FILLMORE DISCOS 19

When a film as unexpectedly brilliant as Revolutionary Road comes along, it makes sitting through utter mince like The Wackness, Bottle Shock, Blindness et al. seem a LOT more tolerable.

Revolutionary Road (*****)
if you've got the emotional fortitude and courage to witness happen - right before your eyes - the tragic unravelling of a marriage and the shared dreams within, then don't dare miss out on this; universally compelling performances and the highest production values, along with Mendes' fine eye for detail, all combine to make this moving, nay devastating, film a timeless classic

The Wackness (*)
dreary dreary rubbish: firstly, there's the insanely annoying and intrusive soundtrack - not that the music's that bad, but that it just will not stop and is such a blatant lazy device for keeping it all 'real'; secondly, the goofball philosophy and chump lifestyle/relationship advice that is flung around for fun; thirdly, Kingsley acts like a prize ham, and the rest of the cast is just plain weak

In The Electric Mist (*)
turgid beyond belief - even when you can make out the occasional word that Tommy Lee Jones mumbles

Bottle Shock (*)
based on a genuinely interesting true story but totally undermined by the Dukes Of Hazzard caricaturing and xenophobic undercurrents - it's actually put me off drinking Californian wine

Lakeview Terrace (**)
Jackson's screen presence is captivating and the photography is unusually pleasing, but that aside and despite superficial references to social issues, this is a bog-standard neighbour-from-hell thriller with uniformly unlikeable characters and an overblown ending as inevitable as it's possible to get; for the relevant social commentary, refer to Cassavetes' 1959 classic Shadows

Religulous (*****)
Larry Charles' follow-up to the outrageous Borat sees Bill Maher travelling the globe meeting religious zealots of all flavours: far-removed from say Dawkins' creepy intellectual machismo, Maher is always likeably funny, smart, and hits a lot of targets; of course, he's preaching mostly to us converted, yet the bit about America's founding fathers was, to me, a real revelation (pun already regretted); and what is for the most part 90 minutes of fast-paced scary laughs culminates in a heartfelt and surprisingly moving monologue; it's also noteworthy that questioning the historicity of Jesus is beginning to enter mainstream debate

Blindness (*)
damn, another couple of hours of my life down the pan - 3rd rate sci-fi exploitation movie dressed up as social allegory, where the allegory is pretentious and simplistic, and the exploitation totally unfulfilling - think 28 Days Later, except even worse than that particular gubbins was; it doesn't help that Julianne Moore, in the central role as survivor of the blindness epidemic, is such a deeply unappealing woman