Disturbia (8)

I was worried that this might just be a same-old teen flick, and it does have those elements. Boy, Kale, falls for new neighbour, Ashley. But what a delight the story was.

Kale is under house arrest and so can not leave his property; out of chronic boredom, he watches the neighbours. Soon Kale and his friend, Ronnie, become suspicious of a neighbour, Robert, especially with the recent disappearance of a young woman. And thus begins a great remake of Rear Window. There's the suspense, the build up, the trying to prove dodgy goings on and chase scenes.

While other films make up silly reasons for cell phones to fail because they can't script around ubiquitous connectivity, this film seamlessly blends in current tech. There's phones used for tracking and photography, computers, internet used throughout, web cams and iPods and even hacking of a garage door!

Even with the slightly cheesy ending, and silly "basement discovery", I'll have to say I'm very impressed. It rates an 8 (seeing it again, I would still enjoy it). Teenagers would love it! As would fans of good Hitchcock remakes, which are rare.

Highlander 5, The Source (2)

This awful film only gets a 2 (I watched in fast forward).

Duncan MacLeod, his ex-wife Anna and the Immortals go in search of The Source in a post apocalyptic world. Of course it's obvious very early on what the mysterious Source is going to do; MacLeod and his ex wanted a child but couldn't. The nemesis was the most interesting character even though he was a cardboard acting sword swinging thug.

And if the film wasn't bad enough, the last ten minutes is a flashback of the film that has just been endured!

The only reason that I didn't stop watching this mess (and giving it a 1) was because I actually sort of liked the original, and didn't think that they could actually make film worse than the previous in the series, but I was wrong.