I’ve been looking forward to 9 for a while now. The terrific high res trailer seems to have been around forever and the simple “what’s that all about?” intrigue of it’s central premise (a post apocalyptic world inhabited by oddly mechanised ragdolls) fascinating enough to keep me eyeing the release date eagerly.

What a shame, then, that the entire enterprise is suffused with an almost overwhelming sense of disappointment.

Well, maybe not in the first few moments, which do rather pin you down, shut you up and insist you take notice. In that opening, we see the close-up creation of the dolls, hand-sized automata, seemingly made of hessian, but filled with magically vitalised wood and metal, lovingly assembled by a mysterious Geppetto-like inventor. This gentle and enigmatic sequence is the highlight of the movie; it’s quiet care and simply beauty really hold you. Unfortunately, it is over way too soon and afterward we are thrown into an unsatisfying mess.

At less than 80 minutes, 9 seems indecently hasty in its pace, and after introducing its world (a wasted landscape redolent of war-torn Northern France), we are soon learning of the ravages of a recent conflict where man has lost a war to a fascistic machine-driven foe. Only the dolls are left as a reminder of what went before to, er, well, I don’t know what they’re expected to achieve exactly. The purposes of any of the creatures in this ruined set-up seem elusive and unknowable. They don’t know why they’re there, and we don’t either.

They only really define themselves by battling The Beast, a vast many-tentacled mechanical creature who, if it manages to catch the dolls, sucks out a green lifeforce from their bodies. Encounters with the monster are spectacularly choreographed and soullessly boring. And they are almost entirely constant. This is a bang bang bang movie with very little let up.

At one point we get to a breather, where the dolls discover a recording of Judy Garland singing Somewhere Over The Rainbow, and the reflective sequence we have craved is thus undermined by the niggling feeling that this Universe, surely then, isn’t as smartly Alternative as we had been led to believe.

I feel churlish criticising 9 this much. It is clearly a visual treat in many ways, and in every way a labour of great love (it is adapted and expanded from director Shane Acker’s 2004 Oscar-nominated short of the same name) but I’d feel much happier channeling you towards that earlier work, which is pretty wonderful. Does expanding a smaller piece ever really work? They have added big names into the process (Timur Bekmambetov and Tim Burton as producers) and, I’m afraid, have managed to lose a lot along the way.

And the loss comes by adding; too much action. Go back to that beginning. The inventor with his invention. It is fabulous.

I like dark, I like bleak, I am all for a grimly determinist sense of the weight of prior actions composing your fate, and that’s all here…but it is drowned in pyrotechnics and absurd set-pieces.

In any other year, too, 9 may have grabbed the attention effortlessly, but I saw this in an empty 600 seater screen. Next door, the crowd for Up was jostling for space, and therein lies a huge problem. Pixar’s triumph says more about our humanity, about personal resilience, and is darker and yet also more vibrant than anything 9 manages, and so why would you want to see one when the other delivers so much and so consistently?

Two further bugbears of mine are included that I mention simply as a personal irritation; and that is that menace is defined by a horde of scuttling robotic spiders (no more of this, ever again, please), and – in a rather mawkish touch – that returning souls offer a chance for a sentimental valediction. Stop, stop, stop, stop, stop. Please.

Thanks.

There is a scene in Act 2 of Bach’s St Matthew Passion where Peter is describing his betrayal of Jesus (the “before the cock crows, you will have denied me three times” story). This culminates in the aria Erbarme dich, mein Gott (Have mercy, Lord). Peter remembers that Jesus told him he would betray Him, and he weeps:

Have mercy, Lord, for my tears’ sake
Look at me, my heart and eyes weep to Thee bitterly

The piece should begin with a violin solo, growing with the steady introduction of lower strings to conjure up the idea of a weeping Peter, the symbol of all penitent believers.

In Park Chan-Wook’s fabulous new film, Thirst, the aria is played much more simply, ascetically even, by a priest on a wooden flute. This is Sang-hyun (Korean superstar Song Kang-ho) a deeply troubled young man about to come face to face with his doubts and fears in the most horrific way imaginable. Sang-hyun has taken part in a medical trail to find a cure for a particularly nasty leprotic-style disease. After infection he appears to die, but is restored to life and seemingly cured of the ailment.

But he is not cured, not really. A blood unit given to him during his treatment has driven the disease away but at the price of vampirism. As he hides away in his priest’s cell, he wrestles with this new and horrendous spiritual dilemma. He plays the flute, and this most significant of pieces, clearly an expression of how deeply he is feeling, and he coughs…vomiting down the instrument a great gush of blood, pouring through the holes, purging the music. Is this a symbol of his body kicking out the sacrement, that the holy blood is no longer required, and that only the blood of innocent victims will now be taken?

It is a uniquely troubling, thoughtful and memorable image, perfectly at home in a nasty but brilliant take on the vampire story.

Cinéastes aware of Park’s work will not be surprised. For years now the darkest and smartest movies from Korea have been Park’s Vengeance trilogy, most notoriously the wonderful Oldboy. Thirst continues the tradition that those extraordinary pieces began, steadily developing a marvelously black and cynical world hanging off a simple idea.

Here, we have our priest’s struggle, around which grows a story of new lusts and desires; Sang-hyun is compelled to begin a relationship he doesn’t understand with a scheming and manipulative young woman (Tae-joo, played with an alarming feline sensuality by Kim Ok-bin) who needs him to help free her from her marriage.

Deftly, Thirst picks up the strands of Zola’s Thérèse Raquin and Park has great fun turning up the tension to full-on noir gloom and destruction. Be warned, this is a seriously grown up affair, with shockingly intense sex and, once Sang-hyun’s secret is out, some very gruesome and upsetting scenes of face to face violence. There is a scene where the two lovers need to deal with a family group, and it is executed with chilling assurance and sang froid. And amid all the mayhem and choreographed chaos, Sang-hyun in an immaculate white shirt, cuts the image of a perfectly conflicted character.

Thirst is impeccably framed; it looks great from scene one. As with much Asian cinema, there are images and concepts here that are fresh and vital to our eyes, and which leave you thrilled to witness them. Let The Right One In was, and remains, this year’s vampire masterpiece, but Thirst pushes it all the way; despite the horror and the grim commentary on skewed love, they provide forceful and authoritative arguments for what we could have when Art meets Horror, if only we had the nerve to entertain it. The really terrifying thing that’s on show with both films is simple, it’s how bloody good they are; the sad thing, how rare.

Zombieland is fucking huge. All event movies would like to be this big; it has done fabulous business and continues to do so, and it seems to be everywhere. Twitter, for instance, waxes in and out of trending it (“zombieland was awesome you will like it lol” says @jackcity64, and who could resist @dreloc94’s “LOL… ZOMBIELAND WAS THE SHYT HAHAHA” recommendation?).

It is, not that you need telling, the comic tale of a bunch of plucky survivors adrift in an America devastated by a Dead apocalypse. And it starts off at a hundred miles an hour.

With the backdrop of a burning Capitol building, and with Hendrix’s still-striking mushed-up Star-Spangled Banner setting the tone, a disfigured goo-spewing zombie starts to come at you and this sense of in-your-face confusion blasts us through the inventive credits and then into the cautious life of Columbus (Jesse Eisenberg), a geeky survivor.

Columbus has managed to stay ahead of the game because he adheres to his raft of OCD rules for dealing with the Dead. Fitness, or Cardio, for example, being Rule No.1 (“The fatties were the first to go.”).

These Rules form a neat little motif throughout, appearing, first because of his voice-over, and then when we’re all complicit with his mindset, as physical 3D obstacles on the screen, items to be bumped into or knocked over. They’re smart and a bit Fourth Wall-y, and they give Zombieland a stylistic edge you might not otherwise have expected. They also start to get a little irritating. And, if anyone’s seen Warner Brothers’ TV series Fringe, they’re not entirely original. Still, it wouldn’t be quite so quirkily entertaining a movie without them, I just wish it had been toned down a tad. Just a tad.

Anyhoo. Columbus meets Tallahassee (Woody Harrelson) and then Wichita (Emma Stone) and finally Little Rock (Little Miss Sunshine’s Abigail Breslin) along the way and without really letting on to the audience – who are still reeling from the excellent opening – we’ve somehow become a road movie. Not a bad road movie, but a road movie nevertheless. In fact, the opening and the climax aside, Zombieland is fairly zombie-lite.

Don’t all shout at once, it is. 300 million+ people but the landscape isn’t exactly crawling with horrors. I could have done with a lot more dread (or some, I should say) but that might have encroached on the vibe of the whole affair. It is a funny movie, and there is much capering about and happy abandon to be had twatting the re-animated, but for a movie called Zombieland, it’s not really a land filled with zombies. All I’m saying.

That noted, we eventually get to California and it’s there I sort of switched off. I was with it. It was fine. No real complaints at all. It passed the laugh test, a handful of the horror tests, and I was pretty happy. Not up there with Mr Dreloc94, above, I’ll admit, but I was doing OK. And then along comes The Cameo. A lot has been written about Bill Murray’s cameo (as Bill Murray), so it’s not exactly letting the cat out of the bag to say that Bill Murray’s in it. People in the audience enjoyed it, I just thought it was indulgent and pointless and indicated that they’d essentially run out of all their good ideas in the first half, figured they needed a boost in the flagging second Act, and so on comes Bill Murray. As Bill Murray. I preferred the Amber Heard cameo, personally. But, hey.

As the movie walked up to it’s rather lacklustre finale, I couldn’t help but think that I’d been entertained, but not quite as royally as I initially expected.

Rule No.1, let’s not get carried away.

Oh, do I have to declare where I stand before we can start? OK. I suppose this will become more and more common. Right; I’m one of those liberal, rational types, who sides with the scientifically-minded evolutionists. Is that what you wanted? So…through the door, first on the left, in with the comedians, chat show hosts and lifestyle column writers..? Gotcha.

I fear that discourse will eventually come to that. Eventually you’ll just have to swipe a card and you’ll be channeled off into your proscribed section of the internet and only allowed to play with people you get along with. Not here and now, I hope, but if you’re that way inclined, at least now you can decide whether or not you want to read on.

Creation, famously unable to find a distributor in the US, for whatever reason (although Reason wasn’t anywhere in the room at the time), now has at least a limited roll-out to a handful of screens Stateside. Whether or not that means you now think we’re approaching a new Dark Age isn’t really the point; the controversy has, unfortunately overshadowed a wonderfully affecting human story. Indeed, contrary to popular opinion, the film does not have at its core a strident anti-God message, nor does it rail in tub-thumping style against all and every religion, and it is most certainly not a call to arms to burn Creationist text books (or Bibles, as they’re known) in the streets. Admittedly, the famous Biologist Thomas Huxley (a terrific Toby Jones cameo) gets to say, “you have killed God, sir!” but this is largely dismissed as the exhortation of a fiery little fellow, urging the debate into areas that the film doesn’t particularly want to go. No, Creation, the movie, isn’t against Religion.

What it is, is a story about common human emotions, about love and loss and the crippling fear of taking steps that you know will change forever your relationship with the world. It just so happens that the person, whose story it tells, is Charles Darwin.

When we start, Darwin (a career-best Paul Bettany) has already returned from his voyage on the Beagle, and indeed long since had “the most dangerous idea in the world”. He has come home, and written up his notes, and then procrastinated over his ideas. His documents are packed in a locked box and he spends his time debating with himself over what he has done. The main thrust of this debate centres around his fears for the reaction of his devout wife, Emma (Jennifer Connelly) and the relationship Darwin has with his beloved daughter, Annie (Martha West).

In effect, Annie is the centre of the film. She’s certainly the centre of Charles Darwin. Wide-eyed, and sharp as a tack, West (daughter of The Wire’s Dominic) provides the emotional heart of the film. Told in a series of extended flashbacks, all beautifully dove-tailed into the present, we see just how much Darwin loves his eldest child, how galvanised he is by her spark and inquisitiveness, and how devastated he is by her death at ten years old from scarlet fever. Throughout, incapable of letting her go, she appears to him, and implores him to open the box where he has locked his documents. Crushed and broken by the loss, he is incapable of finishing his work, and even if he could, he is wracked with the worry of what that completion would achieve.

Darwin’s difficult resolutions provide the story with an almost overwhelming sense of personal tragedy, and it would be wrong not to emphasise just how unrelentingly sad a tale this is. Hunched, with all the woes of the world on his shoulders, for they are universal woes in every respect, Bettany fills every scene with a resonant dignity and grace, and it would take a heart evolved from purest granite not to be moved by his troubles. This is a grown-up, elaborate and subtle film, filled with ideas. Yes, the ideas are, inevitably, sometimes about Evolution and Religion, but that is a sideshow to the real issue of how to deal with the deepest conflicts of the human heart.

And why would you want to miss out on that, whatever else you believe in?

The least appealing title in cinemas for a while, Cloudy With A Chance Of Meatballs explodes all over our screens in a welter of primary colours and a fair amount of brouhaha. We all expect the better animations to throw in a few laughs for the grown-ups, and indeed Pixar usually manage to squeeze in entire adult subtexts running parallel with all the kid-related fun, but did I really hear one critic last week say that this had a ‘nightmarish Lynchian feel’? (Yes, I did).

I dragged my heels, despite that. This had more to do with not wanting to actually say the words, “one for Cloudy With A Chance Of Meatballs, please” out loud, than anything else, I’ll be honest. I tried to summon up a feasible scenario in my head as I waited in line: my kids had complimentary tickets and were waiting in the foyer; my date was already in there; I’m the director trying to avoid the crowds. It was never going to work. In the end I endured the withering gaze of the ticket booth girl and ploughed ahead. Nightmarish Lynchian kids’ cartoons are to be encouraged and embraced after all.

Meatballs is a robust slice of whimsy set on an island off the coast of the States (an island that’s hidden on maps beneath the A of Atlantic Ocean, which was a neat touch). The main industry is, or at least was, sardines, but the whole business is in decline. In the middle of things is Flint, a young chap who doesn’t want to be part of his Dad’s ailing tackle shop, but would much rather be an inventor. Unfortunately, all his previous inventions (which, charmingly, make smart little cameos throughout) have been utter plop.

No matter. Flint is a determined young man and he determines to make something truly memorable. On the day of the grand unveiling of the sardine theme park that the island believes will alter its sinking fortunes, he ruins a young TV weathergirl’s day by launching his new gismo, a machine that makes food out of plain water. It all goes disastrously, there are numerous calamities and the island seems ruined. Flint’s machine is rocketed up into the sky, presumably never to be seen again, and everyone is humiliated on national TV.

Then, miraculously, with the food making gadget floating in the clouds, it starts to rain cheeseburgers.

You heard.

Then jelly beans, then steaks, then ice-cream. In fact, anything Flint programmes into his computer appears to fall out of the sky. This isn’t quite as much fun as you might think, but it’s fun nevertheless, and the kids in the audience seemed to love it. It’s only when things threaten to go awry, and the machine begins to interact with a violent storm (the spaghetti tornado is fabulous) that it gets significantly darker and a whole lot weirder.

This necessitates a trip up into the clouds to see just how much Flint’s unmonitored tech has mutated and expanded. Now, I have to say that at this point it all gets pretty frenetic and there is much silliness. However, deep within this last twenty minutes lie some brilliant visual gags (there is a kung fu tiger claw joke that flies by, but had me in stitches) and some downright certifiable gear that I was very unsure about (surely that wasn’t a giant spewing backside?). But it is thinking, thinking, thinking all the time: I mean, who knew anaphylactic shock could be so amusing?

Still, it is most definitely a children’s movie, and not the new Meet The Feebles. Let’s just get that clear. As much fun as this is, and it’s a lot, I’d come up just a little short of Lynchian. I feel a little let down, in all honesty. But not that much.