FILLMORE DISCOS 38

Hachiko: A Dog's Story (*****)
beautifully understated, heartwrenching film about a loyal Japanese akita - Richard Gere is wonderful in the role of the professor
who finds him at the station

Bandslam (*)
it's tragic to see VAH doing crap like this as director Graff forcefeeds us and the cast his utterly lamentable taste in music

Sherlock Holmes (*)
starring Sherlock Holmes in the role of Robert Downey Junior, this is one of the most embarrassing films of all time: RDJ and Jude Law are absolutely pathetic in the roles of Holmes and Watson, and the laughable mix of Matrix-style punch-ups and Dan Brown-esque plot devices transform Conan Doyle's original into a ludicrarse pantomime

The House Of The Devil (*)
diabolically awful, infernally inept

Midnight Movie (*)
laughably bad Z-movie horror - it'd seem the entire $500 budget was blown on the cheesy heavy metal opening credits

The Time Traveler's Wife (**)
kind of creepy (sadly, for all the wrong reasons)

Triangle (*)
yet another UK Lottery-funded film school dud - the plot is as all over the place as are the various attempts at US accents; Lottery ticket holders won't be comforted to see half their money going on relentlessly sucky films, the worst Olympic Games in history, and the collected papers of that war criminal Churchill

Cold Souls (*)
this 'soul' nonsense should have been rejected out of hand upon being submitted for production - the very best you can say is that Jim Carrey wasn't cast in the lead role

Up In The Air (*)
awful - predictable - George Clooney

Blood Creek (*)
Joel Schumacher ruins what could have been a fun outing with uber-corny po-faced dialogue

Interrogation (****)
Przesluchanie (to use its original title) is as interesting as much for its origins in Stalinist Poland (and thus unsurprisingly banned); Bugajski's and others' courage in making it cannot be overestimated - amidst the gloriously low-budget scenic fetishism, there is brilliant lampooning of the terrifying bumbling incompetence of a totalitarian state, rather than the stereotypical Orwellian brutal efficiency one's used to in books and movies

Torrente (***)
all in unbelievably crass taste, yet there's an underlying honesty about Torrente that, firstly, allows it to transcend the Spanish subcultural stereotypes it affectionately lampoons, and secondly, allows us to lol out loud

Ebola Syndrome (****)
completely sick OTT HK Cat III black humour - brilliant performance by Anthony Wong, who, with great vigour, carries the entire grisly proceedings

The Stepfather (****)
refreshingly believable classic 80s horror - nice Patrick Moraz soundtrack to boot

The Stepfather (*)
dreadful, pointless 2009 remake of the superb 80s original