When Tim Burton decided to remake Apes in 2001, I was pretty certain it was a bad idea. By that time I absolutely got the original, and didn’t think it was something you needed to remake. I was right. I didn’t hate Burton’s remake, but I don’t think many people would describe it as being particularly good.

And so to Rise. When it was announced, it sounded like another terrible idea. A prequel? Hasn’t that been done? I didn’t hold out much hope. And then a particular person got attached to the cast list: Andy Serkis. When Serkis gets involved in any project I take notice, regardless of the medium. His work on the console game Enslaved is outstanding, he turns in a great performance in Heavenly Sword, and everyone is aware of what a great job he did working with Peter Jackson on King Kong and Lord of the Rings. He’s a great actor, a master of motion and performance capture, and seemed like a magnificent choice for McDowall’s modern day counterpart.

Put simply, Rise of the Planet of the Apes is the best film I’ve seen this year. Serkis is absolutely stunning under a layer of digital ape skin. Thanks to today’s performance capture technology, every facial twitch, subtle wrinkle of the brow, and expression of rage is translated directly into the digital portrayal. You can actually see Serkis underneath the layers at times, just like traditional makeup effects. It’s incredible to see.

Serkis isn’t solely responsible for Apes roaring success. The script is brilliantly understated at times, never insulting the intelligence, and sensibly taking its time to establish each character. Rupert Wyatt’s direction is confident and steady, and he knows exactly how to make the most of the effects. It goes without saying that he’s absolutely one to watch in the future. Patrick Doyle’s score is excellent too (the second time in recent weeks I’ve mentioned Doyle in a review actually).

My only minor complaint would be that James Franco doesn’t seem to be giving it his all. In a film where Serkis’ raw emotion is so powerful – the scenes with his digital ape and John Lithgow are incredibly moving, and there are similarly affecting moments where only Serkis and his digital apes are on screen – Franco seems to be irritatingly lifeless. You could argue that his character lacks the ability to react with suitably strong emotions, but at times I found his performance irksome. It’s not enough to ruin the film though, there’s more than enough life and emotion around him to compensate.

Supporting cast beyond Franco are all great. Let’s be honest, you’ve got to pay attention to any film with Andy Serkis, Brian Cox, and John Lithgow on the cast list. Freida Pinto doesn’t really make the role her own, but it’s a pretty thinly written character in the first place. David Oyelowo does a decent job as Franco’s boss, and Tom “Draco Freaking Malfoy” Felton is excellent as the abusive ape sanctuary worker (so much so that it took me a while to place him).

There’s also a raft of nods and in jokes to the original films, some of which are more welcome than others. There’s a pretty gratuitous use of a particularly famous quote from the original that really didn’t need to be there, but by and large the references are appreciated.

Rise then: a resounding success. Best film so far this year, a worthy Oscar contender when the time comes (here’s hoping it’s not overlooked), and a film you desperately have to go and see at the cinema.

The trailers didn’t do much to change that opinion. The first few looked bad. The later ones didn’t look as bad, but they didn’t exactly look good. And yet, as the theatrical release got closer, I started to get quite excited. Probably not because I thought it was going to be any good. More likely because it marks the start of the summer blockbusters, and the return of Marvel Heroes to our screens.

I could not have been more wrong. Thor isn’t just good, it’s Marvel’s best cinematic offering so far. It’s so incredibly well conceived, judged, and executed that all my previous fears seem rather silly in retrospect. What’s more, I was pretty confident of that fact roughly twenty five minutes of film, only a quarter of the way in. And it only gets better.

There are so many things to heap praise on, and so few things to criticise. The performances are, for the most part, excellent. Chris Hemsworth makes a great Thor, able to nail the transition from arrogant tosser to a hero you actually care about with skill. He has comic timing, looks the part, and shares great chemistry with co-star Natalie Portman. After Black Swan, Portman is chilling out a little here, having some fun, and makes an excellent Jane Foster. You can accept her character’s intelligence, and she’s genuinely attractive but not distractingly so.

Tom Hiddleston is also impressive as Thor’s brother Loki. He looks for all the world like a young Fassbender, and throws himself into the part with a real passion. Hiddleston probably has the most complicated role to play, and is totally convincing throughout. The rest of the supporting cast play their parts well, Ray Stevenson looks pretty goofy under all that hair but just about pulls it off, Stellan Skarsgård has some good moments but doesn’t get a lot of screen time, Clark Gregg is back as the essential Agent Coulson. But of all the supporting case, it’s Anthony Hopkins that surprises the most. Hopkins has a tendency to snack on the scenery when he’s allowed to. His “hilarious” turn in The Wolfman was just the most recent piece of mounting evidence in support of my theory that he was going to be dreadful as Odin. I’m pleased to report that I was wrong. Perhaps it’s Branagh’s direction (more on him later) but Hopkins is formidable as Odin. He’s commanding. He’s believable. He portrays absolute emotion with regard to his sons, and doesn’t chew a single piece of the scenery. It’s the best performance he’s turned in for years.

The one fly in an otherwise remarkable ointment, would be Jaimie Alexander as Sif. If I had to pick a weak link, it’d be her. I found her to be pretty wooden, unremarkable, and lacking any real character. Pretty much everyone else had their moments and managed to put their own stamp on the character. Alexander doesn’t achieve that. It may be down to the excellence of everyone else, as opposed to a real failing on her part though.

And so to Branagh. Who, for me, is the biggest surprise of the film. His direction is flawless. Big action set pieces are handled with confidence. Asgardian politics are elevated beyond silliness in costumes, and take on genuine dramatic weight. There are some absolutely lovely camera moves and shots. It’s all the work of a man with absolute vision, who knows exactly what he’s doing. Branagh was clearly born to direct Thor. I don’t know if he has a deep love of the source material, whether the excellent script helped, or whether he’s backed up by a great team, but I attribute a good portion of the success of the project to him. It would be remiss not to mention Patrick Doyle’s glorious musical score too, which unquestionably responsible for some of the film’s success.

Speaking of the team, the visual effects in Thor are some of the best I’ve ever seen. Not so much for their imagination and ambition (although they don’t really lack for either) but rather for their seamlessness. The Frost Giants, the film’s main antagonists, are executed brilliantly. Colm Feore (look him up, you’ll recognise him) channels Tim Curry’s Darkness for his part as the Frost Giant King Laufey. Asgard looks stunning. The costumes are all perfect and lack a single trace of silliness on the big screen. I spotted no irritatingly limp or bendy CGI actors, everything has a realism and weight that totally convinces. Even Thor in flight looks like he belongs.

There are pleasing classic Thor references, some nice potential setups for The Avengers, well judged comedy, the requisite Stan Lee cameo, and more besides. There’s real emotion here, a depth that the material’s origin might lead you to believe would be lacking. If you’re a fan of super hero movies, you need to see Thor. If you’re a fan of movies in general, you need to see Thor. Basically, in case you hadn’t yet got the idea, you need to see Thor.

Now, dearest Marvel executive types, please give Branagh the keys to the sequel. I wonder if I’ll be saying the same about Joe Jonhston after I’ve seen Captain America in a few weeks…

“It’s just, well, kind of nice”.

Pretty sure I said that coming out of Battle LA.

Ian (who, along with my father, is my regular cinema-going compatriot) laughed hysterically at that. I wasn’t trying to be funny. I was referring to the sentiment. If, hypothetically speaking, you were to jump out of a helicopter, wouldn’t it be nice to live in a world where your mates jump out with you? Wouldnt it be nice to live in a world where the simple knowledge that a) you are awesome, b) your country is awesome, and c) you’re a God damn hero God damn it, is enough to instill the confidence to take down an alien horde?

That’s kind of what you get with Battle: Los Angeles. And…it’s kind of nice.

Don’t get me wrong, the film has an absolutely terrible script and isn’t going to win any awards. Characters frequently state the bleedin’ obvious (or explain obvious plot developments for the slow people in the audience). Each marine in the film’s squad fits neatly into a classic stereotype or cliché (he’s getting married, his wife’s pregnant, he’s a rookie virgin, he’s suffering from post traumatic stress, etc). And there are moments of absolute, golden, unintentional hilarity.

On top of that, the pacing is totally out of whack, with an amazing ability to kill any and all momentum after each set piece.

But it’s the set pieces, for me, that really make the film. They’re tense, loud, brilliantly put together, and full of frantic energy. The aliens, too, are pretty cool. There are some nice touches and attention to detail that were lacking from last year’s craptastic Skyline. While on the subject, Skyline lacked hilarity of any kind, intended or otherwise too.

Aaron Eckhart reads every terrible line of dialogue like he’s going for the Oscar. It’s almost like he doesn’t know he’s making Independence Day meets Modern Warfare 2, he’s going for it, he loves his country just as much as his character and by God, he’s going to make the best God Damn recruitment video he’s ever made. It’s like he thinks he’s making a Hurt Locker sequel or something. He’s all stoic,macho, and troubled. But he can hug a child when he needs to. Oh yes.

The rest of the marines are fairly anonymous. Even Michelle Rodriguez fails to bring much to her character, likeable as she is. Fans of True Blood will be happy to see Hoyt get a big screen role, but disappointed that he gets to do very, very little. There’s also a massively wasted opportunity for a facial joke at Rodriguez’s expense. So many jokes, I thought, so little time.

It’s the lack of definitive personality that’ll probably put most people off Battle: LA. That said, I can see a certain demographic eating this up like apple pie, and cheering and “boo-yah”ing in all the right places.

But I really enjoyed it, despite its problems. It’s got great action, cool aliens, stuff to laugh at, and – if you’ll allow yourself to be swept along with it – a brothers-in-arms, we shall overcome attitude that, for one night at least, I found reassuring rather than nauseating.

I’m sure I’ll be back to normal tomorrow.

Halloween was a favourite of both my sister and mine ever since we were old enough to be allowed to watch it. Come to think of it, probably slightly before. They Live was on constant rotation in my teenage years. In The Mouth of Madness cemented an interest in Lovecraft. The Thing would these days rate incredibly highly in my all time list of favourite films, and those golden age Carpenter films will always have a place in my heart.

But then it seems in my adult life, Carpenter has gone badly off the boil. It’s not just him – Argento and Romero suffered the same fate. Past glories dancing out of reach for all of them. But it’s Carpenter, really, that my teenage self would really like to see bounce back. Vampires, Ghosts of Mars, Children of the Damned. They’re all massively below par for someone who has been described as a master of the horror genre.

Which brings us nicely to The Ward. Sorry, “John Carpenter’s The Ward”, to give it the full title treatment. I bloody hope Carpenter isn’t so proud of what he’s done here that he insists on adding his name to the title. But then, Alan Smithee’s The Ward doesn’t quite have the same ring to it.

Maybe suggesting that Carpenter attribute this to that famous alias man is a bit strong, but the more shit that the guy makes, the more distant that memory of Kurt Russel and Keith David seems.

The Ward involves a haunted psychiatric institute (situated in the US town of North Bend, prompting bad “round the bend” jokes to worm their way into my head every time we see the sign, which is a lot). The titular ward refers to a specially closed off area of the hospital, within which reside several teenage female stereotypes, and a homicidal phantom. All presided over by the sneering hospital staff.

Amber Heard arrives at North Bend’s finest within a few minutes of the film’s start (right after she burns down a building mysteriously) so we’re given precious little time to build up any kind of relationship before we being asked to give a shit about her. And I’d be willing to bet you probably won’t. But, before you can say “where’s she getting all that makeup in a loony bin” young Amber is off sticking her nose in, trying to work out why the asylum’s resident spook is bumping off inmates. Oh, and trying to escape. There is just so much mystery here, Scooby. And the film really wants you to know that.

In order to inject The Ward with all manner of classic terror and atmosphere, Carpenter reaches into his bag of cinematic horror tricks and produces…very little. It seems that his only two remaining cinematic horror techniques are 1) something I like to call “quiet, quiet, quiet, LOUD NOISE!” while 2) is “look over there, look over there, FOOLED YOU; SCARY’S OVER HERE!”. These “tricks” are used over and over, and you can predict when the latter is going to happen with almost surgical precision. Whenever it looks like something creepy is about to happen and the camera goes wandering off to the left of a character’s perspective, you can be almost certain old ghost face will pop up on the right, just after we centre back on the original camera position.

It’s embarrassing to see Carpenter falling back on such cliched horror tropes when he was capable of such subtlety and greatness back in his day. I always used to consider Carpenter the master of things happening in the background. Those things you thought you saw, but that might never have been there. All of which makes the use of loud noises to elicit jumps and scares incredibly juvenile and lazy for a “master”.

For some bizarre reason, the film finds itself set in the 60s, and I can’t quite work out why. It elicits a kind of Shutter Island-lite vibe that distracts more than it enhances. Amber’s stylish 60′s jeans, for example, or the way the girls decide to bust out some funky period moves when someone activates a record player (one of the film’s more horrific moments, actually).

Proceedings aren’t helped by a pretty terrible script. At one point, during an escape attempt, after narrowly avoiding an orderly, one of the girls says something like “He’s really angry”. If it’s an attempt at humour, it falls way short, and is probably the only time the film cracks a smile – it takes itself incredibly seriously. If it’s not, well…

There’s a soundtrack that sounds like one of those cheap cover albums trying to do Suspiria, all tinkly and mysterious but very, very shit. At least if Carpenter and Howarth did the soundtracks for these films then there might be something to enjoy.But surely there are some decent kills, right?

Wrong. Despite the involvement of gore maestros Berger and Nicotero, there are only a handful of actual kills, and none of them are original or well done. There’s not a great deal of gore at all on offer really. Admittedly Carpenter has never really been about explicit gore, but you’d expect something more imaginative than what’s on offer here. All the kills are carried out by an antagonist that’s so over exposed in the final reel that it starts to look completely rubbish. There’s also a physicality to the thing later in the film that becomes almost laughable. Finally, there’s an ending that will leave you cursing the last 90 minutes and wishing John Carpenter had retired a long time ago. I’m not going to spoil it here, but I hated it. It actually made me feel worse about the rest of the film, which is perhaps the most remarkable thing about the film.

If this really is the best that the once great director can manage, then he needs to stop embarrassing himself. I’d love to know whether he thinks this is some noble mystery tale that needs to be told, or some classic horror-mongering that deserves to be seen. Because, despite wanting to recapture the brilliant Carpenter moments of my youth, The Ward is nothing more than tired, unimaginative, straight-to-dvd horror. And there’s quite enough of that already.

I do look forward to the sequel though. It’s about an ex-TV superhero who is haunted by visions of Adam West. I don’t know about you, but I think “John Carpenter’s Burt Ward” could be amazing.