The Day The Earth Stood Still (2008)

It is hard to know where the homage to pulpy science fiction of the paranoid cold war era ends and where this starts simply being an over- or badly acted and largely logic-free Hollywood bastardisation of a 1951 sci-fi classic, but somehow this is enjoyable, albeit in an immediately forgettable way, perhaps because Keanu Reeves dons his suit and is supposed to be wooden as he plays a visitor from outerspace whose appearance on Earth heralds the arrival of enormous robot machines and nano-sized (robot?) insects that seem to be hellbent on taking over or destroying the planet.

★★☆☆☆

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Hulk (2003)

In his other films, director Ang Lee successfully melds themes and genres in a way atypical of traditional Hollywood - homosexual romance and life on the land in the American Midwest in Brokeback Mountain, major release wuxia in Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon - but here, his mix of superhero origin story and drama about the uncommunicative men, delivered in comic-book panels and blobby cgi, is less engaging because Lee forgets to give Bruce Banner anything heroic to do beyond overcoming his personal demons, which I suppose is heroic but it ends up feeling like the movie takes two hours to get to a starting point.

★★☆☆☆

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Labyrinth (1996)

Imagine The Dark Crystal, Fraggle Rock, and The Muppets all rolled up in one and you've got something close to this other Jim Henson project, a 1996 musical fantasy with a cult following about Dorothy Gale-like Sarah transported to an Oz-like otherworld where she encounters characters the Fireys, Ludo, and Hoggle, who assist her on her quest to rescue her baby brother from David Bowie's Goblin King, Jareth.

★★★★★

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