Usually when people escape a shitty relationship they take their books and their CDs. They might even stuff a couple of posters under their arms and run off with the Blu Ray player. At the very worst they’ll sneak into their ex-partners house when they’re at work and nab the cat. Elizabeth (Rosario Dawson), though, has other ideas...

Directed by Danny Boyle, you wouldn’t be completely off your nut to expect decent things from Trance. From Trainspotting to Shallow Grave to 28 Days Later to Slumdog Millionaire to the amazing opening Olympic ceremony that had this homesick Londoner in tears, he has an incredibly robust CV. But then Trance rears it’s weird, deranged head.

First things first, I was incredibly entertained by Trance. But I can’t call it a good film. In fact, it’s pretty fucking awful. It’s a colossal mess. It’s nasty, it’s bitter and it’s trashy...which is why I probably found it so perversely entertaining.

Part of me thinks that Trance is a reaction to Kerry Fox’s character in Shallow Grave. In that film you have a scheming, manipulative woman who is outwitted by an equally scheming, manipulative man. But even though they’re equally dastardly, you can’t help but root for the Ewan McGregor character. But why? He’s greedy, he’s a coward and he’s completely lacking in moral fibre. So why should we root for him over a woman with the same kind of characteristics? Do we somehow believe that women should be above such avarice? Or is there some kind of misogyny going on? Are we so insecure that we can’t abide the fact that a woman could be smarter or more devious than a man?

Perhaps. But Danny Boyle atones for his vaguely misogynistic treatment of women in Shallow Grave by having the female lead get away with everything in Trance. She takes the male characters to the cleaners and gets to take home an expensive Goya.

But is this a satisfying role reversal? Not really. The character is painted in broad strokes and her ability to manipulate the minds of others is so strong that she could almost be considered a super hero/super villain; she doesn’t seem human - she’s more like a character out of X-Men.

One of the most egregious things in Trance is the ending. Elizabeth has got away with the expensive painting and she’s screwed over all the men in her life, including Franck (Vincent Cassel), a mid-level hood. The expensive painting was his prize and he’s understandably upset that someone else has it. But Elizabeth offers a solution. If Franck just picks up the ipad she’s sent to him by courier, he can forget that it ever happened. All he has to do is press an app called ‘Trance’ and she’ll erase it from his memory.

This scene is stupid for many reasons. Firstly, it’s way too cute. Elizabeth, speaking through the video on the ipad, is perfectly filmed. Really? Did she do this or herself? Or did she hire a professional, Academy Award level crew to film her message? The lighting and the camerawork are all perfect. And then you have Franck standing there like an idiot. Ooh, I’m attracted to this woman but she screwed me over and I really want that painting back but I want to be able to escape the torment of not having it. Shall I press the Trance app? Yeah, I think I will. No, wait! No I won’t. I won’t touch it. But it hurts so much. I can put an end to the pain. Yeah, let me press it. But I want the painting so much! I can’t do it. But I’m in agony. I can have peace. But I want the painting! *THE END*

The thing that surprised me the most was just how bad James McAvoy is. His overacting in this film is insane. A couple of times he does this evil look. It’s kind of hard to describe. It’s like some weird Tourette’s tic. Or he’s just pooed himself and he likes it. I never knew that he was quite so hammy.

But not knowing anything about the film before going to see it, I was quite surprised at just how fucked up it is. At the beginning it seems like something of a lightweight caper film. Oh, there’s an art robbery and various shenanigans are going to follow. But then an hour and half later James McAvoy is driving around in a car with a rotting corpse in it. And then he’s shooting people in the penis and strangling women to death. [insert evil McAvoy smirk]

Something else James McAvoy’s character likes is a pube-free, little girly vagina. Yep, he’s so turned on by Renaissance nudes that he likes his women to be hair free. Cue graphic shots of Elizabeth’s hairless mound.

He becomes so obsessed with this baby smooth pussy that he begins getting jealous for no reason and starts beating Elizabeth up. So to try and stop him from killing her, she gradually puts him in a trance and makes him forget her and their relationship. Surely this would be enough. No, no it wouldn’t. As compensation she plants an idea in his head - he’ll steal a painting and deliver it to her.

It’s a neat enough idea but the script is too weak to pull it off. For a little while I thought it was going to be a genuinely decent film. I know my wife was hating every second that Rosario Dawson opened her mouth, but the initial trance scenes were entertaining. It’s like a detective story, only the mystery is trapped in your head. But then the film degenerates and becomes a crazy guilty pleasure. Would you like graphic cock violence with your gential close-ups? Yes, please!

I think I could drink a six pack and have the most amazing time watching this film. There are certainly one or two howlers.

In one scene Elizabeth passes three bullets to James McAvoy...into his mouth...and no one notices! Okay, they’re having a romantic kiss before they get killed. But can you really walk around with three bullets in your mouth without anyone noticing? ‘What have got in your gob there?’ [Jangle, jangle]

The unintentional hilarity even extends to the movie poster. It features a multi-coloured James McAvoy screaming at the viewer. Is this the frustration we’re going to feel when viewing the movie? Or is it outright anger? But to me it looks like a Technicolor shit arranged into James McAvoy’s visage. Yes, Danny Boyle did a dump and this is what happened...and it’s kind of amazing.

Hmm. Shall I hit the ‘Trance’ app and forget everything that happened? But the film is so much fun! But it’s such a piece of shit as well! I should just erase it from my memory. But the McAvoy smirk is so amusing! No, don’t let it take up precious room in your head. Get rid of it! But James McAvoy shoots someone in the penis!

*THE END*

I still have nightmarish flashbacks to my last X-Men experience. I was unemployed and I decided to run some errands. In my foolish enthusiasm to get out of the house, I slammed the door shut without checking to see if I had my keys. I didn’t.

In order to kill time before my wife came home, I decided to go and see X-Men Origins: Wolverine. Fuck me, it was a horrible experience. It was like some deranged monkey had been put in charge of the production and had spent $150 million throwing fecal matter at the screen. I vowed never to watch another X-Men film.

Not that I thought another film would come any time soon. I thought that Wolverine hadn’t made any money and that X-Men would be left alone for a while. But apparently lots of sad, lonely husbands also got locked out of their apartments during that time and went to see that colossal skidmark.

X-Men: First Class didn’t really appear on my radar. When the film came out, I could only think of my cat dragging his dirty bum across the tile floor in the kitchen. The insolent look of disobedience; the furry backside dragging mournfully across the surface with the hind legs terrifyingly immobile; the horrible brown streak circling the dinner table - 20th Century Fox were going to push this on us no matter what; even if the poo on Hugh Jackman’s face hadn’t had time to dry yet.

One of my wife’s little quirks is that she wishes she could deport me and marry James McAvoy instead. With this in mind, there wasn’t a chance in hell I was going to get away with not watching First Class.

The first thing that struck me when watching the film: it’s actually quite good. Sure it’s a little odd to hear Kevin Bacon speaking pretty good German, but it had a strong start.

The movie begins with a young Erik (who’ll later become Magneto) being separated from his parents in a Nazi concentration camp. Distraught, he manages to bend some metal gates with the power of his mind. Seizing on this, Dr Schmidt (Bacon), later to be called Sebastian Shaw, tries to get the kid to move a coin for him. The kid tries and tries, but he’s unable to move it - the coin stays stubbornly motionless. Feeling that the kid perhaps needs a little more motivation, he brings the child’s mother into the room. Schmidt says that the boy has until the count of three to move the coin or he’ll shoot the boy’s mother. Erik tries even harder but he still can’t do it. True to his word, upon the count of three, Schmidt shoots Erik’s mother dead. Finally the boy is able to move the coin - his powers are fuelled by his rage.

What surprised me about this scene is just how grim it is. There’s an incredible amount of tension and the violence is shockingly strong for a PG-13. It’s nice to see a comic book movie that doesn’t hold back.

Better is yet to come. Erik, now grown up and played by the omnipresent Michael Fassbender, decides to track down Dr Schmidt so that he can avenge the death of his mother. Here the film becomes something of a Bond movie. Erik slowly draws closer to Schmidt/Shaw and assassinates anyone who gets in the way. There’s a fabulous scene where Erik uses his powers to kill a couple of ex Nazis who are hiding in Argentina. At one point he uses his magnetic powers to pin a man’s hand to a table with a knife. He doesn’t even have to touch the blade.

What makes this even more enjoyable is the over-the-top music that plays. When Erik’s in 007 mode, he has this brilliant piece of theme music that accompanies him. It’s kind of like a mixture of the James Bond theme and the rattling guitar piece from Once Upon a Time in the West. It gives the character a level of cool that far exceeds anything in the previous X-Men movies.

Once Erik meets up with Charles Xavier (James MacAvoy) the movie becomes a little less fun. It’s still leagues ahead of anything else in the X-Men franchise, but the movie can’t quite maintain the heights of the opening thirty minutes.

One of First Class’s major problems is that the supporting characters are universally dull. The mutant kids that Xavier tracks down are fairly appalling and every time they’re on the screen, the film drags. None of the kids have got any serious acting chops and all of their special skills are underwhelming. There’s a kid who can fire raw bolts of energy, another has wings like a fairy, another can scream at such a pitch that he can fly at supersonic speeds and there’s even a boffin with prehensile feet. There’s also a kid called Darwin, who can adapt to any situation - at one point he sticks his head in a tank of water and develops gills. But the character’s only purpose in the film is to die. He’s the sacrificial lamb to prove how ruthless Sebastian Shaw is - Shaw fires raw energy into the kid’s mouth and the kid croaks.

What makes this scene so risible, though, is that Darwin is one of the only black characters (the other is a stripper). At one point Shaw even makes a speech about slavery and the camera stops right on the black kid. Subtle, no? But of course, the kid is black and therefore he must die.

The most ridiculous part of the film occurs in the final battle between the X-Men and Sebastian Shaw’s Hellfire Club. A large portion of the battle is given to a fight between the evil fairy stripper and the kid who can go supersonic by screaming. The fairy can apparently shoot stuff out of her mouth, which frequently gives us the completely idiotic image of a stripper fairy shooting crap out of her mouth as a spotty kid with flying squirrel wings screams in order to reach supersonic speeds. It’s the worst action scene I’ve seen in years - it’s completely risible.

Thankfully, cut into this nonsense, is the final confrontation between Magneto and Sebastian Shaw. If the film had focused on this entirely, it would have had a much stronger final act. I particularly liked the cold, methodical way that Magneto kills Shaw - with Shaw paralysed by Professor X’s mind control, Magneto, using his powers, slowly moves a coin towards his head. It’s the same coin that Shaw tried to get a young Erik to move when he killed his mother. The coin slowly floats towards Shaw’s head and then enters it, eventually passing through the other side. The younger Erik would have had this coin go through Shaw like a bullet, but the older, wiser and more ruthless Erik takes his time so that he can enjoy Shaw’s death.

One strange thing about the ending of the film is that Michael Fassbender, having now become Magneto, starts talking in a thick Irish accent. Throughout the rest of the film his accent is fairly neutral. Was this the first day of shooting or is he unable to shout in anything but his native brogue?

And the final shot ensures that the film ends with a damp squib. We finally see Magneto in his full costume. Only the costume looks like he knocked it up at home and his helmet has silly little horns on it. After such a strong beginning and such a shaky final section, First Class was begging for a strong ending. Sadly it doesn’t get it. I couldn’t help but feel they dropped the ball with this one.

My main problem with the film adaptation of Atonement, like the novel, is the ending. Here we have a character, Briony Tallis, who as a thirteen-year-old girl splits up a young couple and sends a young man, Robbie Turner (James McAvoy), to jail by falsifying evidence. Years later she realises what she did was wrong and tries to atone for her mistakes. But the way that she tries to do it seems wrong to me.

You see, Briony is a writer, and as a precocious thirteen-year-old girl she attempts to put on a play called The Trials of Arabella. Full of self-importance it promises to be a ridiculous piece. But then as a successful writer, and diagnosed with a terminal disease, she writes a novel about her experiences – about the way she destroyed a burgeoning love affair. She claims it’s entirely autobiographical. And before this we have a powerful scene where an eighteen-year-old Briony, now a nurse in the Second World War, confronts the couple she attempted to split up (the woman in the relationship, played by Keira Knightley, is her sister). Full of anger and regret, it shows how Briony is trying to make things up. She wants to right the wrongs she made.

But then as the older Briony talks at the end, we find out, even though she said the entire book was autobiographical, that this scene is a fiction. Briony never really met her sister during the war. She never met Robbie. Indeed, Robbie never even made it back from Dunkirk. He died of septicaemia. And Cecilia (Knightley) died in an Underground station during the Blitz. What kind of atonement is this? It’s meant to be some kind of offering to the world, to show how glorious their love could be. And it’s also meant to be a way of immortalising their love, to allow them to live on. But personally, I think it suggests that Briony hasn’t learnt a single thing. She’s still the silly little girl living in her dream world. She still can’t accept reality. In fact, the old Briony explains her reasons for not including the actual events by saying it wouldn’t be satisfactory for her readers. Well, maybe it wouldn’t, but at least, for once, it would be the truth – a novel concept for the rather wretched Briony Tallis.

Aside from this, though, I enjoyed the film. And I even have to say that the ending moved me somewhat. But it didn’t move me because of Briony’s ‘atonement’. It moved me because Robbie and Cecilia’s love was never fulfilled. There’s something touching about the banality of Robbie’s death, that such a strong will to survive and that such a determined desire to return home can be extinguished so easily.

Another moving scene is the one where an eighteen-year-old Briony has to comfort a dying French soldier. I can remember it being the most powerful scene in the novel, and it’s equally powerful here. I think it’s the first time that Briony ever realises what love really is, that it isn’t a selfish need to possess another human being (her betrayal of Robbie is entirely motivated by feelings of rejection) but a simple desire to make another person happy. Therefore, when she talks to this dying soldier, a man who’s delirious and who seems to think that he knows her from the past, you get a proper sense that she’s atoning for her mistakes. I really think it’s near impossible for her to untangle the mess she made with Robbie and Cecilia, but the simple way she says ‘Yes’ when the young soldier asks her whether she loves him is so sweet and kind and unselfish that you feel that she’s finally beginning to act selflessly.

However, my favourite scene in the film occurs when Robbie enters Dunkirk. There’s a wonderfully cinematic sequence where the camera floats through the beach and into the town. Around you soldiers lie down to sleep, others fight and some even congregate to sing. And then in the background you have drunk soldiers staggering about and others destroying machinery and vehicles so that the Germans can’t use them. It’s done in such a simple, elegant way. Plus it economically communicates the despair and desperation of the situation. These men can almost see home – they can almost see it on the horizon – but it still seems so far away.

It’s curious, though, that while, in the novel, I wasn’t particularly inspired by the Dunkirk sequence, I loved the opening. But in the film I feel it’s the weakest section. For me it just didn’t have the claustrophobia, the passion and the intensity it has in the book. But maybe the film was always going to struggle with this section – in writing you can kind of tolerate the young Briony, but brought to life she’s rather wretched and annoying. Plus Keira Knightley is never totally convincing. She doesn’t embarrass herself, but she does lack charm and sex appeal. And she also has a habit of trying too hard – just look at her mouth when she says “come back to me” to Robbie; her lips look almost disfigured, she’s trying so hard to impress. But when she relaxes, she's actually fairly capable. There’s a lovely little moment when she holds Robbie’s hand. There’s no pouting, no exaggeration – just a nice bit of warmth and feeling.

Another thing that counts against the opening sequence is that once or twice it’s unintentionally comic. Fair enough you have the silly twins who are meant to garner a laugh or two, but I’m sure that the dramatic, zoomed-in typing of the word ‘cunt’ wasn’t meant to have people rolling in the aisles. But such was the faux profundity of the moment that it did just that.

But these problems aside, Atonement is a decent adaptation of Ian McEwan’s novel. I certainly don’t think it should be involved in the upcoming Oscar race, but it deserves to be kindly remembered.