Machete (2010)

Machete is the cinematic equivalent of Taco Bell - cheap, junky and best consumed in low doses. That’s why it was great as a faux trailer for 2007s Quentin Tarantino/Robert Rodriguez trailer-trash epic Grindhouse, and why it falters as a full length feature flick here. Machete is an ode to bad cinema, a movie that wants to be so bad it’s good. But a movie that succeeds at being a bad movie is ultimately still just that – bad.

Predators (2010)

Robert Rodriguez-produced Predators does a pretty decent job of not defecating on the original. Crucially, all of our memories of the much-maligned AvP debacle is also smashed into pieces by its quality. This is surely a fitting sequel to a franchise that we all figured had died a slow, horrible death. Mind you, John McTiernan's original wasn't anything amazing per se, but it was unadulterated fun in all its unashamed 80s glory. Danny Glover-starring sequel was a bit shit, but you kinda expected that - it was a desperate attempt at squeezing more money from a non-franchise.

Then the AvPs came and ruined the P and dragged the sublime A along with it to the dark recesses of movie shitedom that we occasionally force ourselves to subject to for lack of any decent films (case in point: Clash of the Shitans).