Cedric the Entertainer (“Johnson Family Vacation”) stars in “Code Name: The Cleaner”, a mildly amusing spy comedy. This is a generic comedy that mainly sticks to immature humour and for a movie involving espionage, be prepared for a serious lack of gadgets.

Jake (Cedric the Entertainer) wakes up in a hotel room next to a dead guy and a briefcase full of money with no recollection of how he got there and who he is. He is soon being chased by the police and must try to piece together whether he is a spy or just a simple caretaker with the help of the beautiful Gina (Lucy Liu “Shanghai Noon”).

Cedric the Entertainer occasionally manage to make me chuckle but that does not make him particularly funny. His main gag is that he is an overweight black guy and he becomes rather tiresome as the movie progresses. Lucy Liu is charming as Gina. Nicollette Sheridan (“Beverly Hills Ninja”) plays Diane, who claims to be Jake’s wife; she has a scene where she tries to arouse Jake in order to help him remember where he placed a computer chip. She prances around in her underwear in what is probably the best scene of the movie. The other characters are really irritating.

“Code Name: The Cleaner” has a few moments here and there that are not too bad but most of the film just falls flat. Cedric the Entertainer is not endearing at all and that means that we do not care whether he is a spy or not. I’m sure most of the filmmakers’ effort went on getting Nicollette Sheridan’s underwear scene right and then rushed the rest of it. There are better spy comedies out there including better spy comedies with Nicollette Sheridan (“Spy Hard” is really funny) so I do not recommend “Code Name: The Cleaner”.

This is a biography picture about famous fashion designer Coco Chanel, I have never and will never be interested in women’s fashion but I kept any open-mind when watching this film but it just didn’t impress me all that much.

We see the life of Gabrielle ‘Coco’ Chanel (Audrey Tautou “Amelie”, “The Da Vinci Code”) from her childhood in an orphanage to the height of the fashion world; along the way she encounters many forms of love as she struggles to decide which kind she prefers as both have their pros and cons. Her life doesn’t seem interesting enough to warrant a movie.

The performance by Audrey Tautou as Chanel is stale but I would probably say that is what the movie forces her to be like. There are parts where Chanel sings but it is a shame the singing isn’t very good. Unlike other people who have biography movies made about them such as Nelson Mandela (“Invictus”), Mozart (“Amadeus”) and Bruce Lee (“Dragon: The Bruce Lee Story”), Miss Chanel’s life doesn’t seem to be all that engaging and that’s a big problem that this movie has as it becomes an ultimately boring experience. The other characters were dull too, which certainly doesn’t help matters.

In “Coco Before Chanel”, there are a few bits and pieces about what makes good clothing that I’m sure the intended demographic will much appreciate so it gets points for that and the romantic elements while subpar will probably be enjoyed by those who enjoy these little kind of movies where not all that much happens so I believe it gets another few points for that but apart from that this film really offers very little to keep one entertained. All-round this is an average movie that it is the hard kind to criticise because it mainly suffers from blandest as opposed to anything else.

Bars have played vital roles in films such as “Star Wars” and virtually every Western but I don’t know if there has ever been a film about bartenders as such and after seeing “Cocktail” I hope there aren’t any others.

In “Cocktail”, we meet the cheeky Brian Flanagan (Tom Cruise “Top Gun”, “Mission: Impossible”), who comes to New York to make it big. After a series of unsuccessful interviews, he becomes a bartender and learns the trade from the eccentric Doug Coughlin (Bryan Brown). Soon Brian sees a bright future as he hopes to find love and open his own bar named ‘Cocktails And Dreams’.

Tom Cruise performance as the sarcastic Brian Flanagan is ruined by the fact that I’m convinced both he and Bryan Brown were drunk during the filming of this picture and the camera simply followed them around acting like idiots. The two do such unfunny and preposterous things that you can’t help but feel they’d had a pint to many and because of this after a while like any drunk they become a bore to watch and after that they just become a nuisance. The other characters are boring too, which of course means the film fails in this department.

“Cocktail” is a novelty film and it is really fun for twenty minutes but then it goes downhill quickly with only a few moments that prove to be mildly amusing. Had “Cocktail” been a short film then I could praise it for its kinetic energy and silly feel but the film just spirals into an uncontrollably bland experience that feels so similar to so many other lacklustre experiences. The whole film is just a variation on the first twenty minutes or so and gets weaker each time we reach a new variation. “Cocktail” didn’t do it for me at all.

Originally, he was to star in “Beverly Hills Cop” but he wanted to make a more violent picture so thus Sylvester Stallone (“Cliffhanger”, “Rocky”) made “Cobra”, which is essentially just a remake of “Dirty Harry” starring Clint Eastwood.

In “Cobra”, Stallone stars as tough cop with the title for his nickname, who is assigned to protect a model named Ingrid (Brigitte Nielsen “Red Sonja”) as she is the only surviving witness to a crime committed by a murderous cult. As you watch you’ll notice every cop movie cliché known to man but here it is executed in a fun, cheesy and likeable way.

Sylvester Stallone is hardly a great actor but he can be good when placed in the right role, here there is less humanity than his Rocky Balboa and John Rambo characters but he works alright. Like Harry Callahan he’s an unrealistic character in a realistic world. Some of the lines he says here are dynamite; my favourite is his comeback when a deranged man threatens to blow up a shop. Brigitte Nielsen is good but nothing special as the damsel in distress. The bad guys aren’t too memorable however and this is an area where the film isn’t too good.

“Cobra” begins with Stallone telling us some shocking American crime statistics, what’s kind of sad is that I somehow feel there are people in some more unfortunate other countries who will laugh at these figures. The film is juvenile but the action sequences are good, the action star has charisma and the one-liners are amusing. I don’t know why this film gets such low scores on review sites but I actually think it is a lot better than many of Stallone’s pictures. The only missing from this in terms of comedic value is to have the poster of the film actually in one of the shots.

“Clue” is based on the board game “Cluedo” (or merely “Clue” as it is known in the U.S.). It is a devastatingly bad mystery comedy movie. Everybody in this movie looks bored and like they have been drained of their energy by some device from a science-fiction film.

In “Clue”, a group of strangers are invited to a mansion with each one of them being assigned pseudonyms such as Professor Plum (Christopher Lloyd “Suburban Commando”, “Back To The Future”) and Miss Scarlet (Lesley Ann Warren “Cop”). When Mr. Boddy (Lee Ving “Flashdance”, “Black Moon Rising”) turns up dead, they realise that one of them is a killer.

Tim Curry (“Legend”, “Congo”) plays Wadsworth the butler. Even in a bad movie, Tim Curry can usually give a really good performance but here he seems to have his charisma sucked from him. It’s a real shame to see talented actors such as Curry and Lloyd appear in such an awful film. The characters are not remotely interesting and none of them made me laugh. The only one that is even remotely funny is the sexy French maid (Colleen Camp “Wayne’s World”) but the gags about her revealing uniform quickly wear thin (no pun intended).

“Clue” is essentially just about the gimmicks because it’s based on a board game and they also filmed three different endings with different cinemas showing different endings. All of the endings are bad but the whole movie is just awful. There’s a joke near the beginning where Curry accidentally steps in some dog mess and other characters can smell it, this gag is repeated several times when it was not particularly amusing the first time. The whole movie is repetitive and it is frightfully dull. I cannot believe how boring and unfunny “Clue” is and that is why I’m shocked to learn that it has developed a growing following over the years since its release.

“Club Dread” is a horror/comedy that seems to combine “Friday The 13th” with “Meatballs”. It’s from Broken Lizard, the same comedy group that made “Super Troopers”. I despised “Super Troopers” so I went into “Club Dread” with fairly low expectations. While I cannot say it is good, “Club Dread” is a significant improvement over “Super Troopers”.

A group of partygoers travel to a tropical island resort where the main aim is to get drunk and get frisky. However, a serial killer is on the loose and is murdering the staff members one by one. With no means to contact the outside world, the staff try to keep the guests happy while trying to discover who the killer is.

Brittany Daniel (“Little Man”, “Joe Dirt”) plays Jenny, the aerobics instructor and she’s okay. Bill Paxton (“Twister”) plays Coconut Pete, who is in charge of the island. He’s mildly amusing and gets to sing a few silly songs throughout the film. The Broken Lizard comedy team all have roles and none of them are very funny. The killer wears some form of Caribbean voodoo mask. Why is it that slasher villains all have to have a mask as a substitute for a personality?

“Club Dread” is a pretty harmless and forgettable comedy flick. Many of the jokes are pretty lame and it rarely goes overboard with its humour so a lot of its scenes feel like they could be housed in a legitimate slasher movie. One scene that did peak my interest (at least in terms of the concept) was where some of the guests play a real-life version of “Pac-Man” in a maze. It’s certainly something I can imagine being pretty fun to do. The rest of the film is your usual bikini girls and bloodthirsty kills that you have no doubt seen countless times.

“Cloverfield” is a giant monster film but it’s also sadly a found footage film. The film came close to making me physically ill with is violent camera shaking and when it wasn’t making me sick, I was bored by its choice of narrative as it provides arguably the dullest way to showcase a monster attack.

“Cloverfield” opens with an insanely bland party for a guy by the name of Rob (Michael Stahl-David) but then disaster strikes and a band of people try to rescue one of their friends as a giant monster attacks New York. The army are there fighting but instead we only see glimpses of the big fight against the monster from the worst possible angles, depriving us of any enjoyment.

The characters in this film are bad even when considering the genre. Giant monster movies aren’t known for entertaining characters but the ones here are so painful that I found it hard to tolerate them. The worst is easily the cameraman called Hud (T.J. Miller “Deadpool”), who constantly says “I’m documenting” and it goes far beyond ridiculous. The monster may be interesting but we get such poor shots of it that I can’t really tell. It looked a little generic as it was very similar to many other American giant monster films of the era such as “Super 8”.

Many see “Cloverfield” as a clever way of making a monster film by only providing you with limited shots of the monster and a narrative that deviates from most giant monster films. However, I find it more irritating and severely underwhelming. I think “Cloverfield” is one of the worst movie experiences I’ve had because it denies you the chance to see a film where a monster attacks a city through its style. The reason why films such as “King Kong” and “The Beast From 20,000 Fathoms” work so well is because you can see the monster.

John Cleese (“Rat Race”, “Monty Python and the Holy Grail”) can make me laugh but here we see him star in a movie that puts all of its effort into making Cleese look great but nothing else.

In “Clockwise”, we meet a strict, British school headmaster named Brian Stimpson (Cleese), who is obsessed with keeping everything on time. He is the chairman of some headmasters’ union and is on his way to deliver a speech. Things go badly wrong for Stimpson as after a misunderstanding he misses his train and resorts to getting a student to drive him to Norwich. On the way he steals, he vandalises and is pretends to be a monk. Also, various people including his wife believe Stimpson has ‘gone off’ with the schoolgirl so they all go on a mad hunt to capture him.

John Cleese is very good in “Clockwise” as Stimpson. You actually sympathize with him as he’s a victim of circumstance. As the film goes on you realize he’s actually quite a nice person and you even feel that aside from this occasion, his way of life is very efficient. The other cast members are alright but they don’t really make you laugh in the way they should.

Apart from John Cleese’s character and performance it’s tricky to find anything amusing in this picture; this is the downfall of the film as you can’t just have one good character and that’s it. You could have done so much with this idea of trying to get somewhere on time. How about a drive through a shopping centre like in “The Blues Brothers”? How about a hostile bus takeover? These are just a few ideas that would have made this is a great movie. Also, another thing was that I wasn’t too happy with the ending as it seemed a little abrupt.

Renny Harlin (“Die Hard 2”, “Deep Blue Sea”) directs this average at best action film. It never thrills us the way it should as it suffers from being predictable due to following the clichés, which it never has fun with doing.

In “Cliffhanger”, a mid-air heist goes horribly wrong and a group of bad guys led by Eric Qualen (John Lithgow “Shrek”) have to search for suitcases full of money in the Rocky Mountains. They call for help and use the skills of two mountain rangers to find the money. Sylvester Stallone (“Rocky”, “The Expendables 2”) plays the main mountain ranger Gabe Walker, who escapes the bad guys and now has to save the day.

The film really fails in the characters/acting section as we see the various stars deliver tons of corny dialog. Stallone can add emotional sides (as seen in “Rocky” and “First Blood”) but here the emotional scenes are so predictable that they become almost laughable. John Lithgow reminded me of Dennis Hopper in “Speed” as he could have been a lot better had he been given more interaction with the hero and a few better lines. The other characters are really dull and that’s another reason why the film doesn’t quite work.

The action scenes are entertaining but they never live up to their potential, the film is a little too gory, the characters are weak and deliver bad lines and all-round it just isn’t very interesting. “Cliffhanger” isn’t as bad as Stallone’s “Daylight” (which is similar in a lot of ways to this film) but it isn’t any “Rocky” or “First Blood” either. “Cliffhanger” is a real disappointment as it could have been so much more… on the plus side the end fight sequence is pretty darn good (it’s easily the best part of the movie). Arguably it’s in the better half of Stallone’s filmography but that really doesn’t say much.

“Clerks” is an intriguing yet unfulfilling comedy directed by then newcomer Kevin Smith (“Dogma”, “Mallrats”). It was made on a small budget and that’s fine because you can make the subject matter work with virtually nothing but the film never really excites us.

“Clerks” shows us the mundane lives of cashiers in a convenience shop named Dante (Brian O’Halloran) and Randal (Jeff Anderson). A couple of things, which are the kind of things that happen in real-life and not movies, go bad for them and while I get that’s kind of the point I was hoping to see them break loose from their restrictive chains and do something fun; my wish never came true.

I think the Dante character is perhaps the most realistic but by far the dullest so although that’s the point, the fact is, he just isn’t entertaining to watch. Randal has a bit more personality so he’s arguably the best character in the film. Also, there are two drug takers named Jay and Silent Bob, the latter is played Smith but unlike directors such as Clint Eastwood (“Pale Rider”) and Quentin Tarantino (“Reservoir Dogs”), there is no point in having him in the movie; there isn’t even the fun novelty of spotting him like Alfred Hitchcock (“Psycho”) as he’s clearly there for everyone to see.

“Clerks” is a movie grounded by reality and while I get it, I just feel that movies should take us into to more exciting and different universes that help us escape ours. Some of the punchlines are funny but often the build-up to them is far too long. It is an interesting film, I like how it is in black and white and there are some laughs to be had but that’s just about all I can say to defend this otherwise average picture, here’s hoping Smith’s other efforts are a bit better.