The Crazies, The Lovely Bones and Green Zone

A curious mix of zombieland meeting government genocide, The Crazies presses most of the right buttons for a mild horror action flick. A remake of the George A Romero 1973 movie, all sorts of ingredients make for an enjoyable thriller. All that was lacking was a bigger slice of humour, but the cast, led by Timothy Olyphant and Rhada Mitchell, pitch in with gusto.

It must be that the book The Lovely Bones is unfilmable, or else Peter Jackson has made a real hash of taking a much loved novel to the big screen. Where to start. The book is told in the first person by Susie Salmon who has been murdered. That is the highly original key to the book. Of course you cannot narrate a whole film, and this is where it goes wrong. You are not seeing what unfolds from Susie's point of view, and the plot suffers as a result. Her father suspects the culprit twenty percent through the book, but we have to wait and wait. Susie describes beautifully some of her old life, but hardly any gets to be on film. There is also little in the book of the "in between" where Susie finds herself, but Jackson takes the opportunity to flood his movie with awful and distracting CGI scenes partly reminiscent of NZ. The one bright element is the acting of Saoirse Ronan as Susie. Here she fulfills the promise shown in Atonement. One to watch.

Green Zone is a superb thriller from Paul Greengrass. The pace is relentless, the soundtrack loud, and nobody does handheld camera work better. Matt Damon charges around Iraq looking for non existent WMD's and uncovers the false evidence that was the excuse for the invasion. Exciting stuff.