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USA/Germany: Timur Bekmambetov, 2008; IMDB

Can I have those two hours of my life back, please?

I really don't feel like writing paragraph after paragraph about WANTED. It started off well, but rapidly disintegrated into a sludge of cod-philosophical mumbo-jumbo, incomprehensible action and a narrative so muddled it can only have been the work of a committee. What ends up playing out feels like a more colourful, sillier and vastly less entertaining rip-off of THE MATRIX - the sort of film that it's hard to believe anyone involved in the production actually cared about. The impressive cast is wasted, with Angelina Jolie doing nothing but pout and James McAvoy thoroughly miscast as a would-be action hero, overdoing the goofy facial expressions and making annoying "Waaaahoooooooeeeeee!" noises during the copious slow motion fight/chase scenes. And does Morgan Freeman not get tired of constantly getting the "Yoda" roles? An awful, awful film - loud, clumsy, confused and utterly forgettable.

USA: Kathryn Bigelow, 2008; IMDB

USA: Wes Craven, 1984; IMDB

I've said before that I find Wes Craven very inconsistent as a filmmaker, and while A NIGHTMARE ON ELM STREET is regarded by a considerable number of people to be his finest achievement, I must admit I'm less sold on it. It has considerable merit, not least its compelling premise (A dead child killer who stalks people in their sleep? That's COOL!) and the fact that, before he turned into a figure of fun, Freddy Krueger was actually a pretty creepy individual. The dream sequences are imaginative - in fact, throughout the whole film Craven manages to create a dreamlike atmosphere. Nice musical score too, courtesy of Charles Bernstein. On the other hand, the characters don't do a whole lot for me, and the lead, Heather Langenkamp, is, to put it politely, uneven. That's not good when the bulk of the film rests on your shoulders, and while she rises to the occasion when it comes to screaming and running around in a state of terror, she stumbles through the dramatic scenes, some of the dialogue exchanges verging on painful.

It's definitely a landmark film, melding the slasher movie formula with supernatural horror, and delivering a true genre icon in the form of Krueger (though, given the later sequels, whether that's a good thing is somewhat debatable), but not a favourite of mine. Then again, I make no secret of the fact that the 80s US slasher movie craze more or less passed me by. Give me a good black-gloved Italian maniac over Michael, Freddy or Jason any day.

France/UK: Olivier Megaton, 2008; IMDB

In THE TRANSPORTER, Jason Statham (I'm not going to call the character by his name - he's just Jason Statham being Jason Statham) drove bank robbers to safety and indulged in people trafficking with nary the blink of an eye. In TRANSPORTER 2, he jacked that in in favour of ferrying a rich brat to and from dental appointments. In TRANSPORTER 3, he FALLS IN LOVE, and the series (I'm assuming they aren't planning on making any more) dies with a whimper rather than a bang.

With TRANSPORTER 1 and 2 director Louis Leterrier's star ascendant, Olivier Megaton takes up the reins for this third outing. However, while Megaton certainly deserves his share of the blame for the film's problems (in terms of camerawork and editing sensibility, think Michael Bay on acid - yeah, it's that bad), it wouldn't be fair to claim that everything is down to him. Luc Besson and regular writing partner Robert Kamen's script is a mess, reining in the over-the-top nature of the second film in favour of something that tries desperately to be epic and taken seriously, meaning that the more ridiculous elements (the over-the-top car chases, the blatant homoeroticism that has Statham removing his shirt on the flimsiest of pretences) don't gel at all, resulting in a film that just doesn't know what it wants to be. The plot is overly convoluted, to the extent that, when the credits began to roll, I wasn't sure what had actually happened - not a good state of affairs for the latest instalment in a series of deliriously stupid summer blockbusters.

Besson also throws in the most annoying sidekick this side of Spielberg's wife in INDIANA JONES AND THE TEMPLE OF DOOM. Besson apparently spotted Natalya Rudakova in the street, took a shine for her and paid for her to take acting lessons - a wasted investment if ever there was one, because her performance, to put it bluntly, sucks. Not that a better actress would necessarily have made the role any more palatable, as her character's personality is so loathsome that I spent the bulk of the film hoping she'd get it in the neck. Nice freckles, though.

So, in summary: TRANSPORTER 2 > THE TRANSPORTER > TRANSPORTER 3.

USA: Wes Craven, 1996; IMDB

Ah, the 90s! Haven't they aged well? No, not really, at least in the case of SCREAM. Wes Craven's 1996 slasher was more or less the first modern horror movie I ever saw - prior to that, I had only ever been acquainted with the likes of THE OMEN and THE MEPHISTO WALTZ, and SCREAM opened up a whole new world of possibilities for me, ultimately leading me, in a very roundabout way, to the gialli of Argento, Fulci et al. SCREAM owes something of an indirect debt to these films, and can essentially be viewed as a Californian, teen-oriented giallo, with the Ghostface costume and raspy Roger Jackson voice a clear descendent of the black-coated, black-gloved killer who so often disguised his (or her) voice when making menacing phone calls to his intended victims. I'm inclined to think, however, that the better gialli were somewhat cleverer and more self-aware than SCREAM.

SCREAM, you see, has been called many things. A parody, a satire, an homage... the last of these is probably nearest the mark, although the film's creators have muddied the waters by using all three (I forget precisely who called it what and when, but I don't think it really matters much). The film purports to be self-aware, and this self-awareness manifests itself in the form of its entire cast having an intimate knowledge of the horror genre and repeatedly observing that the situation unfolding around them is very much like... would you believe it... a horror movie. The trouble is that I'm not quite sure what the filmmakers are trying to say. Are they mocking the genre? I don't have a problem with that - slasher movies are ripe for mockery. SCREAM, however, attempts to both have its cake and eat it, essentially pointing out the clichés but doing nothing beyond that. There's little real subversion of slasher movie conventions, and the few that ARE subverted - for example, Sidney commits the cardinal "sin" of having sex but lives to tell the tale - stick out like sore thumbs amid the slough that aren't. I don't know it Craven and writer Kevin Williamson were aware of how conventional they were being in killing off the ditzy, big-titted blonde, but frankly I don't think it really matters whether they knew what they were doing or not - either way, no real point ends up being made.

What we're left with, once you ignore the muddled and now decidedly uncool self-referentiality, is an admittedly well-made slasher movie that looks an awful lot like a whole bunch of other well-made horror movies from the previous decade. Craven is what I would call a very uneven director - for every NIGHTMARE ON ELM STREET there's a SCREAM 3 - but when he's on the ball, he's REALLY on the ball. His most recent film but one, RED EYE, was a gripping exercise in eking every last drop of tension out of a minimalist situation, and on several occasions he manages the same thing with SCREAM. The opening sequence, featuring an extended cameo by Drew Barrymore, is one such example; another is Sidney's first phone conversation with Ghostface and her subsequent flight from him through her otherwise empty house. These sequences owe a certain debt to the segment "The Telephone" in Mario Bava's BLACK SABBATH, and both Barrymore and Neve Campbell make for likeable "scream queens". It also has a genuinely effective whodunit that caught me off-guard the first time I watched it. When the tension lets up and the characters start waxing lyrical about "Wes Carpenter" (haw haw) flicks, however, you remember all too quickly how annoying the rash of self-referential slasher movies that came out in SCREAM's wake were. SCREAM was the first, and probably also the best, but it just doesn't have the impact it did 15 years ago.