Let's just dive right into the cess pool this week shall we, with a look at the reviews for Dukes of Hazzard...we need a laugh.
Now you don't get a medal for predicting a one star review from James Christopher in The Times. It's a "a ghastly nightmare" according to Jimmy, "a catwalk of threadbare nostalgia, expensive smashes and craven greed", during which "several thousand police cars accelerate into trees or belly-flop into the nearest swamp."
Well, you can't say you were expecting much more.
According to Steve Rose's one starrer in the Guardian the "ethnically cleansed idyll of moonshine, bar-room brawls and barely enforced speed limits," are pretty loathsome, but there's "so much more to dislike about this film than casual racism":
The story is negligible, the humour is juvenile, and most of the cast are far less entertaining than their TV counterparts. The only survivors of this pile-up are the leads, Johnny Knoxville and Seann William Scott - both likable, natural comics having a lark with sub-standard material. Their final-credits out-takes are by far the funniest thing in the film.
Never a good sign.
Finally in the Independent, no prizes for predicting a third one star with Tony Quinn in particularly vitriolic mood: "What I most hate about these inbred Dixieland peckerwoods is the way they incline anyone with a brain towards the most po-faced PC response. Even without the racism and sexism it would be unutterable rubbish."
That's a pretty unanimous chorus of "Shit film!" then.
On to something possibly more worthwhile: The Intruder.
No, not the 1962 film about a racist William Shatner, this one is by "French auteur" Claire Denis and is billed as a bit of an arthouse puzzle.
Xan Brooks writing in the Guardian quite likes it and gives it three stars. " I'm still scratching my head over this one, but the itch is mostly pleasant," he says which doesn't make us want to watch the film as much as scratch ourselves.
There's a similar three star review in The Times, where James Christopher says you'll require "a big screen, several viewings and a keen mind," to enjoy the film and sums it up as "a lump of frozen intimacy with an alarm bell attached."
The Intruder gets its worst review in the Independent where it pick up two stars andQuinn dubs it "beautifully photographed but maddeningly opaque" and calls Claire Denis "one of art-house cinema's most overrated practitioners".
We're sure she loves you too Anthony.
Finally this week we've got The Mighty Celt (no, we're not going anywhere near The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants).
Peter Bradshaw isn't a fan of this 'Kes with greyhounds' picture, giving it just two stars because it's "sentimental and programmatic". Apparently the acting is good and the writer-director makes a good job of it...but "there is a disappointing lack of finesse in a script" (and Pete is bloody hard to please).
Although it's only another two stars in the Independent, where the main flaw is again the melodrama, which is poured on "as thick as an Irish mist.
The film does pick up three stars in The Times where James Christopher is a little more gracious, even though he calls the story "so slender it almost crumbles between your fingers". For him the "winning ingredient" is "how the lonely adults square their differences for the sake of the young boy".
In film news this week, the Goblet of Fire teaser trailer has been released; video game Halo is to be made in to a film with a script by Danny Boyle; and another game-to-film project Doom already has a trailer.
And looks at these stills for new Sam Jacxkson film Snakes on a Plane. Genius.
Our trailer of the week meanwhile, has to be the one for The Fog
