Catch up with this week’s show where in the cinema section we review the latest comic book adaptation, this time set in a harsh future where Karl Urban is the law in Dredd 3D and Tom Hardy and Shia Labeouf lead an all star cast including Gary Oldman, Guy Pierce and Jessica Chastain in bootleg thriller Lawless. On DVD & Blu-Ray we join Jim, Michelle, Oz, Kevin, Vicky, Heather, Finch and Stiffler for their American Pie: Reunion, Jason Statham takes on all the mob in New York to protect a young girl in Safe, we set sail in Aardman Animation’s latest adventure and join The Pirates! In An Adventure With Scientists!, Henry Cavill finds himself out in The Cold Light Of Day and Ray Winstone finds himself holding The Hot Potato, plus the latest movie news, UK Box office and DVD/Blu-Ray top 10′s.

You can listen to any episode of The Monday Movie Show via Spreaker. This week’s episode is now also available to stream via youtube or download:

The Cinema Show:

DVD & Blu Ray Show:

Download Options:

Spreaker (Cinema Show) (DVD/Blu Ray Show)

Soundcloud (Cinema Show) (DVD/Blu Ray Show)

iTunes (Direct links – click to play in iTunes) – (Cinema Show) (DVD/Blu Ray Show)

Wrath of the Titans (2012) – I never saw Clash of the Titans, but that didn’t stop me going along to the sequel no-one seemed to want. Nevertheless I had a surprisingly decent time. Yes it’s dumb, loud, and full of senseless violence – but it knows it. Wrath is a film without pretentions. It gets immediately to the point of telling a straightforward story – Hades captures Zeus, Perseus and friends must go rescue him – and actually does it with minimal dialogue and maximum action.

Unlike recent fantasy films that get bogged down in convoluted back story and pointless side quests – *cough, John Carter, cough* – Wrath plays to it’s audience well. Liam Neeson and Ralph Finnes, put in minimal effort to their acting – which is hilarious, and Sam Worthington gets to stick to his native Australian accent, even though everyone else is British. It’s absurd in a good way. [3/5]

The Pirates! In an Adventure with Scientists! (2012) – Aardman doing what they do best. It’s fun for all the family, funny throughout, I found myself laughing out loud quite a lot. It’s full or quirk, charm, and brilliant animation. Superb. [4/5]

The Fighter (2010) – I was a little underwhelmed by this awards contender from 2010/2011. The story of a dysfunctional family, which happens to contain some boxing, it was nowhere near as good as last year’s Warrior – a high melodrama told in an absolutely offbeat and mesmerising style. Christian Bale won an Oscar for overplaying as Mark Wahlberg’s drug addicted brother, trainer, and former boxer. But the star of the show is Amy Adams who proves she has real acting talent. David O. Russel directs in a sub-Scorsese style with clichéd hints of Goodfellas, Ranging Bull and The Departed, which is quite offputting. [2.5/5]

Burlesque (2010) – Another surprise success. Like Wrath of the Titans it plays to its audience. It’s clichéd, overdramatic, and predicable. But Cher is strangely awesome despite her face no longer moving (they avoid close-ups as much as possible) and Christina Aguilera is a surprisingly solid actress. Ultimately, at approaching two hours it’s half hour too-long, but what’s there is solid, and I can see it being the kind of film your mother (well at least mine) would revisit several times a year. [3/5]

Directed by Peter Lord

Featuring the voices of Hugh Grant, Imelda Staunton, David Tennant, Martin Freeman, Lenny Henry, Salma Hayek, Jeremy Piven, Brendan Gleeson, Ashley Jensen, Brian Blessed and Russell Tovey

Mixing CG and Claymation with some very british humour, The Pirates! is great fun and the step in the right direction for Aardman.

Previous Aardman films have either relied on Claymation (Chicken Run and Curse of the Wererabbit) or CG (Flushed Away and Arthur Christmas, but The Pirates! is the first to put both animation mediums to good use. Though the film still took five years to make, and retains everything that makes a claymation animation unique visually, the inclusion of CG backdrops and effects really push the film beyond the quaintness of stop motion and give it a more complete feel.

There is something very, very British about the whole thing, from the little visual touches of the Blue Peter badge worn by The Pirate with Gout (all the pirates in Pirate Captain’s crew have descriptive names, including Pirate Captain), to the cross-dressing female pirate,  The Surprisingly Curvaceous Pirate. There is also something very classic British comedy, about the humour. There are visual jokes aimed at children, and Mr BoBo (image above), Darwin’s chimpanzee manservant, had my four year old laughing every time he was on screen. There was also dialogue and bawdy images which tickled the adults amongst the audience, me included, which were subtle enough to go over the heads of the young.

Though the film does begin to falter towards the middle, which is a problem with the running time, not the story its self, I really did enjoy The Pirates! The characters were funny, and each member of the crew had plenty of screen time and things to do. The Pirate Captain himself was fantastic, and quite rightly stole the show, though The Queen and Mr Bobo come close many times. Hugh Grant is completely unrecognisable as the voice of Pirate Captain, and is brilliant. I think he may have found his calling, to be honest. As a voice actor, he manages to create a complete package with the on-screen character.

The Pirates! is a great family film, full of fun and japes, though expect smaller children to lose interest at times. The action slows down in places, which might bore those with short attention spans.

Mr Bobos out of Five