The good, the bad, and the gory...

Struggling to find a film you can watch with a hangover in between all the Nazis, biopics and faux-documentaries? Wondering what to see at the cinema now that awards season is in full swing? Let me help with a quick run down of the no-brains-required options of the week... (minor spoilers follow)

Covering the comedy angle with a neat little film that manages to be both predictable and entertaining is Role Models, doing the better-late-than-never coming-of-age story with a wonderfully deadpan Paul Rudd (Knocked Up) and a nicely reigned in Seann William Scott (American Pie, Road Trip). Both leads are on form, and the pace cracks along nicely leaving no time for fidgeting around wondering where the next joke is coming from. It's really the kids in this film that make it so unexpectedly brilliant, though. Christopher Mintz-Plasse (Superbad) is both lovable and ridiculous as a friendless role-playing nerd and Bobb'e J. Thompson had me in hysterics as a foul-mouthed ten year old. A pretty obvious plot (kids are impossible to relate to, but in the end they bond with their mentors and teach them a little something about life blah blah schmaltzy blah) is done with the minimum of puke-inducing chick-flick moments, and the comedy always comes first. The scenes with the seriously unhinged, ex-drug addict volunteer coordinator (Jane Lynch) are sometimes more awkward than funny, but this is a minor quibble in an otherwise very enjoyable film. Besides, hearing a ten year old saying "cock block" will never not be funny.

Also funny in an unintentional way was My Bloody Valentine 3D, which had me creased up over a lengthy and completely unnecessary scene of full frontal female nudity. On the whole, though, this film was pretty satisfying, with the usual amount of suspense, who-dunnit, and slasher gore vastly improved by the impressive use of the 3D gimmick. Gore flies in your face, shotguns are pointed into the audience, and pickaxes are waved under your nose. It's pretty cool. Jensen Ackles is passable in the lead role, although I felt the film would have been improved by more nudity on his part. Something for the ladies, please, makers of slasher films! That said, I also enjoyed the fact that the mysterious masked killer took a few beatings during the course of the film, most of them dished out by Jaime King as Ackles' ex Sarah, who manages to beat the mass murderer off with a shovel, a lamp, and a frozen leg of what may have been lamb. It's nice when women in horror films aren't just there to get naked, scream, and then get killed. That said, the plot twists aren't particularly impressive and any scene which doesn't involve someone getting killed seemed tedious and strained, and full of balls about the importance of mining to the community. But you don't go for the social commentary. You go for the scene where someone's eyeball flies towards your face on the business end of a pickax.

Last, and definitely least, there's Underworld: Rise of the Lycans. If, like me, you have pushed the first two Underworld films so far to the back of your mind that you can only recall vague images of Kate Beckinsale in an improbable outfit and some convoluted stuff about a guy named Corvinus then fear not, for this sequel is, in fact, a prequel and could stand alone, plot-wise. Mostly. It opens with some hurried exposition and then tries really hard to fill the next couple of hours with about enough plot for twenty minutes. Oops. Basically, there's a really weird sex scene over a cliff edge (I really want to make a safe sex joke but I wont), Bill Nighy overacts, and then the werewolves rise. That's pretty much it. The ending relies too heavily on a final showdown between Bill Nighy's vampire king Viktor and Micheal Sheen's (frighteningly buff, more frightening than James McAvoy in Wanted... more frightening than Gary Rhodes!) lycan Lucian which is doomed to fail, tension-wise, because this is a prequel and both these characters appear in the original films! In fact, since we already know what the outcome of the film will be (we have been told that the lycans rise and that Sonja (Rhona Mitra) dies during the plot of Underworld) it would have been nice to spend a little bit more on how we got here. Think the recent Star Wars prequels, or Titanic, for example. Why did Viktor let first-of-his-kind Lucian live? Why train the boy to fight to protect your clan then make him a blacksmith? How on earth did vampire princess Sonja end up falling in love with a lycan slave boy in the first place when her race supposedly despises his? This could have been so much better, and would have given the ending, when Sonja meets her inevitable doom, a sense of tragedy that was sorely lacking. Instead I just wondered at how Lucian managed to get all that tight leather on and off so quickly. I suspect with a liberal application of baby powder. Also, since when did Michael Sheen become such a shrimp (bite off the head, leave the body)?

I have no intention of seeing Bride Wars. Even I'm not that brave.