Finally saw it today, and was pleasantly surprised. Not because I didn't think it would be good, but because I had seen so many bad reviews that I had a nagging doubt that it was going to be an absolute disaster. But, flawed as it is, it's a very entertaining summer action film with some brilliant action set-pieces.

2 or 3 sequences really stand out, a sea-monster attack on a ship is great, a running 3-way sword fight is handled with more panache and ingenuity than maybe even the 2-on-1 duel in The Phantom Menace. The third, and probably best action scene in the film involves Will and some prisoners trapped in a cage using teamwork to run, jump and roll the spherical cage in a rollicking chase sequence while Jack simultaneous engages in a similar escape while still tied to a 10 foot pole. While being outlandish in the extreme, it really is something we haven't seen before which is rare these days.

One of these days I'm going to stop watching horror films altogether. I used to love horror films, back when they actually had a hint of plot and interesting characters or situations. Horror films these days are just an hour of random killings followed by a last half hour of somebody trying to escape. The last victim either escapes or is killed horrifically. And that's it, there are no surprises in the story and in these days of CGI and spectacular effects there are very few horrific things we haven't seen onscreen, so there are no surprises in the violence either.

The Hills Have Eyes. So do you.

Inside Man is a refreshing change from the recent crop of far-fetched tales of ridiculousness that seem to pass for "thrillers" these days. 2 recent examples: Flightplan and Firewall both had completely ridiculous plots with no internal logic and characters who appear to be braindead. While not having as much action or humour as these films, Inside Man really works as both a heist movie and a thriller.

The movie tells the story of "the perfect bank robbery" - which for once is actually a plan that you think might work. It's not spoiling the film to say that the plan is simply to rob the bank and leave without the police ever having any clue who the robbers were.

Some sequels continue the story in a new direction. Some sequels put the same characters in a new and interesting situation. Horror sequels, on the other hand, tend to take the same plot and basically remake it, with new characters getting into the same predicament as in the original.

Final Destination 3 is definitely in the latter category: Someone has a premonition about a bad accident and manages to prevent it happening. The people that would have died in the accident are then killed in spectacular ways in the order they were "supposed to die". In Final Destination it was a plane crash, in 2 it was a car pile-up and in 3 it is a runaway rollercoaster accident. The problem is that now we've seen 2 films with the exact same plot we know the rules and we know exactly what is going to happen: The deaths will be amusingly clever and spectacularly gory, and nobody will survive. There are no unexpected twists, no cunning additions to the Final Destination mythology, it all just treads along as expected and then ends.

With the new Pirates of the Caribbean movie breaking records this weekend I realised that though I saw the first one when it came out and remembered enjoying it, I really didn't remember all that much of it. After failing to rent a copy from the wonderful Blockbuster which cleverly had all of one copy of such a big film whose sequel was coming out, I saw it on sale for $10 at Target and decided to buy it.

"Pirates" is one of those films that is like Ronseal Quick Drying Woodstain: It does exactly what it says on the tin. It's a throwback to Indiana Jones and other 80s movies that managed to combine humour and action without becoming cheesy or camp like so many modern film. The cast is pretty good, if a bit unbalanced, with Jack Sparrow, the supposedly supporting character played by Johnny Depp easily outshining the less experienced acting chops of Orlando Bloom and Kiera Knightly in the lead roles.

Superman Returns is a good film that, with a completely rewritten last hour, could have been a GREAT film.

Let me start with the negative: The last hour of the film is poor for two reasons. Return of the King was a film which annoyed the hell out of me for refusing to end when it needed to. Superman Returns has a similar problem and at least twice the filmmakers have the opportunity to end on a great cliffhanger but choose to keep plodding on a good 20 minutes after the film has lost all of it's momentum. The other problem is the lack of a decent hero/villain resolution - it needed one more climactic confrontation scene to really satisfy.

If you haven't seen and intend to see Flightplan, don't read this.

OK, according to the film here's the plan that someone apparently came up with to make $50 million dollars:

So we find a female flight engineer, living abroad, kill her husband and plant a bomb in his coffin. We then hope that woman decides to return to the US with her daughter the coffin is placed on the same flight as the woman and her daughter travel on. We further assume that nobody on the flight will see the mother bringing her daughter onto the plane and that there will be no video evidence of the girl before she boards the plane. Assume that at some point the mother will fall asleep giving us an opportunity to take the child, and again assume that nobody else aboard will see this. Put the girl in the hold and put a bomb near her.

Some people say modern cinema is creatively bankrupt. I have two words for these people: Karate Dog.

Not actually Unbreakable 2, but a trailer for another film about a "real" superhero - it's called Special, and there is a trailer online now. I thought it was interesting as it takes almost a 180 from the premise of Unbreakable. Unbreakable was really about a guy who didn't want to believe he was a superhero even when the evidence was right in front of his eyes. Special appears to be about a man who really wants to be a superhero, even though reality suggests otherwise.