Fantastic Four (2015)

"Its clobbering time!"

This may just possibly be the worst film I have EVER seen. It really is that bad, and it's depressingly clear that Fox only made the film to retain the rights- not the only time this has happened with a Fantastic Four film, unfortunately. You can certainly understand Marvel's disquiet.

So what's wrong with the film? Well, Reed Richards is blatantly too young; the character of Doctor Doom is mishandled in exactly the same way as the otherwise excellent 2005 film, portraying him as simply an arrogant scientist who may as well be American; and it does the bloody origin again, which is something I keep banging on about as something films should avoid as they're essentially just exposition and it's best just to skip to the action.

But what's truly unforgivable about the film, aside from the cast's utter lack of charisma, is that it utterly fails to do this. It's boring. Literally nothing exciting happens until the last ten minutes. It takes a lot to make a film about the Fantastic Four that's just dull, but this has managed to do it.

I suppose you could say that the film successfully conveys the horror of Ben Grimm's situation, and it's nice to substitute another dimension for cosmic rays, but this film has no other redeeming features. This is one to be watched only for the purpose of slagging it off in blogs, which is my way of trying to justify wasting my time on this dreck.

The Simpsons Movie (2007)

"I can't believe we're paying for something we get on TV for free. If you ask me, everybody in this theatre is a giant sucker. Especially you!"

See? Told you the blog lives! And it's way past time I did another movie. So, er, here's one.

Let's not pretend: this is The Simpsons, so obviously it's brilliant. Let's just take the gushing as read. I'm not going to pretend to not like 83 minutes of The Simpsons: that would just be silly. Also, I'm trying not to just make this review a list of funny bits from the film. Well, maybe a bit. I love the Green Day cameo, with band going down with their ship like the band on the Titanic, the "latest rock band to die" in Springfield. I love the fact that Springfield borders Ohio, Nevada, Maine and Kentucky. I love the tasteful sex scene with the adorable Disney-style animals, which is not as addled with bestiality as it sounds. I love "Why does everyone I whip leave me?" I love… that'll do.

There are lots of nods to the fact that this is a movie, of course. The opening titles are much swankier. The animation is posher, and the credits reveal that an army of South Korean animators was hired for this. The stakes are higher. The opening sequence with itchy and Scratchy makes a nice metatextual reference to the fact that this is a movie based on a TV show, and the Simpsons themselves talk over the closing titles. Maggie's first word is "sequel". But, in spite of all that, this is basically just a really long episode of The Simpsons. It doesn't look particularly different from the TV show, at least on the small screen. And that's no bad thing.

Of course, boring old politics rears its head a bit. America's indifference to the Environment gets a bit of a dig, as does the Big Brother surveillance society that's popping up everywhere these days. But this is essentially just 83 minutes of sheer fun, that throws a countdown in at the climax for the sheer Hell of it.