Devil (2010) Dir: John Erick Dowdle

To steal a line from someone else, they missed a trick calling this movie Devil when it should have been called Hellevator.
Based on a story by M. Night Shyamalan, a man whose reputation could not have sunk any lower had he been caught fellating Gary Glitter, this is pretty much the ultimate high concept movie: Five people get stuck in a lift and one of them is Satan himself.
That's the pitch and, honestly, that is the plot.
Sure, we get the odd bit of backstory fleshed out, primarily of the lead detective, but nothing else beyond the scope of that single line synopsis occurs at all.
It's a bleedin' miracle this movie manages to reach the required length to be classified as a motion picture, given the paucity of plot, but it does and, truthfully, though it does start to flag a little towards the end, it never really gets dull.
The ending is ludicrous, and so painfully obvious from about minute fifteen that if you don't figure out who Satan is I would strongly recommend jabbing long, sharp things into your ears until blood starts to flow.
Not really scary, not half as clever as it seems to think it is - it's trying for Cube but ends up more The Blob - I have no intention of ever watching this again, but it mildly entertained for its duration.
Perhaps they should put that on the DVD cover: "Mildly entertaining."

It's a 3 out of 5.

The Expendables (2010) Dir: Sylvester Stallone

Sylvester 'pushing sixty five' Stallone delivers another pumping, high octane actioner.
The plot: A covert CIA agent (Bruce Willis) hires a motley crew of mercenaries, led by Stallone's Barney Ross, to take out the tyrannical ruler of a Gulf Coast island - played with some gusto by Dexter's David 'Angel Baptista' Zayas - and his wealthy American overlords.
Seriously, that's all you need to know.
As most will be aware, the lure of the movie is the red meat on show, with Ross' team made up of Jason 'The Stath' Statham, Jet Li, Dolph Lundgren, Randy Couture (whoever he is) and Terry Crews (whoever he happens to be), half dozen of the primest specimens of manliness you are ever likely to assemble.
Stallone strings together a series of outlandishly implausible, yet riotously entertaining set-pieces, the script around which they are draped one of the weakest I have heard in manies the moon, with Sly making the classic mistake of trying to write comedy when, as a human being, he is about as humorous as a severe bout of throat cancer. A quibble, but a small one as, inevitably, it's the action that is the star here and, fortunately, it is just excellent.
Dumb as a bag of scratchings it may be, but this manages to showcase several scenes I have certainly never encountered in a movie before; the 'fuel dump' attack by the waterplane, The Stath's death move towards the end of the final showdown and a gun so powerful it makes those automated sentry guns in Aliens look like freakin' pea-shooters. Talking of THAT gun, whenever she appears there is the welcome addition of a touch of splatter, albeit of the CGI kind, though it is worth noting that CGI, for the most part, plays second fiddle to proper, live action stunt work done the old-fashioned way, lending the movie an air of credibility it may otherwise have lacked.
Set your brainwaves to dormant, stick matchsticks in your eyelids and strap yourself to an iron lung to keep your basic bodily functions active.
Then sit back and enjoy.

4 out of 5

Predators (2010) Dir: Nimród Antal

I must confess, I was desperately excited about this movie, as evidenced by my first day of release viewing, something I can rarely be bothered to do, though my anticipation was tempered somewhat by the knowledge that, usually, I have a preference for old over new.
So, would the updating be an effective one?
Oh yes!
The plot: The movie opens in a quite dramatic fashion, with Our Hero Royce (the seemingly omnipresent Adrien Brody, if the trailers that ran before this movie are anything to go by) falling through the sky at great speed, a parachute strapped to his back, but the bloody thing won't open. Inevitably, he survives the fall, and meets up with several others who have befallen a similar fate, the last thing they remember a flash of light, then nothing, before awakening in freefall.
It soon transpires that the motley collection of dubious specimens have been deliberately selected for their specialist skills: a Yakuza, a black ops. mercenary, a guerrilla fighter...you get the picture, though amongst their number, a doctor, who doesn't quite seem to fit the mould.
Puzzled as to what has happened, it's not long before we are right in the action, a pack of alienoid dogs attacking the group, but worse is to follow. Realising that they are not on Earth, but instead on a strange, multi-mooned jungle planet, the band of disreputables soon figure out their purpose for being there: to be hunted.
More action packed than the original, though perhaps lacking a little in terms of atmosphere, there are some genuine standout moments:
The initial alien dog attack; the first glimpses of The Predators; Morpheus's sudden appearance, all bedecked in full on Predator suit, though his presence is more of a cameo, despite his high billing on the posters; the Yakuza guy's Samurai sword fight with a solitary Predator in a moonlit field of knee high grass.
Oh, and don't be fooled as I was. Rodriguez did not direct this movie, simply produced it, camera duties being handled by the marvellously monikered Nimród Antal, the man behind the lens for the pretty decent 2007 motel horror yarn Vacancy.
With The Predator's themselves fleshed out a little more than in either of the previous movies, I was more than a little impressed by this modern slice of sci-fi horror.
Liked it a lot.

4 out of 5.