“Hellbound: Hellraiser II” is the second instalment in the “Hellraiser” franchise and it’s about as good if not better than the first film, although that’s not saying too much. There the film has no logical order, it’s essentially just one gross image after another but at least the makers put some effort into being creative about the gross imagery.

“Hellbound” features no real story as such; we know that the girl Kirsty (Ashley Laurence), who was in the first film, finds herself once again the victim of various demonic forces unleashed by a puzzle box. There’s an awful lot of running around corridors, screaming, skin being sliced and horrifying monsters laughing.

The acting in this film is terrible. Nearly everybody in this film ranging from Kenneth Cranham (“Layer Cake”) to Ashley Laurence is laughably bad and delivers stupid lines of dialog. Of course, you didn’t come here for the people; you came for the monsters and “Hellbound” has a lot of them. There’s Pinhead (Doug Bradley) and the rest of the Cennobites, who don’t do a great deal and spend an awful lot of time just talking about pain and suffering. The best visual though is during a hysterical and creative scene in which a woman loses her sort of ‘suit’ of skin.

“Hellbound” has a great score and at times, it has impressive visuals but you can’t escape the facts that there’s no real plot, the acting is terrible and that there is no real point to anything here. If you enjoyed the first “Hellraiser”, “Hellbound” will give you even more monsters and skin slicing but for everybody else, you’re left with a visually striking but ultimately very nonsensical picture. Maybe if the filmmakers can actually think of a purpose for the monsters, we may, just may be onto something.

A young John Wayne (“The Searchers”, “The Alamo”) stars in “Hell Town” (or “Born To The West”). This is a harmless Western movie that is not bad but you certainly do not need to be trying to hunt this one down.

In “Hell Town”, Dare Rudd (Wayne) is known for being reckless and getting into trouble but his cousin is prepared to give him a chance to prove that he has matured by putting him in charge of a cattle drive. However, some pesky cattle rustlers are out to make things all the more challenging. If Dare can succeed, he will not only win the approval of his cousin but the love of Judy (Marsha Hunt “Raw Deal”).

John Wayne is of course one of the greatest Western actors of all-time but at this point in his career, he had not quite established himself as the genre’s king (or the ‘Duke’). He does a good job here and I cannot fault his performance as he delivers his lines with a great amount a wit and a large dose of charm. The Judy character is okay but not terribly interesting. The other characters are rather bland and you definitely will not be remembering the villainous cattle rustlers.

“Hell Town” is not another “The Searchers”, “El Dorado” or “Red River” or any of the really popular John Wayne films. This is an early film that feels like a warmup for Wayne’s movies that would come. If you a really big John Wayne fan and eager to see as many of his films as possible then “Hell Town” is worth a look and it’s not even an hour long. I think most people are going to find this film a little bit dull and considering John Wayne has done so many films, why bother with this one?

I don’t know if it is even possible for me to encounter a movie more bizarre and more disjointed than “Heavy Metal”. It’s an adult-themed cartoon movie that makes no sense whatsoever, is poorly animated and thinks it’s okay to substitute coherency for nudity and sex. It borders on a cartoon equivalent of movies not available in most cinemas or shops. I considered doing a segment review but some only last roughly five minutes and it’s all about the same level of quality.

In “Heavy Metal”, a green glowing orb named Loc-Nar (Percy Rodriguez) terrorises a young girl with a collection of weird stories about evil, now I thought this was going to be stories of perhaps the deadly sins but it’s just something that I can’t explain.

The animation may seem interesting at times but it really showcases just how weak it is with the characters as frequently what’s onscreen doesn’t sync-up with the audio, now that would be fine if I was watching a foreign film but this isn’t and also this is several decades after Disney gave us some spectacular pieces of animation. Voices include John Candy (“Uncle Buck”), Harold Ramis (“Ghostbusters”) and Richard Romanus (“Mean Streets”) but nobody can help this truly awful film. I was surprised when some characters used drugs, do you really need them if you inhabit this wacky environment?

Many segments don’t even have a point or an ending as such and many of them are poor versions of many other movies and tv shows as we get ones clearly ripping-off “Blade Runner”, “Flash Gordon” and “Barbarella” but then there are plenty that don’t make enough sense for them to be comparable to anything. “Heavy Metal” is like “Alice in Wonderland” without Alice because it is without a narrative. For a movie brimming with such diversity and such weird stuff it somehow manages to render itself completely lifeless.

“Heat” is a big and reasonably sophisticated action picture with a cast of lots of familiar faces. I wasn’t too sure about “Heat” but I think there are enough good action scenes and enough good performances to warrant a recommendation.

In “Heat”, a ruthless police officer named Vincent Hanna (Al Pacino “The Godfather”, “Scarface”) is on the trail of an efficient gang of armed robbers lead by an equally ruthless criminal mastermind named Neil McCauley (Robert De Niro “Taxi Driver”), whose operations run like clockwork. Now Hanna and the police force must put the ‘heat’ on McCauley’s gang. This means Hanna won’t give up and will shoot McCauley if he needs to. However, the flipside is that if he’s boxed in, McCauley won’t hesitate to shoot Hanna.

Al Pacino does a reasonable job as Vincent Hanna. Robert De Niro does a good job as Neil McCauley. What I like is that just by knowing there’s a movie where the two square off; you don’t know who is the good guy and who is the bad guy and I love that. The rest of the cast do a reasonable job. There is a lot of famous faces from Jon Voight (“Transformers”), Natalie Portman (“Black Swan”), Val Kilmer (“Top Secret”), Danny Trejo (“Machete”) and lots more.

The best scene in this movie is not the action but when Hanna buys McCauley a coffee and to start with the two tell each other about their personal lives. It’s great to see a good guy and a bad guy interact like that as they’re both leaning on different sides of what is good and what is bad. Some of the action sequences are also very impressive. The famous faces aren’t just chucked in for no reason as a lot of them are not the sort you will instantly know by name.

“Heartbreakers” is essentially the female version of “Dirty Rotten Scoundrels”. Much like that film, everything is in place for it to work but it just never quite hits the mark; the setup is there but there is often no punchline.

Max (Sigourney Weaver “Alien”, “Ghostbusters”) and Page (Jennifer Love Hewitt “The Tuxedo”) are a mother and daughter con team that specialise in seducing wealthy men. When the two owe money to the authorities, they decide to pull off one last scam for the score of a lifetime but things prove harder than they expected.

Sigourney Weaver and Jennifer Love Hewitt both look very attractive here and the film gets them to wear all kinds of exotic clothing but fails to make them interesting or funny. Sure, we get to see their cleavages but when do they deliver any great lines? Their chemistry is reasonable but nothing particularly impressive and again, I can see how a funnier script could have helped matters. Gene Hackman (“Superman: The Movie”) is great as an elderly tobacco millionaire. Ray Liotta (“Goodfellas”) is okay as another victim of Max and Page. Jason Lee (“Mallrats”) is somewhat annoying here. Carrie Fisher (“Star Wars”) has a cameo as a divorce lawyer that you may wish to keep an eye out for.

“Heartbreakers” has its moments where makes us smile but it never lives up to its potential. Many of the scenes just come across as awkward rather than amusing and that’s a shame because there are enough talented people on the screen to provide us with some entertainment. If you want to watch a good comedy about scamming people than try “The Producers” instead but if you think you would prefer to see a con artist movie with female leads then you will have to settle for this instead.

“Harry and the Hendersons” is a family comedy that should be really endearing but instead it comes across as really lousy. To its credit, I guess it is hard to write a movie on this subject matter without seeming more stupid than anything else.

In “Harry and the Hendersons”, the regular, all-American Henderson family go on a short holiday in the countryside but on their way home hit something. It turns out to be none other than the legendary Bigfoot (Kevin Peter Hall “Predator”), who for some reason they decide to call him ‘Harry’; I would have gone for ‘Predator’ but that’s because I’m an audience member with some background knowledge and not a character in this movie. They try and bring him into their home and what follows isn’t all too amusing not heart-warming.

John Lithgow (“Cliffhanger”) leads the Henderson family and he’s a good actor, who has proven his comedic capabilities with the tv show “3rd Rock from the Sun” but the material here doesn’t remotely try to be funny. Kevin Peter Hall must have a thing for wearing outfits that completely cover him, the outfit here looks well-designed but the facial expressions look more bizarre as opposed to funny or whatever the filmmakers should have been going for. David Suchet (“Executive Decision”) rather hilariously plays a top-notch hunter; he’s only funny because he’s such a good actor doing work that is clearly beneath him.

“Harry and the Hendersons” has some good casting choices but ultimately is very underwhelming. All the stuff to get this type of film to work is there but only in blueprint form and no expansion has been done in order to make it work, meaning it suffers the same fate as movies like “Brewster’s Millions” and “The Great Outdoors”. This movie could have been successful if it had the likes of John Hughes (“Coming to America”) and Harold Ramis (“Groundhog Day”) pulling the strings.

The first of the somewhat popular stoner comedy series, “Harold & Kumar Get The Munchies” (or “Harold & Kumar Go To White Castle” as you may know it) has its moments but like a lot of movies of its type, it never impressed me that much.

Taking inspiration from “Beavis And Butt-Head Do America”, “Dumb And Dumber” and “Wayne’s World”, to name just a few, “Harold & Kumar Get The Munchies” tells the tale of two stoner friends. Korean-American Harold (John Cho “Star Trek”) and Indian-American Kumar (Kal Penn “Superman Returns”) go out on a drug-fuelled mission to eat some burgers at White Castle but get seriously side-tracked.

Harold and Kumar are kind-of funny. Harold is uptight while Kumar is laidback but both love smoking marijuana and both really want some White Castle burgers. I think Kumar is slightly more amusing. John Cho and Kal Penn do a decent job. The other characters are bland; you’ve got so many obligatory characters from this sort-of road movie genre as you have a policeman, a weirdo, attractive women and several others so it feels way too formulaic for its own good. Neil Patrick Harris (“Starship Troopers”) plays himself in a cameo and it isn’t anything special.

There’s a scene of comedy gold where Kumar has forgotten his phone, he’s just a few feet away from his flat and he contemplates getting it for several seconds before deciding that he’s too far already. There are a few other moments that are quite amusing but some of it is just unnecessarily gross such as the scene that takes place inside a female toilet room. I think if you enjoyed “Beavis And Butt-Head Do America” or “Dumb And Dumber” then you’ll enjoy “Harold & Kumar Get The Munchies” but otherwise I wouldn’t really seek this out.

“Harold & Kumar Escape From Guantanamo Bay” is the second film in the “Harold & Kumar” series. I went into this one hoping for an improvement over the original but I found myself disappointed by it. It’s got a few little bits that work but most of the film feels pretty mediocre at best.

In this film, Harold (John Cho “Star Trek) and Kumar (Kal Penn “Superman Returns”) are on their way to Amsterdam when they get mistaken for terrorists and sent to Guantanamo Bay. They quickly break out and a whole bunch of really random things happen such as meeting the Ku Klux Klan, a cyclops kid and Neil Patrick Harris (“Starship Troopers”)… again.

Harold and Kumar were definitely more amusing in the first film. Here they’re just kind-of there. Most of the side characters aren’t very interesting so in that respect this film is quite similar to the first one because that one failed to have interesting side characters as well. This time the side characters feel really dull though because they’re not even the usual weirdos people bump into in road movies, they’re sort-of like they’re characters that didn’t make the cut for the first film. Neil Patrick Harris isn’t very impressive.

“Escape From Guantanamo Bay” features a ton of dirty sex jokes, nudity, drugs and racism; most of the time it’s pure sleaze and fails to have any brains. If you enjoyed the first one then maybe you’ll enjoy this one but if you’re like me and you didn’t really get the attraction with the first one then I can see you eagerly skipping this if you ever have the opportunity to watch it. If the “Harold & Kumar” films are going to work then they need to be less concerned with the gross comedy and more concerned with the plot and characters.

“Hardcore Henry” is an explosive action flick filmed entirely from a first-person perspective. It’s even more disorientating than “Cloverfield” and “Blair Witch Project” combined. It also feels more like watching somebody play “Call Of Duty” than watching a film.

Henry is resurrected as super-powered cyborg but he has no memory of who he is. He is thrown into one intense action sequence after another after the telekinetic bad guy Akan (Danila Kozlovsky “Vampire Academy”) kidnaps his wife (Haley Bennett “The Girl On The Train”). Get ready for little to no plot yet lots of the camera shaking around like it’s strapped to rollercoaster.

It’s incredibly hard to connect with Henry because we never fully see his face and he never speaks because his voice module was never installed. The fact he lacks the ability to speak made this film feel even more like a videogame. Apparently, Henry was played by several different stuntmen because they kept getting neck injuries from wearing the camera. The villain Akan is very disappointing. Sharlto Copley (“District 9”) plays Jimmy and he’s pretty annoying. I do have to praise the work of the stunt people in this movie because there is one exciting action scene after another; pity we get such a poor view of it.

There is a reason why there have not been many films shot entirely in first-person and it’s because it does make the viewer feel sick and it also robs us of a clear view of what is going on. In this desperate race to make videogames and movies more like one another, videogames have becoming more complex with more detailed characters and stories, films have been dumbing these aspects down. “Hardcore Henry” is arguably trying harder than any other movie to be just like a videogame. I cannot in anyway recommend a film that is likely to make many people want to vomit.

Steven Seagal (“Under Siege”, “Under Siege 2: Dark Territory”) stars in this underwhelming revenge film. It may have a few decent action scenes but apart from this film really doesn’t deliver any of the goods found in superior police films (“Dirty Harry”, “Beverly Hills Cop”, “Kindergarten Cop” etc…).

In “Hard To Kill”, police officer Mason Storm (Seagal) is just about to break a big case when he’s gunned down along with his wife by a group of masked bad guys. Seven years later he wakes up from his coma and aims to exact revenge on the villains and prove his innocence.

Steven Seagal isn’t an over the top action star such as Arnold Schwarzenegger (“The Terminator”) or Sylvester Stallone (“Rocky”) and suffers from just being bland. Seagal uses a much more realistic style of martial arts than people such as Jet Li (“The Forbidden Kingdom”) and Jackie Chan (“Who Am I?”) and that doesn’t translate well to film. Like any police film there is a hold-up scene but here our police officer allows the cashier to get shot, which just shows what a weak action hero Seagal is. The villains are unmemorable like a lot of police films and the other characters are very poor.

The film is very funny that’s because the acting is incredibly wooden and the script is very weak. Seagal is a lacklustre action star whose films usually only make for a decent chuckle. With so many better police films both before and after this I can’t really praise this one. Some of the action scenes are entertaining but they can hardly compete with those found in superior action flicks. If you’re thinking of getting into Seagal, try “Under Siege” first as that is probably his best one (even that isn’t particularly entertaining). All-round it’s an unsatisfying film.