With the change of pace towards Christmas this year, it was clear that the normal constant stream of going out and getting drink exercises was never going to be repeated, and frankly sometimes you just want to do something a little different. When money is also on the short supply, you then start looking around for something different.

In this case, there was an option to wander across the road to sit with the cool kids at a local university at an all night cinema event. The basic premise is simple enough, 5 films, starting from the early evening, all the way through the night to the early morning. Who will survive? (Cus explosions and epic soundtrack)

University, where everyone has way more hair than Chewbacca.

Now when you hear about the local university’s cinema, your mind will have already conjured up a poky little hole where someone just plonks a TV from the 1980s on the table and 100 weirdos gather round it to watch ET for the first time. This was far from the reality of what was presented.

The room was well laid out with seating nicked from the local canteen, the screen itself was surprisingly good quality and the sound system way above the two little pocket speakers you would expect with a cinema on the cheap. One of the things they offered was the “all-you-can-eat” hot food and drink throughout the night for just £5 a head.

To anyone, that sounds like a slice of fried gold. On offer was hot dogs, toasties, noodles, soup, tea and coffee amongst various other things. Upon arrival, you could tell they had basically raided Tesco for everything but you can’t blame them for that. Far from it, it was a better spread than what you would ever see at the Vue.

So far so good then. A cheap night with cheap food in London town which was hugely enjoyable with good humoured company. But given the number of films on show, and the recent critical rubbish written on this digital tome once again, it’s only right that we delve into a couple of them for your dining and dancing pleasure. Be forewarned, there may be spoilers afoot.

For your consideration, Exhibit A: Gone Girl

Not gone yet.

We begin the story in a lovely little town in America where nothing bad ever happens, as a mystery about a man whose wife has somehow gone missing and the suspicions pointing to him soon after. What unravels afterwards, can only described as lies, treachery and deceit of the highest order, which borders on the cinematic equivalent of crack cocaine. You would never see it coming.

We have the new Batman, fresh from people confused as to how Ben Affleck got the role in the first place, alongside Rosamund Pike as the girl who has well, gone.

We see a lovely world where it’s a marriage in the skids and slowly but surely, we start seeing a disturbingly familiar story where the magic dies and the cheating begins. Motives become obvious and it appears poor old Ben has no hope.

But then it starts getting weird. Very weird. To the point you wonder if you had a stroke and missed something.

It appears the Mrs had planned the whole affair to ridiculous levels of detail and that is when it really kicks it all up a notch. We begin to see some cruel, calculating behaviour that wouldn’t be out of place on America’s Next Top Model, and that is when the film really gets going.

Now she’s gone.

It sinks it’s perverted teeth into your eyes and forces you to watch, as you really don’t know what way the story is going to take. There are truly some amazingly messed up performances from all involved, and it makes it all the more engaging.

From the hidden messages while giving an interview on a gossip show, to discovering various “goodies” in a wood shed which everyone would assume Ben Affick is guilty, pure and simple, it’s a delightful evil and sinister tale, which deserved a round of applause just for how far it really pushed the limits. Hell, it was also very funny at times, even given the terrible trauma that ensues.

Overall the film examines a variety of themes on a truly horrifying level, such as dishonesty, the media circus that is the news, a bad economy’s effects on marriage, and the way people perceive one another. You may not think it, but this really is one to watch, and possibly pick up the book to see how much worse it could have actually been.

The next contestant for the chance to win everyone’s approval is Interstellar

Did you know that before being a scientist, I helped Batman…

We begin with the fact that the world is going to not be jolly nice to live any more, with dwindling food supplies, and huge dust storms appear to occur far too often for you to enjoy a lovely picnic outside. For some reason as well, humans don’t like technology any more, despite the fact that it’s helping them maintain their food supply.

Well it’s a good job we have Matthew McConaughey on hand, as an ex-brilliant person who manages to track down with the help of his young daughter and some sand, NASA who is hiding inside NORAD for some reason.

Good old Mr Caine turns up with daughter / “sexy love interest for Matthew probably” Anne Hathaway to say there’s a plan to save everyone and everything on another world, and soon off we go off into the stars to boldly go where Star Trek hasn’t gone before.

Oh god, it’s a massive headf**k incoming!

Now…..before we go further with this, it’s probably best to remark on where the remainder of this little snippet is going. The reaction from everyone after the lights came up pretty much told the story of how it was perceived. Instead of the applause greeting the end credits as was the case with Gone Girl, it was an en masse swinging of heads and all looking at each other confused.

You see, the film was doing so nicely up until 2/3 of the way through. The presentation was very well done, the effects were beautiful at times and you were hoping for the mission to succeed. Then it appears the writers hadn’t a clue on how to start wrapping up the ending and decided to drop a giant deux-ex machina into the mix which would magically explain everything which had happened before.

It was akin to tripping balls on acid and then waking up in Milton Keynes.

We had a series of unfortunate events (Mainly due to tidal waves on one planet, and Matt Damon on another who is a bit of a nutter) leading to what seems to be the end of the human race. Good lord, would they actually do it? Have a disaster film without a happy ending?

But then the freaky sequence in question happens where we go through a black hole, we end up on a space station where houses are also on the ceiling ala that dream sequence in Inception, and frankly God only knows at what point in time or what happened to the Earth and all the people there. Then Matthew nicks a ship to go looking for Anne Hathaway.

I’ve been told you have to watch Interstellar about three times to get what the whole story was and why certain things happened. Good luck with that. I hear better times can be had by poking your eyes out with coat hangers.