ABRAHAM LINCOLN: VAMPIRE HUNTER

Dir: Timur Bekmambatov. Starring: Benjamin Walker, Rufus Sewell, Dominic Cooper

****

It's the title really, isn't it? Like Snakes On A Plane, sometimes all you need is a good title. But this actually offers more, a rip-roaring, mind-bogglingly outrageous story which may not vie with Steven Spielberg's upcoming epic in the Oscar stakes, but possibly generates a lot more pure pulp pleasure.

Here's how it goes: as a young lad, Abe sees his mother killed by a vampire and, after growing up a bit, tries to take revenge. This results in him being trained up as a fully-fledged vampire hunter, something that comes in handy later when he becomes president of the US of A and realises that the dastardly confederate forces are being bolstered by vampires. So, it's out with the faithful axe (why an axe? Well it could be something to do with how good it looks in 3D) and off to Gettysburg for some good ol' vampire killing.

OK. Let's get real. Clearly this film has absolutely no redeeming social features. But I really enjoyed it. And ace Russian director Bekmambatov brings his own visual sense to proceedings, making for a sublimely silly action outing. Turn off your brain and have fun.

One of the stranger career transformations in recent screen history has been Liam Neeson's leap to becoming an action hero. Sixty is obviously the new 30. But even the Irish star's gruff charm and tough smarts have trouble with the minimalist story of The Grey (** ½). It's about a bunch of hardened macho types off to work in the Alaskan outback whose plane crashes. A dozen or so are then hunted by a pack of wild wolves. One by one they succumb to the CGI predators. And that's about it really. Continue watching after the end credits for the final twist.

There's a really good film out there called Total Recall (**). Unfortunately this isn't it. This is a crap remake from the director who brought you Kate Beckinsale fighting werewolves in Underworld wearing tight black leather. She's married to him. Here she again dons tight black leather to chase Colin Farrell around a future dystopia. And that's about all they do. He runs, she chases. Once upon a time the story went to Mars and was filled with mutants. Now it goes to Australia. And, in case it needs pointing out, Farrell is no Arnie. The Austrian oak's cartoony presence is sorely missed in a film with little wit or originality.

Bel Ami (***), based on Guy de Maupassant's celebrated nineteenth century novel, is an elegant piece of work, beautifully evoking hedonistic Paris life. Into this fleshpot cauldron comes Georges (Robin Pattinson), an ambitious schemer fresh out of the army. A job from a newspaper column about his military exploits and help from various duplicitous beauties (Una Thurman, Kirsten Scott Thomas, Christina Ricci) sees him rising in society; dangerous heights for a country boy to climb as anyone who has watched Age of Innocence or Dangerous Liaisons will realise: all's fair in love and politics. It's a carefully executed story, somewhat – though not fatally – marred by Pattinson's peculiar performance.

Werner Herzog is a unique documentarian, expanding his early fiction films' fascination with man's relationship to nature's extremes to a vast cannon of non-fiction films that explore the natural world, usually accompanied by the director's eccentric musings on human nature. Cave of Forgotten Dreams (****) finds him given very rare access to France's Chauvet Cave where in 1994 scientists discovered hundreds of cave paintings dating back over 30,000 years, the very dawn of modern man. It's a thoughtful meditation on the birth of mankind's artistic spirit amongst various tangential subjects, the cave and its artworks casting a (literally) awesome and very powerful spell.