War 2 espionage thriller, redeemed by a strikingly-shot climax. The latter — a rain-drenched shoot-out between opponents edging their way around the outside of a hotel’s upper storey — was surely conducted by Welles; so too several striking compositions earlier in the movie.
all added by Welles after the studio had their way, which seems to be the one US viewers know. The version without those seems to be the only one shown on UK TV, however.)
In an era where sequels seem to improve on their predecessors more often than not — building on established characters and mythology for a deeper experience, rather than rehashing the same plot/jokes/action sequences for a second-go-round money-grab — this Michael Bay-helmed series based on ’80s action figures is a throwback to… well, the ’80s. It’s almost appropriate.
There are impressive visuals, it’s true, but that’s all they are: dramatic pictures. The characters, their motivations and actions that lead to these visuals often make no sense. And to say they “lead” there at all is generous, because just as often things begin to happen for no apparent reason. I swear no one’s thought any of it through — like the moment when the big honourable hero is offered a truce by the villain and, instead of accepting it, immediately executes him. Stay classy, Optimus Prime.
#45 
#49 
The General
The Gold Rush
The Passion of Joan of Arc
Intolerance
Empire readers considered this the 399th best film ever. TSPDT treated it more kindly, slipping into the top 100 at #94; the Top 300 Silents rank it among their top ten, however, at #10. The original (now lost) cut ran eight hours; the version released was merely two. In 1999 a four-hour version was created using stills from the deleted scenes, which seems to be the only one readily available, though I’ve heard the shorter cut is superior.
100Films.co.uk 