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Men In Black 3

It’s not a sequel that needed to be made, but thanks to the charm of its leads and a tone that harks back to the wit and humour of the original, it’s a pretty enjoyable trip.

Bel Ami

The excellent female support cast saves this patchy effort, which is let down by its leading man and a flat screenplay.

The Dictator

A disappointing, often repulsive and mean-spirited mess of a film with seemingly only one real criterion on its agenda: to shock and offend.

The Woman In Black

Packed with atmosphere, this old-fashioned but deftly told ghost story delivers ample chills and thrills.

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Fright Night (3D) (Film)

by Mark Demetrius | September 13, 2011 11:57 | Edited September 13, 2011 11:59

Stripped of scares or laughs, and with too many vampire flicks saturating the market in the past few years, this remake is pretty much a waste of time.

Remakes can be superfluous at the best of times. Consider that (a) in this case, the original 1985 film was an ironic homage to vampire movies, something which had been done better many times before, (b) the vampire genre has since been flogged to death, and (c) this new version is in quite pointless 3-D - and the superfluity level goes through the roof.
     

Anyway, Fright Night is slick, effects-riddled schlock, hammy when not intended to be, and ineffective even in its own limited terms. The male lead - or at least the chief goodie - is Charlie Brewster (Anton Yelchin), a sixteen-year-old Las Vegas high school student. He's popular at school, and is crazy about his girlfriend, Amy (Imogen Poots). His mother (Toni Collette), meanwhile, is rather taken with the new next-door neighbour, Jerry. He's played by the usually impressive Colin Farrell, who compensates for an understandable apparent difficulty in keeping a straight face by being wooden. Jerry is rather charmless, witless and narcissistic, but these are the least of his defects, because he's also - no surprises here - a vampire. Charlie and his former school friend, Ed (Christopher Mintz-Plasse), are onto this fairly quickly, but of course, nobody believes them. And so the carnage and "recruitment" to the ranks of the undead begins. Charlie enlists the reluctant assistance of magician and supposed vampire killer, Peter Vincent (Doctor Who's David Tennant) but, really, you don't want to know...
     

There's a lot of ludicrously histrionic soundtrack music here, which actually detracts from the atmosphere, and there's precisely nothing unpredictable on offer from Australian-born director, Craig Gillespie (Lars And The Real Girl, Mr. Woodcock). Not for a minute is Fright Night either funny or scary. That's not too good in a comedy horror film.