toppin

If you're going to be nearly 3 hours long, you'd better earn it. This film doesn't.

I can count on one hand the number of films around or above the three hour mark which actually deserve to be that long. A good script is a must, good direction and good acting, of course. Perhaps the most important thing though is a purpose (beyond pure profit). I can't find that here.

We've already seen all the shades a Batman film can take. We had campy over-the-top comic book-lite Batman with the late 80s and 90s Batman films. We had the "comic books are super serious", SFX laden, "Batman saves the world" Snyder films of last decade. Most importantly, we've also had the gritty, realistic and complicated Batman seen in Chris Nolan's brilliant Dark Knight trilogy.

There's literally no good reason for this film to exist. Yes, Pattinson is a better Batman than I ever realised he could be. Yes, the script is decent and so is the direction too. If the Dark Knight trilogy didn't exist, this film could perhaps be heralded as the start of an interesting new direction for the Batman franchise, but the Dark Knight trilogy does exist and is superior to this in every way.

A film doesn't get to be this self indulgent without a very good reason, this film simply doesn't have one.

In a word, beautiful.

A single word isn't enough of course.

I'm a huge fan of the original, I was too young when I first watched it though and remember thinking another word – boring. At 12 I suppose you don't want to watch a movie that ponders deep philosophical questions, you just want a good guy, a bad guy and some action. As you get older, naturally, the complicated philosophical questions gain more relevance, black and white blurs into shades of gray...

This is long film but the time flashed past in an instant, no scene was unnecessary, poorly written or badly acted. Some scenes stood above the rest though including a gorgeous 2-on-1 love scene that wasn't actually a 2-on-1 love scene at all, a brilliant conversation with a 'creator of memories' and the long awaited re-introduction of Rick Deckard in a fantastically realised derelict 'future Vegas'.

This is also one of the most visually stunning movies that I've ever seen (Roger Deakins must win an Oscar) the soundtrack is wonderfully minimalist (I only missed Vangelis a little), and the acting is everything that you could ask for.

Why not 10/10 you might ask? I guess that I still prefer the original... but only ever so slightly.

Two movies for the price of one.

That's a fairly glib start to a review of a movie that I really liked, but it is true. The first half of Gone Girl is a fairly standard "did he or didn't he" mystery thriller. Then, about an hour in, the perspective shifts entirely and suddenly you realise that you're watching – perhaps – the most pitch-black comedy that you've ever seen.

Despite the abrupt shift, I still think that Gone Girl holds together extremely well as one whole movie. Ben Affleck's Nick manages to inspire sympathy without ever being truly likable while Rosamund Pike's Amy (the star of the show in my opinion) is brilliant, terrifying, hilarious and despicable in various combinations and occasionally all at the same time.

David Fincher's direction is both classy and clever (as usual) and several scenes are particularly outstanding due at least as much to his brilliance as that of the actors involved in them. My one complaint would be over the length – it really didn't need to be two and a quarter hours long. There were certainly a few moments, particularly in the first half, when I wished that the movie would hurry up and get to the point just a little more quickly.

Gone Girl is a movie unlike any that I've ever seen before and as such largely defies further description. I would recommend this movie to all (with a warning that the adult rating is well earned) but especially those with a dark sense of humour. The darker the better.