Q: After reading through many of the reviews, I don't know what movie some people were watching, but clearly it wasn't the same one I saw.

This movie is horrible. The acting, primarily Moore's, is just terrible. The woman cannot act. Nice tits, but she just can't act. At no point did she come across as the actual character. Instead, it was spoiled Hollywood actress goes to the beach to play make-believe with the boys.

And that's what this movie ultimately is -- Hollywood make-believe. The training sequences are over the top. The politics -- over the top. The political correctness -- over the top. The combat scenes -- you guessed it, over the top. Your mission is to get in and get out without being detected. So what do you do? Why shoot off as many rounds and make as much noise as possible, of course. Oh G.I. Jane, you can be my wing man anytime.

The premise is good, but as soon as Hollywood gets a hold of it, we end up with Top Gun with tits.

What more is to be expected from commercial US films anymore? Not much I guess.
A: negative
Q: The Bloodsucker Leads the Dance - what a laughable title, it's so utterly misleading. It's not surprising that the film-makers try and mislead us though because this is one terrible movie.

The story basically involves a murder mystery in a castle on a remote island.

Very little happens in this film. And when something does wake the viewer from his stupor, it invariably is unintentional comedy in the form of atrocious dialogue delivered by a hopeless group of voice-artists. These guys are so bad they make the actors they deliver voices for appear like a group of remedial-level morons. It really is hard to determine how bad the acting is when you have dubbing this abysmal. But the voice-artists cannot be blamed for the script. It's a travesty. Unintentionally funny at best, pathetic at worst. The story in general is, to say the least, uneven. The women characters are particularly idiotic; the men are either creepy or tedious.

The whole enterprise smacks of pure exploitation of the audience. It doesn't remotely deliver what it promises and even when the murders (finally) start happening, they all occur off screen. All we get is a few half-hearted severed head shots.

A few people have said that this movie is a giallo. I cannot agree less with this opinion. Anyone who enjoys Italian thrillers should give this movie a wide berth as there is nothing remotely thrilling about it. It's basically a soft-core porn film with a horror angle. But it's not very erotic either.

I can't recommend this to anyone.
A: negative
Q: If you haven't seen this, it's terrible. It is pure trash. I saw this about 17 years ago, and I'm still screwed up from it.
A: negative
Q: Carla works for a property developer's where she excels in being unattractive, unappreciated and desperate. She is also deaf.

Her boss offers to hire in somebody to alleviate her heavy workload so she uses the opportunity to secure herself some male company. Help arrives in the form of Paul, a tattooed hoodlum fresh out of prison and clearly unsuited to the mannered routine of an office environment.

An implicit sexual tension develops between the two of them and Carla is determined to keep him on despite his reluctance to embrace the working week. When Carla is edged out of an important contract she was negotiating by a slimy colleague she exploits Paul's criminality by having him steal the contract back. The colleague quickly realises that she's behind the robbery, but when he confronts her, Paul's readiness to punch people in the face comes in handy too - but this thuggery comes at a price.

Paul is given a 'going over' by some mob acquaintances as a reminder about an unpaid debt. He formulates a plan which utilises Carla's unique lip reading abilities to rip-off a gang of violent bank robbers. It's now Carla's turn to enter a frightening new world.

The fourth feature from director Jacques Audiard, 'READ MY LIPS' begins as a thoroughly engaging romantic drama between two marginalised losers only to shift gears halfway through into an edgy thriller where their symbiotic shortcomings turn them into winners. The leads are excellent; effortlessly convincing us that this odd couple could really connect. Carla's first meeting with Paul is an enjoyable farce in which she attempts to circumnavigate his surly reticence and jailbird manners only to discover that he was, until very recently, a jailbird. Emmanuelle Devos, who plays Carla, has that almost exclusive ability to go from dowdy to gorgeous and back again within a frame. Vincent Cassel plays Paul as a cornered dog who only really seems at home when he's receiving a beating or concocting the rip-off that is likely to get him killed.

Like many French films, 'READ MY LIPS' appears, at first, to be about nothing in particular until you scratch beneath the surface and find that it's probably about everything. The only bum note is a subplot concerning the missing wife of Paul's parole officer; a device that seems contrived only to help steer the main thrust of the story into a neat little feelgood cul-de-sac.

It was the French 'New Wave' of the 60's that first introduced the concept of 'genre' to film making and I've always felt that any medium is somewhat compromised when you have to use a system of labels to help define it; so it's always a pleasure to discover a film that seems to transcend genre, or better still, defy it.
A: positive