It's not a vintage week for releases this week, but nevertheless it's encouraging to see the two big British releases getting their fair share of the plaudits. Guy Ritchie returns to his Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels and Snatch roots in the London-based gangster flick Rocknrolla. Keira Knightley squeezes into yet another corset for the period drama The Duchess. Nicolas Cage squeezes into yet another improbable hairpiece for the Hollywood remake of Thai hitman thriller Bangkok Dangerous. And the movie literally no-one had been waiting for, Disaster Movie hits our screens. So what did the critics have to say?

After two bona-fide Tomatometer turkeys - Swept Away at 5% and Revolver at 16% - Guy Ritchie returns to more familiar roots with cockney-crime-caper Rocknrolla, and with the film currently at 63%, the critics agree he has taken a step in the right direction. A fine cast, snappy direction and trademark flashy editing add positives, whilst a poor script, naff gags and derivative plotting referencing his own previous movies drag down the movie on the negative side. All in all, a return to form, even if that form wasn't particularly great in the first place.

The distributors have unashamedly promoted The Duchess with the tagline "There were three people in her marriage" to draw parallels with the titular Duchess of Devonshire and her direct descendent Diana Spencer, but most critics feel the comparisons and allusions in the movie itself are heavy handed and predictable. Just scraping in as Fresh at 65% on the Tomatometer, Keira Knightley and Ralph Fiennes deliver decent enough performances to prevent it from leaning from period drama to period soap opera.

With limited press screenings, and a review embargo until today, Nic Cage's latest, Bangkok Dangerous, had a whiff of being Rotten before the day had even began. With a new low for Cage at 10% on the Tomatometer, the critics are wondering when the once-funny and dependable Cage will stop appearing in every pointless remake going. The biggest talking point of the movie seems to be Cage's hair piece with Charlotte O'Sullivan of London's Evening Standard saying, "It seems Cage wants the world to believe he still has long, flowing locks; if so, his big mistake was to graft bits of an old shag-pile carpet onto his head. Because that's what his 'hair' looks like."

The original centred on a deaf-mute hitman, but with Cage starring and producing, this interesting angle on a tired genre is thrown out in favour of Cage, you know, talking and that, so then it does just end up being a tired generic addition to the actors recent poor output.

But what can be said of Disaster Movie other than Movie Disaster? At a truly pathetic 0% on the Tomatometer, its seems that the bottom of the barrel that Jason Friedberg and Aaron Seltzer had been scraping for their previous stinkers, Meet the Spartans and Date Movie, has finally given way and they have started to scrape the mouldy detritus beneath, to bring us what could potentially end up being the worst movie of the year. Devoid of laughs, humour or charm, shamelessly referencing nearly every movie from the last 12 months, seemingly without having seen half of them, Disaster Movie has managed to elicit precisely zero positive points from any of the UK critics.

Quote of the Week
"You'll find yourself less fixated on inner turmoil than whether you could feasibly slip a cocktail sausage between her perma-pouting lips."
The Duchess -- Larushka Ivan-Zadeh, Metro