Essential point of a book review

I'm not really sure what to make of Colin Tudge's review of John Lennox' God's Undertaker: Has Science Buried God? I'm certainly no clearer on whether the book is any good or not. I am, however, clear that Tudge doesn't think much of Atkins or Dawkins.

I'm perfectly OK with partisan book reviews — I fact, I generally prefer them — but I must insist on one small point: that the reviewer actually review the book in question; describing the views of others is neither relevant nor helpful.

Attack of the Clones

When the third of the recent Star Wars films came out at the cinema, I didn't bother to watch it. Why? Because I found Attack of the Clones so awful that I felt I couldn't run the risk of watching something quite so appalling ever again.

AotC seems to me to be completely without merit. The plot is distinctly cursory and the acting is dreadful. Ewan McGregor and Natalie Portman phone in their roles and could have been replaced by a couple of cardboard cutouts and no-one would have noticed, whilst Hayden Christensen manages to comprehensively misread the intentions behind his every line of dialogue — something that wouldn't be quite so bad if he didn't have quite so much screen time — to the point of unwatchability.

All of this goes to undermine the spectacular set pieces. If you don't care about the rest of the film, it's hard to take an interest in a car chase, no matter how dramatic; or to care about the outcome of a lightsabre duel; or, as with the foundry scene, even work out how it is supposed to relate to the rest of the plot.