Why I (Mostly) Quit Writing on the Internet: Hit-Baiting, Churnalism and Reactionary Bollocks

At the start of the year I said that, at some point in the future, I might write a post here about how I fell out of love with wanting to be a full-time movie critic/"journalist" and why I basically stopped maintaining this blog with anything like the frequency of the first two years. I hadn't bothered to do so to date because that's obviously a very self-indulgent thing to do, even by blogging standards, and - quite honestly - who cares about why I decide to do anything? Yet over the past couple of days, in the run-up to the (in gamer circles) highly anticipated release of Grand Theft Auto V, I've started receiving (not entirely unjustified) negative comments on Twitter and elsewhere about an article I wrote on the game for a reasonably widely-read pop-culture website nearly two years ago - which people are obviously coming across on Google now that the game is a hot topic once again.

Basically, I wrote a self-consciously inflammatory piece about the upcoming game long before any footage or screenshots of it had been released (a fairly douchey thing to do, I know), basically outlining a series of flimsy, uninformed and troll-baiting reasons why it would be terrible. I'll get around to explaining why in a moment, because that's sort of the most important part of this whole saga.

That article, which solicited (arguably deservedly, in this instance) typically morale-boosting comments like "wow. That's the worst article I've ever read", was not entirely motivated by snarky cynicism as I originally conceived it: at first I was genuinely interested in having a reasonable discussion about how I feared growing negative feeling about GTA IV, which (somewhat against the grain of fandom) I like and consider a huge step forward for the series, could lead to developer Rockstar taking a backwards step, just as their best-selling series had started to mature. I worried we'd see something more shallow, less focussed and a return to the kind of knock-about, irreverent shenanigans of earlier games in the series. This was me post-The Dark Knight but before The Dark Knight Rises: when the idea of something being dark and grounded had more currency for me than it does now, trite as it's become. But, if I'm honest, I always knew GTA V would turn out to be a polished, entertaining product and that it'd probably be a great game well worth looking forward to.

The finished game, out this month, may or may not have ended up like I feared, though I'm sure it's a lot of fun regardless. (To be honest, I don't really have time to play games to the extent that I used to and don't really care one way or the other about GTA V.) But the article could have been, in theory, a reasonable piece of commentary saying "I fear [X], but on the other hand [Y]". The troll-baiting snarkyness came from trying to be something I'm not: it came from pressure to attract those all-important "hits" that generate the ad revenue necessary for website owners to make money. Which had just become my problem for the first time.

You see in the run-up to writing that article I had gone from working for the site completely for free - as many young writers, hungry for opportunity are happy/compelled by a penny-pinching industry to do - to being made a sort of sub-editor told that I stood to make X-hundred numbers of pounds per week depending on the number of hits I attracted to the site. At first I attempted to meet this responsibility as I'd always naively imagined it: idealistically commissioning what (I thought) were "worthy" articles about film-making and wider pop-culture (as per the remit of the site). Mostly celebratory, labour-of-love stuff about the wide array of things the site's huge pool of (volunteer) writers were passionate about, from comic books to arthouse movies to sport.

Alas, these things weren't at all compatible with an economic model based around attracting hits via search engines and, for one miserable week, I was spending from 8am to 10pm hunched over the computer with little to show for it - creatively or fiscally. It was an uphill struggle to get good quality work on that site (from people working for free), not made any easier by the fact that new content arrived so fast it tended to push less popular items off the front page within an hour or so of publication - quickly dooming less bombastic pieces to the archive.

In short: "10 Reasons Why [X] Will Suck" is worth more to such a site than something more nuanced and reasonable. If you wonder why online discourse is frequently so antagonistic and perpetually ALL-CAPS shouty, the blame doesn't lie solely with angry readers, hatefully abusing their anonymity: editors encourage articles that solicit this response because they get people talking. Because people share them on Facebook and Tweet about them and thus attract more hits, bringing in more revenue. Navin R. Johnson came to a similar realisation in 'The Jerk'.

Hence the reasonable article I originally planned on never appeared. It didn't have a title that would work with Google or anything like enough punchy bullet-points to sustain the casual engagement of the imagined skim-reading public. To be clear: I'm not blaming this on the editor/site owner at all. The article was my idea. I pitched it and I ultimately made it sensationalist crap. But I did so because I was worried about getting enough hits to get paid. Volume of traffic is what counts and not the quality of it. To put it into context, so you don't assume I'm a money-grabbing-shyster who'd do anything for a quick buck, the sort of articles I like to write frequently attracted only a couple of hundred hits each.

These were, quite often, interviews with directors and actors which required hours of preparation, travel up to London, then several more hours transcribing words from a scratchy dictaphone (not fun at all), before then writing and formatting a finished article. And then you get a few hundred hits if you're lucky - at least on the site I wrote for (we're not talking The Guardian here), which was at that time dominated by share-friendly list articles proclaiming the "10 best this" and "100 worst that". In contrast my terrible article on GTA V currently has several hundred thousand views, over a hundred comments and lots of all-important "re-Tweets" and "shares". These are stats which make me sad about the state of online journalism and made me increasingly reluctant to want to devote much more of my life to it, because they actually highlight an existing disincentive to spending the time it takes producing work of quality.

Be honest: if your income was directly linked to how many hits you attracted, would you spend a considerable part of your working week posting an interview with Werner Herzog or Noah Baumbach that ten people care about, or would you spend the equivalent time bashing out a dozen terrible list articles that will each attract several hundred times that of an interview and take minimal time/brain power to write (at least when done badly by me)? It's that question I didn't want to have to answer any more, basically.

Now the circumstances leading up to the creation of my article, which was merely lazy and cynical rather than outright offensive, weren't the only reason I stopped wanting to write in this field on anything like a professional day-to-day basis. I also didn't appreciate being asked to effectively re-type other site's news stories, which - alongside lists - was part of that site's bread and butter in the absence of any actual investigative journalists. The embarrassing and ethically questionable practice I've seen described as "churnalism". Then there was the day, shortly before I left, that I received a mass e-mail asking for submissions from the writing pool for an article about the "top 100 babes" or something similar. Which is gross.

But probably the worst thing I came across was during the London riots. As they unfolded live on TV - as several decades of disenfranchisement of the inner-city poor and ethnic minorities created a sorry, pointlessly destructive spectacle of raw human ugliness - I was horrified (not a word I use here lightly) when one of the site's owners excitedly sent round an e-mail soliciting articles about the best weapons to use on rioters (I seem to remember tear gas was a suggestion), hoping to cash-in quickly on the turmoil. I can imagine the same guy suggesting an article with the title "10 Weapons We're Excited To See Dropped On Damascus!" That I didn't quit writing for them that instant remains a source of shame, but you're always reluctant to burn professional bridges when you're just starting out and I was grateful for many of the opportunities the site had given me in the past. I suppose I'm bridge-burning right now, though I've tried to do so without causing undue embarrassment or offence to anybody involved.

So yeah, I wrote a stupid article about something I didn't care that strongly about in an attempt to impress my boss, earn some money and subsidise dead-end articles about things I actually do care about. It's not something I'm proud of, but at least I stopped doing it very quickly and I haven't done it again since. Now you know why I fell out of love with doing this stuff. I hope it was worth your time! Thanks for reading.

'Upstream Color': review

In order to satisfy a verbal contract I've made with myself, I try to write something amounting to a "review" of every film I see at the cinema. For that reason I feel obliged to write a little bit about the universally acclaimed 'Upstream Color' - written and directed by its star Shane Carruth, who also provides the music. For what it's worth, it was a film I was really looking forward to. It's the story of [anybody's guess really, Google one of the many detailed descriptions if you're curious]. You probably gather by now that the film did nothing for me. In fact I'm willing to admit I didn't follow it very well at all, either on a plot level or as a metaphor, so oblique was it - hence my reluctance to spend much time talking about it. Apologies if you came here genuinely seeking some sort of proper analysis.

Friends of mine who did enjoy it have since directed me to pages devoted entirely to explanation of its themes and basic story, but I gain nothing from that, personally. For me, the film needs to speak for itself and needs to make me feel something. Or maybe it doesn't? Who's to say you can't make films catering to a very specific niche of people, and with little regard for or interest in a bulk of the audience? Perhaps there's a place for 'Upstream Color' and plenty of hardcore Thoreau fans out there to lap it up. Certainly lots of people I trust seem to think it's one of the best of the year. It's just not for me, I guess.

'The Way, Way Back', 'Elysium' and 'Planes' (sort of): review round-up

'The Way, Way Back' - Dir. Nat Faxon & Jim Rash (12A)

The words "Twentieth Century Fox Searchlight presents" or (better still) "from the makers of 'Little Miss Sunshine'" rarely herald something good. There's a certain quirksome, brightly coloured, ensemble cast-powered American Indie - usually with a sun-faded blue and yellow poster - that comes out every year bearing these stark promotional slogans (or warnings, as I call them). They usually have boring-straight-man-Steve-Carell in them somewhere ("I'm an actor!", these appearances seem to scream) and Alison Janney is never far away - though she's completely superfluous in the latest of these jangly guitar music laden monstrosities, 'The Way, Way Back', which adds to the feeling that a perfunctory box ticking exercise has informed some of the decision making from writers-turned-directors Nat Faxon and Jim Rash.

This one can be summed up as being about a kid (Liam "one expression" James) who is entirely miserable and unsympathetic in the face of constant, unearned kindness and compassion from almost everyone he meets. Sam Rockwell runs a water park and wants to be this kid's best friend, for... reasons, I guess. It's never clear why. He just starts following him around and smiling at him in a way that should register as creepy. Likewise, everyone at the water park - customers and employees - loves him. Amanda Peet wants to dance with him. Alison Janney is desperate for her son to be friends with him, while her daughter (the three first-name sporting AnnaSophia Robb) is equally desperate to be his summer girlfriend, hanging around looking longingly at him in spite of his clear lack of social graces and charisma.

The cherry on the cake here is that he hates his mother's (Toni Collette) new boyfriend (Carell), as children his age are liable to do. But whereas most kids in his position form an irrational hate they can't reasonably express about a person who's probably decent enough, this kid actually has sees first hand evidence that this guy is a douchebag and gets to shout about it at a garden party - re-framing the story from "angsty teen who needs to grow" to "crusader teen who knows better than the grown-ups about everything".

He should be a sympathetic character. We've all been awkward, moody teenagers. But this kid is his own worst enemy in a world that's throwing nothing but well-intentioned metaphors and sunshine in his direction for the most part... and he doesn't even really learn anything or change at all by the time the credits roll. He enters the film a moody, entitled little shit and exits the film in the same fashion. At the start Carell tells the kid he's a 3/10 and that he needs to put himself out there more and smile occasionally. Well, this is the story of a kid or goes from three to, charitably, a four and a half over an hour and forty minutes that will have you thinking "shit, even Sam Rockwell is bad in this" and "did these guys really write 'The Descendants'"?

'Elysium' - Dir. Neill Blomkamp (15)

It isn't 'District 9' but Neill Blomkamp's follow-up is as ambitious and imaginative as it is clunky. There's a lot of ham-fisted, panto-quality, over-acting involved - notably from Brazilian actor Wagner Moura as "Spider" and Jodie Foster, who seems to be playing a Disney villain in a film happening in her own imagination - while the childhood flashback sequences are a bit cheesy and obvious and, I'll concede, its movement between irreverent, splatter-gore comedy and cloying, string-music backed scenes of children on crutches in peril speak of a tonal mishmash. But it's also got some decent dystopian world building and spectacular design work, as well as some interesting politics for a mainstream blockbuster - with our hero, Matt Damon, framed as an insurgent against the robot drones, unhinged mercenaries and satellite surveillance footage of the film's privileged bad guys - white, wealthy elites living far above a shanty town and predominantly Hispanic Los Angeles in the shiny, clean space station paradise of the title.

The man who once nearly directed a Halo movie, based on the Microsoft video game, continues to borrow heavily from recent sci-fi hits of that medium - notably with elements of Mass Effect and Halo itself. There're some very video gamey future-weapons too, and the plot sees Damon effectively level-up into an augmented mech warrior for some hi-octane fight scenes against Sharlto Copley's crazed henchman that make me question whether I'd rather be playing 'Elysium' than watching it. But it's a solid and entertaining action movie with ideas and a high-concept, so overall I'm enthusiastic about it despite a great many shortcomings.

'Planes' - Dir. Klay Hall (U)

Now, I can only kind of review this - so take my opinion with a greater than usual pinch of salt - but I took my aviation-obsessed 2 1/2 year-old brother to see 'Planes' and he got bored after about 15 minutes, and we left the screening after 30. So I haven't seen the entire movie and usually wouldn't give too strong an opinion based on that. However, I wanted to note that this movie seemed to fail with its target audience: on a plane-mad toddler who will patiently watch actual YouTube footage of a helicopter take off with wide-eyed glee for a very uneventful ten minutes. Sadly, he just couldn't be bothered with the exploits of Dusty the Cropduster and I can't really blame him.

From my end I can only say it's very clear that the film was produced by Disney's straight-to-video people and not by Pixar. It's flat, not particularly detailed and the animation lacks finesse. And, on top of that, it's basically a re-make of the first 'Cars' with a less flawed, more bland central character. That's right: a re-make of 'Cars' made by less talented people. Shudder.

'Alan Partridge: Alpha Papa': review

'Alan Partridge: Alpha Papa' - Dir. Declan Lowney (15)

It's a familiar story by now: the successful UK TV sitcom - usually a small-scale, charmingly parochial comedy of manners or subtle character study - gets blown up to epic proportions for cinema screens, in a way that can't help but detract from what made the series work in its original form. That's not to say many of these films aren't fun to watch, especially for fans deprived of fresh TV episodes, but this tried and tested formula rarely results in anything that holds a candle to the small-screen original.

'The Inbetweeners Movie' could be held up as a good example of this well-worn trope working well: that film taking its teenage cast on a summer holiday to Crete is completely in keeping with the characters and the result is something very much in the spirit of the show. Though perhaps Armando Iannucci's 'In the Loop' does the best job of maintaining the spirit of its source, BBC TV series The Thick of It, in spite of transporting the back-room dealings and ineffectual PR spin antics of its British cabinet minister to Washington, DC. So, on a first glance, it would seem a shame that another Iannucci TV creation would be catapulting themselves rights over the shark on their debut big-screen outing.

'Alan Partridge: Alpha Papa' - a new vehicle for Steve Coogan's long-running character co-created with Iannucci (among others) for radio comedy On the Hour, and the star of several TV series and specials since - sees the middling local radio DJ caught up in a hostage crisis and forced to become an unlikely negotiator between disgruntled, shotgun-toting DJ Pat Farrell (Colm Meaney) and the East Anglia police force. It seems like a set-up slightly off-kilter with the former chat show host's world, as gleaned over the years in shows like I'm Alan Partridge, but it doesn't play that way in practice. Happily this movie Partridge is as nuanced as ever and - though there are some broader moments to satisfy the film's wider audience - all the best moments stem from the character's trademark small-minded asides and from little character moments: for instance as he bemoans people who insist on keeping eggs in the fridge.

Fan favourite characters like troubled, ex-army Geordie Michael (Simon Greenall) and beleaguered, unappreciated personal assistant Lyn (Felicity Montagu) also benefit from nice, little bits of business which are simultaneously funny and which enhance these already rich characters - from Michael's revelation that he sleeps in a cupboard because "sometimes me brother wants the whole bed to himself" to Lyn's heartbreaking reaction to the fact that somebody is going to make a cup of coffee for her. For his part, as the nominal antagonist, Meaney's Pat is another subtle and surprisingly developed character, worthy of as much sympathy as derision - making him a fitting addition to the ensemble.

There are a few times when it falls a little flat in translation to a feature film format, with some gentle parody of Hollywood movies that comes off like B-Team 'Hot Fuzz', but for most of its length 'Alpha Papa' feels like a very good episode of the TV series. For some that might seem like an example of damning with faint praise but, as a fan of the character, nothing could be further from the truth. It's nice to spend an hour and a half with the infuriating, selfish, egotistical character that is Alan Partridge: rooting for him against our better judgement and sometimes even finding yourself touched by that ever-present, underlying sense that somewhere inside he's all too aware of his inadequacy. There's something very humane and humble about Coogan's Alan Partridge: on one level a figure of fun and a satirical assault on middle aged Top Gear viewers everywhere, but on another a strange testament to empathy and understanding of even the most wretched people.

'From Up On Poppy Hill', 'Only God Forgives' and 'Blackfish': review round-up

Not seen a lot of movies of late, but here's a round-up of some recent cinema trips. I won't review 'Red 2' (above) - because I only saw the first half - but thought I'd mention the fact that it was (from what I saw) so empty, lifeless and insipid that it was the catalyst for my second ever walk-out. Everyone, most especially Bruce Willis, was just going through the motions. Mary Louise Parker was watchable enough, but the constant misogynistic comments about her from Willis ("you don't give the girl a gun!" and "you don't bring the girl along on a mission!"), whose character talks about her to others constantly whilst she's standing right there, were grating to say the least. I'm sure Willis' character learns some valuable lesson about trust and/or sharing by the film's end, but I couldn't face another 45 minutes waiting for a grown-up to learn that women are people too. Anyway, it just wasn't funny, it was really slow, the action was deathly boring and at one point there was a lingering close-up of a tube of Pringles. There are obviously worse films, but very few are this lacklustre.

The first film I ever walked out of? Since you asked, I couldn't stomach Richard Curtis' interminable 'The Boat That Rocked' - even though I had been allowed to watch it whilst on the clock at a cinema. I was having such a bad time with that one that I left to go and Brasso some door handles instead. One major reason for this was that I'd just encountered a comic scene in which a man committed statutory rape - sneaking into bed with a woman in the dark, pretending to be her partner (which I felt was less "cheeky" than it was "creepy" and "sexual assaulty"). But the main reason was that I checked my watch, expecting to be halfway through this 135 minute epic, to find I'd been sat there for only half an hour. Just over an hour and a half left to go! No thanks, Curtis. No thanks.

'From Up On Poppy Hill' - Dir. Goro Miyazaki (U)

A colleague of mine aptly described this one as "minor Ghibli", and it certainly is one of the less significant entries in the Japanese animation house's filmography, but that's not to say it isn't entirely pleasant from start to finish. It's gentle, charming and life-affirming without being overly cheesy. It's also a damn sight better than director Goro Miyazaki's (son of Hayao) first attempt following his move from landscaping to filmmaking: the uncharacteristically dull and unpolished 'Tales From Earthsea' - sections of which felt like limited TV animation and a far cry from the finesse of 'Spirited Away' or 'My Neighbour Totoro'. The animation here is much better, though still not up there with the work Miyazaki senior or Isao Takahata, Ghibli's other master - responsible for the studio's most mature (less magical) works 'Only Yesterday' and 'Grave of the Fireflies'.

'Poppy Hill' - adapted from a 1980 manga by Tetsurō Sayama and Chizuru Takahashi - is a wistful and nostalgic 60s-set story about two school kids who fall in love only to find that they are likely brother and sister: both having the same sea-faring father, who perished during the Korean War. This small-scale character-driven plot runs against the backdrop of more typically active movie fare, as the kids try to organise the student body to persuade the authorities not to demolish the old clubhouse and replace it with a newer building, in a rapidly developing Japan looking to eradicate reminders of its recent history. The clubhouse - home to a myriad of wacky extra-curricular activities, all taken extremely seriously by the student body - is reminiscent of something out of Wes Anderson's 'Rushmore' and is as fun a place to be as that suggests.

Perhaps the story reaches an all-to-sudden and convenient conclusion in the last few minutes, but it's genuine and heartfelt and difficult to be too cynical about. Filler until the next big Miyazaki masterpiece, maybe, but there are less winsome ways to spend an hour and a half.

'Only God Forgives' - Dir. Nicolas Winding Refn (18)

Hmmmmmmmm. And there I was thinking the last collaboration between Danish director Nicolas Winding Refn and star Ryan Gosling was all style and no substance. Well, say what you will about the hipster-baiting self-styled "instant cult classic" 'Drive', but compared to 'Only God Forgives' it's a nuanced character study and a hi-octane crime thriller of the highest order. This one sees Gosling play an American living in Bangkok, who runs a boxing club and whose nose is put very slightly out of joint when a cop allows a victim's father to kill his murderous rapist brother. The main thing you need to know about this character is that he looks pretty good in a suit - choosing to fight whilst dressed like a particularly trendy barista.

At my weary, bored-to-tears best estimate, around 80% of 'Only God Forgives' consists of Gosling sitting in the semi-darkness, staring into the middle distance, somewhere off camera (a friend suggested somebody on-set was waving something colourful) emoting nothing at all. Ignoring the bit where he shouts at a prostitute in a slightly weedly and accidentally comic way, his acting range in this film goes between expressions of acute indifference all the way up to moderate contemplation. There's a method writers employ to assess whether their characters are fully formed which requires them to be able to describe any given character without mentioning the way they dress or what they do for a living. Try doing that here, with any of the characters, and get back to me if you manage it. And "has penis-envy of his brother and wants to fuck his mum" doesn't count, because the film just outright, explicitly tells us that (several times) via Kristen Scott-Thomas in her ground-breaking against-type role as middle-aged-women-who-says-cunt.

Vithaya Pansringarm plays a brutal cop that many are calling the highlight of the movie, but this is another non-character. Or at least it's a movie stock character: a walking cliché - the violent killer with a code, whose capacity for ultra-violence sits in contrast to a peculiar affectation and/or hobby (in this instance karaoke). This character has been in every Quentin Tarantino film ever made, for instance. Where the film appears to think it has something to say is in relation to the Oedipus complex: it's all tracking shots down red hallways, Gosling's disgustingly literal urge to return to the womb, his apparent lust for his mother and the detail that he apparently murdered his father. But what the film is saying about all this is beyond me. In 'The Man Who Wasn't There' ace lawyer Freddy Riedenschneider tries to bamboozle a jury by claiming they should not look at the facts but the meaning behind the facts, and that the facts have no meaning. He might as well have been reviewing 'Only God Forgives'.

As a visual/sensory exercise though, it's obviously a piece of world-class work - the stuff of a real virtuoso. As with 'Drive' and 'Bronson' (the one Refn film I uncomplicatedly like) before it, 'Only God Forgives' shows Refn as a supremely visual storyteller and a real stylist. I eagerly await the next time these qualities once again combine with the urge to tell an actual story of some substance.

'Blackfish' - Dir. Gabriela Cowperthwaite (15)

I write this every time I review a documentary, but it's difficult to separate what you think of the film's point of view from the quality of the film itself. Especially when said film is such a polemic, highlighting facts and cherry-picking interview subjects to arrive at a previously determined conclusion (however valid said conclusion might be). In this case, I overwhelmingly agree with the basic premise of and majority of the arguments in 'Blackfish': for what it's worth, I think the process of gathering cetaceans for commercial use is cruel and the evidence seems to suggest that life in captivity is detrimental to the animals' well-being.

That said, I don't think 'Blackfish' says anything that 2009's 'The Cove' didn't say far better and in a more slick and cinematic way that better delivers that point to an audience. 'The Cove' also looks at the subject in a much broader way - considering international whaling lobbyists, the anti-whaling movement and other things - whereas 'Blackfish' looks at SeaWorld very specifically. Aside from specific accounts of incidents at SeaWorld parks, involving the injury and death of employees working with orcas, I didn't find it particularly illuminating. It also takes a lot of things for granted and doesn't hold its subjects, mostly former SeaWorld employees, up to any amount of scrutiny. For instance, non-scientists make statements such as "scientists are reluctant to say whales have language but it's clear they have language" which go wholly unsubstantiated in the film and, at one point, one of the most vocal collaborators confesses "I know nothing about whales".

For those in the dark about the issues raised here, it may be a far better and more effective piece of filmmaking than I found it to be. It's a laudable and worthy film, for sure - and I hope a lot of people see it, as it could do some tangible good in the world (apparently it's already caused Pixar to re-write the end of their 'Finding Nemo' sequel) - it doesn't tell you anything you couldn't glean from skim-reading a couple of Wikipedia articles. However, it should perhaps be required viewing for those thinking of visiting a SeaWorld water park.

'The World's End' and 'The Wolverine': review round-up + Interview with 'Frances Ha' director Noah Baumbach

My laptop went and broke the other day, so that's why (or, should I say, the latest reason why) I haven't been updating. Got a quiz to write for tonight (if you're Brighton-based, and fancy a challenge, get to Dukes at Komedia for 6.30ish), so I'll keep this short.

First up, I did an interview with director Noah Baumbach a little while ago for What Culture. That's available to read online here. Next up, reviews:

'The World's End' - Dir. Edgar Wright (15)

Full disclosure: I didn't grow up with Spaced and have only ever rated 'Shaun of the Dead' and 'Hot Fuzz' as "alright", so take my opinion of this conclusion to Edgar Wright's "Cornetto Trilogy" with a larger than usual pinch of salt. This one takes on aspects of the sci-fi genre as a small town's inhabitants are slowly replaced with, what I'm going to call (to make it easier to explain in shorthand), robots - though in a way that feels like the zombie horde from 'Sean' meets the strange, rural-folk conspiracy stuff of 'Fuzz'. In 'The World's End', Simon Pegg plays Gary King, a middle-aged man who hasn't moved on since the greatest night of his life: attempting "the golden mile" - a 12 pub crawl across his home town - with his closest mates. However, decades later, everything has changed except for Gary.

The pubs themselves are now identikit chain pubs and all his mates have moved on with their lives and moved away from the small town of their youth. Many of them, including Nick Frost's Andy, actively hate Gary - making things all the more uncomfortable as he pathetically attempts to get the gang back together for one last crack at the mile. It doesn't go well and only gets worse when the robots turn up. That was originally meant as descriptive, but actually forms a pretty good anchor point to start my critique because, for me at least, the film was far more entertaining and engaging before the science fiction elements kicked in. The "former friends coming back together in their sad little home town for a pathetic pub crawl" story was actually really well worked for the first half-hour, with nuanced characters and genuine pathos for Gary: a complete prick, but one you feel crushingly sorry for nevertheless. With his mates played by Paddy Considine, Eddie Marsan, Martin Freeman and the ever-dependable Frost, the film trundled along very nicely for the first 30 minutes as a bitter-sweet comedy-drama.

And then the film gets lost in long (admittedly well choreographed) fight scenes, exposition about this alien/robot threat and all manner of other things that actually detract from what's really appealing and interesting about the film as was: the human drama and the character arc of Gary King - who, reservations about the overall film aside, I think is the year's best original character [more on that to follow at a later date, when I have time]. Gary's arc is maintained and still carries the film, of course, but it gets bogged down in everything else that's going on. It also doesn't help that the film - nominally a comedy - isn't really very funny. It has a few chuckles and it's never less than pleasant to watch, but it's uncharacteristically gag-light by the standards of the creative team. I will say this for it though: what this film has to say about friendship is far more mature and rewarding than pretty much ever other "bromance" movie. There are a lot of similarities between this and the summer's US comedy 'This is the End' - yet, whilst that film is far funnier, this one is the more interesting and emotionally affecting.

'The Wolverine' - Dir. James Mangold (12A)

It's the wrong side of the two-hour mark and goes by extremely slowly - with far more green tea-sipping than claw-knucked action - but 'The Wolverine' is watchable and oddly compelling if mainly because of Hugh Jackman's charisma as the title character. Loosely based on Chris Claremont and Frank Miller's celebrated and far-better-than-this-movie 1982 mini-series, which sees Logan on a solo adventure in Japan, the film takes the character out East where he becomes embroiled in the familial intrigue of a large corporation, a few fights with the Yakuza, and a punch-up with an unconvincing CGI robot samurai. There's a neat action sequence on a train and some nice moments for fans of the character (he even throws in a "bub" at one point), but James Mangold's film - strangely reliant on the maligned 'X-Men: The Last Stand' through extensive Jean Grey (Famke Janssen) dream sequences that might have been better left on the cutting room floor - requires prior investment in the character to be of any interest.

There are some odd cinematic allusions to great Japanese works, for instance one ninja fight sequence borrows imagery from Kurosawa's Macbeth adaptation 'Throne of Blood', and these might help explain the logic behind the film's mannered style and extremely slow pacing. This is probably the quietest blockbuster made this century - and that's admirable and makes for something weirdly fascinating, even if it doesn't really work as intended. It feels boring rather than intense or dramatic, but it's clear (and, again, admirable) that they were really trying to make a character-driven movie about regret and coming to terms with loss. I'm left wondering if they might have succeeded had Darren Aronofsky accepted the long-rumoured offer to direct, but - like his aborted 'Batman Begins' - it was sadly not to be. I will say this for 'The Wolverine' though: if modern superhero movies exist in large part as extended trailers for their inevitable sequels then the film did its job. Even before the post-credits scene, the film left me more excited about next summer's 'X-Men: Days of Future Past' than I was going in.

'Pacific Rim', 'Monsters University', 'The Bling Ring', 'We Steal Secrets' and 'The Deep': review round-up

'Pacific Rim' - Dir. Guillermo Del Toro (12A)

A clear labour of love for creature feature obsessive Guillermo Del Toro, 'Pacific Rim' marks the 'Pan's Labyrinth' director's first completed film since 2008's 'Hellboy II' and sees the Mexican channeling his fandom of Japanese mecha anime series and kaiju monster movies into something grand and frequently spectacular of the summer blockbuster variety. It takes place in the near-future, where a trans-dimensional portal beneath the Pacific ocean has been unleashing giant beasts upon the Earth for a number of years with city-destroying consequences. Humanity's solution? We created monsters of our own, in the form of Jaegers: towering metal soldiers controlled by teams of specially selected, mentally compatible human pilots, built in a spirit of international co-operation. However, years into this struggle, we are losing the battle: the kaiju are getting bigger, their attacks are more frequent and only a handful of Jaegers remain as governments worldwide abandon the program in favour of hiding behind ineffectual coastal walls. It's down to the last Jaeger pilots, and a pair of eccentric scientists, to cancel the apocalypse.

Packed with jaw-dropping set-pieces, characteristically striking visuals and boasting gorgeous production design, it's a visual treat and the sort of thrill-ride you only get from the very best Hollywood fare. Even the 3D - post-converted, but apparently given more time and attention than usual - is a treat, adding texture to the rain effects in particular, as the Jaegers battle the Kaiju at sea. From a character point of view it's broad, but certainly not dumb or empty: the drama feels humane and ties into the action rather than being a perfunctory afterthought. It's also pleasing how international the whole thing is. Yes: it's an American movie, so the American pilot and American mech win the day. But, on the flip-side, rarely is an action movie of this kind less militaristic or nationalistic than this. There's a Russian mechs, a Chinese mech and we're told the Australian mech is the best of the bunch - the most successful and effective around - allowing a sense that this is truly humanity fighting together in its darkest hour.

Also missing is the traditional antagonism between the military and scientists: the misunderstandings, the distrust, the contempt that's usually a huge part of the sci-fi genre. The human characters are, broadly speaking, all good guys and all on the same page - for the most part behaving rationally and not just shouting each other down. At several key moments the film neatly side-stepped whatever horrid cliche I thought was about to occur in favour of something less frustrating or contrived. There are still cliches, but they are the fun kind: like something out of the best bits of 'Independence Day' rather than 'Transformers'. What's more, the male characters are allowed to be emotional, while the lead actress (Rinko Kikuchi) is capable and not really a love interest in the traditional sense (the bond she shares with Charlie Hunnam's lead is not explicitly based around sexual attraction, and she's certainly never presented as a prize to be won by the hero).

Where the film really shines is in the amount of subtle world-building that takes place, with lots of background details and minor plot-points making the world feel rich and lived-in. This is a world effected in numerous ways - big and small - but the arrival of the Kaiju, and this provides some really excellent moments and imaginative ideas. Ideas that become enigmatic and encourage audience curiosity. If this film was a character, it's Boba Fett from 'The Empire Strikes Back': intriguing, rarely seen, the potential basis for endless hours of thought and fantasy by fans. What it's not is Jango Fett from 'Attack of the Clones': over-exposed, over-explained and under-whelming as a result.

One of the most purely enjoyable films we're likely to see this year and possibly the finest original sci-fi action film since 'District 9'.

'Monsters University' - Dir. Dan Scanlon (U)

Why don't presidents and prime ministers ever do all the stuff they promised they'd do once elected? The cynical view is that they're all cads and crooks: they never intended to do those things. They said what they had to in order to get elected and then they did what everybody does - they protected their own interests. But maybe (maybe) the reason the Obamas of this world don't live up to expectations is that, when you're actually in the chair, you're suddenly seeing different data, hearing different opinions from advisers and faced with a different set of responsibilities and expectations. I think this latter analysis might explain why Pixar - who once deliberately, self-consciously stood as a counter-point to the cynical, sequel churn - has been milking its "franchises" for all they're worth ever since founder John Lasseter got promoted at Disney.

For the record: I love Pixar. I think, not controversially, the people at Pixar are geniuses who have presided over arguably the most consistent run of quality animated films ever delivered by any studio. Unsurpassed in terms of technical accomplishment, story development and animation detail, their films are modern masterpieces. 'Cars' accepted, the nine of the ten films released between 1995 ('Toy Story') and 2009 ('Up') have to be considered among the finest animated films ever made. I say this not to fawn unduly, but to show that I both deeply love and greatly respect what the studio has stood for during the peak years of its existence. But ever since John Lasseter became the CFO at Disney in 2006, all those sequels the studio used to shun have happened or are on their way to happening at the expense of the sort of original ideas we've become accustomed to as devoted members of their audience.

We've had the (and I know I'm in the minority here) lackluster 'Toy Story 3', the embarrassing 'Cars 2' and now - with a sequel for 'Finding Nemo' apparently on the way - here comes 'Monsters University': a prequel no one asked for, from a studio that - less than a decade ago - would never have considered making it. I have all the respect in the world for John Lasseter and, since 2006, the quality of output coming from Disney Animation Studios has increased dramatically ('Princess and the Frog', 'Tangled', 'Wreck-It Ralph'), but I mourn for Pixar after this latest assault on its legacy.

As you may have gathered from the opening three paragraphs of increasingly shrill hysteria, 'Monsters University' - which sees the beloved Mike (Billy Crystal) and Sully (John Goodman) learning to be "scarers" and friends during their college years - is not a great piece of work. It's good. It's perfectly fine. It passes the time. There are moments of great wit and invention, and a few genuinely inspired laughs, whilst the animation and technical side of things is as polished and sophisticated as ever. Yet, overall, it's hollow and unfulfilling - the gags obvious "college movie" stuff punned with monsters the way The Flintstones does with the stone age. Worse still, it's not too indistinct from the sort of unambitious, by-numbers sequel you'd expect of Dreamworks or Fox. That's not say it isn't entertaining, but Pixar are victims of their own great success in this instance: what would represent a creative high-point for one of their imitators is simply not good enough. I enjoyed 'Much Ado About Nothing' last month, but would I have enjoyed it as much if someone told me it was the latest Paul Thomas Anderson movie? Some folks you hold to a higher standard.

'The Bling Ring' - Dir. Sofia Coppola (15)

Want to make a film? Only got about 15 minutes of actual story (something you read in a magazine article, perhaps?) and worried it might not stretch to feature length? Well, my friend, you've lucked out, because Sofia Coppola's latest provides you answers to this very conundrum! For instance, if the one scene you have sees five vapid teenagers breaking into a minor celebrity's house and stealing some of their clothing and jewelry: just show that same scene half a dozen times! It's easy - just take the teenagers to another house and do the same thing again! They can pick up slightly different bags and say how cool a slightly different house is. If you're feeling adventurous you can shoot this a few different ways to make people think they're watching something different each time. Sofia gives us a few options to play with: night vision, security camera footage, eye of god external shot etc. And make sure your characters say "Facebook" and "Twitter" a few hundred times so we know how hip and young and thoroughly now the whole thing is. You can string out the scenes in between with the kids driving and just, sort of, standing about looking at their phones. Really: if you put a cool enough soundtrack behind it you can even get it distributed and played in cinemas for actual paying customers. It's genius really.

Oooohh! Start with the ending and then... show the ending again later! That's another 10 minutes taken care of. And play some of the same dialogue multiple times - sometimes in a jarring, faux documentary style that's at odds with the rest of the film and then again out of that context. Have the actors say it word-for-word too, so you don't have to re-phrase it even slightly, because that might require more writing and you only have 15 pages to work with after all. If you have the money, you can hire a former child star freshly liberated from a wildly popular franchise. It doesn't matter if they're any better at acting than the other kids who nobody has heard of at all - or even if they have to do an accent. What matters is that you can get free publicity out of their appearance here, maybe halving the marketing budget of your picture. They may even work relatively cheaply because they're trying to break-out and be a "serious actor". Who knows? You can hope. All of this works much better if: 1) your famous family can produce it for you and 2) if you still have goodwill left over from a genuinely great film you made once.

There you go, lazy budding filmmakers of the world. Enjoy!

'We Steal Secrets: The Story of Wikileaks' - Dir. Alex Gibney (15)

An amazing piece of work: balanced, stylish, thrilling, sick-making - sometimes funny and never less than compelling. Alex Gibney takes on Wikileaks and Julian Assange in this revealing documentary that - like many of the contributors - is on one hand in awe of its subject and on the other immensely troubled by him. Bound up with the potentially world-changing and arguably heroic activities of Wikileaks itself - which, among other things, helped bring to light the ugly reality of the conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan - is the increasingly odd story of Assange, the organisation's founder: whose behavior has been increasingly antithetical to the ideals the whistle-blowing website stands for in the eyes of supporters. It's neither a hatchet job, nor a celebration, but an examination of flawed human beings. It's a sad portrait of a man who seems equal parts a brilliant idealist, a paranoid loner, and self-styled international celebrity.

As much as it follows the career and recent legal troubles of Assange, the film also looks in detail at Bradley Manning - the US private who disclosed thousands of classified files to Wikileaks and who has subsequently been imprisoned without trial and, it would appear, tortured. There's discussion of war crimes committed by the US military under Obama's leadership. Discussion of how the procedures behind the sharing and storage of intelligence data changed after 9/11. Discussion of the moral grey areas around the entire subject: who is hurt by this freedom of information? What do we lose and what do we stand to gain from it as a society? A lot to chew over and Gibney's film, which features a wealth of interviews with fascinating contributors, does a fantastic job of facilitating and furthering the debate.

'The Deep' - Dir. Baltasar Kormakur (12A)

Iceland's official Academy Award entry for the last Oscars (though it wasn't in the final pool of nominees), 'The Deep' is a dry and slightly boring "based on a true story" account of how one man survived in the Northern Atlantic for six hours when he should have died after 15 minutes. When a fishing boat goes down, isolated and at night, all but one of her crew succumb quickly to the extreme cold - but one overweight man, who isn't even an accomplished swimmer, makes it back home against all odds. He even has to climb a mountain of volcanic rock when he gets there, so understandably he's hailed as a evidence of a miracle and a national hero upon his successful return. It turns out this wasn't a very cinematic feat, even if it would make a mildly diverting story if you came upon it in a newspaper.

However, with a third of the film left to go (most of it's a man swimming very slowly in the dark, talking to a bird), it shifts into a tale of a mostly apathetic man, devoid of charisma, shuffling between dry medical examinations and unconvincing efforts to comfort the families and friends of his fellow sailors. It's basically what a shrug looks like if filmed in super slow-motion.