Human Traffic
Directed by Justin Kerrigan
Starring John Simm, Lorraine Pilkington, Nicola Reynolds, Danny Dyer, Shaun Parkes
Set over the course of one hedonistic weekend, Kerrigan's debut follows the exploits of a group of young clubbers as they search for fun, excitement and sexual satisfaction through the dancefloors and all-night parties of Cardiff, but its good intentions are let down by clumsy filmmaking and a less than sharp script. The film depicts its characters as dedicated to the pursuit of Class A drugs and good times, but lumbers them with cliche-ridden attitudes and some truly awful lines. Veering uneasily between drab naturalism, state-of-the-nation pontificating and clumsy attempts to convey the artificially-induced elation of clubbing, Human Traffic ends up looking merely pedestrian.
Virus
Directed by John Bruno
Starring Jamie Lee Curtis, Donald Sutherland, William Baldwin, Joanna Pacula, Marshall Bell
Special effects whizz Bruno is best known for his work with James Cameron on The Terminator, The Abyss and Titanic, so it's perhaps not surprising that his directorial debut seems to amalgamate elements from all those films, dealing as it does with extra-terrestrial robots slaughtering unwary humans aboard a storm-wrecked ship. There's nothing here that we haven't seen before, and the plot is peppered with illogicalities and absurd non sequiturs, while the mechanical monsters are often more silly-looking than scary.
Virtual Sexuality
Directed by Nick Hurran
Starring Laura Fraser, Luke de Lacey, Rupert Penry-Jones
With so many American teenflicks filling our screens at the moment, it's not surprising that a British attempt at the genre should have appeared sooner or later, and Hurran's fantasy-comedy with a cybertwist, set amongst a bunch of hormonally-tormented 17-year-olds, tries valiantly to make North London seem as glamorous as Southern California. That it fails is due as much to budgetary limitations as anything else - that golden sheen costs money, after all - but a clunky script and some dubious casting don't help.
