Jules Verne's classic subterranean adventure gets updated with bells and 3-D whistles, but once you get past the novelty of CG touchable sea serpents and carnivorous plants, this is pretty flat stuff. Certainly, it offers no new dimensions on the usu
al adventure-movie standards, such as a resourceful protagonist who flings himself down a volcano to get picked on by dinosaurs (that would be Brendan Fraser), the bratty teen who hitches a ride and learns a few life lessons (that would be Josh Hutch
OPERATING PROCEDURE (15) ****Let other documentarians deal with urgent issues such as the fate of the penguin, Errol Morris's withering new documentary about Abu Ghraib prison sets out to find out the background to the infamous pictures of Iraqi prisoners by the US military. Drawing out interviews of disarming honesty, Morris doesn't condemn the soldiers, but in pointing to the national shame they caused, he doesn't let them off the hook either. Not as powerful as his 2003 Academy Award winner, The Fog Of War, but some startling moments.
DONKEY PUNCH (18) **Abrasive Club 18-30 horror flick, inset, where four posh blokes pick up three apparently up-for-it Leeds girls on holiday in the Med. Their cruise becomes a battle for survival when an accidental death is followed by a series of grisly murders. Made on a no-budget, this Britpic's chills have a certain lethal ingenuity, though most of the demises are a result of how morally vapid, or useless with boats, the characters are. Death don't like stupid. It doesn't mind, however, entertaining the stuffing out of us.
MEET DAVE (PG) *When a fireball hits the ground around the Statue of Liberty, it turns out to be the spaceship in the form of a man in a white suit called Dave (Eddie Murphy, above), who walks the streets of New York with difficulty trying to get back to his home planet. Imagine you are tiny aliens looking to get by on Earth. Would you choose a spaceship shaped like Eddie Murphy rather than, say, Brad Pitt? Only if you had Eddie prepared to endure humiliating toilet humour in a childish sci-fi comedy. A crew of aliens in charge of every word, bodily function and action seems to be the only explanation for Eddie's entire Meet Dave experience.
MAD DETECTIVE (15) *Giddily off-kilter, incoherent Hong-Kong picture that's part Crime Story, part Harvey, where a Kowloon ex-detective (Lau Ching-Wan) is needed to hunt a serial killer because he's a brilliant criminal profiler. However, he's also a grade-A nutjob with a long-suffering wife who listens attentively to his problems, only because she doesn't actually exist.
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All on general release from FridayThe full article contains 481 words and appears in Scotland On Sunday newspaper.
