Review: Prometheus

It's tempting to put Prometheus in with the rest of Ridley Scott's recent work where the impressive visuals have often outshone some pretty weak scripts - and whilst that's true to a certain extent with this Alien prequel, there's enough ideas and excitement to be found beneath its pretty exterior to make this more than worthy of your time.

The cast is reliably excellent, Fassbender gives the standout performance as an O'Toole obsessed android that will change the way you look at Wall-E from now on, but Noomi Rapace as proto-Ripley Elizabeth Shaw and Charlize Theron as ambiguous villain Vickers are also worthy of praise.

On the downside, minor quibbles would be a few too many crew members are there seemingly just to die (I don't think that's a spoiler for an Alien film?) and the big orchestral score doesn't really fit into the mood of the franchise for me - but the biggest problems come in the film's final third, featuring an unsatisfying end that only really tees-up more prequels to bridge the gap with the 1979 original and an over-reliance on big CGI effects to create tension and terror - the original being the case in point for how less is more.

Those flaws aside, Prometheus is still a welcome addition to the post-Inception line of intelligent blockbusters that don't seek to insult the audiences intelligence.

Review: The Girl Who Kicked The Hornet's Nest

The final part of the Millennium Trilogy is a return to form, wisely getting rid of much of the Bond and Kill Bill inspired antics and going back to the spirit of the original with a tale of murders, conspiracy and a mysterious past.

The past in question this time is Lisbeth's as Blomkvist tries to prove she is innocent of the 3 murders she is accused of, whilst to uncover why the Swedish authorities seem so keen to silence her. The Girl Who Kicked The Hornet's Nest is still not without problems though, mainly being its still a bit too long and the feeling it would work better as a TV series is hard to shake, but thanks to the power of the performances from Nyqvist and Rapace in particular, you still manage to stick with despite it being hard-going at times.

Therein lies the problem with why the sequels fail to match up to the original - the fact that Blomkvist and Salander are barely together in parts 2 and 3 means they are always destined to be seen as the weaker of the efforts, stripped of the chemistry that made The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo such a success.

Review: The Girl Who Played with Fire

For those whose first introduction to the Millennium Trilogy was David Fincher's recent remake - The Swedish version of The Girl Who Played with Fire is pretty easy to get up to speed with, as the only major difference to get used to is journalist Mikael Blomkvist now looks more like Shaun Ryder than James Bond.

It's a shame then that this second instalment is the worst of the three by far, thanks in main part to the introduction of a hokey Bond-style bad guy who feels no pain in an implausible action-based plot that actually turns out to be pretty inconsequential in the grand scheme of the trilogy's storyline.

Add on an ending that tries to be a cliffhanger but just ends up annoying the viewer for wasting 2 hours on a film that goes nowhere and you have a middle part that is eminently skippable.