Big Fish: That’s some good viewin’ there. Hard to describe what I liked about this. Probably simply the aura of Tim Burtonage. That guy is a genius.

The Incredibles: even better second time round! I saw it with Portuguese subtitles this time. The translation was sadly flat, as usual, but I noticed something very cool: all the in-film text (i.e. signs on doors, words on computer screens) had been translated too! I wonder if they re-animated the mouths for the dubbed version…

Ghost in the Shell: Not quite as good as Akira, and I have to say that even though The Matrix shamelessly rips this off, I prefer The Matrix. In fact, since Syndicate gets its aesthetics from this film, I have to put this down as one of those films that’s important more for what it inspired than what it was itself. Not that it’s bad. Absolutely worth watching at least once.

Oh yes, and there’s something faintly crappy about early 90s stuff which involves “cyberspace”. Ulch.

The Importance of Being Ernest: I’d never seen any incarnation of this before the modern Ealing one with Colin Firth, but older versions can’t possibly be much better than this. Absolutely stunning soundtrack for a period comedy-drama. I want a tuxedo for my birthday.

Passport to Pimlico: The first of three Ealing Stuios films I watched over Christmas. This one was Rather Good. It’s about the borough of Pimlico, London, seceding from Britain. Kind of a precursor to the Free State Project! Very light comedy by modern standards, but for a film from the 40s it’s held up well.

Hue and Cry: This Ealing comedy on the other hand, is Rubbish. Dull. Very dull.

The Titfield Thunderbolt: First saw this when I was in playschool. A classic, but perhaps that’s just my rose-tinted cataracts. Plot: the local train line gets shut down, so the locals buy it out. Polite British capers ensue.

Star Wars Original Trilogy DVDs: Ah, this is what Star Wars is about! The DVD editions look lovely, and some of the redone scenes are indeed improvements (the awful yuk-yuk song from the end of Return of the Jedi is gone now). Unfortunately, that psychotic hack Lucas has been at it again. Greedo shooting first yadayadayada. I don’t know why I’m writing anything; this has been reviewed and dissected and debunked far more comprehensively elsewhere.

Top Secret: Crap. Expected better from a Zucker-Abrahams-Zucker film. I counted about 4 good jokes in the whole film. It’s got a horrid cheap 70s look to top it off.

Team America: Brilliant fun. I imagine it will date horribly. The songs are funny the first few times, but nowhere near as good as the South Park ones. Constant homo-this-and-that, combined with evidence from South Park, makes me wonder if Trey and Matt are gay…

Gattaca: Saw it again recently. World’s greatest fictional documentary.

Ed Wood: Tim Burton can do no wrong, except for Planet of the Apes. And Johnny Depp can do no wrong full stop. Their powers combined, yet again, make a masterpiece. It’s a proper documentary, but manages to be as compelling as fiction without sacrificing too much truth. This inspired me to watch Plan 9 From Outer Space, but it really is as bad as they say, so I bailed after about 30 minutes.

Spirited Away: Weird. Beautiful to look at. Manages to be dreamlike without sacrificing internal consistency or being annoyingly arbitrary. I’ve never seen a better depiction of water on-screen, and I don’t just mean in a technical animation sense; it captures everything that water is about: fluidity, expanse, cleanliness, energy… it makes the film incredibly refreshing to watch. Random personal fact: I always, without exception, dream about water.

Repo Man: Wow, this is the ultimate 80s film! Punks, beaten up cars, a filthy Los Angeles, aliens, televangelists, crime, destruction, pseudo-Scientologists (”Diarrhetics”), cans of food labelled “Food”, and an inexhaustible mine of oneliners: “The more you drive, the less intelligent you are.”

Meet the Fockers: Went in with fairly low expectations, since Meet the Parents was juuuuuust this side of being cynical commercial trash. In fact, it was quite good. It did indeed have a ton of flagrant product placement (a living room with two iMacs?), and missed no opportunity to say the word “Focker” (L0Lz3rs!), but not even the weak script could bring down all the acting talent here. Dustin Hoffman in particular was a hero. Oh, by the way, Focker sounds like a rude word! ROTFLMPASAUO!

Raising Arizona: Excellent sort-of-fantasy film with very thin plot, like all Cohen brothers films - but of course the meandering plotlessness is part of the attraction. Not a belly laughing comedy, but what jokes it has are perfectly executed.

The Passion The Of The Christ: Better than I expected. Might’ve been really good if I considered organised religion a positive life-affirming force for good instead of an infectious mental illness. Still, the film makes an excellent case for the separation of church and state. It’s only anti-semitic if you’re one of those morons that thinks you are your ancestors. Unfortunately, most people suffer from this delusion, so I have no doubt that some monosyllabic skinhead will smash his pint glass down in outrage, fling his knuckles up into the air, declare “Cai-phus bad! Cai-phus Jew! There-fore Jew bad!”, and launch himself into a frenzy of slavering hate.

Er, as for the film, there were several surprises. It features Satan! And Satan is a woman (of course…)! In fact it features a weird androgynous baggy-eyed Satanette in a dark hooded cloak. Could easily pass for Darth Satan, which as far as villain names goes, is about as badass as you can get. Only Dr. von Darth Satan would be better.

Pontius Pilate is quite well constructed. He’s got an anatomically correct moulded metal bat-breastplate! Unfortunately Jesus is the only person in the film with superpowers, and even then the worst thing he does is stomp on a snake, which is quite cold for Jesus, IMHO, even though it had just been deployed from Satan’s aforementioned avatar.

And yes, it came out in the space year 2004, so it actually does have several utterly gratuitous CG effects, including a snarling demon that jumps out for a split second, which is an unbelievably cheap schlock-horror stunt for a serious film like this to pull.

All in all, it’s worth seeing if you are a Christian. Otherwise, probably not, unless you like a bit of the old ultraviolence, which all of us atheists obviously do. Speaking of which, I’m off to murder shopkeepers, burn bibles and flip off grannies! Cheerio!