Hanna

It's just over a year since a teenage girl with remarkable ass-kicking skillz blazed an expletive-laden trail across cinema screens and delivered a breath of fresh air to audiences bored of watching middle-aged men getting all the action. Thirteen months later, Kick-Ass's Hit Girl hands the baton to Hanna's Hanna, who stares at it blankly, fires an arrow through it then mumbles a nonsensical payoff line at it which nobody understands.

It's hard to see how Hanna wouldn't work: the story of a girl raised in the wilderness to be a ruthless assassin by Eric Bana (himself no slouch with the assassining stuff), then forced to go on the run, simultaneously hunting and hunted by hard-assed CIA bitch Cate Blanchett across continents, with some potentially devastating revelations about her own identity to discover along the way should be the perfect appetiser before the summer's main course of blockbusting action spectacugasms.

Unfortunately it's more like a fortune cookie: bland, hollow and with nothing useful or interesting to say. Saoirse Ronan can run and fight a bit, but her permanently expressionless chops never let us anywhere near her character; Eric Bana gets one spectacularly-shot and choreographed fight scene and not much else, while Cate Blanchett, one of the world's most overrated actors, is as unconvincing as her hair.

With Pride And Prejudice and Atonement director Joe Wright behind the camera you might expect some dramatic interplay or character depth, but instead you get a series of Chemical Brothers music videos linked by frustratingly unfulfilled scenes of potential interest (Hanna's sexual awakening is hinted at then forgotten about; the truth about her past is banal and irrelevant), a thread of incongruous comic relief from a British family in a motorhome, and the year's oddest casting in cuddly Tom Hollander as a sadistic hitman with an inexplicable wardrobe and neo-Nazi sidekicks.

Still, if it's a violent gore-fest you're after, Hanna is the film to see. Don't just take my word for it: the IMDb Parents' Guide tells you all you need to know.

Hit Girl must be shitting herself.

What Can Loosely Be Described As The "Top 10" Movies Of 2010

I say "loosely" because really only the top four or five have earned the right to be in my Top 10. The rest wouldn't be allowed within shitting distance of such a list in any other self-respecting year.

So here are The Incredible Suit's ten least worst films of 2010, presented in reverse order of least-worstness in a pathetic attempt to drum up some excitement as you make your way towards the bottom rubbishest movie of the year. Go enthusiasm!

TEN

A dull story about a bunch of wankers told with unmatchable style, wit and skill by one of the world's greatest living directors. David Fincher could direct a film of this blog and make it bearable. He's that good.
Lazy but easily marketable description for idiots: It's Revenge Of The Nerds meets The Net!

NINE

Not just "funny", but also "touching". I know because the internets said so. Julianne Moore and Mark Ruffalo for Best Everything at next year's Oscars.
Lazy but easily marketable description for idiots: It's Desert Hearts (or some other famous lesbian film) meets BBC1's My Family! But funny! And touching!

EIGHT

Satisfyingly engrossing murder mystery populated by well-written characters and directed with style and elegance. The exact opposite of its sequels.
Lazy but easily marketable description for idiots: It's Murder Most Foul meets The Seventh Seal (or some other famous Swedish film)!

SEVEN

You might need the novel as a guidebook, but this is an undeniably massive pair of quality funbags (thanks largely to Mrs Weasley) from start to finish. Not that it actually, you know, finishes as such.
Lazy but easily marketable description for idiots: It's Harry Potter meets Lord Of The Rings! In a tent!

SIX

Uneven but solid entertainment which should spawn a cracking sequel. Hit Girl is this generation's Ripley, only swearier.
Lazy but easily marketable description for idiots: It's Spider-Man meets Batman starring that potty-mouthed kid off of The Exorcist!

FIVE

Occasionally uncomfortable, often hilarious, always brilliant: it's THE FILM THAT TOOK THE WORLD BY SURPRISE! Or at least both of us who saw it. Good job, "marketing department".
Lazy but easily marketable description for idiots: It's Mrs Doubtfire meets Kevin The Teenager!

FOUR

Insanely high expectations may have led to initial disappointment, but this panoply of pixellated punch-ups comes out fighting with every repeated viewing. Quality Edgartainment.
Lazy but easily marketable description for idiots: It's Fight Club meets Grease!

THREE

Nothing new from Pixar, just the effortlessly perfect blend of action, comedy and drama that rival animation studios can only Dream of.
Lazy but easily marketable description for idiots: It's Toy Story meets Toy Story 2!

TWO

Minds were blown, brains were melted, eyes were popped. All of which made a terrible mess, but when it's this entertaining you really can't complain. Unless you're the one cleaning the cinema.
Lazy but easily marketable description for idiots: It's Dreamscape meets that episode of Scrooge McDuck they're all on about!

ONE

The greatest film about a box since The Box. Director Rodrigo Cortés sticks to pleasingly old-school filmmaking while Ryan Rodney Reynolds keeps it grounded. Grounded! Ah, deary me. *wipes eye*

Lazy but easily marketable description for idiots: It's Lifeboat meets Boxing Helena!

So off you pop, "2010". It was semi-nice knowing you. Byeeeeeeee!

The Iron Man 2 Manifesto

Hi! I'm Iron Man. Of all the films coming up in the blockbuster season of 2010, I'm here to tell you why you should watch Iron Man 2 rather than anything else, with my 7-point Iron Manifesto:

1. I pledge to get rid of my friend Rhodey from the first film because he was too interesting and a bit fat. My new Rhodey will be a slimline version who can easily fit into one of my spare suits, will immediately know how to operate the suit even though it took me about an hour of screen time in the first film, and will be entirely devoid of character so as not to show me up.

2. In fact I pledge that all my fellow characters will be as weak as possible so that I'm the only one anybody remembers. I'll waste Mickey Rourke and Sam Rockwell as rubbish one-dimensional villains, I'll give Scarlett Johansson a figure-hugging suit and one fight scene but nothing else and I promise to use the mighty Samuel L Jackson to turn up, deliver expository dialogue and bugger off again.

3. Despite having the most technologically advanced and downright incredible suit ever made, I pledge to resort to punch-ups in most of my fight scenes. If I do suddenly reveal a very cool laser that you've never seen before as - inexplicably - a last resort, I pledge to explain why I don't just use it all the time by muttering something about how it can only be used once. I also promise not to bore you with why that's the case.

4. I pledge to introduce an irrelevant subplot about how that thing on my chest that keeps me alive is also killing me, and furthermore I pledge to solve this problem with a further pointless subplot about my Dad which will be one of the most ridiculous contrivances in modern cinema.

5. Remember that cute scene from the trailer where Pepper Potts kisses my helmet (fnerk) and I jump out of a plane saying "you complete me"? Well I pledge not to include that in the film. I do, however, pledge to kiss her in a scene that is supposed to carry some emotional weight but is in fact about as emotionally charged as a tin can kissing a stick can be.

6. I pledge to include an obligatory final scene after the credits that means nothing to anyone except the most hardcore Marvel Comics fan.

7. Finally, I pledge to do absolutely nothing for the superhero genre, despite recent envelope-pushers like The Dark Knight and Kick-Ass, and I promise to do it with as vague a story and script as possible so as not to confuse the kiddlywinks.

So that's the Iron Man 2 Manifesto. I hope you'll choose my film as the one to spend a tenner on because we need all the cash we can to parp out another one of these in a couple of years.

Thanks!
Iron Man
x

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Happy Easter From The Incredible Suit!

Hope you find something delightful inside your eggs.

See you next Tuesday, as potty-mouth Hit Girl might say!

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Kick-Ass: Quite F***ing Good

The first thing to say about Kick-Ass is that, even if you are f***ing British and a southern f***ing softie, you MUST pronounce it "Kick-Ass" and NOT "Kick-Arse". If you choose the latter pronunciation you just look like a f***ing arse.

That settled, I can tell you that Kick-Ass is a f***ing rare thing: a f***ing good movie released in 2010, officially the worst f***ing year for films, like, for f***ing ever.

It's fun, it's funny, it's f***ing violent and it's got an 11-year-old potty-mouthed girl kicking the f***ing bejesus out of every motherf***er she comes by, and - to add f***ing insult to injury - calling them really f***ing rude names. I think as well as a stunt double she must have had a f***ing swear double to drop all those f***ing f-bombs for her.

In fact Chloe Moretz, as Hit Girl, is the best f***ing thing about Kick-Ass. The rest of the cast are fine - even Nicolas f***ing Cage is watchable, and the McLovin guy sensibly doesn't just do the f***ing McLovin thing all over again - but Moretz is f***ing ace. I did come over a bit Daily f***ing Mail when she was flinging a butterfly knife around, because I'm not entirely sure if it's OK to glamourise knives like that, but maybe I'm just being an old f***er.

Anyway despite some f***ing uncomfortable lurches from comic-book laffs to f***ing brutal beatings and stabbings, and a f***ing terribly directed rescue scene featuring an epilepsy-inducing strobe light, Kick-Ass is the most entertaining f***ing thing I've seen at the cinema this year. Although when its competition for that title is the likes of The F***ing Wolfman and Up In The F***ing Air, that's not much to f***ing shout about.

What Cineworld Enfield Did To Annoy Me This Time
Nothing, because I went to Vue North Finchley, who won bonus points for having no f***ing adverts before the trailers. I did, however, have to listen to a woman behind me say, after watching the f***ing brilliant Scott Pilgrim vs. The World trailer: "I ain't watchin' that shit".

What a c***.

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