Fantastic Four: Rise Of The Silver Surfer (SPOILERS!)

Look, it’s a spoiler, I know, but I feel this should be said as a simple public health warning for all you geeks out there.

DON’T get excited about Galactus.

The film’s definitely a sequel: slightly less funny, slightly less fresh, slightly less clever (Yes, I DID like the original, stone me if you must). But by all accounts, Fantastic Four: Rise of the Silver Surfer is actually pretty good.

Keeping in with the PG-rating, it’s the epitome of inoffensive action fun, with a bit of a Disney morality lesson thrown in. All that stuff about how we choose to do right and wrong, as the titular Surfer (Doug Jones) draws the monster Galactus ever closer to Earth while last year’s villain Victor Von Doom (Julian McMahon) comes back to wreak metallic havoc on our Four.

Where Four finds its strength is through the characters. It’s not the dark introspect of recent Batman or Spiderman flicks, but our heroes are drawn as more than pencil sketches, as people with personalities, wants, and conflicts, even if they do have rubber limbs, stone flesh, or Jessica Alba’s arse, and as a family unit they provide a different slant on the genre from the tortured solitary villain (Batman) or feuding team (X-Men).

Then, as I mentioned, there’s Galactus.

The Silver Surfer’s great. Hell, you’ve seen the trailers. And the special effects are bloody fantastic (especially a set piece involving the London Eye). But do they give the Devourer of Worlds (TM) the slightest bit of love?

Do they buggery.

A spoiler again. Don’t read if you like being disappointed:

Gone is the helmet, gone is the awesome looming body.

Galactus is a giant cloud.

The End.

Pirates Of The Caribbean: At World's End

Bringing the end (hopefully) to the trilogy, Pirates Of The Caribbean: At World's End doesn’t do too bad a job, even if it does lack the flair of the original.

Gore Verbinski brings a darker tone than the first two films, as well as redeeming himself slightly for the woefully average Dead Man’s Chest. The laughs come faster, the action is more riveting and succinct, and the emotions are more genuine.

Rejoining the story after Jack Sparrow’s (Johnny Depp) death in the mouth of a huge, tentacled, toothy vagina (otherwise known as the Kraken), its up to our pirates to rescue him from Davy Jones’ Locker, while also coming to blows with the good old Brits, various international pirates (Chow Yun Fat and Keith Richards among them), and Davy Jones himself (Bill Nighy).

It's a bit of a shambles. The first hour drags on, even if it does have twenty times the Jack Sparrow (literally) and Keira Knightly’s bare legs, but once it hits its stride there are one too many characters and storylines. Davy Jones (aka, the best thing about Pirates 2) is still fun, as are the ragtag gang of minor players, but we’ve really seen it all before.

As with the first film the best part about At Worlds' End are the two captains: Barbossa (Geoffrey Rush) and Sparrow. They bounce off each other like old hands, their overacting perfect rather than jarring, and account for most of the laugh-out-loud moments. Orlando Bloom, as well, finally gets to do something that doesn’t require him to look earnestly pretty, and proves that he does have acting chops beyond holding a sword.

In the end it’s not a bad film, keeping more to the upbeat frivolity of Black Pearl than the drudgery of Dead Man’s Chest, and providing some blackly emotional scenes into the bargain. Though it does have some slow points, the exciting ones more than make up for it. It’s just not enough to convince of the fact that they shouldn't have stopped with one film.