Adam Boult 

Film quiz 2012 – can you guess which movies our reviewers are talking about?

Test your knowledge – below is a selection of quotes from film reviews published by the Guardian over the last 12 months. But can you tell which films they're talking about?
  
  


  1. "There is a type of film so bad that it is actually scary, like seeing those mawkish photographs of sweet little children in Victorian Britain dressed up as angels and realising after a few moments that they are corpses. [This] is such a film."

    1. Jack & Jill

    2. Cloud Atlas

    3. John Carter

    4. On The Road

  2. "Nothing in this insipid story does anything like justice to the cast's combined potential."

    1. Cloud Atlas

    2. The Master

    3. The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel

    4. The Dark Knight Rises

  3. "One of those films that is so stultifying, so oppressive and so mysteriously and interminably long that I felt as if someone had dragged me into the kitchen of my local Greggs, and was baking my head into the centre of a colossal cube of white bread."

    1. Battleships

    2. Lincoln

    3. John Carter

    4. Marvel's The Avengers

  4. "Not so much a stoner movie, perhaps more the result of film producers getting stoned, and talking about old stuff they can't get out of their heads."

    1. Ted

    2. Holy Motors

    3. Looper

    4. 21 Jump Street

  5. "However smart and sophisticated this film is, it may disappoint those who, in their hearts, would still like to be genuinely scared."

    1. Dark Shadows

    2. The Cabin in the Woods

    3. Prometheus

    4. John Dies At The End

  6. "The final 50-odd minutes of the film are a virtual tsunami of emotional waves … a succession of small, potentially lethal crises that cumulatively strain credulity and risk parching the tear ducts."

    1. Amour

    2. This Is Not A Film

    3. Wild Bill

    4. War Horse

  7. "Underneath the enforced jollity there's a real sense of sadness … (the central characters’) boundless enthusiasm carries them stubbornly on, and if times have changed, they're refusing to acknowledge it."

    1. Five Broken Camera

    2. Amour

    3. War Horse

    4. The Muppets

  8. "This is a cool, measured, loquacious film; even its sexual adventures are shown with a clinical detachment."

    1. Magic Mike

    2. A Dangerous Method

    3. Prometheus

    4. Cosmopolis

  9. "If you found Transformers just a touch too subtle, this is the film for you."

    1. Battleship

    2. John Carter

    3. This Means War

    4. The Expendables 2

  10. "Bill Nighy isn't in it, and yet afterwards I had an intense memory of Bill Nighy being in it, the way amputees can feel their toes itching."

    1. Nativity 2: Danger in the Manger

    2. Gambit

    3. Salmon Fishing in the Yemen

    4. Les Misérables

  11. "Karl Marx could have been anticipating 9/11 and this movie when he said that history repeats itself first as tragedy, then as farce."

    1. John Carter

    2. Battleship

    3. Men in Black III

    4. Avengers Assemble

  12. "When the actors start mouthing ersatz-passionate dialogue about poetry and novels, the movie starts to flatline, and worse still, when they start on about how incredibly life-affirming they all are, it is as dead as a haddock on a slab."

    1. The Perks of Being a Wallflower

    2. Seeking a Friend for the End of the World

    3. On the Road

    4. Sophomore

  13. "We get the party started with what is admittedly a bravura masturbation scene. Then it loses its way."

    1. Project X

    2. American Pie: The Reunion

    3. The Watch

    4. The Dictator

  14. "A skull-splinteringly violent, uncompromisingly intense and simply brilliant action movie in a nightmarish and claustrophobic setting."

    1. Safe House

    2. The Dark Knight Rises

    3. The Grey

    4. The Raid

  15. "High on energy, bluescreen and careless acting, it's marginally more inspired and certainly more likable than Snakes on a Plane or The Human Centipede ."

    1. Iron Sky

    2. Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter

    3. Two Headed Shark Attack

    4. Battleship

  16. "This is an evocation of young love in a more innocent America: a charming, beautifully wrought, if somehow depthless film; heartfelt and thought through to the tiniest, quirkiest detail."

    1. Nobody Walks

    2. Ruby Sparks

    3. Moonrise Kingdom

    4. Seeking A Friend For The End of The World

  17. "Hold on to your comfort blanket and have the cloves of garlic handy: this horror-comedy is so spectacularly bungled that it leaves the viewer in a state of advanced petrification."

    1. Dark Shadows

    2. Piranha 3DD

    3. A Fantastic Fear of Everything

    4. Frankenweenie

  18. "Revels in evil and lacks any sprightliness that might have redeemed its twisted characters, all of whom are loathsome and stupid."

    1. Seven Psychopaths

    2. Killer Joe

    3. The Twilight Saga: Breaking Dawn- Part 2

    4. Paranormal Activity 4

  19. "One long, repetitive chase with occasional pit stops."

    1. Ghost Rider: Spirit of Vengeance

    2. Skyfall

    3. Looper

    4. Total Recall

  20. "The director conjures a strange and dysfunctional world, a world that looks like 1950s America, but perhaps more like some alien planet that happens to look exactly like ours, a world pregnant with disturbing secrets."

    1. Moonrise Kingdom

    2. Cosmopolis

    3. The Devil Inside

    4. The Master

  21. "A whooping, leaping carnival of shouting about your difference in the faces of all those jocks and squares who never even heard of Sonic Youth."

    1. The Amazing Spider-Man

    2. The Perks of Being a Wallflower

    3. Celeste & Jesse Forever

    4. 21 Jump Street

  22. "Children may well enjoy it, despite the absence of anything that might pass as imaginative sustenance."

    1. Rise of the Guardians

    2. Madagascar 3: Europe's Most Wanted

    3. ParaNorman

    4. The Pirates! In An Adventure With Scientists!

  23. “I have had paper cuts on the soft flesh between the thumb and forefinger less painful and more rewarding than this agonisingly pointless remake.”

    1. Gambit

    2. Total Recall

    3. The Amazing Spider-Man

    4. The Three Stooges

  24. "Plays up to the director's worst tendencies: machismo, bombast and self-indulgence, and the factor that could conceivably have made this movie tolerable – humour – is off the menu."

    1. Savages

    2. The Dark Knight Rises

    3. Skyfall

    4. The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey

  25. "It's inventive, wittily drawn, macabre in a Charles Addams vein, and overlong. Children will find it as much fun as Halloween."

    1. Frankenweenie

    2. Dark Shadows

    3. ParaNorman

    4. Hotel Transylvania

Solutions

1:A, 2:C, 3:C, 4:D, 5:B, 6:D, 7:D, 8:B, 9:A, 10:C, 11:D, 12:C, 13:B, 14:D, 15:A, 16:C, 17:C, 18:B, 19:D, 20:D, 21:B, 22:A, 23:A, 24:A, 25:D

Scores

  1. 7 and above.

    Oh dear. Not a great score. Why not have another go and see if you can do any better?

  2. 12 and above.

    Average score. You can do better. Make your new year's resolution to watch more films

  3. 17 and above.

    A pretty good score - why not have another go before checking the answers?

  4. 24 and above.

    An excellent score – if there was a film equivalent of Mensa, you'd be entitled to join it, but you probably wouldn't bother as you'd be too busy watching films

  5. 25 and above.

    Perfect score! Did you cheat? You're pretty amazing. Hooray. Well done. All that.

 

Leave a Comment

Required fields are marked *

*

*