MAGICAL MYSTERY TOUR
Dir: Paul McCartney - Starring: Paul McCartney, John Lennon, George Harrison, Ringo Starr.

The Beatles have attained such a place in popular music that it is barely possible to think of them as mere mortals any more. Every move they made is just a creative reflection of their genius.

So perhaps you might like to see the Beatles in a different light. Magical Mystery Tour was an hour long TV special. The boys, under the direction – if you can call it that – of Paul McCartney, headed off with some cameras and a bus and a whole bunch of their mates and made a sort of movie. The idea was to create scenes as they went along and join it all up with songs. The result is... mixed.

Mixed, in that the songs are good and everything else is staggeringly embarrassing. This film deserves to be seen just for the shock of how rotten it is, like a bad home movie where everyone is desperately trying to have fun but no one can think of anything to do.

And, from that point of view - seeing charismatic desperately talented people floundering around - it's quite entertaining. Lennon appears off his face most of the time; McCartney bravely defends it all on the commentary track as influential avant garde film-making. Hmmm...

Although I respect his skill and talent, when it comes to Adam Sandler – not a fan. In That's My Boy he plays obnoxious, drunken, foul-mouthed accidental celebrity Donnie. His son Han Solo was so traumatised by Donnie's single-parenting, that at 18 he changed his name and hasn't seen his father since. Until down-on-his-luck Donnie needs money and shows up at his son's upcoming wedding in the heart of ultra-rich society. Surprise, surprise, everyone is immediately charmed by his loud boorish behaviour except his continually humiliated son. I think the moral is that even the crude, rude and ignorant have hearts of gold (while being apparently irresistible to women).

The American writer Edgar Allan Poe died in mysterious circumstances, after not being seen for four days - apparently. The Raven takes this premise and runs with it. And it must have seemed like a good idea: construct a murder mystery around the final days and get John Cusack, someone who exudes on-screen intelligence, to play the great man. And, indeed, you can see a terrific film popping its head up every so often. But so much is misjudged (and Poe's character is presented so unsympathetically) that it's a wearying exercise despite Cusack's best efforts.

The Dictator is the third cinematic crack at an ‘outsider' comedy from Sacha Baron Cohen, following the provocative footsteps of Borat and Bruno. This differs in that it's a fully-fledged, straight-ahead comedy, rather than one that relies upon the reactions of shocked unsuspecting Americans. And, despite the odd languor, it's a very funny film, though making light of the anti-Semitic, homophobic ravings of a homicidal dictator might be regarded as bad taste by many. Said dictator goes to New York only to be replaced by a body double and cast out onto the streets to fend for himself. Rampantly un-PC; frequently hilarious. The blu-ray version is 20 minutes longer (recommended).

It's the end of the world as we know it and everyone feels miserable. In The Collapsed society has, er, collapsed. A family find a car to escape the city. There are Bad People on the road and when the family are forced to take to the woods, there seems to be some mysterious force following them. This is a low-budget effort where the tantalising glimpses of the deserted city are barely even glimpses. Where all the people have gone is anyone's guess – even Bad People are in short supply. As so often with shoestring Indies, there's a lot of time spent building up to things that never happen, though the ending is satisfying. If you get that far.