My brother and I used to refer to Days of Thunder as Days of Chunder (to ‘chunder’ being to vomit). In our estimation, the film was so shit that just to watch a few moments of it would make you regurgitate all over yourself.

So how did it fare this time? Was it as bad as I remembered? Yes. And did I puke all over myself? Thankfully no.

One of the most shocking things about this film is that it was written by Robert Towne – the guy who wrote the masterpiece Chinatown. But then you look at the screen and see that Tom Cruise had a story writing credit. You can just imagine him in script meetings. ‘Yeah, I want a scene where I drive really fast with a shit-eating grin. I want one where I almost die and subsequently learn important life lessons. And I want one where I knob some ginger chick who’s at least two feet taller than me.’

But you’ve also got to remember that this is the same production team that made Top Gun. That means that you shouldn’t expect cinematic excellence. And also bear in mind that uber producer Don Simpson was the sort of man who liked to have prostitutes drink from his toilet as he pissed into it, that he once had fat injected into his penis to give it more girth (unfortunately he ended up with a deformed cock) and that during the filming of Days of Thunder he was experimenting with testosterone implants...in his ass. The theory was that the implants would give him a steady flow of macho energy. Instead they leaked and he went crazy. Mental giants were not in control of this production.

To illustrate this fact, consider the scene where Cole Trickle (yes, that’s the name of Cruise’s character) and rival race driver Rowdy Burns (another great name, and one that perhaps suggests that the character perpetually has the clap) race each other in wheelchairs. You see, earlier in the film, they had quite the rivalry going on and it lead to a spectacular crash. And now that they’re both in hospital, they decide to have a chair race. Yes, they’re primary school children.

However, there’s a scene that’s even more spectacularly stupid than this. For some reason the head of NASCAR invites them to dinner and gives them a set of keys for a car that they can drive over. He does this even though they have serious head injuries and hate each other’s guts. Yes, giving them a car and not having them driven over by a limo would be a great idea. So Rowdy encourages Cole to hire a car so that they can have another race – Rowdy in the car that the NASCAR guy gave him and Cole in the rental. And the two men proceed to race across streets and beaches in their shitty automobiles, ruining their cars. And when they finally arrive for dinner, they no longer hate each other. They share a knowing look that suggests that this vehicular destruction was a substitute for a hard cock up the arse.

By the way, the term for ramming another car is ‘rubbing’. Therefore nearly half of the film consists of men ramming and rubbing each other.

Bearing this in mind, it’s not surprising that women hardly get a look in. Nicole Kidman is a bland prophet of doom who eventually sees the light and realises that happiness lies not with professional integrity but with being a subservient beard. And then earlier in the film we have a scene where Cole and his race team get pulled over by cops. Cole is pushed into the team’s truck and is then groped by a state trooper. It turns out that the trooper is a stripper with a gorgeous set of tits. But you see, just like Maverick was wooed by his woman dressing like a man in Top Gun, Cole Trickle likes some gender reversal too.

Something else that illustrates how disposable women are in this world is the ending. You see, Trickle wins Daytona and celebrates with his beard for about two seconds. But then he sees that Harry, his surrogate father (played by Robert Duvall), isn’t joining in. This makes Cole sad and the two share a little moment. Eventually Harry perks up and the film ends with the two men running after each other with shit-eating grins. Pussy is nice and all, but real ecstasy lies in rubbing another man in victory lane.

Second to the explicit man love, the most amazing thing about Days of Thunder is how stupid Cole Trickle is. He doesn’t know anything about tires or engines. He doesn’t know that you’ll knacker a car if you give it too many revs. How am I supposed to believe that? How am I supposed to believe that a racing driver that supposedly has a few years of experience wouldn’t know that you couldn’t just take a race car and drive it as fast as you can – that you have to have a little strategy? It’s surely too much to ask of an audience.

And then when Cole is injured he’s like a small child. He has to have an MRI and gets a little frightened because no one is talking to him. He then goes on to mention that when he drives he has a man who talks to him all the time. Poor didums needs someone to hold his hand at all times. He probably even needs Harry to tell him how to pee.

But one of the most stupid acts is actually committed by Nicole Kidman. And no it’s not the moment when she decides that Cole can park his car in her garage. No, it’s the fact that she goes on a motorcycle ride with him…without a helmet...after he’s crashed his car and has head injuries. Fuck me running, would you entrust your life to this muppet? A man who can’t control a car and who makes a living by wearing overalls that have Mello Yello emblazoned all over them? He’ll probably crash the bike and then have you piss on his face.

The only thing that saves the film is how outstandingly bad it is. Nowhere else do you find the line ‘we ended up looking like a monkey fucking a football out there’ in it. It’s entertaining for all the wrong reasons. I mean, it has Carey Elwes playing a smarmy scumbag racer. That’s got to be worth something. Not a whole lot, but something. Plus there’s a scene where, after winning a race, and while celebrating his victory lap, Trickle rams Elwes at full speed. Somehow Cole doesn’t receive a life ban for this. Perhaps NASCAR know what a prick Carey Elwes is.

It’s kind of strange that Slumdog Millionaire was marketed as a feelgood movie. Yes, it has a fairytale ending, but it’s a story filled with violence and misery. There’s a lot of shit to crawl through.

At one point the film takes this literally. There’s a scene where the hero, Jamal, has to wade through loads of excrement in order to meet a film idol of his. With poo dripping off him, he’s the one person who manages to get an autograph. I’m guessing the movie star admired his determination.

And it’s Jamal’s determination to hold onto his dream that allows him to overcome all the obstacles that face him. He won’t let anyone get in his way.

Of course, as in most ‘feelgood’ movies, the dream is a beautiful girl. Jamal is obsessed with Latika, and throughout the movie we see his mind flash to a recurring image of her standing at a train station and smiling up at him. He plays it over and over in his head. Getting the girl is all that matters to him.

Even fame and wealth don’t matter. But in a curious twist of fate, Jamal ends up on the Indian version of Who Wants to Be a Millionaire? – it’s his final attempt to win over the woman he loves.

And the game show is an excellent framing device for the movie. At first I was concerned that it might be too gimmicky or just plain dull. How interesting can a game show be? But instead it works superbly, serving as an imaginative way of telling the character’s life. All the questions and all the answers somehow reveal something more about the man.

Another concern I had about the framing device was the fact that the film begins with Jamal’s torture for doing so well on the game show. Therefore, knowing that he’d got the questions right, the game show scenes would have little tension. But thankfully the filmmakers have a couple of tricks up their sleeve.

The first trick concerns the game show host. At one point, when Jamal is in the bathroom, he gives Jamal the answer for a particularly tough question. Is the game show host helping him or trying to screw him? We already know that Jamal gets the question right, but we don’t know whether he goes with the TV personality or against him. As it turns out, the game show host is pissed off with the fact that Jamal may become a bigger star than him and tries to fuck him over. Thankfully Jamal trusts his instincts and ignores the host.

Before I go on, I must point out how annoying the game show host. He’s a right smug bastard. But he’s annoying in a good way. He helps us identify with Jamal even more – we want him to beat his smarmy sparring partner and go home a rich man. And all the casual insults and mentions of him being a ‘chai wallah’ tell you a lot about this society. Yes, the economy may be exploding and skyscrapers might be replacing slums, but equality is still a long way off. It’s still the haves against the have-nots.

But back to the game show…

The second trick is the way that Jamal gets through his torture unscathed and then has to return to the television studio to finish the game. Finally, at the very end, we have a question where the outcome is unknown. And the tension in this scene is palpable. I haven’t been on the edge of my seat like that in a long time.

Not that the monetary outcome is of any importance. The important thing is that Jamal manages to get the girl. But of course, a few million Rupees won’t hurt.

The one disappointing thing about the film is the chemistry between the adult Jamal and Latika, or lack thereof. Sparks don’t fly. Some of the little moments between them just feel a little flat. Thankfully, though, you have Danny Boyle on hand to inject the film with loads of visual pyrotechnics to make you forget the fact that the love story is actually a little bland. The train station scene, for instance, is so fantastic because of the energy that is injected into it by the director.

In fact, the directing is so energetic that sometimes it’s on the verge of schizophrenia. Nearly every shot is a crazy Dutch angle. But for some reason, it works really well. The characters never get a chance to see the world straight on – their viewpoint is always skewed, their reality a little distorted.

For me the best scenes are the ones that focus on the characters as children. In particular, I love the sequence where the two brothers are on the train. They tie themselves to the roof and spend their time stealing and grifting. Even though they’re thieving, the sequence is filmed with such an exuberance and innocence that you can’t help but think of them as loveable little tykes. This is really the only way they can survive.

But mere survival isn’t what these characters long for. Each wants a part of the new Indian dream. Jamal’s brother is a casualty of this, falling into the trappings of easy money and criminality, but Jamal somehow manages to overcome his slumdog origins and fulfils his destiny. It’s a fairytale ending but getting there is hell.

Directed by Danny Boyle
Written by Simon Beaufoy
Produced by Christian Colson
Original Music by A.R. Rahman
Cinematography by Anthony Dod Mantle
Starring Dev Patel, Freida Pinto and Anil Kapoor

Running Time: 120 mins

Rated R for some violence, disturbing images and language, you chai wallah!

As my wife pointed out after exiting the theatre, Up has the saddest beginning to an animated movie since Bambi’s mum got shot. Here we have a boy and a girl falling in love. They have all kinds of hopes for the future – they want to have a family and they want to have all kinds of adventures. But they find out that they can’t have children and they’re never able to save up enough money to travel (they’re always raiding their travel fund in order to pay off bills). And then as time passes, the married couple grow old. They’re still just as in love as they ever were, but now the years are taking their toll. At one point we see the man standing on top of a hill waiting for his wife to make it to the top (in the past, it was her that would bound easily to the crest with him struggling to keep up). And then we see the woman in hospital, and after the husband kisses her, she’s gone and the man is left alone. It’s a heartbreaking beginning.

The economy of the opening sequence is incredibly impressive. The couples’ childhood courtship is full of snappy dialogue, but once we hit their adult years, we just have a montage of moments. And in those moments we see the entire story of their life together. Indeed, it could even make a short film in itself – the adventure that people have together and the heartbreaking end that always looms in the distance; that one person will leave the other alone and bereft. The most upsetting image is that of the old man returning alone to his home without his wife.

The beauty of the story of Up is that Carl, the old man, doesn’t just capitulate. He could quite easily whither away. He could quite easily sell his house to the soulless property developers. But instead he decides to have the adventure that he and his wife always wanted. He attaches thousands of balloons to his house and heads for Paradise Falls.

The image of an old man floating in a house immediately reminded me of the opening to Monty Python’s The Meaning of Life. In that film a bunch of elderly office clerks turn their building into a pirate ship and raid other financial institutions. Here the old man’s intention isn’t quite so…violent, but we still have some of the same kind of imagery.

Some of the most beautifully rendered images are ones of the house just floating through the sky. However, at times, the film didn’t really help my vertigo. You see, the old man attracts a castaway – a young scout called Russell. And at one point, we see Russell being lowered out of the floating house on ropes as they go over a large city. The boy points out various sights and then Carl loses his grip on him and the boy plummets. It turns out to be a fantasy on the part of the old man (at the beginning he doesn’t want Russell there) but it did nothing to help me get over my crippling fear of heights.

Once the characters get close to Paradise Falls, the film becomes more traditional. Standing in their way is a bad guy called Charles Muntz (a kind of play on Charles Lindbergh) who wants to get his hands on a rare bird in order to salvage his tattered reputation. And would you believe it, the old man and the boy have befriended the bird and don’t want this madman to capture it.

But the familiar good guy/bad guy beats do nothing to diminish one’s enjoyment of the film. There’s plenty of fun to be had with the villains, especially the talking dogs. You see, Charles Muntz has a pack of dogs that have special collars attached to them – which allow the dogs to speak. Unfortunately though for the alpha male - a huge Doberman - his collar is broken and he speaks in a pathetic, weedy little voice.

I also like how easily distracted the dogs are. Time after time they get distracted when they catch squirrels in their eyeline. They could be having the most menacing conversation and suddenly it’ll be, ‘Squirrel!’

A small throwaway that really made me laugh was when Carl first meets Charles. After being menaced by the dogs, Charles declares Carl is not to be bullied or threatened any longer. The dogs then begin to make a fuss out of the old man. And as they lead him into Charles’ huge blimp for a slap-up meal, one of the dogs says, ‘I like you temporarily.’ It’s a line that is easy to miss but it really made me chuckle.

The meal is also a very funny scene. The dogs make dinner (!) and serve Russell a big hot dog. Great, he thinks. But every time he tries to take a bite a random dog appears out of the background, munching on his grub. All of the dogs are loveable dolts and add to the good-natured spirit of the movie.

The only thing that let the movie down a tiny little bit was the final action sequence. As so often happens in Pixar films, the movie ends with a by the numbers action scene so that the punters can feel like they got their moneys worth. And while it was amusing to see dogs fly planes and then crash when they’re told that squirrels are nearby, it kind of ends up being a generic way in which to end the movie.

Another minor criticism is the 3-D. Some of the film looks great in three dimensions and some of it looks flat. It’s like the filmmakers never really committed to the format. But this won’t be a concern for people who view the film on a regular screen. And the film, with its great story and characters never really needed the gimmick anyway.

Eventually Carl loses his house and sees it disappear through the clouds. But by the end he’s realised that he doesn’t need the house to stay close to his wife. It’s just bricks and mortar. And at the end he also looks through the album that his wife started as a child. In it she wanted to keep pictures of all the adventures she was going to have – adventures she never had. But then the old man sees that his wife has filled the album with pictures from their marriage. Their true adventure was their life together. They didn’t need Paradise Falls.

When I first watched The Silence of the Lambs, I thought how crazy it would be to have Hannibal Lecter out in the open. The mad fucker would be eating people left, right and centre. He’d be chowing down every day on entrails, brains and flabby buttocks (maybe even titties and testes). No one would be safe. You’d be walking down the street and the next thing you’d know a camp Welshman would be chewing your ear.

Alas the fantasy is a lot better than what’s presented in Hannibal. What we have here is a fat snob with a pinky ring who kills the odd person here or there. You’d hardly think that the FBI would give a shit about the guy. All the people that he kills or nibbles on are lowlifes and scumbags. This isn’t a psycho so much as someone doing a public service. So what if the odd dirty cop gets hung and gutted? And so what if a scummy FBI agent is made to eat his own brains? It’s not like Lecter is kidnapping children and feeding them to their grannies. He’s far too decent for that.

And I guess it’s the positioning of Hannibal as an anti-hero that I find hardest to swallow (pun intended). Since when was I supposed to revel in his antics? Last time I saw him he was biting the face off of some poor EMT. I don’t want to root for this tossbag. Ideally I’d like to see him get fed to some sharks.

Now here’s something that Mason Verger, the film’s main villain, gets wrong. Instead of feeding Hannibal to some sharks or to some lions, he decides to feed him to, er, pigs. Now fair enough they’re wild boars and would certainly be shit-your-pants scary in real life, but in a cinematic context, they don’t really do it. In fact, they hardly seem bothered about eating human flesh. Ferocious they ain’t.

Not that Ridley Scott doesn’t pull every trick to try and make them seem intimidating – close-ups, quick cuts and loud squeals. But try as he might, they just don’t really seem that bothered. Maybe ravenous squirrels would have been better.

But what a clot Mason Verger is. Here we have a villain who spends all of his time collecting Lecter paraphernalia (he buys Lecter’s mask for a quarter of a million dollars) and planning to capture him. But then when he has his foe in his clutches, Hannibal gets loose. But rather than get taken out by Lecter, Verger dies an infinitely more pathetic death. As he sees Lecter getting away, he decides to bully his poor assistant – the guy who does everything for him. Now if ever a time for restraint is asked for, it’s when a serial killer has just gotten loose and you’re overlooking a pit full of hungry pigs. But no, Verger decides to mouth off and the assistant pushes the hapless, deformed, kiddie-fiddling spastic over the edge so that the boars can feast on him. And as he goes over the edge, he hilariously cries the assistant’s name over and over again. ‘Cordell! Cordell!’ It’s absolutely pathetic.

But then most of the film is pathetic. For instance, the beginning titles end with a bunch of pigeons making a pattern that resembles Hannibal Lecter’s face. Ooh, ominous. Maybe they could even make Lecter’s face out of pigeon excrement.

Then you have Lecter’s annoying use of words like ‘goody-goody’ and ‘ta ta’. No wonder the FBI think that Hannibal is more bent than a nine bob note. But what are these words supposed to mean? Are they supposed to hint at refinement? Are they meant to make him sound educated? Are they meant to show how playful and humorous he is? Oh look, it’s a serial killer who talks like a Frasier Crane. Tres amusement, non?

Even more exasperating is the idea that Lecter is supposed to prefer to eat the rude. Again, what happened to the psycho in Silence of the Lambs who ate the face of a poor EMT? A cannibal who eats people for society? Don’t make me laugh. And apparently he didn’t eat his guard because his guard was civil to him. Well isn’t that doodily dandily? He does his best to only eat bastards. So does that mean that if he lived in a Utopian society he wouldn’t eat human flesh? Does he only ever get the itch to munch on someone if they’re playing their ipod too loud or if someone doesn’t open the door for a lady?

I was also disappointed at Lecter’s gaff. It’s far too ornate. It looks like Liberace’s residence. I was kind of hoping for human munchables left everywhere and for Hannibal to be marinating human skulls with his jizz while howling at the moon because he can’t take his freedom. But no, he adjusts to his freedom with ease and lives an opulent lifestyle. (Quite how he maintains this lifestyle, I don’t know. His place is too large for him to be able to look after it himself. Does that mean that he has servants? And if so, does he eat them when they leave the toilet seat up? And if that’s the case, does he sit there eating a leg while interviewing the latest candidate? ‘Don’t worry, this is rhino leg I’m consuming. They’re rather large, don’t you know and I have one hell of an appetite. Would you like to try some? Goody-goody.’)

However, the most absurd thing is the ending. Lecter drugs Ray Liotta’s scummy FBI agent and then feeds him his own brain. Yes, it’s as silly as it sounds. But because of Liotta’s glorious overacting, it actually ends up being the highlight of the film. I kind of hope that Liotta realised the ending was stupid and he decided to send the whole movie up, because his utter lack of restraint is glorious. ‘That smells great!’

But then Liotta is wheeled off and we have to deal with some Hannibal/Starling nonsense. Do I really care whether he wants to pork her? Do I really care whether she wants his meat? No. Whatever fascination they have with one another isn’t shared by me. They’re just another ‘will they or wont they?’ Ross and Rachel – just quit with the annoying foreplay, bone each other, and then get the hell off my screen.

The horrors of war aren’t restricted to the battlefield. They also spread to the cities and the towns. This is what Grave of the Fireflies captures so masterfully. It paints the story of an ordinary family in Kobe during the end of the Second World War. One day some American bombers attack and the residents predict it’s going to be a heavy bombing. No one though realises just how bad it’s going to be.

The Americans firebomb the city and end up destroying a large portion of it. Much worse than this, however, is the human cost. Many people end up dying. One of the casualties is the mother of a young boy and his little sister. All of a sudden their relatively safe world has been ripped to shreds.

Even though this is an animation, we’re not spared the horrible effects of the attack. The mother of the children, who survives briefly after the bombing before succumbing to her wounds, lies in a makeshift hospital, her broken body a bloody mess. Bandages cover every inch of charred skin and blood soaks through the gauze. She no longer looks human.

The young boy, Seita, tries to protect his little sister, Setsuko, from this tragedy. He tells her that their mother is recovering in hospital. But the truth can’t be contained forever and their heartless aunt, who they go to live with (their father is fighting in the war and is likely dead himself), eventually tells the little girl the truth.

I think it was a superb idea to make this story as an animation. Had it been filmed with actors there would have been a very real possibility that the child actors would have tried too hard and would have ended up being annoyingly precocious. However, here, even though the character animation is certainly on the very cute side, there’s a wonderful believability to the sibling relationship. Gone is the potential problem of two child actors trying to show off and score points. You can just concentrate on the characters.

And it’s the relationship between the two central characters that makes Grave of the Fireflies such a strong film. Here you have two innocent people thrust into a horrific situation. But rather than allowing their circumstances to corrupt them, the characters exemplify everything that is good about humankind. The siblings here look after one another and do everything they can to make their lives better.

The boy, in particular, is a shining example of decency. His sister is terribly young, and it becomes his duty to look after her. So he becomes her parents – he’s both mother and father. He has to feed her, he has to entertain her and he has to protect her.

In one scene, Seita takes his little sister to the beach. For a few moments they’re able to experience a happy diversion. They’re able to experience some form of normalcy. But then they find a body and we then have a flashback to happier times when their mother was the one to take them to the beach. As hard as they try, things will never be the same again.

While Seita is an excellent example of decency and integrity, the siblings’ aunt is the opposite. She’s cold and unsympathetic when she’s told that their mother has died and she even gets them to sell their mother’s kimonos in order to raise funds for food. And then if it’s not bad enough that she makes the little girl cry by getting rid of her mother’s clothes (the only possessions of hers that they have and the only physical connection to their mum), she begins taking their food away. Her rationale is that while they’re in her house, she can do whatever the hell she pleases. And then she criticises their war efforts. The aunt certainly represents everything that is bad about humanity – our pettiness and our inability to see past our blinkers.

Unable to take their aunt any longer, the brother and sister leave. They go and live in a disused shelter. And at first life is rather idyllic. In one beautiful scene, fireflies illuminate their squalid living quarters. For a brief moment it looks like they’re floating in space. They’re removed from the harsh realities of real life and can enjoy the beauty of this moment. But then the girl asks why fireflies have to die so soon and they’re reminded of their mortality. Everyone is fated to burn brightly for a short length of time and then fade into oblivion.

Unfortunately the two characters in the film are destined to shine for a shorter length of time than most. Unable to find enough food to eat, the girl eventually starves to death. And the scene where she finally succumbs is incredibly sad. In her delirium she makes some rice balls out of dirt and offers them to her brother, who has finally returned with food. But it’s too late. Despite his best efforts, he fails to protect her.

And Seita’s fate is even sadder than that of the little girl’s. Unable to deal with her death, he withers away and eventually dies himself. His only possession is a chocolate tin that contains his sister’s ashes.

One of the surprising things about Grave of the Fireflies is that this (the death of Seita) is the film’s beginning. We hear him whisper his sister’s name and then he drops down dead. Some men then coldly throw away the tin that he clutches, thinking that its rubbish. But the spirits of the two characters emerge and passively watch events unfolding. From the very beginning the film sets up the sombre tone and it also establishes the inevitability of the characters’ demise. You get to witness their brief, last flash of life.

The end of the film sees the two characters looking over the rebuilt Kobe. You can rejoice at the way that the country recovered and re-established itself, but the human cost was terrible.

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Apart from the stellar final section, there isn’t a whole lot to recommend in Twilight Zone: The Movie. Two of the four short films are piss poor and one is merely okay.

However, the opening prologue is rather amusing. The film begins with two men driving along a deserted road at night. It’s unclear whether the men know each other, but they talk about TV shows and eventually begin to try and scare one another. The driver’s method is to turn the lights off on his car and drive blind. The passenger isn’t best pleased and then asks the driver if he wants to see something really scary. The driver pulls off the road and the passenger turns around. When he turns back he’s a blue demon.

I don’t know whether the above is meant to be scary, but it’s certainly funny. And it’s funny because Dan Akroyd plays the passenger. A less scary man I can’t imagine – he the cuddly, Pillsbury Dough Boy-like figure of the Ghostbusters films. So therefore, when he has the driver (incidentally played by Albert Brooks) stop the car, and when he holds his finger up as he hides his face, it’s amusing rather than threatening. What’s blubber-boy Akyroyd going to do? Hug the man to death? And as a demon he almost does this. But even though the moment with the demon is genuinely meant to be shocking and scary, it’s made somewhat laughable by the fact that the demon looks like it goes cross-eyed when it attacks the driver. The bonk-eyed demon from hell strikes!

Sadly most of the short films aren’t as entertaining as this prologue.

The first short, and the one that was responsible for beheading Vic Morrow and the killing of two children when a helicopter crashed into them, is a moribund affair. What we have is a bigot pissing and moaning about the fact that he was passed over for promotion by a Jewish man. Cue the joyless bastard insulting as many minorities as he can.

For his sins, the man is then transported back to Nazi Germany and he’s recognised not as the all-American, uber macho Yankee he sees himself as, and is instead given a yellow star to wear. He then tires to run away and is pursued by dirty fascists.

After this, he’s transported back to America and is almost lynched (a group of rednecks call him a nigger). However, the man manages to kick a hooded Klan member into a burning crucifix, once again proving why it’s stupid to walk around with a huge, burning stick. And after surviving this ordeal, the man is transported back to Vietnam and is almost killed by American soldiers as they call him a gook.

The final moments see the man transported to a concentration camp by Nazis. Mmm. I wonder what the moral of this story could be? Is it saying that racism is, you know, bad?

The second film, directed by Steven Spielberg, is even worse than the first. Indeed it’s hardly even worth mentioning. Basically what happens is that a magic black man turns a bunch of old codgers into children and we learn that no matter how old you are, you should always stay young at heart. But there can be no feelgood glow when the child actors are so overbearingly precious. It’s like a horrible test run for Hook. And plus it feels incredibly out of place when spliced into the middle of all of these dark, nasty tales. It’s like being punched by a couple of right hooks (Demons! Nazis!) and then someone baking you a cake that makes you puke all over yourself. It’s just wrong.

Things improve somewhat with the third film, but it still didn’t quite do it for me. A schoolteacher almost runs over a child and then drives him home to take him back to his family. However, when we get to his house, we realise something is wrong. The family (which proves not to be his family at all – he ‘collects’ people) behave weirdly and there seem to be far too many televisions playing cartoons.

Over time we find out that the child can make all of his wishes come true. And seeing as he’s a pre-pubescent, he mostly wants to make people cook him burgers and tell him how great he is. Of course, though, for everyone else, this is hell. They live in terror. They’re always frightened of displeasing their ‘son’.

And while this story is fun, the attempts to round out the character of the child fall flat. He’s sad that his wishes don’t make him happy like wishes are supposed to. Oh boo-hoo, I feel so sorry for someone who transports people into cartoons and has them eaten by weird cartoon characters. Yes, I can feel your plight.

And while there are some pleasingly nasty shocks, the end is kind of ridiculous. The teacher decides to become a real mother to the boy and he promises to no longer use his powers for evil – she’ll look after him and give him a proper life. Yeah, right, good thinking lady. You just know that he’ll fall off the wagon. I mean, say he’s okay for a couple of years. Sounds okay, doesn’t it? But then the teenage years will hit and bad things will happen. Just think about it. Say there’s a girl in school that he likes but then she turns him down. Is he really going to accept that? I don’t think so. He’ll do something hideous to her. Or even if he has a girlfriend but she wont perform an act that he desperately wants. For example, say he wants her to perform oral sex on him but she doesn’t like it. He’ll probably go and have her mouth turned into a vagina and have her transported into a maximum security prison. Or alternatively, unbeknownst to her, he’ll have her clitoris transported into her heart. The only time the woman will have a clitoral orgasm will be when she has a massive coronary.

Thankfully the fourth film comes along and blows everything else out of the water. It’s a remake of the Twilight Zone story that had William Shatner terrorized by a fat Yeti on the wing of a plane (a fat Yeti that looked like the man in a bear suit in The Shining - the one that was sucking that ghost dude's cock). Here, though, you have a nasty, evil looking gremlin.

The success of the story lies in the everyday fear that drives it. Even if you’re not frightened of flying, you can relate in some way. I’m sure most people have had their moments on flights when they’ve been scared – whether it be turbulence or a jittery landing. So unlike the demons, the scary boy and the Nazis (unless you lived through the Second World War), you finally have a story that can easily resonate.

Plus there’s no annoying moralising. This isn’t a plea to stop being a bigot, or to stay young at heart, or to be nice – it’s just a good, honest story about a gremlin.

And the gremlin anyway is just a visualisation of the fear that something will happen to the engines or the plane itself. It’s a normal fear made flesh.

And most of the time the gremlin looks very cool. It looks particularly creepy when seen from a distance. But things kind of fall apart when it interacts with John Lithgow. At the end there’s a ridiculous moment when Lithgow shoots through the plane window and man and monster fight at thousands of feet in the air. It’s the only wrong step in an otherwise excellent piece of filmmaking.

Lots of credit must be given to the director and the star. The film is jittery and anxious, and Lithgow’s performance is marvellous. And it’s kind of galling that the director of Mad Max and Babe: Pig in the City could so easily blow Spielberg off the screen. But he does so with ease.