Movie turkeys and triumphs

Well, the Shropshire Star's print and website readers have spoken, writes movie blogger Carl Jones. Atonement is officially the county's favourite film of 2007.

Now I'm not saying there's been any county bias in here, but if it hadn't been for the fact that the Keira Knightley drama was shot at our own Stokesay Court, would the result really have been the same?

Personally, I'm with the users of Amazon.com who flocked in their thousands to make The Bourne Ultimatum the number one DVD in their Christmas retail charts - for me, it was head and shoulders above allcomers in the top picks chart.

But with the exception of the latest Harry Potter adventure (it is me, or is hindsight blurring all the boy wizard's adventures into one?), our readers seem to be broadly, thankfully, on my wavelength.

None of their choices have been panned in my column this past year - and a heart-felt thank-you for not voting Eddie Murphy's Norbit as a 2007 hit.

Nor the distinctly underwhelming Golden Compass, for that matter.

So, another year, another awards season begins.

But before the annual dose of globes, Oscars and Baftas, there's that strange period between Christmas and New Year to fill.

A time when no-one is certain about what kind of movie to release, and who is in the mood for sitting down at the flicks.

If you still have an appetite for turkey after the festive excesses, Balls of Fury should be near the top of your menu.

This hamfisted attempt at comedy from the man who brought us the woeful Reno 911! Miami is a disaster.

Punchlines consistently fail to hit their target in a tiresome tale inspired by The Karate Kid and Enter The Dragon.

An FBI agent is desperate to snare criminal mastermind Feng (Christopher Walken), a shadowy figure who organises a ping-pong tournament every year in his secret lair.

He picks out a one-time ping-pong wonderkid to act as his undercover man.

The body count is surprisingly high, in stark contrast to the laughs, while Oscar winner Walken overacts as the campy villain and Maggie Q, aside from a brief fight sequence, is little more than eye candy.

Why this film didn't go straight to DVD is a mystery.

The week's big release is undoubtedly I Am Legend, an effects-laden adventure starring Will Smith as the last remaining human being on earth.

Everyone else has been destroyed or mutated by a flawed cancer cure drug, and if the mutants know of Will's existence, he'll go the same way.

Based on Richard Matheson's 1954 novel, this post-apocalyptic thriller is a true film of two halves.

The first hour is terrific, thanks to Smith's natural charisma and likeability which holds us spellbound.

He brilliantly conveys the loneliness and fragile mental state of a survivor who finds comfort in small things, like conversations with shop mannequins.

But once the scriptwriters move away from the study of their leading man's psychological scars to focus instead on the battle between Robert and one of the mutants, the film lapses into the rather unfortunate guise of an effects-laden video game.

The visuals, though, are impressive as they conjure up a chilling metamorphosis of New York where abandoned vehicles clog the streets and avenues, grass and weeds push through ruptured pavements as Mother Nature slowly encroaches on the deserted metropolis.

Sadly, though, the visual feast fails to paper over some gaping holes in the film's logic, and the blitzkrieg of digital destruction in the final showdown is chaotic and rather unsatisfying.