Avatar (2009)

No wonder Avatar was such a big hit at the cinema - in this shallow age of ours it is the ultimate expression of style over content.

If as much time and devotion to detail had been spent on the script as is put into the building of the world of Pandora, it could have been amazing.

As it is, Avatar - out on DVD in the UK tomorrow (Monday) - is a beautiful movie let down by a hackneyed script, full of unnecessarily drawn-out scenes for James Cameron gets to show off his swanky CGI.

There are lengthy portions of the film where there are no humans on screen, just CGI aliens and beasties in front of CGI scenery when you realise that this is a studio head's wet dream - the technology has finally arrived to eliminate pesky, temperamental actors from the whole film-making equation.

Sam Worthington is Jake Sully, a wheelchair-bound marine called back into service to replace his dead scientist twin brother on a trip to the alien world of Pandora. There he will be bonded with an 'avatar' - a vat grown clone of a native that was created with a combination of his brother's DNA and that of one of the locals, the giant, blue-skinned Na'vi.

It is supposed to be a scientific mission to learn the ways of the hostile Na'vi and hopefully negotiate a way for the humans to obtain the rare precious substance called Unobtanium (don't get me started on that particular red flag!), but he is approached by the stereotypically two-dimensional military commander Colonel Miles Quaritch (Stephen Lang) to act as a spy in the Na'vi camp, obtaining useful "intel" for when the military move in to forcefully evict the Na'vi from their sacred lands.

Unsurprisingly, it all goes a bit Dances With Wolves and Jake falls for Na'vi princess Neytiri (Zoe Saldana), comes to realise that the humans are the bad guys and helps the Na'vi drive the invaders from their lands.

And for some reason this takes two-and-a-half hours.

That said, Avatar is never boring, it is a visual treat with alien flora and fauna - but isn't exactly food for the brain, despite its best efforts to drive home a pro-Green, anti-corporation message. Both sides in the fight are such stereotypes - with the noble savages of the Na'vi on one side and heartless military machine of the Earth forces on the other - that it's not that easy to take the conflict seriously.

It's simply 'ewoks versus The Empire' writ large and with a quality of CGI that would make George Lucas weep.

The planet of Pandora is the true star of this film, with its cornucopia of native life forms, totally integrated ecosystem and freakish geology - the flying mountains are breathtaking, an amazing realisation of '70s prog rock album cover artwork.

But let's address the elephant in the room: Unobtanium, the McGuffin that set this tragic chain of events in motion, a substance so valuable that no one ever explains what it does (or why it's so valuable) and is promptly forgotten about after 20 minutes and never mentioned again.

The moment corporate stooge Parker Selfridge (Giovanni Ribisi) delivers his expositional infodump to Dr Grace Augustine (Sigourney 'Ripley' Weaver), the head of the Avatar program and Diane Fossey to the Na'vi, about the whole raison d'etre for the human presence on Pandora - which you would have thought she was probably well aware of - you know James Cameron isn't trying very hard on the scriptwriting side of things.

Once you accept this and just enjoy the idea of watching the best-looking video game you've ever seen, Avatar is a lot of fun - but purely on a superficial level.

While his friend tried to explain the "brilliance" of Avatar

Once again Our Valued Customers has nailed a key issue of geekdom in a brilliantly well-observed single panel.

District 9 (2009)

The aliens arrived 20 years ago, parking their broken-down transport ship over Johannesburg, South Africa. Eventually humans made contact and, upon entering the ship, discovered hordes of malnourished insectoid aliens - who were quickly dubbed 'prawns'.

A refugee camp was established, which, over the years, grew to become the ghetto known as District 9 - as the alien population grew in size and clearly had no way of getting home (wherever that may be).

Interest in alien weaponry attracted massive corporate interest as well as that of local crime lords but (un)fortunately the high-tech weapons were keyed to alien DNA and so wouldn't work for humans.

After two decades of bubbling racial tension between the humans and their unwelcome alien neighbours, Multi-National United, the corporation controlling the camp, has decided to relocate it further away from Johannesburg and sent in some pencil-pushers, backed up by trigger-happy mercenaries, to serve eviction papers on the 'prawns'.

In charge of the operation on the ground is Wikus Van De Merwe (Sharlto Copley), a rather bumbling jobsworth who accidentally becomes infected by some strange fluid he stumbles over in an alien's shack.

This sets off the whole train events that becomes the meat of District 9 as Wikus rapidly begins to change into something "not quite human", and his former employers and the area crime boss want to get their hands on him as his mutated DNA now allows him access to the alien weaponry.

Starting off as a rather hit-and-miss faux fly-on-the-wall documentary, Neil Blomkamp's movie suffers initially from being unable to stick truthfully to this format - inexplicably interjecting scenes that the human characters ("the film makers" and archivists of 'found footage', CCTV camera shots etc) couldn't possibly have witnessed.

However, after about 50 minutes this artifice is abandoned in favour of a straight-forward, high-octane action movie as Wikus and his new-found alien friend, 'Christopher', launch an attack on Wikus' old workplace to retrieve the only existing sample of the "strange fluid".

The story then becomes the classic mismatched, 'odd couple', buddy movie as human and alien fight a running battle back through the settlement camp - with Wikus morphing from the sniveling underdog into a battle-hardened, alien-loving Rambo figure.

The virtual stunts and special effects are quite stunning in District 9, quite often being so breathtaking that it takes a moment to register what you've actually witnessed and for the full awesomeness to sink in.

While the plot may not be that blindingly original or that deep, there is an air of verisimilitude that eventually settles over the movie that makes you forget that the aliens are computer-generated and convinced that a ghetto slum like District 9 really could exist if alien refugees actually turned up on our doorstep.

While most storylines reach a satisfactory conclusion within the film's one hour 50 minute duration, its ending is left nicely open for a possible sequel that could see District 9 develop as an Alien-style franchise.

Aliens Vs Predator: Requiem (2007)

For years fans were crying out for a match-up between the Aliens and the Predators, but they were less than impressed with the 2004 addition to the mythos of both these creatures: Aliens Vs Predator.

At least that had Lance Henriksen in it as Charles Bishop Weyland (the 'inspiration' for the Bishop android in Aliens) to tenuously tie it in to the earlier films.

Aliens Vs Predator: Requiem picks up right from the end of the first continuity-befuddling AvP film, with the birth of the 'PredAlien' (a hybrid Alien born out of the chest of a Predator).

It attacks the Predators on the ship and forces a crash-landing back on Earth, near the small, isolated Colorado town of Gunnerson, releasing not only the PredAlien, but hordes of little face-huggers, in the wilds.

This is a town of bland, non-entities (the only slightly famous face I spotted was Reiko Aylesworth aka Michelle Dessler from 24) meaning that anyone could die at anytime (including children and pregnant women), as none have the protection of star quality.

We are quickly introduced to an array of stereotypes - from the returning soldier who has lost her 'special bond' with her daughter, to the disenfranchised local sheriff and the recently released convict returning to his home, and delinquent brother, to make a new life - before the action rapidly escalates.

You can't fault the directors Colin and Greg Strause for the speed with which they make the carnage snowball, as the alien horde grows exponentially and the humans quickly discover that there is nothing they can do to avoid becoming monster chow.

The Predators have dispatched one of their own to Earth, presumably to clean up the mess they've helped create, and he starts butchering humans and Aliens alike in his zeal.

Before you can say "but what's the story?" the film has spiralled into a plotless gorefest of Aliens munching on humans, humans running around screaming and the Predator killing anyone he can lay his hands on.

Much of the action takes place at night, and with the town's power out, so it's often difficult to even get a sense of what's going on, but ultimately it's difficult to grow tired to watching two of cinema's greatest killing machines doing what they do best.

There are some half-decent moments - such as the ambush of the national guard, which is a low-budget re-enactment of the marine massacre early in Aliens 2 - but don't expect to remember many, or any, of the performances about 10 minutes after you've stopped watching.

In the end, it is left to the US Army's radical "evac" plan, and a cameo by Françoise Yip as Ms. Yutani, to claw the franchise back into some vague semblance of the continuity established in the first three Alien movies.

Gone are the gritty, outer space environments, the 'lived in' space ships and alien planets, replaced by everyday, contemporary Earth; reducing the Aliens to just more monsters that go bump in the night.

In theory, it's actually not a bad idea - to remind us all just how bad ass Aliens and Predators are - but it could have done with a bit more story to back it up. For lengthy sequences, this movie ranks on a par with watching someone else play a particularly violent video game.

Aliens Vs Predator: Requiem is really one for die-hard Alien/Predator completionist fans only or if you're just looking for some moving wallpaper while you do something else; don't go into this expecting anything new or inspirational and you won't be disappointed.