Final Destination 5, The Skin I Live In and One Day

At last we come to the end of the summer movies which are either fantasy, superhero or gross out comedy. "Final Destination 5" fits none of these categories, but is still aimed at the end of the holidaying teens. It is basically the same old story, but the filming in 3D works spectacularly well on occasion. The set piece bridge disaster is a revelation, and quite the best use of 3D I have seen to date. Otherwise a diverting but unmemorable movie.

Amazing that the best film I have seen this year happens to be a subtitled Spanish melodrama. None of the critics use this description for "The Skin I Live In", preferring physcological thriller or a soap opera horror. "The exageration of plot and character to appeal to the emotion" as melodrama is defined, suits this brilliant movie, although certainly it mixes all the other ingredients to make one superb pot. The credit all goes to the director Pedro Almodovar. He also co-writes the screenplay loosely based on a French novella. One lasting impression is how suptuous the film looks. The lighting of the gorgeous sets produces something special on the big screen, the costumes, sound and music are all excellent. There are jumps in time that are well done and go to give us the one huge twist well before the awesome ending. Antonio Banderous is great as the barmy but brilliant surgeon and the rest of a fairly small cast are equally good. It will take something special to beat this to the best foreign movie oscar.

Having read the book of "One Day", I was nervous as to how such a rich study of two peoples' relationship over sixteen years would translate to the big screen. The first half hour proved my fears were well founded. After skipping a few years after the predictable opening, I felt it hardly captured the feel of the platonic friendship. It did not help that the longer scenes were quite boring as they included too much of Emma's "boyfriend" Ian and Dexter's decline into booze and drugs. And Ann Hathaway's occasional attempt at a Yorkshire accent was quite offputting. Apart from that, she is very good, as is Jim Sturgess as Dexter. After seeing him in "Heartless" and on the trailers, I thought he was no way the right actor for the role. But he grew into the part really well. Things pick up halfway through. Dexter's downfall, and becoming nicer as a result, is well complemented by Emma's maturing character. Why the wedding they attend had to be situated in central London rather than Somerset I dont know, but their scene together sets up a much better final third. The last few scenes are brilliant. The director follows the device in the book to bring in the second half of Chapter One set in 1988 at the end. And it makes far more impact in the movie, as time jumping sometimes does. So I left with a warm feeling, something I had not expected early on.