Directors: Will Speck, Josh Gordon
Cast: Jason Bateman, Jennifer Aniston, Thomas Robinson, Jeff Goldblum
Certificate: 12A
Trailer

Who's up for seeing a film about fertilisation called The Baster? Thought not. Good thing, then, that the title got changed to something more palatable. The Switch is a romantic comedy about Jennifer Aniston artificially inseminating herself with some guy’s sperm. Still up for seeing it? Well, you should be: unlike J-Lo’s The Back-Up Plan, this is actually quite amusing. Not the sperm bit, though. That’s still gross.

What with the horrifying Human Centipede hitting the cinemas and the recent release of Splice, I (as a research scientist) am starting to feel a bit persecuted. You may think I’m paranoid but more often than not, scientists end up as the bad guys in movies.

Whether we're villains with God complexes or clueless, well-intentioned beings who mess with things way beyond them, us test tube folk always get left carrying the buck. Especially when Bad Things Happen.

Researchers in medical sciences, and particularly genetics, seem to be the most likely to be given the Frankenstein (or "Harold Shipman") treatment. But is Hollywood right? Are we all horrible, heartless or just plain ignorant? If The Human Centipede is "100% medically accurate", let's open the Pandora’s Box of Hollywood’s past scientific failures and see just how accurate their "evil" scientists are.

Directors: Josh Gordon, Will Spech
Cast: Jennifer Aniston, Jason Bateman, Patrick Wilson, Jeff Goldblum
Certificate: 12A
Release Date: Friday 3rd September

Set in Manhattan, The Switch is about Kassie (Jennifer Aniston), a smart, fun-loving, single woman who decides she wants a baby. Despite her neurotic best friend Wally’s (Jason Bateman) objections, she chooses to go for this on her own and opts for the services of a charming sperm donor, Roland (Patrick Wilson).

Unbeknownst to Kassie, her plans go awry when Wally drunkenly makes a last minute switch that isn’t discovered until seven years later when he finally meets her precocious – though slightly neurotic – son.

Don't you love remakes? David Cronenberg's remake of The Fly, back in 1986, was wonderful, eclipsing the original Vincent Price vehicle with it's incredibly nasty effects and the harnessed power of Jeff Goldblum. Now, 20 years later, old Cronie is set to do it all over again - after Cosmopolis and Robert Ludlum's The Matarese Circle, that is. Fox are behind it, with The Hollywood Reporter suggesting that today's visual technology is probably the reason for it (I hope they don't consider 3-D).

I'm not sure anyone could better Brundlefly, no matter how big their processing unit. But hey, at least Rob Zombie's not doing it. After all, he only did Halloween so no-one else could ruin it.