The Mistress of Spices (2005)
Jul 24, 2006Indian Magical Realism/Magical Spices
Magical Realist film with Aishwarya Rai running a spice bazaar where she is able to tell fortunes
Ingenious Film Partners
Night at the Museum (2006)
Feb 11, 2007Museum Exhibits Come to Life
Popular family hit with Ben Stiller as a night watchman at New York’s Museum of Natural History who discovers that the exhibits come to life at night. More a cute idea than a full film, there is some fun to the characters and effects
Eragon (2006)
Feb 11, 2007Epic Dragon Fantasy
A dragon fantasy adapted from a popular book series that has Lord of the Rings wannabe stamped all over it and only unimaginatively follows in Peter Jackson's footsteps
Garfield: A Tale of Two Kitties (2006)
Nov 10, 2006Lazy Talking Cat
Where the first live-action Garfield film approximated the original comic-strip and its focus on a cat delivering sarcastic lines, this sequel pitches everything down to the level of an inane children's film
Scoop (2006)
May 27, 2007Journalistic Tips from the Afterlife
One of the more forgettable Woody Allen comedies with Scarlett Johansson as a journalism student who gets tips from the afterlife
X-Men: The Last Stand (2006)
Jun 21, 2006Comic-Book Superheroes
Brett Ratner inherits the X-Men franchise from Bryan Singer for the third film in the series and promptly killed it off (after this point everything became prequels featuring Young X-Men). Ratner's handling of the superheroic action lacks Singer's exhilaration or any affinity for the characters
Children of Men (2006)
Oct 31, 2006Infertile Future
Alfonso Cuaron film set in a near-future afflicted by an epidemic of infertility. Cuaron’s depiction of a dystopian world comes with a richness of casually layered detail that makes for a stark and powerful film
Fantastic Four: Rise of the Silver Surfer (2007)
Jun 25, 2007Comic-Book Superheroes
The 2005 Fantastic Four was an amiable entry among the Marvel Comics adaptations of the 2000s. This is a sequel that turns that substitutes lowbrow comedy and renders the great character of the Silver Surfer as a CGI cartoon
Live Free or Die Hard (2007)
Aug 17, 2007Action Film/Socially Catastrophic Hack Attack
The fourth of the Die Hard films and the only one that enters genre territory with Bruce Willis fighting a catastrophic hack attack that disables the entire US. By now, what was originally an enjoyably gritty action film has been pumped up with over-the-top action sequences that frequently defy credulity
Hannibal Rising (2007)
Feb 26, 2007Hannibal Lecter Origin Story
Building on the successes of the Hannibal Lecter films, this is a prequel that goes back sets out to tell an origin story of how the young teenage Hannibal came to be during World War II
The Golden Compass (2007)
Dec 27, 2007Epic Fantasy Adventure
The attempts to launch another Lord of the Rings went astray with this adaptation of Philip Pulllman's fantasy series, which cut many of the core elements of the books to not offend religious conservatives
Outlaw (2007)
Aug 25, 2009Vigilante Film
British vigilante film that strains at issues of social relevance but only ends up parroting Death Wish cliches
Sunshine (2007)
Apr 19, 2007Solar Expedition
Danny Boyle and Alex Garland make a big serious SF film about a solar expedition, which works with great scientific rigour until the shows heads off at a tangent and falls apart in the latter third
Shrooms (2007)
Jul 11, 2023Drug Hallucinations/Backwoods Horror
A party go searching for magic mushrooms in rural Ireland. In between assorted drug hallucinations, someone or thing begins slaughtering the group
Avatar (2009)
Dec 20, 2009War Between Human Colonists and Aliens
James Cameron’s film was a smash phenomenon. Cameron has relocated the plot of Dances With Wolves on another planet and uses motion capture to create one of the most dazzlingly realised alien worlds on film
X-Men Origins: Wolverine (2009)
Apr 29, 2009Comic-Book Superhero
After the disaster of X-Men: The Last Stand, the decision was made to give a whole film over to the series’s most popular character, Hugh Jackman’s Wolverine, and to go with a prequel that told his origin story. Largely a film that exists as a series of superheroic action scenes