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05 / 11 / 2008
Review: After the gruelling James Bond press junket tour, I bet Daniel Craig could use a Quantum of Solace.

02 / 11 / 2008
Fantasy Rally: The results from Rally Japan are in - just one rally to go and still the lead keeps changing! See how your team fared or see the Japanese rally results. Any of the top ten could still claim overall honours!

23 / 10 / 2008
Review: Brad Pitt steals the latest from the Coen brothers: Burn After Reading.

23 / 10 / 2008
Review: Simon Pegg learns How to Lose Friends and Alienate People.

23 / 10 / 2008
Review: Ben Stiller directs stars aplenty in Tropic Thunder.

12 / 10 / 2008
Review: A few words on some recent movies: RocknRolla,
Death Race,
Hellboy 2: The Golden Army,
Space Chimps,
Stuck,
The Babysitters,
Starship Troopers 3: Marauder,
Son of Rambow,
Jack and Jill vs the World,
Made of Honor,
Meet Dave,
Doomsday,
Pathology.

15 / 08 / 2008
Review: You can mess with Adam Sandler, but You Don't Mess with the Zohan.

15 / 08 / 2008
Review: Mike Myers tickles some chakras in The Love Guru.

14 / 08 / 2008
Review: Toot and come in, it's The Mummy: Tomb of the Dragon Emperor.

14 / 08 / 2008
Review: You can stop watching the skies now, it's The X Files: I Want to Believe.

31 / 07 / 2008
Review: Batman Began and now continues in The Dark Knight.

24 / 07 / 2008
Review: The Chronicles of Narnia continue with Prince Caspian.

23 / 07 / 2008
Review: Pixar goes Short Circuit with Wall-E.

22 / 07 / 2008
Review: Jules Verne never envisaged a 3D version of Journey to the Centre of the Earth.

09 / 07 / 2008
Review: Jet Li and Jackie Chan team up in The Forbidden Kingdom.

09 / 07 / 2008
Review: Will Smith keeps the streets safe and smelling of booze in Hancock.

09 / 07 / 2008
Review: M Night Shyamalan's latest, The Happening.

09 / 07 / 2008
Review: Spanish creepy-creepy The Orphanage.

09 / 07 / 2008
Review: A quick catchup of movies that don't get the full treatment:
Be Kind Rewind,
Street Kings,
What Happens In Vegas,
Superhero Movie,
The Ruins and
Teeth.

08 / 07 / 2008
Review: Bend that bullet Angelina! Wanted.

01 / 07 / 2008
Review: Those cats were fast as lightning - Kung Fu Panda.

24 / 06 / 2008
Review: Don't make Ed Norton angry - The Incredible Hulk.

24 / 06 / 2008
Review: Carrie and Big's wedding, it can only be Sex and the City.

11 / 06 / 2008
Review: Everyone's favourite pot-addicts are back in Harold and Kumar Escape from Guantanamo Bay.

04 / 06 / 2008
Review: Harrison Ford returns in Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull.

04 / 06 / 2008
Review: Tube driver seeks suicidal man in Three and Out.

18 / 05 / 2008
Review: CGI fantasy motor racing in Speed Racer.

18 / 05 / 2008
Review: Your creases will fly away with Iron Man.

18 / 08 / 2005
Sudoku! Have a go at the online Sudoku game.

Plenty more
See the rest of the reviews here.

National Treasure: Book of Secrets

Cast: Nicolas Cage, Diane Kruger, Jon Voight, Ed Harris, Helen Mirren, Harvey Keitel, Justin Bartha, Bruce Greenwood. Directed by Jon Turteltaub. Story: On the trail of more hidden treasure. Running Time: 2hrs 4 minutes. UK Certificate 12A.

I must admit I've become a little tired lately of finding new ways of saying movies are "pretty good, not great" and giving them 4/5. National Treasure: Book of Secrets neatly avoids this problem by being fucking terrible.

You may remember the first one - I said that it was a bad movie, but you'd love it, and most of you did. With Book of Secrets, however, the first time Cage instantly solves one of the obscure riddles you'll hear an audible collective scoff from the audience - "the clue is 'twins', Danny de Vito was in that, he was also in Throw Momma from the Train, what's the most famous train? The Flying Scotsman - so the treasure's in the sky over Scotland! To the hot air balloon!" OK, I made that up, but it's equally asinine. Whereas in the first movie the daftness was offset by some reasonably compelling drama, here it's monkey-brains to the core. Sequels are usually similar but amplified versions of the original, but they've amplified the wrong aspect - the implausibility - instead of the Indiana Jones you-could-do-this ethos.

With a script as painful as this, it's a major surprise to see some big names inflicting a vomit-stain on their CVs. Nicolas Cage, Diane Kruger, Jon Voight and Harvey Keitel all return, and oh my, that's Ed Harris and oh no, they've got Helen Mirren too! Much as I love watching her in her varied successes such as Calendar Girls and The Queen, in this cesspit of a movie it was a couple of scenes before I even figured out she was trying to do an American accent - maybe she was trying to distract us from the avalanche of sewage going on around her. I can only assume that the movie underwent a tumultuous development cycle, because there's no way these names would've signed up if the initial script was this bad. You expect when a sequel arrives without fanfare that it's going to be poor, because otherwise the studio would've been shouting about it, but Book of Secrets effortlessly limbos under the expectation bar in platform heels.

Now here's the thing. Despite the wholesale shittiness of the movie, I still predict it will garner more than its fair share of fans. I will grudgingly admit that the car chase in London's tight streets is quite fun, albeit riddled with the continuity errors you expect from half-arsed crap like this, and the Brit-bashing is mildly amusing, but for every step forward there are at least ten steps back. Every plot step is so utterly ludicrous that I was half-expecting the final clue to be branded into the president's arsehole, requiring Nic Cage to don a proctologist's white coat and persuade Mr President to flash the starfish.

National Treasure: Book of Secrets should remain buried forever. You need to believe in it to enjoy it, and compared to this, the evil bile spewed by Sally Morgan: Star Psychic seems quite plausible. If you're one of the lucky viewers with no imagination who enjoyed the first one, it'll entertain you in the same way, but I shouldn't think too many of those kind of viewer will be reading this, because you lovely people are smarter than that.

I enjoyed this film: 1/5

I think the average moviegoer will enjoy it: 3/5

Testosterone Satisfaction Rating: 2/5 - not as much as the original.

To enjoy this film you should: have no sense of disbelief to suspend.