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Last week I was sent through my Cineworld Premium Unlimited card. It's black which makes it feel even more exclusive than it probably is. It's a card that I pay £14.99 per month for and which allows me to go to any Cineworld cinema and see any amount of films in a month as i want. (At least, i don't think there's a limit to the amount of films you can see. Who reads the T's and C's anyway!).

The premium unlimited card has been introduced to people who've been unlimited members for more than a year. That's me! It also allows you to get a much needed 25% discount on food and drink in the kiosks and you can now even book a ticket online too. This is a long awaited feature. The only problem is that that day i did just that, the queue for the ticket machine was extra long and so my ticket was re-sold as i hadn't redeemed it within 20 minutes of the performance starting. I think this system will only work if there are a few unlimited members only collection machines in the foyers so that we don't have to wait in super long queues. Just a thought.

My Cineworld card has been one of the single most useful and important things i have ever purchased. I'll tell you why...

I'm often to be found wandering aimlessly through town or the city if i venture out at weekends. This card means that if i have a few hours spare (which let's be honest for me is most weekends), then I can simply walk to the nearest Cineworld cinema and see a movie. I've really gone to town and taken full advantage of the card recently. I've seen a great number of brilliant films. Some good films and maybe one or two not so good films.

I wanted to share with you some of those films and why i thought they were brilliant or just plain good. Don't worry i'll try not to spoil them for you. But I can't guarantee i won't tell you some details so don't read any further if you want to avoid them...

Argo

Ben Affleck directs here. An absolutely brilliantly told tense true story. I was on the edge of my seat without even realising. Set in 1980 the clothes and hair are bang on. The story is mostly set in Iran and follows 6 fugitives and how they were extracted from a volatile troubled Tehran. You sorta knew the ending but how it got there was a different story. I'd never heard about this true story before. It's almost unbelievable but true. I've always liked Ben Affleck. Good Will Hunting is one of my favourite films ever. He stars and directs Argo and it's a triumph. "Argofuckyourself"... you have to see it.

Rust and Bone

A French movie with subtitles. Stars Marion Cotillard. I'd seen the trailer for this a few weeks before the movie was released and I immediately fell for it. I waited on the release and then one lazy Wednesday afternoon i took myself specifically to Glasgow to see it (it wasn't in any cinema in Stirling). It also stars Matthias Schoenaerts who is a Belgian actor (no i didn't remember that, I IMDB'd him). But he's not forgettable - ladies! He's Ali in the film. Father to a young son who leaves Belgium to live with his sister in Antibes, but all doesn't go to plan. Marion Cotillard is Stephanie. Ali and Stephanie meet in unusual circumstances. It was so good from the start. I wasn't sure what the story was at the beginning and then it started to make sense. Things happen (no spoilers) and this film turned into a beautiful tale of hope and ultimately it's a love story too. It's harsh at times. There are brutal and devastating scenes in it but this is what gets you so attached to the characters that you care what happens to them. Well, i cared. It's beautifully shot,  great music underpins it and the characters were real. I'd highly recommend you see this.

End of Watch

Wowsers. Great film. Shaky camera work, great rapport between the two main characters and Jake Gyllenhaal doing funny! What's not to love. Again, with this begin a cop drama set in the tough South Central LA, there are scenes that might make you look away. But that won't be for very long. I saw Jake G talk about this film on tv the other night. He said one of the crashes in the movie did actually happen in real life, accidentally, but the cameras kept rolling. You see that this was shot on handheld cameras but that kinda brought it more in your face. A good solid cop drama.

Silver Linings Playbook

Woah. A bit off the wall is our Patrick (Bradley Cooper). Patrick has just been released from a mental hospital where he's been for 8 months following an incident with his wife! He's now trying to get his life back together whilst living back at home with his parents. He meets Tiffany, a girl who seems to be just like him. Patrick is trying hard to win back his wife after the incident. It might all go to someones plan. It's a bit kooky, quite funny and was a bit of a change to Cooper's outings in The Hangover films. He makes you see the heartache in Patrick's mind through his lovely blue eyes (I couldn't write a little tale about the Cooper without mentioning those eyes). Robert De Niro wonderfully plays Patrick's troubled dad. Great. An enjoyable film I could relate in a weird way. I loved it.

The Imposter
This is a true story/documentary about a guy who pretends to be a boy who went missing from a family in America. Except he turns up in Spain! It's intriguing. It's weird. And if you didn't know it was true you'd think it was totally unbelievable. But all is not what it seems with the family... This was a step away from what i usually watch and i thoroughly enjoyed it even though i left feeling creeped out.

Other mentions go to Ruby Sparks and of course, The Perks of Being A Wallflower...

Alex Cross wasn't up to much apart from Matthew Fox playing a really great maniacal psychopath killer and Edward Burns being Edward Burns.

Anna Karenina was a bit slow but the wonderfully mesmerising dance scene at the ball had me in awe. All those hand movements, i wanted to get out of my seat and start practising straight away. Oh yes!!

Now we get to Skyfall - The more i think about Skyfall the more i get annoyed by all of the blatant product placement that was in it from the very start. I'm not a huge Bond fan but I've seen the last few. This one was beautifully shot in parts, especially the scenes in Scotland. They were breathtaking. I recognised a road I've driven a few times and my first munro i climbed too. Braw. In this one Bond has been absent for a while then reappears. (I don't want to give too much away). Javier Bardem is really good as a menacing Bond villain, almost creepy. To me there is absolutely no point in the Bond girl in this film. I think I'd prefer to know the actress playing a Bond girl so you could maybe relate to or at least care about what happens to her. I didn't here. Incidentally i thought Craig started to look a bit older in this one - dare i say past it... It started to get a bit silly at one point, people are saying it's like Home Alone. I thought that scene went on a bit too long. Oh, I must mention the opening scene (before the opening credits). Now, I can see why they had to put it there but i just found it a bit tedious. Too long perhaps? But, then came the opening credits and i was mesmerised again. The song and the graphics that were all flowy and liquid looking and kind of reminded me of Tales of the Unexpected back in the day. If you can remember that then *high five*! Overall it was a decent movie with some stunningly shot scenes. If i had to I'd give it 3/5.

Movies I'm looking forward to seeing are Les Miserables, Seven Psychopaths, Pitch Perfect, Lincoln, Gangster Squad, Hansel and Gretel and OZ; the great and powerful. Phew!

Angela x

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