These articles were (almost) all written as previews – without having seen the films concerned – for a long-lead agency supplying the local press. The opinions expressed in them do not necessarily represent my final views of the films concerned after finally getting to see them.

They are probably best accessible from the archives, where they are arranged by the approximate date on which the films were released in the UK.

(Originally published in Starburst TV Special no.51 – 2002)

The convoluted history of the Planet of the Apes was confused enough before Tim Burton got involved. J Clive Matthews charts the paradoxes of the films and the TV series: be warned, your head might just explode!

As most Science Fiction fans are aware from the endless TV screenings in teh small hours, the 1968 Charlton Heston-starring Planet of the Apes spawned four sequels, not to mention Tim Burton’s recent rather unimaginitive re-imagining.

In addition, after the initial series of films finally came to a close with the lacklustre Battle for the Planet of the Apes in 1973, two television series also sprang phoenix-like from the ashes of the franchise before quickly fizzling out again. These were the live-action Planet of the Apes (broadcast on CBS during late 1974) and the animated Return to the Planet of the Apes (shown on NBC in 1975). Neither made for very good viewing, which was why both were cancelled after just 13 episodes (although an extra episode of the live-action series was filmed, it was not shown in the US at the time.)

The true star of the live-action series was undoubtedly Roddy McDowall. The former child star had played the friendly chimp Cornelius in the first and third films (but not the second due to other commitments), and Cornelius’ rebellious son, Caesar, in the last two movies. Here McDowall appeared as the friendly chimp Galen (no relation to Wright King’s film character), and stole the show almost every time he came on screen through his quirky ape acting and general tomfoolery. Ron Harper and James Naughton featured as Alan Virdon and Pete Burke, two astronauts lost on the future Earth of 3085 AD, which is run by the intelligent primates – the lacklustre pair being practically indistinguishable Harper had to dye his hair blond in an effort to differentiate them. They were pitted against Dr Zaius (not the same Dr Zaius as in the films, despite obvious similarities) and Spock’s father himself, Mark Lenard, played a bravura role as the evil gorilla General Urko, on whom Tim Roth’s Thade in Burton’s film is obviously based.

For the most part, the Planet of the Apes TV series was middling to weak, shunting the humans and their chimp companions from place to place like some monkey-laden version of The Fugitive. Most weeks, the astronauts displayed rather unfeasible MacGuyver-style improvisational skills, coming up with everything from windmills (episode four, ‘The Good Seeds’ ) and working batteries (episode five, ‘The Legacy’) to a cure for malaria (episode 12, ‘The Cure’), not to mention the fully-functioning hanglider of the final transmitted episode, ‘Up Above the World So High’.

The one stand-out episode is unversally agreed to have been the eigth, ‘Deception’, an effective exploration of racism in which Ku Klux Klan-style ape fanatics are on the rampage killing humans, whilst a blind female ape (played by Jane Actman) falls in love with Burke, not realising that he is not a simian.

Sadly, the majority of episodes came closer to ‘The Good Seed’ where, for almost the entire 48-minute running time, the astronauts try to help a pregnant cow, whilst introducing local humans to 20th Century horticultural techniques. Fascinating, no? It must have been something about the time, as the BBC were making something similar in the form of Survivors, except without any apes.

After the series’ cancellation, five ‘TV movies’ of an hour and a half each were spliced together from some of the episodes, with most of the creativity going into the incredible titles. These were Back to the Planet of the Apes, Forgotten City of the Planet of the Apes, Treachery and Greed on the Planet of the Apes, Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness on the Planet of the Apes and Farewell to the Planet of the Apes, the last of which – like the series itself – ends on the rather disappointing note of Galen feeling a bit seasick and falling off a raft.

In contrast, Return to the Planet of the Apes was an intriguing departure from all that had gone before, giving the apes a society roughly as advanced as man’s in the late 20th century. It again featured American astronauts (Judy Franklin, Jeff Carter and Bill Hudson) from the 1970s blasted forward through time to 3979 AD, with apes called Cornelius, Zira, Zaius and Urko and additional humans called Brent and Nova – just as in previous incarnations of Apes. Despite the very dodgy animation typical of most mid-1970s children’s cartoons (where only mouths and arms appear to move, and then not very well), many of the plots of the half-hour episodes were far more interesting than the live-action show.

Centring on the astronauts’ attempts to save their fellow humans from being killed by some of the most vicious apes yet seen in the franchise, whilst attempting to reveal to the ape public that man used to rule the planet, the series also managed to create a far greater sense of internal continuity than its predecessor. Each episode obviously elaborated on earlier ones, and the characters developed noticeably (albeit simplistically) as the series progressed.

Amazingly, this worked despite the fact that the episodes were initially broadcast slightly out of order. Episode 13, ‘River of Flames’, should logically come before episode six, ‘Screaming Wings’, as it returns Franklin to her companions after she is captured in episode five, ‘The Unearthly Prophecy’. Unfortunately, the series was cut short too soon to fully develop its basic premise.

Despite their failings and short life-spans, in the context of the rather convoluted history of the Apes universe (or universes, depending on your point of view), the two TV series raise some intriguing problems that seem almost as nonsensical as the ending to Tim Burton’s primate picture.

The difficulties actually stem from the films themselves, which from the third instalment set up a rather complex time paradox. At the end of Beneath the Planet of the Apes, Heston’s human astronaut (Taylor) detonates an ancient nuclear device, destroying the Earth. At the start of Escape from the Planet of the Apes, it is revealed that three ape scientists (Zira, Cornelius and Milo) managed to escape the planet’s destruction by launching a rocket and blasting back through time (rather like Superman).

They arrive on Earth in 1973, and the paradox begins to unfold, in a neat reversal of the first film. In Escape, instead of apes being shocked that Taylor can talk, it is humans who are shocked that Roddy McDowall’s Cornelius (and the others) have the power of speech. Much like the apes in the first films, the humans’ reaction is to experiment or exterminate, with only a few dissenters deciding to help the unusual visitors from another time.

As when Taylor’s speech causes such a disturbance amongst the council, the presence of a few talking apes automatically suggests to the more hawkish members of the US military and government that there could be more intelligent monkeys, which could pose a threat. After Cornelius reveals how the apes take over the planet in interrogation, these fears are proven justified. Over the next two films, it appears that the humans’ ‘enslavement’ of the apes occurs sooner due to this foreknowledge, as the humans try to prevent the downfall of mankind by killing the ape astronauts.

The survival of Zira’s intelligent ape son, Caesar, speeds up events even further. In the pre-paradox continuity (as explained by Cornelius) the ape rebellion against their human masters was led by Aldo the gorilla – the first simian to speak – towards the end of the 25th century. (The Aldo of Battle for the Planet of the Apes is clearly not the same one.) In the post-paradox world it is instead Caesar who leads his monkey militia against the humans towards the end of the 20th century.

As anyone who has seen the Back to the Future trilogy knows all too well, if you alter the past even slightly, you can alter the present/future immensely. However, the films themselves don’t deal with the inevitably altered events in the later ape-ruled Earth. After all, if ape society began 500 years earlier, it would have been far more advanced by the time Charlton Heston’s Taylor arrived there in 3955 (which in the pre-paradox continuity was only about 1500 years after the apes took over). It would be the approximate difference between England in the time of Henry VIII and England today in terms of the level of development of ape civilisation, at the very least.

It is safe to assume that, in this more advanced ape society caused by the earlier ape rebellion, events would have played out rather differently when the astronauts from teh 1970s start appearing during the course of the fourth millennium. In a more advanced ape civilisation, it is unlikely that Taylor would have been so successful in his attempts to escape capture, or in detonating the Alpha-Omega nuclear device. With the alteration of the past, perhaps the destruction of the Earth in 3955 if avoided?

According to Return to the Planet of the Apes, Taylor cannot have succeeded in blowing up the world. Here, astronauts from 1976 arrive on a future, ape-ruled Earth in 3979 – twenty-four years after its destruction according to Beneath the Planet of the Apes. In this ape civilisation, the primates drive cars, have radios and firearms, and watch television – rather like in Pierre Boulle’s original 1963 novel on which the first film was based. they are even capable of copying mid-20th Century aviation technology when (in ‘Screaming Wings’) they manage to construct a fleet of aircraft after restoring a World War II fighter that has miraculously survived for over 2000 years.

The apes of Return do seem to be approximately 500 years more advanced technologically than those of Beneath. Return thus initially appears to exist in the post-paradox continuity, demonstrating how ape society evolves in the altered timeline created by Caesar’s rebellion. (Of course, if this timeline develops, Cornelius, Zira and Milo might not have been able to travel back in time, creating another paradox, but that’s another matter.)

More problems occur in episode seven of the animated series, ‘Trail to the Unknown’. Here, the three time-travellers come across another astronaut from Earth’s past, Ron Brent (not hte same Brent as appears in Beneath), who had launched in 2109. According to the post-paradox continuity, this would have been a century after the ape rebellion, the nuclear holocaust of 1992, and the decline of human civilisation. The only explanation for this can be that, despite all major cities being wiped out in 1992, somehoe the human space programme managed to stay intact.

Even this doesn’t yet solve all of the problems created by the paradox of Cornelius, Zira and Milo’s trip back through time. The time-hopping astronauts of the animated series initially leave Earth in 1976. In the live-action series there is a similar problem, as its human heroes had launched in 1980. In both cases, the astronauts launch after the arrival of Milo, Zira and Cornelius, yet they seem unaware of the talking monkeys from teh future, and in both series are shocked on encountering them, and on discovering that the monkey-ruled planet they find themselves on is Earth. The general explanation here is simply that there could have been an X-Files-style government cover-up back in the 1970s, and that none of the astronauts were informed – despite the televised press conferences of Escape.

The live-action Planet of the Apes series has additional problems. In the pilot episode (‘Escape From Tomorrow’), Virdon and Burke are shown a book that has in it a futuristic picture of New York city, circa 2503. this would be impossible if this was in the post-paradox continuity, as all major cities were destroyed in the nuclear holocaust of 1992. This is further elaborated in episode three, ‘The Trap’, where Burke ends up trapped in an ancient subway station filled with remnants of a human civilisation far in advance of the one he left behind in the 1970s.

This would initially seem to suggest that this series occurs in the pre-paradox continuity, one where Cornelius, Zira and Milo did not arrive on Earth in 1973, and the ape revolt does not take place until the late 25th century. New york’s survival in 2503 could simply be explained by the length of time a global usurpation would take. Caesar’s rebellion lasts at least ten years; it is fairly safe to assume that Aldo would not have much more success.

Furthermore, according to Cornelius in Escape, an unusual plague wipes out all dogs and cats on Earth in 1984. This is the initial reason for the promotion of apes to the role of pets and helpers and, it is implied, their increased evolution. Yet in the live-action series, dogs are clearly seen wandering around in several episodes. (Some have pointed out that, in a convenient explanation, Caesar seems to think that not all dogs and cats were wiped out in the plague.)

But the idea that the live-action series exists in a pre-paradox continuity – or indeed in any continuity – is somewhat damaged by episode five, ‘The Legacy’. Here, the astronauts come across a film recording made by scientists from their own era that details the downfall of mankind. This would suggest that such an event occurred fairly soon after their 1980 departure, as it would have done in a post-paradox continuity. Were the Planet of the Apes TV series to exist in a pre-paradox world, the downfall of humanity would not have occurred for another 500 years – which hardly counts as their ‘own era’ by anyone’s standards. thanks to the pilot episode’s revelation of an intact twenty-sixth century New York, the live-action series cannot be placed in a post-paradox continuity either. It seems not to be able to be slotted in anywhere in the pre-existing continuities.

In addition to all these problems, Return also features giant spiders, huge underwater and flying monsters, and humans with telepathic powers – phenomena not seen in any other incarnation of the Apes franchise. It might be arguable that these could be the result of the radiation caused by the 1992 holocaust, but this would, let’s face it, be stretching it a little, especially as the series gives no explanation for the aberrations.

Perhaps it would be best to take the view of Fox Head of Distribution Bruce Snyder to excuse the utterly illogical ending of Tim burton’s 2001 version of the monkey planet: “You just watched a movie about talking monkeys in outer space. Don’t look for too much logic, you know?” Hardly a very satisfactory explanation, especially as the very concept of science fiction assumes a certain amount of internal logic and plausibility, but then Burton’s 2001 film was hardly very satisfactory either.

As it stands, fans of the Planet of the Apes franchise generally appear to choose to believe that the live-action series ignores the last three films, and that Return to the Planet of the Apes is an aberration to the series, outside of any of the continuities set up in the cinema. But in the final analysis the only real explanation can be rather sloppy script writing in the two TV series that were, after all, simply failed low-budget attempts to cash in on a successful cult film franchise. Perhaps if they had stuck more firmly to their source material, they might not have been cancelled quite so quickly. But on such blatant spin-offs, aimed as they were at younger audiences, the only real solution is to not look for too much logic, you know?

Sooner or later it’s going to get to the stage where every conceivable combination of talking animals has been exhausted in Hollywood’s desperate drive to churn out more and more computer-animated tales for the kids. We’ve had sharks, insects, fish, no less than two based on the inhabitants of a New York Zoo, prehistoric and fairytale beasties, and countless others. Some have been better than others.

Thankfully, this is one of the good ones. Seemingly partially inspired by the classic Watership Down, a group of American woodland animals emerge from hibernation to find that human suburbs have spread out over their forest, leaving them but a small clump of trees cut off from the tidy lawns of mankind by a towering, perfectly-trimmed hedge. Led by a rascally raccoon, voiced by Bruce Willis, soon this mismatched bunch find themselves engaged on a series of excursions to the neat human homes, and that’s really about that. No grand adventures, just a simple plot ideal for a series of well-conceived capers as the humans gradually get fed up with their furry neighbours making raids on their rubbish bins.

As is often the way with these things, the voice cast that has been assembled by Dreamworks, the studio responsible for previous anthropomorphic animal animations Antz, Chicken Run, Shark Tale, Madagascar and the superb Shrek, is truly impressive. Joining Willis are Garry Shandling, William Shatner, Nick Nolte, Eugene Levy, Alison Janney and Steve Carell. Admittedly, beyond Willis, Nolte and Shatner the names may not be too familiar to British audiences, but all have top-notch comic timing and are ideally suited for their disparate roles, even with the seemingly mandatory silly voices so many of them opt to put on.

This is one of those films that really doesn’t stand up to much analysis, and nor is it meant to. Despite a few spoofs of other movies scattered here and there, this is firmly aimed at the kids, with few of the Shrek films’ adult-aimed jokes. It’s simple and silly, with few real messages beyond the obvious vaguely conservationist, loosely environmentalist ones that would be obvious merely from the plot outline.

Despite having been responsible for the most successful computer animated film franchise yet with Shrek, Dreamworks maintains its great sense of what works. Inserting more adult humour or more complex adventures into this basic set-up would simply have spoiled it. Instead, they’ve concocted yet another expertly-crafted movie that should prove a genuine hit with the kids – and like all good family films be enjoyed by the adults as well.

Normally, sensible cinemagoers know there’s little worse than a film that relies almost entirely on child actors. Although you may every now and again find a Haley Joel Osment or Jodie Foster amongst the crop of precocious drama school brats who flock to auditions at the behest of pushy parents, the vast majority of pre-adolescent actors are dire. A wooden, nervous and stilted, getting a naturalistic performance out of youngsters is like the proverbial blood from a stone.

Back in 1991 the Macaulay Culkin vehicle My Girl had a similar first love theme to that of Little Manhattan, with its eleven-year-old leads sharing a screen kiss which, though entirely innocent, in these days of tabloid scares about perverts outside the playground, it’s hard not to feel that some of the on-screen antics of the young lovers could be misinterpreted.

Yet despite the nods to more grown-up romantic comedies, this is simply a sweet, nostalgic look at childhood and the first dawning realisation that the opposite sex can be something of interest rather than the enemy. It is hardly a new idea, and one which has been explored on film countless times, but rarely has it been done in such an assured manner.

Male lead Josh Hutcherson, fresh from his turn in the charming children’s space adventure Zathura, is beginning to prove himself a worthy heir to the child stars of yesteryear, and is more than capable of forming the lynchpin of the movie as he explores his disturbing new feelings for a girl he’s known all his short life. As his love interest, newcomer Charlie Ray also demonstrates herself to be a great find, showing a subtlety and maturity of acting style far beyond her years

Ably directed by first-timer Mark Levin, the writer of 2004’s average romantic comedy Wimbledon as well as the producer of 1980s coming of age sitcom The Wonder Years, if you remember that sitcom, you’ll know what to expect here. With a similar use of voice-over to that popular series, the same themes of early pubescent love and confusion are explored in a similarly sentimental, yet never cloying way.

The addition of two talented TV actors, The West Wing’s Bradley Whitford and Sex and the City’s Cynthia Nixon, as the boy’s separated parents also helps provide and added subtext – remember the loves of your youth, and your adult romances could benefit from the less cynical views of childhood. The end result is a charming, if sentimental, movie. But then the sentimentality is a lot of the point – cynicism and love hardly go hand in hand, after all.

The world of politics has inspired some of the finest comedies of the last few decades, from the still-relevant British sitcoms Yes Minister and The New Statesman through the American Spin City and films like Bulworth and Bob Roberts, the fact that politicians are at once so disliked and so powerful has made them prime targets for comedians’ bile. But it is often the little, anonymous people orchestrating things behind the scenes who deserve the most attention.

It’s beginning to look like a good time for movies with a bit of a political message as, hot on the heels of April’s satire of President Bush and Pop Idol American Dreamz, comes this intelligent comic take on the political lobbying industry. Picking those anonymous PR types who pressurise governments to allow their products and industries ever greater freedom from tax and regulation as a subject may at first sound like prime material for immense boredom, yet there is a rich vein of comedy here yet to be fully mined.

Here the tobacco industry is the target, along with Hollywood itself, long blamed for the glamorisation of smoking through the iconic screen images of the likes of Humphrey Bogart and James Dean, cool cinematic heroes rarely seen without a cancer stick to puff on.

Aaron Eckhart – one of those actors who looks familiar but you don’t know quite from where – is perfect as the suave and smooth-talking tobacco lobbyist Nick Naylor, charged with convincing an increasingly sceptical public of the sheer joy of a smoke while deflecting health concerns left, right and centre. It’s a tough job, but he’s the best at it, raising doubts about the anti-smoking argument with ease, from suggesting that as cholesterol causes more deaths than cigarette smoke, by the same logic cheese should be clamped down on to convincing schoolchildren that tobacco isn’t harmful and rekindling Hollywood’s love affair with the noxious weed.

With some great one-liners working superbly amidst an intelligently subtle script, although there are many belly-laughs there’s also plenty to ponder. Rather than the usual hammer-blow attack on an industry that these days everyone agrees is at best rather morally suspect, you’ll come away with a few preconceptions decidedly challenged, even though the message remains, as you’d expect, decidedly anti-tobacco.

With Eckhart, putting in a performance that should remind everyone how talented a performer he was in 1997’s sexist office satire In the Company of Men, backed up by the likes of Robert Duval, Rob Lowe and William H Macy alongside more vaguely familiar faces on top form – with special mention to ER’s Maria Bello and Anchorman’s David Koechner – this is a great show of ensemble comedy. With any justice, in Eckhart we could have a new comic star on our hands, while twenty-nine-year-old writer/director Jason Reitman has finally proved that he’s truly his father’s son – his dad is Ivan, the man responsible for the comedy classic Ghostbusters as well as the excellent White House comedy Dave. This is definitely one to watch – a perfect combination of comedy and cleverness.

It is a rare thing for Robert Redford to merely act in a film these days. In the last twenty years he has appeared in just eleven movies, having been one of the most prolific and popular actors of the 1960s and 1970s. Instead he has been focussing on producing other people’s films, and in nurturing fresh generations of filmmakers through his hugely influential Sundance Film Festival, which has helped launch the careers of the likes of Quentin Tarantino, Robert Rodriguez and Jim Jarmusch.

In other words, to get such an influential Hollywood figure to simply act – especially as Redford is one of the few actors to also have won a Best Director Oscar – takes something special, and in itself is enough to attract other big name stars. Here, though the focus is largely on him, co-stars Morgan Freeman and Jennifer Lopez provide great support, as does newcomer Becca Gardner as Lopez’s early teenage daughter trying to come to terms with suddenly finding herself out in a rural backwater. So good are the cast that this could even be the film that lets Lopez shake off her somewhat unfavourable reputation, as she finally gets back to proving that, when she decides to avoid tedious romantic comedies, she actually has the talent to deserve her fame.

With the arrival of Lopez and her daughter, the tranquil farm life of best friends Redford and Freeman is instantly shattered. The estranged wife of Redford’s dead son, father and daughter-in-law have not seen each other for so long that he was not even aware that he had a grandchild, the initial hostility almost enough to ensure that he sends her instantly packing.

What follows is surprisingly predictable for a film that managed to lure Redford from his self-imposed near-exile. With Lopez playing scared fugitive, Redford gruff but good-hearted and Freeman his typical wise old man, quite why this script got Redford interested out of the many thousands he must receive each year is hard to fathom. But as his directorial outings A River Runs Through It and The Horse Whisperer amply show, he certainly has a liking for sentimentality. That’s not to say this is a bad film, but you have to wonder how a man of Redford’s superb judgement thought this was worthy of his time.

Thankfully, the cast and director Lasse Hallström are strong enough to lift this film up above the weak plot, turning it from what, in lesser hands, would have been merely another tedious TV movie sentimental semi-thriller into a showcase of what good actors can do. The only slight problem is that we all know that these three stars can do this – they are all playing the same character they have played many times before, even if Lopez here does it better then usual. The end result is a well-made if hardly earth-shattering movie that will be comfortingly familiar and probably draw a fair amount of critical ire. But if movies were made for the critics alone, they’d be a very dull thing for everyone else.

Having burst into the national consciousness with his wonderfully eccentric debut film role in Withnail & I twenty years ago, Richard E Grant has become a perennial British favourite. Though hardly the most subtle of actors, always playing a variant on the same slightly extreme, slightly posh character, he found himself a formula that works and is popular, and has made a very good career out of it.

Back in 1997, Grant published his diaries from his time in the film industry to rave reviews. His easy, amusing writing style won over a new legion of fans as it became clear that as well as having managed to make his upper-class screen persona hugely likeable at a time when being posh was, following the anti-Tory backlash of the mid-1990s, decidedly out of fashion, he was a genuinely nice chap with a good sense of humour and an eye for the absurd.

Wah-Wah is both Grant’s screenwriting and directorial debut, but he has stuck to a subject he knows inside-out: himself. Although similar semi-autobiographical film projects could end up self-obsessed, Grant’s account of his early teenage years makes for a wonderful mix of all the classic coming-of-age themes, from the discovery of the opposite sex to the dawning of political awareness as, from their home in Swaziland, the looming political independence of the British colony mirrors his parents’ gradual break-up and his own emergence into adulthood. In fact, were this not based on his own genuine experiences, the plot could risk seeming nearly as contrived as his screen persona would in the hands of a less genuine actor.

In many ways the film is similar to Franco Zefferelli’s tale of British ex-pats in fascist Italy, Tea With Mussolini, but despite the less momentous setting this is somehow a more engaging a tale of coping with a shifting political situation than that slightly impersonal exploration of similar themes. While the subject-matter could be off-putting and heavy, Grant’s light-hearted script and easy, restrained directorial style make this a wonderfully absorbing and frequently entertaining look at a now-lost world about which most people know very little, even if it was only forty years ago. As with his screen persona, Grant has somehow managed to create something instantly likeable, while, as with his earlier diaries, he’s once again proved that he’s more than the usual one-dimensional actor by turning out a very impressive directorial debut.

To back up the cunningly interwoven themes, Grant has assembled an enviable cast, from About a Boy’s Nicholas Hoult as his fourteen-year-old self through Gabriel Byrne, Miranda Richardson, Emily Watson, Julie Walters and Celia Imrie as his family and their colonial friends and rivals. Many of the characters are as familiarly archetypal as are the actors’ faces, yet with such talents on board, combined with Grant’s amusing and insightful script, this is far more than the usual “posh people try and maintain a sense of familiarity in a far-off land” story that has been done so many times before.

It may have only been five years and the repercussions of that day may still be being felt around the world, but already the wounds of September 11th 2001 have been judged to be sufficiently healed for the film versions to start emerging. Soon to come will be Oliver Stone’s take on two of the fire-fighters who ran in to the burning World Trade Centre and were caught in its collapse, but first to hit the screens is this dramatisation of the hijacking of United Airlines flight 93, the plane supposedly destined for the White House that ended up crashing in Pennsylvania after an apparent attempt by passengers to overcome their hijackers.

Unsurprisingly, the very decision to dramatise those events has been hugely controversial, especially in the United States. Trailers for this film were pulled from New York theatres after audiences were overcome with emotion, and despite its sensitivity to the wishes of the families of those killed on board the flight, who were closely consulted, there are many who feel not just that this is far too soon, but that the events are too painful ever to be fictionalised.

Of course, despite a few hints from phone records made by passengers to those on the ground, precisely what happened on board flight 93 can never be known. All that seems certain is that, thanks to being delayed on takeoff, the hijackers were unable to coordinate their attack with their comrades on the other three planes that hit the World Trade Centre and Pentagon. Those onboard flight 93 apparently heard the news of the attacks, realised what was going on and decided to act. Beyond that, the details are sketchy.

In the absence of solid facts, numerous conspiracy theories have arisen, aided by the lack of any definite confirmation of just why flight 93 ended up crashing. Some have claimed that it was shot down by the US military, others that the terrorists themselves lost control and dived too soon, yet more that the pilot and crew were unable to keep the plane in the air for any number of reasons, from bomb detonations to having been killed as soon as the plane was taken over.

In other words, this is only one version of events and, unsurprisingly, the least controversial. While doing a great job of humanising the victims, the desire not to speak ill of the dead has ensured that the entire affair is incredibly one-dimensional. The terrorists are typically shifty-looking and evil, the passengers and crew all wonderful, flawless human beings. Life is rarely that simple.

Nonetheless, the film has received rave reviews in America, perhaps because of its potential to help act as a focus for the ongoing process of national healing. The presence of British writer/director Paul Greengrass has also helped. A former documentary-maker working for World in Action from warzones around the globe before coming to the big screen with The Bourne Supremacy, he has more experience than pretty much anyone in Hollywood of presenting real events as objectively and sensitively as possible. The end result is a good piece of docu-drama. As history it may be lacking in objectivity, but it will take far longer than five years for that to be possible with the events of September 11th 2001.

In 1974, an unusually philosophical drama set in 1930s Los Angeles found itself hailed as an instant classic, with eleven Oscar nominations at the following year’s ceremony and almost unanimously rave reviews. Had it not been for the insanely tough competition of The Godfather: Part II at the 1975 Oscars, Chinatown would have cleaned up. As it was, the only Academy Award for that near-perfect movie was for screenwriter Robert Towne.

Thirty years on, Towne has returned to the same 1930s LA of Chinatown, this time as director as well as writer, adapting a classic 1939 John Fante novel of Depression-era cross-cultural romance, long mooted for a screen outing.

Although Towne was responsible for the screenplays for a number of other 1970s hit movies, and was at the forefront of the decade’s revitalisation of Hollywood through his work on the likes of The Last Detail, Shampoo and especially Chinatown, his star has somewhat diminished in the last couple of decades after lacklustre, mediocre work on a number of bog-standard movies like Tequila Sunrise, Days of Thunder and Mission: Impossible II. His directorial career has likewise not been especially well-regarded and, in the US, his adaptation of this classic American novel has come in for a lot of criticism.

But to expect anyone to live up to the genius of Chinatown is unrealistic and, really, rather unfair. Likewise, to expect any adaptation of any novel to do full justice to the original author’s work misses the essential point that where a novel will generally be several hundred pages long and take a bare minimum of several hours to read, a film version has to cram as much as possible in to just a couple of hours. When the central theme is the blossoming of mixed-race romance in a disapproving society and the pressures of embarking on a largely sedentary literary career, some of the nuances and subtlety of the novel’s more versatile form are naturally going to be lost.

Yet for those unfamiliar with the book, as most British audiences will be, there is much to applaud here. Salma Hayek as the illiterate Mexican waitress and Colin Farrell as the aspiring Italian writer desperate for the American dream of success and a beautiful blonde wife both give believably absorbing performances, their nascent relationship given plenty of time to emerge thanks to Towne’s leisurely pacing.

But the real beauty here is not the plot or the evocation of the artistic struggle, although Towne and Farrell respectively make good stabs at them, it is instead the recreation of an era. Thanks largely to the beautiful cinematography of Caleb Deschanel, probably best known for his work on 2004’s The Passion of the Christ, combined with some superb period sets and costumes from the Coen brothers’ favourite Production Designer, Dennis Gassner, the look of this film is slick and near-perfect. When Farrell dons his trilby, he could almost be Jack Nicholson in Chinatown all over again – albeit without the bloody nose.

That kind of classic Hollywood style is rare these days, and almost worth the price of admission on its own. A visually wonderful, intelligent film with good performances from the leads, if you’re expecting another Chinatown you’ll be disappointed – but if you have those sorts of expectations you should be used to that by now.

The trend for remakes of 1970s movies continues with this updated version of the 1972 sinking cruise ship disaster classic The Poseidon Adventure. As with so many remakes, the first question really has to be “what’s the point?” – especially after James Cameron has brought us his epic version of the sinking of the Titanic, which is surely unlikely to be topped for sheer sinking ship spectacle for a good while.

Add to that the American TV remake that was screened last year to dismal reviews and the terrible Michael Caine-starring 1979 sequel Beyond the Poseidon Adventure, and the whole concept of people trapped onboard sinking ships seems, if you’ll pardon the pun, rather washed-out. On top of that, it is surely rather insensitive to release such a film only a few months after the Egyptian ferry disaster in the Red Sea that killed so many hundreds of people.

But that’s being picky. The whole point of disaster movies is to be vaguely insensitive and play up to the audience’s most fundamental fears – be it of tall buildings with The Towering Inferno, flying with Airport, swimming with Jaws, outer space with Armageddon or the weather with Twister. The only thing that really matters is how good they are at creating sympathetic characters for the audience to root for amid impressive and believable levels of “will they survive” suspense and plausible special effects.

The original Poseidon movie naturally looks rather dated nearly thirty years on, yet remains one of the classics of the genre thanks to a combination of decent plotting and good characters, backed up by a top-notch cast. With stars like Gene Hackman, Ernest Borgnine, Roddy McDowell and Shelley Winters, all at the height of their game, there were plenty of people to root for as the bedraggled bunch of survivors tried to find their way out of the upside-down, rapidly sinking cruise liner. In the sequel the stars were there, with Caine backed up by Sally Field, Telly Savalas and Slim Pickens, but their characters were less rounded and the plotting less considered.

This remake may have upped the special effects to modern standards – albeit with significantly less budget than Titanic – but along the way the plot and characters have again suffered. The biggest names here are Richard Dreyfuss and Kurt Russell, both past their prime, with a couple of rising stars in Josh Lucas and Emmy Rossum – added largely to try and appeal to a younger audience and create more of an action movie vibe than the original’s more interesting look at how respectable middle-aged types would cope with a disaster.

But no matter how glamorous an actor may look on the cover of a glossy magazine, when drenched with water and covered in grime it’s rather more difficult to look pretty. When their characters are also so one dimensional as to give little interest, there’s very little reason for the audience to care who lives and who dies. This can work fine for a spoof of the genre like Mars Attacks! or Airplane! – but for a serious attempt at a disaster movie, the result is little short of, well, disastrous.