The Matte Reviews

The Taking of Pelham 1 2 3

2009-11-30T20:01:00.002Z

Ok, so there's not been any posts for a while, I've been busy and frankly not in the mood to be typing lots after a days work of late, then the films get backed up, I've got a load of Stickies on my dashboard with titles and ratings, so I'll catch up eventually, but I digress...

The Taking of Pelham 123, a Tony Scott remake of The Taking of Pelham One Two Three, I

haven't seen the original, but I'll try to catch it at some point, just out of curiosity.

For the most part it's a reasonably entertaining action thriller, by the numbers stuff really, but engaging enough, John Travolta comes across suitably ruthless and unhinged, Denzel Washington doesn't show too much of his teeth until the end and maintains a reasonable 'everyman' persona.

The hostages on the train are essentially box-tickers and the rest of the police and MTA staff equally as non-descript, a lot of tightening up could've been done buy losing some of this peripheral fluff and focussing more on the Garber/Ryder relationship. Another thing that could've been lost is the wacky vision effects and crazy fast cuts during the opening sequence (which almost put me off watching the rest) and the movie's main action sequences, fine ramp up the cut speed to build the pace, but they went way over the top, especially as the action sequences were intercut with slower paced control room or train scenes, too jarring.

It's not great, but it's not utter shite either.

The Taking of Pelham 123 - 5/10

The International

2009-07-20T20:26:00.005+01:00

Lone maverick vs the big corporation, stuff that's been done before, the corporation in question in this case, is an enormous bank who's interests lie beyond simply making phat amounts of bonus, and the lone maverick in question? Clive Owen, a man who's emotional range is only a notch above that of Steven Seagal.

It's okay though, we've got Naomi Watts to lend her superb acting talents

SO! Clive Owen vs a Bank. Yeah, that exciting. Well, when it gets to the Guggenheim, that's quite good, then it drops back into it's dull procedurals again. I'm not saying procedurals are dull, Zodiac for instance is awesome, this one, however is no Zodiac.

It goes a little bit Bond towards the end, with a stonking lair (I have to admit the location dept. found some cracking locations). Only a little bit though, then it get's dull again. Kind of disappointing ending, but lives up to the rest of the film.

The International - 5/10

Valkyrie

2009-07-16T16:56:00.004+01:00

I seem to recall this got pretty poor reviews in general when it came out, lack of actual Germans, lack of even attempts at German accents (which could've gone horribly wrong let's be fair), Tom Cruise in an eye patch.

Well, I finally got around to watching it and it's not that bad, it's a tad slow, I don't really care about any of the characters, but it was interesting enough to want to see how things turned out. Without wanting to spoil anything, it's not exactly an upbeat ending.

With all the names in this (Cruise, Branagh, Nighy, Stamp, McNally, Wilkinson etc), no-one really seems to be pushing themselves, in fact, considering the nature of the story; a complex plot to assassinate Hitler and his key staff, it's all a bit sedate.

Valkyrie - 6/10

Yes Man

2009-06-18T20:22:00.002+01:00

Or rather, Not So Much Man, It's a pretty lame attempt, I'd suggest watching Chaos Theory instead, similar principal, MUCH better film!

Yes Man - 3/10

Disaster Movie

2009-05-24T23:15:00.006+01:00

They explain every "joke".

A "joke" is a celebrity "impersonator" or film "spoof" or combo of the two.

1/10 for "Like Dolph Lundgren in Rocky IV, I must break you" if only that was in a better film.

I lost count of the amount of times I shook my head at it tho.

Disaster Movie - 1/10

FYI Scary Movie 5 is on the way.

(No amazon links, I wouldn't do that to you)

Paul Blart: Mall Cop

2009-05-24T22:43:00.002+01:00

To be honest, it didn't look that great from the trailer. Less than 10 minutes into the film and I wanted to turn it off, but I stuck with it out of principal. I should change my principals.

It's an odd film, well the film isn't odd as such, it's a basic comedy crime caper/underdog story set in a shopping mall, the thing is that it isn't funny, yet still has a reasonably satisfying resolution. It's straight out of the '80s in it's plot style and has a cracking soundtrack, but ultimately it's just not that good.

Best thing about it is Keir O'Donnell, and the only real smiles came from Kevin James running into things and rolling over his shoulder as only a fat man can. Hardly top notch comedy.

Will Observe and Report be any better or will it be another let down like Pineapple Express?

Paul Blart: Mall Cop - 2/10

The Wrestler

2009-05-23T18:38:00.004+01:00

A lot of fuss has been made about Darren Aronofsky's fouth feature, especially after the flop of The Fountain, couple that with the 'comeback' of Mickey Rourke, in to be fair a very good performance, and you could possibly see why people were interested (myself included).

So what of it?? First impressions from the trailer... it's Rocky but with wrestling. After watching it... it's Rocky Balboa but with wrestling. Basically Rourke plays Randy "The Ram" Robinson and ageing pro-wrestler, well past his prime, still wrestling on the smaller circuits and fan events. He's just scraping buy, has an odd slightly more than customer relationship going on with a bar stripper in the shape of Marisa Tomei and no relationship with his estranged daughter, played by Evan Rachel Wood.

When things start to go south, he tries to make a go of things without wrestling, needless to say that doesn't go so well and he heads back to the ring, for a rather upbeat/downbeat ending.

It's a good film, but it's a character study, so with that, not a lot actually goes on, there's sequences made up Ram just going somewhere, seeing his daily life, self reflection and all that. I watched it through, although interest did wander occasionally, but I can appreciate the filmmaking, which leads me onto the special features, something I don't usually comment on, but I'm a big DVD extras guy and while the rental copy only had 3 video extras (trailer, on set featurette & interview with Mickey Rourke), the featurette was brilliant, more interesting than the film to watch how Aronofsky went about making the film on a comparatively small budget of around $7m (£4m) and a shoot schedule of 35 days.

Worth watching, but an "in the right mood" film.

The Wrestler - 7/10

X-Men Origins: Wolverine

2009-05-19T16:54:00.003+01:00

Wolverine is currently one of Marvel's biggest characters, after starting out life as a bit player with the X-Men, he's now heading them up it seems in comic land. As far as I can gather, this is largely down to the success of the X-Men movies (which I'll cover in a separate post, probably all three on one post, which I've been meaning to do for AGES!).

Now, we have our first X-Men spin-off movie, and obviously they came out with their big hitter, Logan, Wolverine (I keep typing Wolverinie dammit). Now despite it coming off the back of the big X-Men trilogy, and still being a 20th Century Fox property rather than from the Marvel Studios like Iron Man, they still went for a more indie-esque director in Gavin Hood (of Tsotsi fame) and while I can see what they're trying to do, I don't think he was quite up to the task (compared to Jon Favreau's efforts on Iron Man!).

This IS (or supposed to be) the origin story of Wolverine, how he became who we see in the X-Men films. I have to say, not having read any of the Wolverine Origins, or Weapon X comics (currently reading the Old Man Logan storyline in Wolverine tho, AWESOME!) there were a few surprises in there, the length of time he's been about, his real name, bone claws?!? Fair enough. However one of the things that made Wolverine interesting was his LACK of backstory, nevermind, it was in the comics first I guess.

So in the film we see the process of the Adamantium bonding, his apparent reasons for having it done in the first place and a lot of roaring and running about with a snarly look on his face. For someone who's invested in his character as much as Hugh Jackman (producing this outing), and the fact this is his origin, it certainly felt like there was less to the character in this film than the X-Trilogy!

Liev Schrieber does lend a bit of gravitas to Victor Creed (Sabretooth, although he's never referred to as such), but the PG-13 friendly script loses some of the edge off the character.

Speaking of characters, X-M O:W is chock full of them and could pretty much do without most of them. It seems like they just wanted to throw in as many references as they could, ideally to characters as yet unused, such as the much loved Gambit, who was left out of the X-Trilogy for various reasons, yet crops up here as Gambit the MacGuffin, we also get Blob, for a comedy fight, John Wraith, for no real purpose, Bolt, for even less purpose, Agent Zero to die and a whole host of teen mutants, presumably setting up the X-Men: First Class movie that's in development (I could see Gambit being brought back in for that).

One character that definitly wasn't in it enough, was Wade Wilson, who is basically Deadpool (although not quite yet in the film), played by Ryan Reynolds, he OWNS the role and despite me not really getting into the character in the comics, I can't wait to see the announced Deadpool movie.

For an origin story of a major tortured hero, it severely lacks in depth and emotion, I made it all the way through, I kind of enjoyed the ride, it's an enjoyable romp around, a kids movie, but as regards any serious plotting or real character engagement... nope.

X-Men Origins: Wolverine - 6/10

Mirrors

2009-05-19T16:46:00.003+01:00

Pretty much Kiefer Sutherland's big screen comeback, Mirrors, as I recall, got panned by critics and didn't perform too well either. Sorry Kiefer.

It's directed by Alexandre Aja, who previously directed the enjoyable The Hills Have Eyes remake and the ridiculous Switchblade Romance/High Tension/Haute Tension.

Keifer plays Ben Carter, an alcoholic ex-NYPD cop who takes a job as night security at the burnt out Mayflower department store, curiously the mirrors in the store are in pristeen condition. Soon enough some spooky goings on start occuring where the mirrors are concerned and people think Jack, sorry, Ben is going mental, but he's not, no! There is crazy stuff going on with the mirrors and only Jack, sorry again, Ben can solve the riddle.

Okay, so it's not a great film, my girlfriend thought it was "a load of crap" for instance. I however quite enjoyed it, sure it's a tad slow and disjointed, but it falls in well with films of a similar ilk and kept me interested for a couple of hours.

Mirrors - 6/10

Eden Lake

2009-05-18T19:20:00.002+01:00

A British horror/thriller from the writer of My Little Eye (which everyone tells me is crap). For Eden Lake, take one part "horror-in-woods-slasher-flick" add one part Deliverance and a whole lot of chav.

I'm not sure if it's even attempting to make any sort of intelligent comment on chav culture in the UK, or whether it's just using it to try and give us a slightly different take on things, although in the grand scheme of things it's no different to the various American redneck slasher type movies that have come before.

It possibly would've been ok, after all there's not many decent british horror/thrillers out there, however it takes too long to get going (as I've said before, I'm all for slow builds, if they're done right), or maybe it's more that it feels like it takes too long, I don't really give a shit about the couple introduced as our leads and thanks to her whining and their joint decisions, I fail to care about them throughout.

The writing could be tighter, although, credit where credit's due, he sure can write chav, and the kids sure can act it.

When it does get going, it's not too bad though, there's kids committing violence (as much is explained on the back of the DVD), a fair bit of gruesomeness and a reasonably interesting end. However, because it's not totally clear as to where it's coming from, I'm not sure if it packs the punch it should.

Eden Lake - 5/10

Star Trek

2009-05-11T16:25:00.004+01:00

This is gonna be rather spoilery, so be warned.

"Not your father's Star Trek" is a phrase that's being banded around about the franchise reboot from J.J. Abrams and it's an apt phrase in more than just the fresh faced cast and lens flare heavy lighting.

Let's start with the cast; Chris Pine is brilliant as Kirk, I agree with the general consensus, he should be BIG in the next few years, he can clearly balance the humour and action with a massive on screen charisma, strong possibility he's our next Harrison Ford (Sorry Nathan). Zachary Quinto steps in as younger Spock. I've followed Heroes since season 1 (glutton for punsihment?) and knew he'd be perfect as soon as it was announced, he doesn't disappoint. Karl Urban is also brilliant as Dr Leonard McCoy, while Pine goes to firmly stamp his own mark on the iconic James T. Kirk, Karl Urban happily homages-the-crap out of DeForest Kelley and with great effect. I'll be honest Zoe Saldana, John Cho & Anton Yelchin, as Uhura, Sulu & Chekov respectively, are pretty throwaway, ok Uhura's got some stuff going on with Spock and gives us our initial intro to an adult JTK, but overall, they just feel like they're being given their token screen time. That brings us to Simon Pegg as Montgomery Scott, who doesn't come in until some way through the film and doesn't really do anything except be Simon Pegg putting on an accent, he also gets some terrible "comedic" moments courtesy of his spiny sidekick thing.

Eric Bana chews his way through the film's resident villain, Nero, nothing special, but ok.

The casting refresh is one thing, the look and feel is another and this is where it shone for me, a tad too much lens flare maybe, but the look of the sets, the updated ship design and all the general space stuff was pretty damn cool, more energy, more intense, yet clearly updates on the previous versions as opposed to a total re-imagining. I'm not a Star Trek geek, I'll watch it, but I don't get all fanboy over it, I also preferred the movies (not mentioning TNG ones), but the updates hit the right notes with me.

What also makes this "not your father's Star Trek" is the plot. This is NOT a prequel, they even go to writing-hack level lengths to point this out in the exposition, this is an "alternate reality" [Uhura], so how the crew of the Enterprise comes to be in this film is not how it did for the series.

Don't get me wrong, I'm not getting all worked up over this, as I said, I'm not a Trekkie fanboy, but the film's pitched as an origin story, and while it IS, it's not quite the one I went in, and I expect many others were, expecting. That doesn't take anything away from it, just simply an observation... sorry, not an observation, there was a whole sequence devoted to making sure I damn well knew it.

Without going into the convoluted time travel plot, it basically sets up the new Enterprise crew with Old Spock lending a guiding hand along the way.

What stops this reboot from being amazing then? The comedy, that's what. Once you lose some of the language and maybe the brief "sex" scene, it's basically a kid's film, it's full of one liners, some good, plenty bad and stupid slapstick (see: Simon Pegg in coolant tubes) and set against the backdrop of what should be impending doom for all involved, it all feels like they're having a tad too much fun.

I'm not saying this needs to be all doom and gloom, the original movies all had humour, with The Voyage Home being the prime example of this, but that was in context, the humour in this one felt, for the most part, forced and unnecessary. Kirk's son get's marooned in ST2 and we get Kirk wigging out on a revenge trip, the whole of Vulcan gets wiped out in this one and we get Simon Pegg saying how exciting everything is. A bit of balance is what's needed.

So when it comes down to it, the re-boot shows a lot of potential on all fronts (less slapstick though please), there's already a sequel in the works, it looks like Kurtzman and Orci are lined up to write again, let's hope they move a little away from the Transformers style script and give it a little more meat! They came up with Fringe which I'm loving, so I hope they deliver the goods for Trek.

Star Trek - 7/10

Twilight

2009-05-05T23:33:00.004+01:00

I've decided recently that I need to watch more films that i wouldn't normally choose to watch. Twilight is one of them, after all Twilight (based on the book), is aimed squarely at, to use a cliche here, overweight, single women with too many cats. Or soppy teenage girls, of which I am neither.

So for those who don't know, Twilight is a vampire flick, takes some classical vampire notions, mixes them up a bit with a couple of new takes, which in a similar way to Being Human, allows for more EXT. DAY scenes and throws in a generous helping of teen angst and token Scream-esque school friends.

Now I'll be honest here, plot wise, character wise, even acting wise, it's not bad. The secondary characters are more interesting than the main couple, but the combo of Bella (Kristen Stewart) and Edward (Robert Pattinson) is bearable, despite him looking like he's been smacked in the face with a cartoon frying-pan yet everyone thinks he's hot. Go figure.

The story pulls from various sources, there's the classic forbidden love story, and there's the new kid in town story. What is it with vampires and high school outcasts eh? It's not Lost Boys, but at the same time, it's this decade's answer to it.

The script is a tad ropey in places, some clunky dialogue, but that's kind of expected, what let's the film down and I think seriously holds it back, is the APPALLING camera direction by one Catherine Hardwicke, I mean, REALLY BAD, not helped by the editing. Whether the film's editor Nancy Richardson was beaten down on suggesting that maybe less cuts should be used or whether she pushed them through, I don't know, either way, it's crap! For instance, one scene where Bella & Edward are in the woods, she's sussed what he is and building to that point, in less than half a minute, one short piece has at least ten cuts, with different angles, handheld, undercranked steadicam, normal steadicam, swooping crane AAAARRRGGHH!

ONE SHOT, the whole scene could've been done in ONE SHOT and been a hell of a lot better.

Effects, well they're a bit hokey, fine it's a relatively low budget film but hollywood standards, maybe if they'd done less setups on the above scene, they could've squeezed a little more for effects (and maybe re-shooting the soft focus shots.. I mean really, c'mon!)

It's a soppy film, but once you get past the inept camera work, not terrible. Let see if someone can direct the sequels better.

Twilight - 6/10

Franklyn

2009-05-05T09:26:00.003+01:00

This is possibly one of the most original and interesting British films to come out in a long time. It does riff on some familiar themes, but it does so in a very refreshing way.

Although by the end of the film I, just about got where it was coming from, I was totally gripped and genuinely intrigued throughout, I sussed the general direction of the film pretty early on, but what kept me interested was just how it was all going to tie up, constantly speculating on the different characters' connections and figuring out who's who.

It's not perfect, but I thoroughly enjoyed it! It also looks wonderful, it's very well shot (a quick butchers at IMDb reveals the DP to be one Ben Davis, who's also on Kick-Ass, cannot wait for that one!!!)

The cast aren't brilliant, Eva Green's voice irritates me, as does her waifness (!?), Sam Riley, while apparently brilliant in Control, was rather wet, Ryan Phillippe was behind a mask most of the time, but does a very good english accent and Bernard Hill, while good, could've done with more development and screen time. Despite this, the plot keeps it going.

So, written and directed by Gerald McMorrow, a promising debut feature, I for one certainly look forwards to more stuff from him and hopefully he won't let us down like a previous certain person...

Franklyn - 8/10

The Untouchables

2009-04-23T15:31:00.003+01:00

I hadn't seen this in ages, but a recent (well not very recent as I'm catching up here!!) re-watch re-aquainted me with what is a classic movie and one of Brian De Palma's better ones in my view.

We've got Kevin Costner as Elliot Ness, Robert DeNiro as Al Capone and Sean Connery attempting an Irishman, what's not to like there?!?

It's an underdog story, set against the American era of prohibition, there's a lot of shooting and the iconic scene with the pram and the stairs. Not only one of De Palma's better films, but also one of Costner's best, if you haven't seen it you must!

The Untouchables - 8/10

Punisher: War Zone

2009-04-23T15:09:00.003+01:00

Much to my surprise, this wasn't as bad as I thought it was going to be. Based on the trailers and various self absorbed postings from Lexi Alexander, I thought this was going to be a total and utter mess. It's no masterpiece and it pales in comparison to Iron Man, Marvel's biggest success of 2008 (and so far really!), I did however find it reasonably entertaining, certainly more entertaining that The Incredible Hulk (the other big Marvel 2008 release), although overall a similar standard.

It's a grim film, going for a big tick in the violence box, which fits, as Punisher is pretty damn violent, but with all the violence going on and Ray Stevenson's portrayal of the character, you feel a little detached form it all. I don't care about the kid or his mum, or anyone else for that matter, and I don't care about Punisher's reasons for his actions, or have any sympathy for him, I'm just indifferent waiting for him to go shoot some more shit.

I don't know if I'm supposed to sympathise with Frank Castle, the film's certainly set up as such, throwing in a cheeky flashback to the killing of his family, but it's all a bit token gesture for reboot's sake. When it comes down to it, the man's a killer vigilante, out for revenge, that's not really the sympathy type.

I'm also a little torn, as I only gave The Punisher (the most recent previous version 4/10), yet after watching War Zone, I wanted to see Thomas Jane in the role instead, there's no man crush going on, I think I just preferred his Punisher to Ray's. I think I need to rewatch the other two again.

Villain wise, I think Dominic West's 'Jigsaw' is a better one than John Travolta's 'Howard Saint'

Punisher: War Zone - 6/10

The Day The Earth Stood Still (2008)

2009-04-23T14:53:00.003+01:00

On the cutout in Blockbuster it says that The Daily Star (yeah) gave it 10/10 and said "spectacular special effects" or something very similar. I'm guessing that was the best review this remake had.

Let's start with the effects (they're as good a place as any with this one!), they're not spectacular, they're pretty MEH actually and contribute towards highlighting the various script issues. The filmmakers made a big deal out of keeping their version of GORT a secret, so they could have a big reveal when the film was released. I can reveal that it's rubbish and just looks like a big chunk of CGI.

So what about the film, the story, the drama, the sheer lack of emotion pouring out of Keanu Reeves... to be fair, this is probably the perfect role for him, as there's supposed to be no emotion, so I guess on those grounds, he's pretty damn good in this. Everyone else ambles along, various token characters crop up all over the place with no development and thus no engagement. It's too long and dull... it's just not very good, just about watchable, but not really entertaining.

The Day The Earth Stood Still (2008) - 4/10

Splinter

2009-04-20T19:09:00.004+01:00

I really can't decide if I actually liked this movie.

It's a reasonably interesting concept, but they do kind of spoil it, buy making a point of it rather blatantly several times throughout the movie.

So the monster's an anthropomorphic rat...

No, I really don't know. It wasn't a bad movie, it was pretty well shot, nice and short, I think I wasn't totally satisfied by the end, which I won't spoil here, but needless to say I didn't feel it had the impact it needed for me to come away feeling the way you should after a really good gore fest.

There are a couple of nice touches in there gore wise, the script's a tad expositional, but for what is essentially a small, low budget horror, it's ok I guess, worth a watch.

Splinter - 7/10

Lakeview Terrace

2009-04-20T18:58:00.003+01:00

Overall, not great, it's a by the numbers nasty-neighbour film, Samuel L Jackson, strolling through the performance of him playing himself and any attempt to get the audience to sympathise with him fails big time. Interesting to see Patrick Wilson in something else, I'd only seen him in Watchmen... he's roughly as downtrodden in this.

It's also a slooow film, it's set against the backdrop of the recent California wild fires, but apart from a bit of smoke they don't really show up til the end, more could've been made of this I feel, it certainly needs something to ramp up the tension a little.

(this was a recent watch, but I've got a load that I haven't typed up, so trying to catch up as well!!)

Lakeview Terrace - 5/10

Watchmen

2009-04-20T18:08:00.003+01:00

Now I saw Watchmen around opening weekend over here in the UK, so it's been a good few weeks since then and I'm only just getting around to typing something up on it. To be honest, I did try pretty soon after but I couldn't figure out what to write about it...I still can't really, but here goes.

I'd read the graphic novel a while before seeing the film and, while I can see what all the fuss was about, it's not one of my favourite comics, it's a laborious read, weighed down with a lot of metaphor and waffle (yes I'll probably get flamed for that), and for once I actually agree with Jonathan Ross' view on the movie, in that it stayed TOO faithful to it's source material.

Whilst trying to satisfy the book's hardcore fanbase (and possibly Alan Moore as well..good luck) and depsite the changes that were made and the stuff that was left out, it's still a very heavy going film, very wordy and slow, with A LOT going on, I came out feeling that I possibly would've rather seen a stripped down plot, even adapted more for the film format, cos as a FILM, it's not the best narrative.

On the technical side of things, yet again Zack Snyder pulled out all the stops, he's clearly geeky about the technical side of things and pushing new technology, visually Watchmen is great, a real feast if you will, even if the speed ramped fights feel a little cliched now.

Watchmen - 7/10

The Spirit

2009-04-14T22:59:00.003+01:00

Once you get over the fact that the trailers sold it as a reasonably serious action based comic book adap and realise that it's actually a very hammy comedy, it's not too bad.

Of course you also have to get over Frank Miller's ham fisted directing and the fact that he still think's he's writing a comic rather than a film, but all in all, it was okay, there are certain things that saved it though.

Gabriel Macht has got a certain amount of presence to him, depsite having some seriously bad dialogue and directing. Sam Jackson is loving it as The Octopus, and once you indulge him he takes you right along with him, along with, bizarrely, Scarlett Johansson is great as Silken Floss, an understated role, but compliments The Octopus brilliantly, which makes a change as she usually bores the hell out of me.

Skipping over the Sin City stylings (go-on original Frank!) (I was also surprised that Troublemaker Studios didn't pop up at the start), and some of the utterly rubbish animation/wire-work/whatever stuff, there are a couple of really good scenes. There's a nice one between the doc and her dad, and pretty much everything with the kids in is brilliant, I was genuinely surprised at how natural their stuff felt, and how much more mature their scenes and performances came across.

The Spirit - 5/10

Death Race

2009-03-08T09:01:00.003Z

Good old Paul W.S. Anderson is back with another cheesy sci-fi movie, but then this is where he belongs. I remember enjoying Mortal Kombat, I remember feeling sick about AvP (I need to re-watch Event Horizon), so as long as you don't give him a well loved franchise, he should be able to pull off a reasonably entertaining action movie.

Add The Stath to the equation, especially Stath in a car, and things are looking up. Take this film at face value, it's a Paul W.S. Anderson remake of a Roger Corman (prod.) movie, it's not Citizen Kane.

It's stupid, cliched, stuffed full of the crappy 'reality tv' message that seems to be popular at the moment (do people forget The Running Man??), but at the end of the day, it's a big car chase, cars with big guns, that'll do me!

Death Race - 7/10

Eagle Eye

2009-03-08T08:50:00.002Z

I heard a fair few people slagging this off when it was in cinemas, frankly I think they were too hard on it.

Sure it's not the best action flick in the world, but it's just an action flick just the same, and you can realistically only expect so much from that genre. Okay yes there are some that exceed those expectations, but you shouldn't start out that high.

Eagle Eye has kind of a good premise, ordinary guy and ordinary girl, plucked from their everyday lives by a sinister woman on the end of a phone who can track their every move and influence things around them, forced into doing things against their will etc. (all in the trailers)

One comment that's consistently popped up is that "it gets ridiculous" I kind of agree, it's been seen before though in some form or another, and to be fair it's no more ridiculous than most other big budget action movies.

Suspend your disbelief and just go along for the ride.

Eagle Eye - 7/10

Friday the 13th (2009)

2009-02-15T20:17:00.002Z

Mediocre, Samey, Nothing Original, Just another slasher flick etc etc etc.

It's not very inventive, it doesn't do anything new for the genre, it's mildly entertaining yes, but mildly.

Watch it if you like, but if you don't, it's not much of a loss.

Friday the 13th (2009) - 5/10

Outlander

2009-02-14T14:12:00.002Z

This looked AWESOME in the trailer, and overall, it was pretty good, fell slightly short of being truly awesome though.

To sum up the movie in one of those "meets" sentences.. it's Predator meets Alien meets The 13th Warrior, all three of those I love, so this should've been pant wettingly good.

The concept is pretty solid, spaceman (Cavieziel) crashes his spaceship on medievil Earth, somewhere in Norway, also on his ship is a big-ass-alien-killing-machine of a monster, now said spaceman must team up with (fucking-)Vikings to defeat the thing. Along the way friends are made, love is found and we find out a little bit about our own humanity. (So not enough action then yeah?)

Yeah, not quite enough, the alien or Moorwen as it's called is great, although somewhat distractingly looks like it could've been built from the Godzilla CG model, it's a good approach though, very animalistic yet still conveys a sense of sentience.

The humans on the other hand could do with some work, a good mix of accents doesn't help, some of the acting and dialogue leaves a fair bit of room for improvement and all the mushyness, while within the scope of the plot, does slow the pace down a tad much for what I feel it should've been.

There's some nice touches though and all in all it was an enjoyable film.

Outlander - 7/10

Burn After Reading

2009-02-12T12:09:00.004Z

I'm not going to start prattling on about this being "a return to form" or anything like that, everyone said that about No Country, which was okay in my view. Burn After Reading is more along the lines of Fargo or The Big Lebowski in that it's a comedy, a black one yes, but nowhere near the sheer bleakness of No Country.

It's also not quite as good as Fargo or The Big L, but I enjoyed it a lot more than I thought I would based on everything I'd heard about it. Let's be perfectly clear, this isn't another Intolerable Cruelty (thankfully!)

This is also one of Brad Pitt's better roles, hamming it up to great effect alongside Cloony and Malkovich, both of whom also appear to be thoroughly enjoying the ridiculousness of it all!

The ending is a tad abrupt, but it suits what's been going on. It's an enjoyable romp (crap word I know), which is all I really wanted from it and it delivered.

Burn After Reading - 9/10

The Fall

2009-02-06T16:27:00.003Z

I was intrigued in this from the moment I saw the trailer ages ago, partly because it looked visually incredible, partly because the actual story seemed interesting and partly because I hated The Cell.

The film does look amazing, he colours are out of this world, every now and again the framing's just a tad too 'stylised' for my tastes, Tarsem does follow themes here and there, certain stuff he's almost fetishistic about (see: slo-mo horses in desert), visually, everything about the film is an icing coated treat.

Story wise, it's not bad, it's a guy in a hospital telling a story to a little girl. The story reflects the events of the real world and it's pretty dark and emotional, and this is primarily sold by the performances of the little girl and the injured guy interacting with her, which is nothing short of charming and totally engaging.

It's a beautiful tale, not perfect, but a great watch.

The Fall - 8/10

Creature

2009-01-31T09:00:00.006Z

Yay for Joost!! I've recently rediscovered Joost. I signed up yonks ago, near when it first launched and was still using it's own desktop client rather than being web based, I remember it had Bridezillas, some random Jackass type stuff and Total Recall 2070, which was the first programme I looked at and had a surprising amount of nudity within the first few minutes.

Anyway...

Joost is growing, there's still A LOT of crap on there, but there's enough to find something to watch every now and again, and "Creature" was what I randomly picked last night to see what it was, and my girlfriend and I ended up watching the whole thing!! (we've turned off "better" films!)

There's an easy way to explain "Creature"... "Alien". It's quite simply an Alien rip-off, the details of the plot are different enough, but there's still a similar looking alien, a dark, windswept, inhospitable planet, a crew of civilians, an alien craft that's been there for a long time and Klaus Kinski... ok he wasn't in Alien.

The dialogue is terrible, it feels looonng, the effects are average (despite it being nominated for an award), the sound effects are taken from Star Wars and all in all this is a proper Shit-Good film. I've given it 4/10, but that doesn't mean you shouldn't watch it, quite the opposite in fact. If you like watching a really bad film every now and again, this is one you should watch! (it's on the Really Terrible Film Channel on Joost)

Hopefully if the code works, it's embedded below!!! ;)

Creature - 4/10

Pineapple Express

2009-01-20T20:10:00.003Z

Apart from two moments when I chuckled, one involving an ear, I can't remember the other, it's just plain rubbish.

I'm not a fan of the Apatow camp, when I first saw the trailer I thought it could be quite good. I was wrong, it's the same old Apatow-style shite. Most of the characters talk like Seth Rogan, which is annoying, much like Seth Rogan.

Okay, I'm typing this as I watched the end, third chuckle involving a car.

If you liked Knocked Up, Superbad etc al, you'll like this.

Pineapple Express - 2/10

The Exorcism of Emily Rose

2009-01-20T19:56:00.003Z

Looked interesting, was mildly interesting, but was kinda lacking in something.

Not sure what though, it was an interesting concept, apparently based on true events, however it's clumsily executed, too much voice over and the different testimonies, make it a bit of a slow watch, it's almost two films mashed together in a bad way.

The Exorcism of Emily Rose - 5/10

Bangkok Dangerous (2008)

2009-01-11T19:51:00.004Z

As a movie, this is pretty badass! Unfortunately, Nic Cage... not so badass.

From what I can gather (from just watching the trailer), this remake is quite different from the original 1999 film by the same directors. There seems to be a few similar set pieces, but that's about it.

Cage is an assassin, who goes to do a job in Bangkok, needless to say, said job doesn't go to plan and gunfights ensue. Throw in a ladle or two of sentimentality and the odd bit of dodgy camera work/choices and you've got a fresh new remake on your hands.

It's okay, not brilliant, I think it would've been better with someone more convincing as a badass assassin, or alternatively, played up on the ageing pro type thing. Worth vegging out to of an evening if there's nothing else tho.

Bangkok Dangerous - 6/10

The Nines

2009-01-11T17:48:00.003Z

I still maintain that Ryan Reynolds can be a good actor, 'The Nines' shows him trying, unfortunately it's got a highly convoluted plot, the structure's all over the place and by the end of it I was left kinda Meh.

Is it about religion, is it about Sims, is it about too many people thinking they can write the next Donnie Darko?!?!

The Nines - 4/10

Southland Tales

2008-12-30T10:51:00.003Z

I seem to remember Richard Kelly's Donnie Darko follow up getting universally panned, being ridiculed at Cannes and disappearing back into the edit suite for a time, I also remember being very very intrigued by the trailer.

I missed seeing it in the cinema, in fact I missed seeing it for quite a while, always unsure as to whether it looked any good or not. Skip forward to December 2008 and an HMV 3 for £20 deal (this, [Rec] and Death Sentence btw). A day off over the xmas period and a quiet sit down to finally watch Southland Tales.

It's very weird, it makes very little sense, although you can follow a basic plot, it's over the top, part film - part music video and I loved it.

All the characters are off the wall, quirks, their affiliations are all over the place and for the most part you're not sure who's working for who or what their agendas are, which I guess kinda works as our main protagonist Boxer Santaros (Dwayne Johnson) doesn't really know what's going on either, at least not until the film's conclusion.

The highlights of the film for me, apart from just the really randomly enjoyable style, are Dwayne Johnson, Seann William Scott and Justin Timberlake. Now that may make me sound like a twelve year old girl, but their performances in this, whilst not Oscar worthy, certainly made me look at them in a different light.

The film is pure Sci-Fi, it's all out bat-shit crazy for it and that's part of what makes it so wonderful, it takes a heavy influence from Verhoeven, which is no bad thing but it's also, stylistically very now. It's a bit heavy handed with it's politics, but it does the job. I can see how it's not to everyone's tastes, but I was pleasantly surprised and am looking forward to The Box.

Southland Tales - 8/10

Kingdom of Heaven

2008-12-30T10:36:00.003Z

I like Ridley Scott, he's one of my favourite directors, however he's well off his game with this one.

It didn't exactly get a good reception when it came out and i've now seen why, although I picked up the Special Edition for £3, thinking it was the Director's Cut, it's not, so technically I still need to see that as it's supposed to be better, although KoH is long enough as it is, so I'm not sure whether I can be bothered to watch it all over again, but with more!

Funnily enough, I don't buy Orlando Bloom as a hero knight, one minute he's a blacksmith in a muddy village, the next he's an expert military strategist?!?! With great motivational skills?!? No sorry, he's a cock. Eva Green's a waste of space in the movie, which seems to be a trend she's following, Jeremy Irons is always good value, but under used and it seems good ol' Liam Neeson still can't escape Qui-Gon.

I also spent the movie wondering who was playing the kings as he kept sounding like James Woods but a weedy James Woods... it's Edward Norton, so I was close.

The movie is on a massive scale, but isn't really that impressive, it also doesn't make a lot of sense, let's hope Nottingham will be Ridley back on form.

Kingdom of Heaven - 4/10

Amazon.co.uk Widgets

Hellboy II: The Golden Army

2008-12-30T10:13:00.004Z

It took me a while to come around to the fact that Hellboy is actually pretty good in both the movie, which I saw first, and then the comics. Now I'm a pretty big fan of both.

So I was pretty stoked at the news of a movie sequel, until I saw the trailer that is, then a big wave of 'Meh' washed over me as I watched all the bright golds and heavy Del Toro touch unfold on screen.

The first movie's story was mostly lifted from the comics, not entirely, but a lot of the elements and basic points were from the stories in the comics. AFAIK, this was a completely original story thought up by Guillermo Del Toro, and it shows.

I really liked Pan's Labyrinth, but full on Guillermo, I don't feel works for Hellboy. The comics are more shadowy and minimalist, whereas Guillermo does like his "Fantasy Gold" (expect to see a very Gold hued Hobbit). The whole Golden (there it is again) Army thing was a bit of a let down, a non event really, there was a load of slapstick comedy that felt a touch out of place, don't get me wrong, Hellboy is supposed to be funny, but I think this went too far in the wrong direction and overall it seemed a bit jumpy and rushed plot wise.

Back to the looks, but characters in this case, Hellboy seems to have lost weight, which in certain scenes puts his head out of proportion to his body, Abe's gone VERY blue and stripy, and Johann Krauss, well I wasn't totally disappointed, he was a lot better than I thought, look fine, voice ok (Seth MacFarlane was a bit of a concern when he was announced), attitude, not so much, felt a bit more uptight than he is in the comics, but maybe I need to re-read.

I don't know how it will lead into a sequel, if they're gonna do one, but we'll have to wait and see, if they do make a sequel, hopefully it'll be darker and introduce Roger ;)

Hellboy II: The Golden Army - 6/10

Chocolate

2008-12-22T18:11:00.004Z

From the director of Ong Bak and The Protector, the guy who gave us Tony Jaa, comes a female Tony Jaa and Ong Bak with a girl!

Well kinda.

Chocolate is a rather bizarre story of Thai vs Japanese gangs, with an Autistic girl and a fat kid caught in the middle. It's sort of 1 part family drama, 4 parts martial arts action movie.

I really liked the Tony Jaa films, Ong Bak was pretty much by the numbers, but had a certain inventiveness to it, The Protector went slightly overboard, but again had some good bits. What both films gave us is some decent bone cracking stunt work that's not really been seen since classic Jackie Chan. Chocolate continues that trend with some serious injury inducing action (as demonstrated by the end credit outtakes).

As a film, it's not the greatest, the filmmakers can do action, but not so hot on the drama side. It's starts very differently from the Tony Jaa films, with a heavy French influence, echoing something more along the lines of a Jean-Pierre Jeunet film, it soon gets into standard territory though, although the action takes it time before it really kicks in.

Having an autistic girl as the lead is certainly a bold move, and to be fair, it works pretty well, JeeJa also sells it well on both the acting and action fronts, the latter very surprising as despite being 24 now, so probably 22/23 ish while filming, she certainly looks about 13, so being able to pull of realistically kicking someone's ass is no mean feat. She does start off a tad comical, but it's justified within the context of character, but by the 12-on-1 set piece, she's pretty kick ass.

Once it gets going, another entertaining martial arts flick.

Chocolate - 7/10

[Rec]

2008-12-09T20:39:00.005Z

Okay so a few days back I threw down my thoughts on Quarantine, which is the recent English language remake of this Spanish horror. I neglected to mention tho (I think, I could check, but sod it.) that the heating in that particular screen of Cineworld Crawley had broken and thus it was pretty cold in there. Despite the offer of a refund/credit if you came out within 45 minutes, only a couple of people left, everyone else stuck it out and was scared shitless, so by the time we left I felt that the cold certainly added to the experience, and wondered if maybe the cinema had done it on purpose, if so I applaud you sirs, well done.

ANYHOO.. Rec/.rec/[Rec]/[.rec] whatever.. there's probably gonna be SPOILER stuff here

Pretty much every thing I'd heard about Quarantine was that [Rec] was better, all the internet buzz and fanboys were "[Rec] is sooo much better, Quarantine is EPIC FAIL!" (paraphrased), even after I'd seen Quarantine and twittered how scary it was, someone posted "Rec is better IMHO :)"

My view on this is if you see [Rec] first, then you'll probably think [Rec] is better, the same with any original and remake combo, which ever you see first, you'll probably think is the better, there are going to be exceptions yes, but as a rule I think this will apply. Thus I saw Quarantine first, and do happen to think it's the better film, I digress..

Okay, so they're pretty much the same film from the overall structure and setup, the infection device is changed between the two, for clear cultural reasons, and to be honest the US one makes more sense to me, but there's still the reporter following the fire crew which leads them to the house and the old lady.

The main thing I found watching this second, is that there doesn't seem to be as much that happens, Quarantine, when it gets going, is pretty relentless, [Rec] gets going a bit, stops to throw in some more fluff in the form of "interviews" with the residents (Quarantine has pretty much all it's fluff up top), then ambles back into the "action" again.

I found Spanish Angela VERY annoying, one of the things with Jennifer Carpenter's Angela is she does completely shit scared VERY VERY well, Spanish Angela was just whiny and annoying. [Rec] wasn't as scary for me as Quarantine, this is because I knew pretty much when to expect the relevant beats, and was disappointed when certain ones weren't there, I wasn't as involved with the rest of the residents in this one and by the end I was feeling pretty Meh.

Also reading comments elsewhere like "..THIS is how to do hand-held-POV.." No it's not, unless of course it's supposed to be a 5yr old with a handycam, that's still crap.

Who knows how I'd felt if I'd seen this first, in my view it's an interesting idea, but the US remake takes that and runs with it, something that can rarely be said of a remake!

[Rec] - 5/10

Quantum of Solace

2008-11-29T13:30:00.003Z

For the second outing for Daniel Craig as Bond, they've given us an odd mix of Bond, Bourne and a film with very little plot or character arc.

QoS is all about the action, it's simply a ride, a number of set pieces strung together. The opening car sequence is great btw. They're really trying hard to fuse old-school 60's Bond with 00's Bourne, and they're doing it in a really jarring fashion in this one.

With Casino Royale, they did the 'reboot' thing and did it pretty well, Bond was more hardcore, rough around the edges and basically brutal, yet he was still Bond. The film around hi, though, was more standard action thriller.

With QoS, Bond is less Bond and the film around him is more Bond. (?!) Okay, here Bond seems to quip less (so he's pissed off about Vespa, whatever), in fact he says less, he's all moody and quiet, however, we do get a Goldfinger homage, and a bit of a stab at a villain's lair towards the end. You can definitely tell that they were trying to hark back to some of the classic stylings of the older Bond films.

So QoS, all icing and no cake (I like that!), weak ending, weak villain, shite villain's plot, weak henchman and a weak (of character) Bond. The action's gone a little too Bourne, getting too close and scrappy, we need to stand back a bit with Bond, Casino Royale got it about right on that score (see B&W toilet fight and the staircase sequence), however I'm hoping this is going somewhere.

QoS is a direct sequel from CR, and they're were rumblings of a trilogy at least, so we can only hope that with the third part of this story, with Quantum coming more into play, we have a massive end sequence resulting in Bond infiltrating an enormous underground lair or similar, fighting his way through before right before it looks like he's gonna lose it Felix turns up with the cavalry, C'MON!

Quantum of Solace - 6/10

Quarantine

2008-11-29T12:53:00.004Z

Ok... SPOILERS!!

There's no way I can voice my opinion on this one without giving away a major spoiler, so you have been warned and here goes...

Ok for starters this is an English language remake of a 2007 Spanish film called [Rec] or [.REC] or however you want to say/type it. It falls into the current fad of hand-held video style films (such as Cloverfield, Diary of the Dead, even Blair Witch to some extent), and follows Angela Vidal (Jennifer Carpenter), a late night reality show (ob-doc) host, who's shadowing an LA fire crew.

After a bit of faffing about in the beginning, setting up characters and stuff, they get a call and off they go. They arrive at an apartment block where the residents are worried about an old lady in one of the apartments....shortly after the shit hits the fan.

Also falling loosely into the Zombie genre (in the same way that 28 Days Later does), it's a scary fucking movie! So scary in fact that a certain person I was with was so scared she was nearly sick, that's pretty good for a horror movie. It's also pretty relentless. Cloverfield in the cinema was a full on assault to the senses, cleverly done handheld, ridiculous noise, and almost non-stop pacing. Quarantine is just as full on (once you get past the fluff at the start), the POV of the camera lends itself to some truly jump out of your seat moments (as most of the people in the cinema were), and those moments, don't go by quickly, they last, making sure you've well and truly evacuated your bowels.

It also works very well on the laughter side of things, meaning, there are moments in the film which aren't specifically comical, but allow you that release, where you can laugh and relax for a moment before the next assault starts. This guy can do horror.

Apparently [Rec] is better as various people have said, I'm guessing those people saw [Rec] first, and thus already knew what was gonna happen with Quarantine, therefore, I'm assuming [Rec] won't 'do it' as much for me as Quarantine did for the same reasons. Will see tho.

Quarantine - 7/10 (find out why only 7 down below)

Here's where the real spoiler is.

What the film company can't do is marketing.

If you've seen the trailer (and indeed the poster!), you know how the film ends, down to the final shot, this becomes apparent as soon as that sequence starts, possibly earlier. Thus after a REALLY enjoyable horror (especially after the abortion that is Diary of the Dead), it was spoiled by shite marketing. There was plenty of other bits they could've gone with, but they didn't.

Okay, it's a remake, but I haven't seen the original, I don't know if it ends the same way, I'm guessing it's pretty close at least, I'll find out when I watch it (so please don't spoil it for me if it's different!!), thus showing me the final shot of the film in the trailer and on the poster, kinda fucked it up a bit. It wasn't like I figured it out and saw the end coming, I KNEW by that point in the film, that's how it was gonna end. :(

Felon

2008-11-15T09:37:00.003Z

I wasn't sure what to expect from this, the trailer looked interesting and I was somewhat intrigued by a fat, old Val Kilmer.

Basically, it's amazing! I was totally gripped, Kilmer is just fucking brilliant in what is essentially a supporting role, the whole film is a great emotional drama and I think somewhat overlooked as another mediocre Val Kilmer movie. Go watch it, it's brilliant!

Felon - 9/10

AVP: Alien vs. Predator

2008-11-15T09:22:00.002Z

AvP should've been an outstanding triumph, it should've been fucking AWESOME!, but no, unfortunately they had to let Paul W.S. Anderson at it, and while Mortal Kombat and Resident Evil (and Death Race) were enjoyable, and even Event Horizon was pretty good I seem to remember, he was WAAAAY off for AvP.

First we have the (now) cliched, strong female lead, then two of the three Predator's are shite, also the rest of the human cast are pretty vacuous, the gestation period of the Aliens is shortened quite a bit, slo-mo flying facehuggers, slo-mo running from big explosion, large helpings of cheese.

It's not great, hopefully they'll do better with the sequel... oh wait...

AVP: Alien vs. Predator - 5/10

Wall*E

2008-10-08T22:21:00.005+01:00

Pixar started out by giving inanimate objects life, such as in the iconic short Luxo Jr. Now although robots are not exactly inanimate, an interesting decision was made to not give them human voices as is done in most other films using robot characters.

Although at first this seemed a bit odd, I (along with many other people) thought that if anyone could pull that off, it would be Pixar.

And pull it off they do. The characters a engaging, charming and far more captivating than those of Cars for instance.

It's still not up to the standards of Toy Story, but I thought it was a bloody good film.

Wall*E - 8/10

Outpost

2008-10-04T09:36:00.003+01:00

After the disappointment of Unearthed, I wasn't expecting a lot from this (watched them both in the same evening), however, this proved to be an unexpected gem.

It's got Ray Stevenson as the lead, which didn't fill me with confidence, I wasn't really into Rome and the Punisher: War Zone trailer looks God awful. He is in this however, pretty damn good.

The rag tag band of mercenaries, form a more serious Dog Soldiers type vibe, an uneasy camaraderie existing between them, ex-soldiers from various nations (keeping the diversity). Their task to protect their client as he investigates some acquired property.

This property turns out to be an old Nazi bunker, where, funnily enough, crazy Nazi experiments were carried out, and funnily enough, things start to go to shit, basically because of the crazy Nazi stuff.

I almost loved this film, I say almost, because it feels like the filmmakers didn't quite have the courage of their convictions and bring in the action too early. They could've quite easily kept the slow pace and the suspense going for longer with better effect, and the fact that they didn't was a tad disappointing.

Despite that, I heartily recommend watching it!

Outpost - 8/10

Unearthed

2008-10-04T09:17:00.003+01:00

This is a perfect example of a film where the trailer is better than the film itself. WAAAY better.

For your delectation I have included a trailer for this one, something I've been thinking about doing, but this one is in context. The only thing is that this trailer isn't the one we saw on the DVD rentals over here, it shows a little more and doesn't finish on the 'buried' tagline, enjoy tho.

Okay, so there's a trailer, basically when we watched the one that we saw, we thought, yeah it's a shit straight to DVD horror flick, but it looks reasonably entertaining (a "shit-good" film), no, just shit.

The "acting" is terrible, they clearly didn't have enough money for more Luke Goss, who whilst not brilliant, is better than all the others here, especially the TERRIBLE lead, Emmanuelle Vaugier!! The script is awful, there's a whole backstory to the Sheriff that is of no importance or consequence whatsoever, the CG is ridiculous, the creature IS an Alien Xenomorph for all intents and purposes (they even rip off the shot from Alien 3), it's just ridiculous.

Unearthed - 2/10

Kung Fu Panda

2008-10-03T16:48:00.003+01:00

Dull, Boring, not very funny, a couple of clever sequences and the animation's pretty good in certain parts.

That's about it really. They're making a sequel tho.. yay.

Kung Fu Panda - 3/10

Alien3

2008-09-29T18:20:00.004+01:00

(SPOILERS!! more for previous films though)

Although I've seen both versions of this, for the purposes of this little post I'll be focussing on the theatrical cut which I re-watched recently. For the record, I also prefer this cut.

The first three Alien films, literally follow on directly from one another. Following Ripley's story to it's conclusion.

In this one, the EEV containing Ripley, Hicks, Newt and Bishop, crash lands on Fiorina (Fury) 161 a prison planet. They're found by the resident inmates and taken in. The reason for the crash is a fire that broke out onboard the EEV (guess what started that! It's in the opening credits and pretty obvious!!).

After Aliens' whole hive, we're back to just the one, not that that's a good thing for the characters as one's bad enough!

A lot of people don't like this one (or Resurrection for that matter, but that's a different post!), I do! I really like it, I love the premise of the prison, the characters that fill it and general plot. The only bad thing for me is the hokey (using that too much) CG Alien, the tech wasn't quite there at this time, probably could've done with more man-in-suit-in-shadows.

Despite all the trials and tribulations, David Fincher pushes the envelope to create a beautifully atmospheric film and worthy addition the the Alien line-up.

Alien3 - 9/10

Black Rain

2008-09-29T18:08:00.004+01:00

Black Rain is a quintessentially 80's thriller, so 80's in fact I almost aged backwards (?!), it's also a cracking Ridley Scott film, very Blade Runner esque with it's oriental backdrop, but not as heavily stylised.

Michael Douglas is a totally out of place cop, trying to track down a vicious Yakuza killer, Andy Garcia is his partner and Kate Capshaw reprises her singing in an oriental club role.

It's pretty much by the numbers, but it's got Ridley's signature stylings and once you get past the tad hokey script (especially at the start) it's pretty good.

Black Rain - 7/10

Speed Racer

2008-09-29T17:57:00.004+01:00

You've gotta wonder about the Wachowskis, did they only have like 2 good films in them??

Speed Racer is pretty bloody bad, okay so it's aimed at kids, but it's still bad, it's just lots of lights and noise, and the whole film is pretty much just the podracing sequence from The Phantom Menace with lots more colour and slo-mo.

It's another one of those films where you can somewhat admire what they were trying to do on a technical level, but as a film, it sucks.

Speed Racer - 4/10

The Hidden

2008-09-18T10:50:00.002+01:00

Literally a "Hidden" gem, a really entertaining scif-fi film.

A mix of Bodysnatchers, Terminator, Species etc there's an alien running amok and only two men, namely Kyle MacLachlan and Michael Nouri can stop it!

Basically there's cops and FBI, chasing an alien around whichever US city they're in, it's funny, cheesy action and a bit creepy, overall it's brilliant.

Apologies for the crappy type up (like I apologise for the others!!) I'm technically working, but got a little down time, so trying to catch up!

The Hidden - 7/10

The Kingdom

2008-09-01T09:59:00.002+01:00

It begins, pretty harshly, with a terrorist bombing of American families in Saudi Arabia and a group of FBI investigators making their way over to find out what's what.

For about half the film, it's very much a 'procedural', following the steps they need to take and the barriers they encounter while in Saudi, then it becomes more action orientated, guns RPGs and car chases.

It's fun and I was also genuinely shocked by the start, but it's hard to know where it sits politically. It's clearly a film about issues that are high up the political importance scale at the moment, but at the same time it's very Hollywood spin on it all, being rather one sided, not totally, but a fair amount, heaving around stereotypes and possibly not being as clever and worthy as it thinks it is.

The Kingdom - 7/10

2008-09-01T09:49:00.002+01:00

Despite what is a reasonably interesting premise, or at least plot device of Nic Cage's character being able to see 2 minutes into the future, Next falls a little flat.

One of the major flaws is we as viewers are asked to believe that Jessica Biel would fall for Nic "Lank Mullet" Cage, no sorry, suspension of disbelief only goes so far! The writers also cop out a little bit, by going past the 2 minute mark (as well as bend the interpretation of that a tad), it would've been more interesting and tense to see them stick to this restriction all the way through.

There's some ok actiony bit's in, particularly the casino scene, which is how the movie should really have continued. It's mildly entertaining but ultimately it's let down by "playing it safe."

Next - 6/10

The Monster Squad

2008-09-01T09:37:00.003+01:00

Happy birthday to me and cheers to my girlfriend for getting The Monster Squad for me as a present!

I remember watching this some years back (probably around 1987/88 to be fair) and loving it! Although when we watched it recently, there was practically none of it that seemed familiar, which was pretty cool as I was coming in nice and fresh to it. It didn't disappoint!

The film is an unabashed homage to the classic Universal Monsters, although due to licensing they're redesigned for this film, which is a good thing.

The very basic plot revolves around an amulet that can unleash all evil or banish it for another 100 years, thus the monsters, led by Dracula, want it and the small group of outcast misfit Goonie-lite kids (The Monster Squad) are out to stop them.

It's brilliant fun, the Stan Winston workshop creatures are great and the nerds can enjoy spotting all the in-jokes and references (I got a couple), well worth getting, although mine's Region 1, I'm not sure on the Region 2 situ.

The Monster Squad - 8/10

Ratatouille

2008-08-25T17:55:00.002+01:00

So what does Brad Bird follow up the incredible Incredibles (sorry) with?? A story about a rat that cooks..... yep.

Surprisingly, it's actually pretty good! I wasn't expecting to like this, it looked...well... a bit shite in the trailers, but I was really entertained (and after watching Cars, I needed to be!!)

Ratatouille steers back towards a more Disney-esque type of story, with the human/animal interaction and human/animal characters, it feels like a much more "traditional" animated film.

Set in France, Remy the rat has a passion for food and finds his way to a restaurant and a hopeless young man Linguini, cue various culinary adventures and slapstick. It IS a pretty standard story, but it's charming, funny and is brilliantly directed by Brad Bird (& co).

Lifted, this one's accompanying short, is AWESOME!

Ratatouille - 8/10
Lifted - 9/10

Cars

2008-08-25T17:33:00.002+01:00

Pixar are one of the best animation studios out there at the moment, but every studio has to have at least one duff film every now and again.

A good friend of mine commented that a lot of people don't like Cars, but that it's not bad and at the end of the day it's "Pixars least awesome movie", which says a lot for Pixar!!

I agree that it's their worst movie so far, I disagree that it's still awesome though, because it isn't.

The opening race scenes look fantastic, they really captured the energy and style that you'd expect from a NASCAR film, (NB: Actual NASCAR is BOOOOORRRRIIING! from what I've seen at least) but that energy soon dissipates once the track stuff's done with.

Basically Lightning McQueen (blandly voiced by Owen Wilson) gets lost out in the desert and ends up in the forgotten town of Radiator Springs on the famed Route 66. On the way he has to learn a little humility and all that schmaltzy stuff.

The problem is, apart from it being long, slow and boring, is that I didn't and couldn't engage with any of the characters. None of them did anything for me, I just didn't care. Maybe because they're all too similar? Sure they're all various different cars, but they're just cars, all a box on wheels, and there's not a huge amount you can do on a body language front there, so they have to rely more on their voice talent, which doesn't stand out here.

The accompanying short One Man Band, was a hell of a lot more entertaining than the feature presentation!! Which is a shame.

Cars - 5/10

One Man Band - 8/10

In Bruges

2008-08-18T00:19:00.002+01:00

(In best terrible attempt at an Irish accent) It's fucking brilliant is that!

Two hitmen have to spend some time in Bruges, Belgium. Colin Farrell's Ray, really doesn't want to be there, isn't enjoying himself and thinks it's a "shithole". Brendan Gleeson's Ken, actually quite likes it, enjoys the architecture and takes the time to sightsee.

It's a fair bit more involved than that, but that's your basic character premise there. It's offensive to the point where we wondered exactly how they got away with it, it's also bloody funny, touching, brilliantly written and outstandingly acted.

The best hitman movie since Grosse Point Blank.

In Bruges - 10/10

Mission: Impossible III

2008-08-18T00:03:00.002+01:00

I've been waiting to see this for AGES, I enjoyed the first one, the second was utter pants, but with M:I-III, J.J. Abrams is a the helm, so that's gotta be promising!!

For the most part it is. It certainly ups the ante from number 2 (both films take a very different tack from the original Brian De Palma outing), and it's a hell of a ride through most of the film, throw in some, 'here's how they actually do that' bits and Philip Seymour Hoffman and it's top notch. Simon Pegg was pretty funny, although did seem a little out of place among it all (still can't see him as Scotty, but that's not far off now).

It was also my first look at Billy Crudup and while he was pretty good, I'm not entirely sure how he's gonna come across as Dr. Manhatten in Watchmen.

But anyway, the plot has a couple of interesting twisty turns in it and as I say, it's a pretty good ride for the most part, but I was HIGHLY let down by the ending, something I wasn't expecting and I can only hope that Lost doesn't fall foul of it, if he has the reigns for the finale.

Mission: Impossible III - 6/10

Logan's Run

2008-08-17T23:48:00.004+01:00

Logan's Run is an odd film, it's a good ol' 1970's sci-fi, which feels totally of it's time, set in the obligatory dysotopian/utopian future, Logan is a 'Sandman' basically a copper who chases down 'runners'.

'Runners' are those who's life clock has run out (at the grand old age of 30), but don't really feel like getting beamed up and disintegrated. All's going well until circumstances lead Logan into becoming a runner himself.

There's a whole load of stuff that's never really made totally clear, not ambiguous, just not explained properly. Peter Ustinov is brilliant as the 'old man' and Jenny Agutter is HOT!! She alone is a good enough reason to watch this!!

Besides that, it was quite entertaining.

Logan's Run - 6/10

Ocean's Thirteen

2008-08-12T22:56:00.004+01:00

To be honest this was a lot better than I thought it was going to be, plot wise there's a heist, it's a very involved heist, and it involves people that don't really like Danny Ocean.

Don Cheadle's toned down his Dick Van Dyke impression since the first one which is much more pleasant to the ear!

It's basically a big romp, there's no jeopardy for any of the characters you know they're gonna come out on top, it's just a matter of how they get there and how entertaining that journey is.

Ocean's Thirteen - 7/10

Enchanted

2008-08-12T16:35:00.002+01:00

Finally persuaded the girlfriend to watch this with me (how much of that sentence is wrong?), mainly thanks to Blockbuster's current deal on renting family movies for 50p! Bonanza!

The film starts off animated before a series of events transports the characters to the real world, this is where the film takes off, using the 'fish out of water' device, the Disney characters stumble around the real world, occasionally breaking into song (or not as the case my be).

At first I found Giselle to be incredibly INCREDIBLY annoying, thankfully, things were toned down a tad and I made it through!

It's funny, charming and inventive. Even the girlfriend liked it.

Enchanted - 7/10

No Country for Old Men

2008-08-12T16:15:00.003+01:00

I read the book prior to seeing the film. Wasn't overly impressed to be honest. The typeface and layout used in the book is really off-putting, but I digress..

The film follows the book pretty closely, losing only a few elements. What's good about the film is the characters come across a lot better, the humor comes across (not so much in the book) and the language translates slightly better (yes as an Englishman, reading Southern American isn't a strength).

Javier Bardem is as good as everyone makes out, but as a story it's all very disjointed, subtext heavy and ultimately bleak and disappointing. Josh Brolin's character's actions don't seem to ring true and things just seem a bit forced. As a Coen Brothers film, it's far better than Intolerable Cruelty (what isn't?!), but not up to Fargo or Big Lebowski standards.

No Country for Old Men - 7/10

Chaos Theory

2008-08-12T15:50:00.002+01:00

This is Ryan Reynolds' Stranger Than Fiction.

By that I mean, this is where we find out that Reynolds can actually act. He did show a hint of it in the remake of The Amityville Horror, but this one really pushes the boat out.

The story of a man who's life, organised to OCD levels and works as an Efficiency Expert giving seminars, has it all suddenly turned upside down and decides to leave everything to chance (vaguely).

Apart from chocking me up and reducing my girlfriend to a weeping mess, it showed that Reynolds can do something other than shout and raise his eyebrows. Makes me slightly more interested in The Nines, but I'm expecting his appearance as Deadpool in the Wolverine movie to be more akin to Hannibal King.

A top top film.

Chaos Theory - 9/10

Stargate: The Ark of Truth

2008-08-12T15:39:00.002+01:00

Compared to Continuum, this is just plain pants.

This plays much more like an elongated SG1 episode, rather than a feature, it looks like it too, very "TV" and for the most part...dull.

It's lightened up only by (again) Ben Browder and, the chemistry between him and Amanda Tapping's Lt. Col. Carter.

You also need to know more of the back story, as explained in prior episodes, to fully appreciate the plot in this one. Didn't enjoy it as much as Continuum.

Stargate: The Ark of Truth - 5/10

Stargate: Continuum

2008-08-12T15:07:00.002+01:00

I've been getting into the Stargate series recently (SG1 and Atlantis), mainly because there's no Lost, Heroes, Dexter, BSG etc etc (although Generation Kill..CHEERS!) on at the mo, and as such decided to check out the feature length SG1 movies.

First one I watched was this one, the most recent Stargate: Continuum, throwing in a bit of time travel shenanigans, one Baal goes back and buggers up the start of the Earth based Stargate program, fortunately though three of SG1 make it through to the new timeline and after a bit of stuff, proceed to make things right.

The main thing, apart from appearing to actually have slightly higher production values than the series, is that it was actually pretty entertaining! Ben Browder is very entertaining as Col. Mitchell (would like to see him do something new now), Beau Bridges short appearance is nothing short of amazing, and Richard Dean Anderson is old and fat.

It deals with the time travel problems pretty well, and overall gives you a pretty good ride. It's not entirely stand alone, it does sit within the Stargate timeline and universe and as such references previous episodes, which I haven't seen as they're all over the place on Sky, but it's not essential to know this stuff to enjoy it.

Stargate: Continuum - 8/10

The Orphanage (El Orfanato)

2008-08-04T11:11:00.003+01:00

The Spanish language version of a "Quentin Tarantino Presents.." this "Guillermo Del Toro Presents..." follows a very similar style to Guillermo's own films.

It got pretty good reviews when it was in the cinema, and overall it's not bad, got quite a good end, although does suffer a bit from Return Of The King Syndrome, my main complaint is that it's VEEERRY SLOOOOW, it's a good story though and we stuck it out.

Not as creepy as I was expecting, there's a couple of creep-out moments, but it's not IMO, a full on scarefest. Well crafted and looks beautiful, Guillermo's certainly on a mission!

The Orphanage - 7/10

The Dark Knight

2008-07-29T22:10:00.003+01:00

Before I start, there are probably spoilers here.

Y'know there's a very strong possibility that there's been more hype around this film than there was when Lucas announced he was making 3 more Star Wars films. This hype unfortunately primarily exists because of Heath Ledger's untimely departure from this world, ok there was interest in his portrayal of The Joker beforehand, but it then became known more for being "the role that killed him", which is a big shame.

I'm glad the film's doing well, especially on the IMAX performances (I buckled and saw it today at a normal cinema, cos I don't know when I'm gonna be able to get to IMAX), as it's good to see IMAX getting noticed for something other than droll James Cameron docs or making people sick. But the hype machine's in overdrive on this one.

Anyway, I'll move away from that amateur assessment of what's going on in the world and onto what I thought of the film.

I was as excited about this as the next person, I really liked Batman Begins, I like the comics, I like Christopher Nolan, I was intrigued to see where he was going to take it and the fact that it was stated that they were going for the "psychopath joker" rather than the "camp tv series joker" AND that one of the main influences on their Joker, was Alan Moore's "A Killing Joke" which is FUCKING AWESOME!

People are saying that TDK is much like The Godfather Part 2 or Heat. I haven't seen Godfather 2, and it doesn't have the same energy as Heat, and (at the moment at least), as a film, I actually prefer Batman Begins.

So why? Why am I not jumping up and down like a rabid fanboy like I probably should be?

The film's slow through most of it, and it's a bad kind of slow, not a good kind of slow (like Alien), it lumbers around, people chat, Bruce Wayne worries a bit, more chat, exposition, explanation, too much.

I really don't like the dialogue, (the screen I was in had a shitty sound system this could be contributing), there's a lot of "thinking out loud" type stuff in this and "summing up for the audience" at the end... what am I watching Scooby Fucking Doo?

There's some seriously bad editing too (I think this has been picked up on the IMDb boards as well), a few shots that look like they were cut back for the ratings, and then just some shoddy editing, or some amazing ventriloquism by Christian Bale, one of the two.

The opening scenes are great, starts setting things up pretty well, then it gets a bit boring for a bit, Scarecrow! damn, underused again with bad attempt at comedy, then Joker pops up again, he's ok, then we have the 1-on-1 with him and the Bat, this is, in no uncertain terms, FUCKING AWESOME, this is where I got an enormous... grin on my face and thought "Okay, here we go, this is the movie I want to see kicking off now!", cue faster pacing, explosions, jeopardy, pain and...oh.. it's slowing down again now... why is it not going well....it's alright now we have Joker and Two-Face!! C'mon!!...please? just a bit... No you don't need to explain it to me...no really you don't...

Characters;

Bale is Bale, he plays BW/BM much like he did in the first, only he's even more arrogant now he's been doing this for a year. His lisp has got worse, or maybe its just he has more dialogue as BM now and you get to hear it more. He doesn't offer much else, except in the interrogation scene, but then that's quickly forgotten about.

Gordon is possibly the best character in the film and obviously Gary Oldman does an outstanding job of playing him in every single of his scenes (even the one's where he's explaining to the audience)

Harvey Dent/Two-Face, has potential, which would be interesting to see if he's about for the 3rd film, but I don't know if they'll fully explore it or not, I like how they deviated from his origin story, but feel they didn't run with it enough. Aaron Eckhart did a pretty good job, but there wasn't really enough time for the split personality to settle in.

Scarecrow, painfully underused again :(

Random crime bosses and gangsters, were pretty pointless.

Alfred Pennyworth, same old same old from Mr Caine, nothing new to see here.

Rachel Dawes, thank the lord for Katie Holmes "scheduling conflicts", but depsite Maggie Gyllenhall's better performance, the character's a tad incidental, but possibly a good thing for part 3 ;)

Mayor, blah blah, Ramirez, blah blah

The Joker.... here's the biggie, Heath Ledger's portrayal of The Joker is such that people are screaming for him to receive a posthumous Academy Award, that it's one of the best performances of all time etc etc. It's very good yes, Oscar worthy, I don't know, as good as I was hoping for, no.

There's been a big thing made of how creepy and messed up Joker was going to be, how he was a proper psycho, hell bent on destruction and chaos, yet through most of the film he's actually pretty mellow. I was hoping for a full on electrifying performance, I wanted to be SCARED by him, this didn't happen. There's a level of violence to him, a small hint of comedy, only the odd gag here and there, but there's only really one scene/sequence that features the Joker I was hoping for and that's the interrogation scene.

Here's where he really comes alive, where him and Batman are 1-on-1, there's flaws with the dialogue here too, but the scene plays out beautifully, Joker keeps pushing and pushing and Batman starts to crack, Joker just takes the abuse, here we get a REAL Joker laugh (hairs on the back of my neck!), Batman going crazy because he can't deal with him, it's awesome, then Batman goes off to be all heroic and Joker is left to make his way out, still awesome, after everything's done in the police station, it all starts to fizzle out again and by the end we're back to not so great again. The reason? Who knows, maybe that's how they wanted it and they think it's realy psycho like, maybe we couldn't see the Joker I wanted to because at the end of the day, it's a Batman film and needs to be suitable for a certain demographic??

Hellboy.

When I first saw Hellboy (the first one) in the cinema, I thought it was okay, not great, but okay. Then i watched it again and started to really like it, now I love it, the film got me into the Hellboy (and BPRD) comics and I'm quite looking forward to The Golden Army.

My point is that I'm hoping that after another viewing I'll start to like TDK more, I sat wondering if I had seen it on IMAX first would I have liked it better, am I just being a little unfair on it (yes and no maybe). Did I enjoy Iron Man more? yes I did.

I will be going back for another viewing, hopefully on IMAX and I will be buying it on DVD, I hope I like it better as it goes on.

The Dark Knight - 7/10

Doomsday

2008-07-24T22:26:00.003+01:00

Take the following ingredients, stir in and spice up with liberal other influences;

1 part Aliens
1 part 28 Days/Weeks Later
2 parts Mad Max (mainly 2 & 3)
2 part strong female lead with damaged past
Oregano

I love Dog Soldiers! I thought The Descent was an admiral attempt to get everyone taking home grown British films seriously again (and not a bad film), but when I saw the trailer for Doomsday, I swear I could see Neil Marshall doing backflips over a Great White.

It looked SOOO bad!

A problem I have with "hot new directors" at the minute, and in some ways it's a bit of an unfair criticism, is that as soon as they're given a load of money to make a film, they go all shite. They start off with a cracking low budget debut, then someone comes along and gives g'twirty gillion squid to make a movie and they deliver a cow pat. (this probably isn't a new problem)

Now I was pleasantly surprised by Doomsday, it's not the total cow pat that I was expecting, but at the same time it doesn't have the wit, charm or inventiveness of Dog Soldiers, it is British yes, as the use of the word "Bollocks" proves, and I like that about it, I like that Neil Marshall is proud to be British and allows that to come through in his films and it's also nice to see someone attempt a big action film in the UK (in a non piss take way unlike some).

At the end of the day, it's not taking itself very seriously, it's a big fun action movie with PLENTY of gore, some pretty good gore at that, a few good lines, but not much substance. Rhona Mitra was better than expected, but at the same time, doesn't have the presence to really pull it off.

A few pretty good action bits, a lot of silliness and some enormous unfinished plot lines and holes.

Let's see what he does next, maybe not Outpost, something else??

Doomsday - 7/10

Futurama: The Beast with a Billion Backs

2008-07-24T22:15:00.002+01:00

Let us all remember that The Simpsons Movie was pretty SHITE! Futurama, (which I've always preferred) however, does a much better job of sustaining the running time.

It does lag a little in place, only a little though, and mainly because of the concurrent plot lines used to sustain the 90 minutes, but by the end of it, it felt like I had just watched an episode rather than sat through an overly long cartoon.

If you know Futurama, there's nothing really new here, but it does the job pretty well and I laughed a fair bit throughout, definitely worth watching.

Futurama: The Beast with a Billion Backs - 7/10

Assault on Precinct 13

2008-07-21T14:09:00.002+01:00

Nope, sorry, just don't like it. I can see how (as with a lot of films from emerging directors at this time), it probably blew people out of the water, especially with the infamous "ice cream truck" scene, but for me it was just boring.

There's not enough tension between the characters, the acting is well below par and, I'm sorry but John Carpenter is just not that good a director. I wanna check out the remake, out of sheer curiosity now.

Assault on Precinct 13 - 3/10

Hancock

2008-07-18T10:47:00.003+01:00

The ONLY word that was in my head when we came out of the cinema after this was "INTERESTING", I just couldn't decide whether I liked it or not. My girlfriend was the same, neither of us could decide whether we'd actually enjoyed the film or not. Which is weird.

Interesting is a good word for it though. It's interesting what they do with the 'superhero' genre, the down and out Hancock and where they go with his vague 'origin' story, but that's about it, yeah there are some somewhat funny moments, there's no real peril until the end and all in all it's a bit average. Shame.

Hancock - 6/10

Diary of the Dead

2008-07-18T10:35:00.003+01:00

So So bad. George Romero has done ONE good film that was Night of the Living Dead. Everything else is pants.

This is the biggest pair of old man pants yet, even bigger than Land of the Dead (which was pretty bad), top marks for experimenting though, going all "Handheld", although it doesn't have anywhere near the conviction or success in this area that Cloverfield does.

The shots are too framed, the "Narrator" (see shit V.O.), tells you what cameras they're using at the start, one of which is a shoulder mount Panasonic, the other, a handheld one, is conveniently found lying around at a point during the film. Technically it's laughable.

Now onto the "actors", I say "actors" cos they're shite, really REALLY BAD! And the SCRIPT! George has really come up with some God awful nonsense this time! Preachy, hamfisted tosh, it's up there with Zombie Strippers with how not to write a script!

And I think he's still a bit peeved about Zombies/Infected being able to run in other films...GET OVER IT!

Good news though, there's a sequel in the works :/

Diary of the Dead - 2/10

Pathology

2008-07-16T11:16:00.004+01:00

Slow for the most part, an interesting idea, although basically Lost Boys but pathologists not vampires, totally redeemed by the ending.

Milo Ventimiglia as our main protagonist, pretty much sucks. The guy's just not a very good actor. I love Heroes, but he's hardly the best thing in that either. Conversely Michael Weston, is brilliant in comparison.

There's a lot of sex in this too, it's bordering on soft pron! Ultimately that could be the decider for whether you watch this one, for us it was quite unexpected.

Pathology - 6/10

Street Kings

2008-07-16T10:51:00.002+01:00

Street Kings is a pretty generic dirty cop/crime drama, from the pen of James Ellroy (L.A. Confidential, The Black Dahlia etc), (screenplay co-written with Kurt Wimmer (!?) and Jamie Moss), the basic plot has pretty much been seen time and time before.

Keanu Reeves is the 'spear tip' cop, used for the 'special missions', Forest Whitaker is his Captain in the Vice Special unit. See where this is going?

Pretty early on Hugh Laurie steps in as House... sorry Captain James Biggs from Internal Affairs (it's that one American accent thing, like Christian Bale ;) and that throws in a bit of tension within the group.

To be honest, I've basically seen this movie before in other incarnations, but at the same time it was an enjoyable watch.

Street Kings - 7/10

Superbad

2008-07-10T19:34:00.004+01:00

IT'S NOT FUNNY, NOT IN THE SLIGHTEST BIT.

(apart from maybe a very very very slight exhale through my nose at one point late on in the film, but it's only just finished and I can't even remember which bit)

Superbad - 1/10

Zombie Strippers!

2008-07-02T23:32:00.004+01:00

Ok, three basic genre keywords for this one, I'll take them one at a time...

Horror

So we have zombies, virus orientated ones in this case. They're a cross between 'traditional' and 'modern' zombies in the fact that, on the whole the move quite awkwardly and slow, but on the other hand, their pole dancing improves quite dramatically.

There's a fair bit of gore to go with the zombies, a mix of composited elements, which could be better, and some, actually pretty good, practical grue and giblets.

It ain't scary, there are simply no scares, nothing to even remotely make you jump.

Comedy

Admitedly I chuckled at least twice, they were chuckles though. The "possibly some badgers" line made me chuckle (although there's a groan inducing line that follows) and the lead up to "Paco time!" also gave me a chuckle, but I think that was about it.

Before moving on to the final genre keyword, I'll cover a couple of other bits. Firstly; Robert Englund. Clearly the most experienced member of the cast, and despite everything, seems to be enjoying himself, plays a brilliant role, which you have to give him credit for, taking into account the overall quality of the script (see: Not Good).

There are clearly Easter Eggs throughout the film, in both the set dressing and the script, some are less subtle than others, note to film makers; Easter Eggs are meant to be discovered, not delivered. Although fair's fair, it's supposed to be a comedy script and as such they tried to be clever with some of the lines. FAIL.

The film is called Zombie Strippers and starts Jenna Jameson, expect nudity, in fact I think most of the film is a pole dance montage, picture the script....

INT. STRIP CLUB - NIGHT 1

JENNA JAMESON is on stage, removing all her clothes.

INT. STRIP CLUB - NIGHT 2

JENNA JAMESON gets bitten by ZOMBIE MACGUFFIN

INT. STRIP CLUB - NIGHT 3

ZOMBIE JENNA JAMESON is on stage, removing all her clothes.

I think that's pretty much word for word. Also, something I learned from this film is that Jenna Jameson looks better with black contacts and covered in blood. Which is wrong on so many levels.

Satire

Now, the meat (so to speak). It's shoved-down-your-throat-clear from the outset that the film is one big attack on the Bush administration. From the poor attempt at a Verhoeven-esque news report at the start, via the various 'Bush' logos, Osama related military codes and mentions of "the war", right through to the In-Case-Your-Brain-Doesn't-Function-Here's-What-We're-Getting-At Exposition sequence at the end.

Excuse me, Mr Lee?.. Intelligent satire this ain't. However if you were going for the Ham-fisted my first attempt at a political message, you're spot on.

Zombie Strippers! - 2/10

Be Kind Rewind

2008-07-02T09:12:00.004+01:00

mumble mumble mumble mumble mumble mumble mumble mumble mumble mumble something about community spirit, not being racist and Ghostbusteeeerrrrs.

When I first saw the trailer I was totally underwhelmed, it came across as a grubby film visually and so very saccharin sweet it could send a Care Bear into a coma.

That's pretty much how it is. It's pretty dull, the Ghostbusters sweding is reasonably funny, then the novelty wears off. Jack Black is Jack Black, none of the secondary characters matter and everyone else mumbles. (Especially you Mos Def (see 16 Blocks)

Michel Gondry is a technical genius. He is hands down one of the most technically and visually creative directors out there... and this film is a mess. There's a load of trademark Gondry in-camera stuff, a whole sequence of 'sweding' that was more than likely done in one shot, some clever costumes and not much else.

The jokes fall flat, the message is ladled on and we were basically hoping the film would end soon (although we stuck it out 'til the hamfisted ending). Some of the shots (not the swede ones, the 'proper' ones), were, frankly, terrible, off framing, odd choices of going to weird angles mid way through some dialogue, all really odd. If they were 'creative' choices, I don't think they worked.

I really don't know what people saw in this.

Be Kind Rewind - 3/10

The Ruins

2008-07-02T08:59:00.002+01:00

What can I say about "The Ruins" apart from the fact that it's a pretty average film. It's not great, but it's not terrible.

The main 'horror idea' is reasonably original, but draws on a number of influences, the characters are pretty much standard horror 20-somethings, the girls are pretty damn annoying and stupid in my view, not quite Wolf Creek irritating, but close and the guys actually seem to have a bit of sense, which is quite nice, that it's not all but one of the characters who are dumb. I think the girls got the bum end of the deal though.

I'd put money on the fact that EVERYONE should be able to identify who will die first, which is a shame, because as I was waiting for this first death, I was thinking what an interesting dynamic it would add to the rest of the film, but it was not to be.

There are a couple of pretty gruesome bits in the film, although not as much as I'd been led to believe by others.

The end is also kind of predictable, although I had a few different scenarios going round my head before one of those got checked off.

So, not the best, but not bad, kept me engaged and Vicky (girlfriend) really enjoyed it (gives it an 8/10)

The Ruins - 6/10

Batman: Gotham Knight

2008-06-30T21:53:00.005+01:00

An interesting one this, what is essentially an animated prologue to The Dark Knight (no spoilers in it afaik), there's several short stories, all slightly different styles, all slightly different animation/art styles, but all with a common thread.

The animation is pretty Anime-esque, slightly heightened from Batman: The Animated Series (which stands as one of the best cartoons out there), the stories are written by various writers including David S. Goyer, Josh Olsen and Brian Azzarello.

While it's good, it doesn't quite have the tension or action levels to compete with the movie versions, not that it's trying to 'compete' per se, that was a bad choice of words, but it struggled to keep me totally engaged at times.

Essentially though it's pretty well done and a nice bridge between Begins and TDK.

Batman: Gotham Knight - 7/10

Vantage Point

2008-06-26T23:21:00.003+01:00

I thought this looked cool when I first saw the trailer, it seemed to be a pretty full on action film, and for the most part, it's just that.

You have to get past the first half or so of the film, which is where it gets it's "Vantage Point" title from (well, you know what I mean). We kick off in Spain, big event with the US President in attendance, there's a big news OB crew, secret service guys, an odd Forest Whitaker with a camcorder (NB: keen eyes will notice that the camcorder footage isn't the ACTUAL footage, or even close) and a whole load of the public.

The first segment opens with the POV of the news team covering the event for the viewers back home, all goes well until the President is shot, the shit hits the fan and then... rewind and we follow someone else's POV. This happens a few times, and I think just one too many, where you start to think "Again?? Can we not move on yet?"

Eventually it does move on and becomes a more traditional chase thriller, and a bloody good one at that, full on pulse racing, edge of seat stuff, even with Dennis Quaid at the helm, saying that I think he does a bloody good job in his role.

Now there are plot holes, and to be honest, I would've liked a bit more depth to it as it's more of a snapshot event rather than a long term story, but as a single event, it's able to keep the pace up and layer the action on.

I'm not entirely sure whether it would've been better or not with a more traditional structure, rather than the numerous rewinds, it would be trickier to cover all the angles effectively and still keep the pace of the ending. A damn good watch tho.

Vantage Point - 7.. no sod it 8/10

The Incredible Hulk

2008-06-25T22:29:00.003+01:00

Saw this at the cinema today, the girlfriend wanted to see The Happening, but we would've had to wait around for and extra hour, so we went with The Incredible Hulk.

She wasn't happy at the end of it.

Vicky: "Well that was a load of old crap wasn't it?"

Matt: "It wasn't that great, no."

Why wasn't it that great? Well if you ignore the fact that Iron Man came out recently and was awesome, I'll tell you..

Firstly, Edward Norton is a crap Bruce Banner, in fact, he's just crap, overly wimpy, wet, weak sack of dead poodle.

Secondly, Liv Tyler is mind-numbing as Betty Ross, literally mind-numbing, but as a couple, they suit each other as the scene where they practically melt into the rain demonstrates.

The combo of Eric Bana and Jennifer Connelly was much better in my view.

Apparently Edward Norton started revising the script when he came on board, I'm guessing he did all the wimpy dialogue bits.

There's too much wimpy bits and not enough Hulk. Yes I know the character has two aspects, but I wasn't at all sold on the Bruce Banner side and when Hulk was on screen, he didn't really have the presence he should've done, no weight to him (physically).

The fights were almost pretty good, Tim Roth was pretty good as Emil Blonsky, but much like the Scarecrow in BB, underused, and I kinda lost interest in him when he turns into Abomination (that's in the trailer btw). In fact, I didn't really care about ANYONE in the film, none of the characters really had any merit to them, I was just sat there thinking, yeah yeah, blah blah, let's see Hulk kick some ass...

...Oh no, it's become Peter Jackson's King Kong. Damn.

There are elements of this one that are good, there are elements of Ang Lee's Hulk, that are also good, if you stick the two together, you're on your way to a decent Hulk movie, but then at the end of the day this is just a setup for The Avengers, at least Iron Man had some substance to it.

So a couple of good Hulk Smash! scenes and not much else.

The Incredible Hulk - 6/10

Batman Begins

2008-06-25T22:10:00.002+01:00

After Mr. Schumacher officially killed the Batman franchise, along came David S. Goyer and Christopher Nolan to give the series a good solid kick up the arse.

David had previously given us the Blade films and Mr Nolan had made it big with Memento. Things were looking interesting, despite many people thinking there was no way they could top the Tim Burton films, but look, they did!

By steering away from the more fantastic side of the Batman stories and focussing on (or tweaking to) reality based ideas he gave us a more believeable, grounded and hardcore Batman. He also delved into the origin story, something that hadn't really been done anywhere before. The existing story being, Bruce sees parent's killed, grows up becomes Batman. Not terribly detailed. Various stories eluded to training and such and Nolan goes all out on showing Bruce Wayne's transition to Batman and indeed where he get's those wonderful toys.

He also gives us (an underused) Scarecrow and a clever Ra's Ah Ghul (I've probably spelt that wrong, I may check later), who unfortunatly ends up being a bit of a Qui Gon Jin (probably spelt that wrong too), for the first part of the film.

We also get Christian Bale as BW/Batman, and apart from Bale's American accent, he's pretty much perfect as a Year One Batman, being that he's unhinged an' all ;)

The film's bloody good, a little slow, but then it IS an origin story, and they're always a little slow because they've got to cover that initial ground before the meaty action starts. Although to be fair, Mr. Nolan does a good job of giving us some action in the lead up before the suit comes out.

Now this is clearly a re-watch for me, I saw this in the cinema when it came out, but as pretty much everyone on the planet is aware, The Dark Knight is pretty close now (July 25th in the UK) and I'm damn sure I'll be trotting up to the IMAX for this one!!! Anyway, I thought that Begins was due a re-watch to refresh my memory and attempt to satisfy the hunger that's going to eat me up for around another month yet!

Batman Begins - 9/10

Transporter 2

2008-06-16T10:31:00.004+01:00

As you may have seen, I LOVE the first one, the sequel here is pretty good, but doesn't live up to the first one.

Here's why...

TOO BIG FOR IT'S BOOTS.

Yep, basically they try to make it bigger and better and they fail, too much CGI really, they should've kept it real, if they made transporter more like Bourne but less serious it would rule! It does have a Milla Jovovich a-like, scantily clad female villain though ;)

It's still worth a watch, lets see what number 3 brings ;)

Transporter 2 - 6/10

The Transporter

2008-06-16T10:18:00.003+01:00

I Fucking love this film! In the grand scheme of things, it's a bad film, but at the same time, it's AWESOME!

Why? Jason Statham, car chases, awesome fights (yes, ok it has the most homo-erotic fight scene this side of porn or Top Gun, but that's ok)

Some of the dialogue is terrible, the plot's pretty flimsy, but who cares, it's fucking awesome!

The Transporter - 8/10

16 Blocks

2008-06-13T11:55:00.003+01:00

An interesting little movie this one, Bruce Willis starts acting his age (more so than in DH4.0), he plays an old, washed up, alcoholic cop in NY, who at the end of his shift it told to escort a prisoner witness "16 blocks" to the courthouse.

Reluctantly he moseys on down to the cells and picks up Mos Def, who is putting on one of the most annoying voices in the history of cinema.

Now this little escort trip should be a piece of cake... if it wasn't for DAVID MORSE!!! (dum dum duuuuuum!) and a load of other cops who don't want Mos to make it.

Another interesting point with 16 Blocks is that it's directed by Richard Donner! Yes that Richard Donner. So should you expect big things? Yes, but then he also did Timeline (awesome book, shite film) and Maverick (gee, thanks).

Overall, it's not bad, it's not great, it's a bit slow and doesn't have as big of a climax as it feels it should have, but at the same time it's a pretty good watch. (It ain't no Goonies or Lethal Weapon though)

16 Blocks - 7/10

Jumper

2008-06-11T16:49:00.002+01:00

A lot of people have totally slated this film, partly because it's got Hayden "NOOOOOOOOOO!"*Christensen in it, and partly because apparently, it's rubbish.

So, what's the background? Well it's an adaptation from a book (which apparently a lot of people like), it's scripted by David S. Goyer (Dark City, Blade, Batman Begins), Jim Uhls (Fight Club) and Simon Kinberg (XXX 2...DOH!) and it's directed by Doug Liman (The Bourne Identity), so based on those bits, you should expect a pretty good film yes??

Well let's say it's an okay film, it's not great, old Annie can't really keep it up as far as leading man is concerned, it's got a really weak end in my view, it's left wide open for a sequel, but that doesn't mean you can't have a strong ending, for a first film (which should potentially stand alone as well) it shouldn't be a cross between an origin story and The Two Towers.

Samuel L. J is his usual self, this time with funky white hair, Jamie Bell is great but needs to be let off the leash a little more, Rachel Bilson is YAWN and the mish mash of story elements is a bit of a let down (especially from Goyer).

There's simply not enough jeopardy in the film, pretty much throughout David (HC) is supposed to be being hunted by SLJ's Roland, however apart from a bit of squinting he seems to be pretty much taking it in his stride, which when you look at how they're trying to define the character...doesn't work.

Overall it's reasonably entertaining, just feels like there should be more to it.

Jumper - 6/10

*(Yes I know he didn't do the voice, but he was in the suit and pretty bad out of it)

The Warriors

2008-06-03T23:19:00.004+01:00

Had this hanging around for a while (must give it back to Simon!!), finally watched it and...

It's not bad, oddly enough! Fair do's it's not the greatest film ever made, but overall it works pretty well.

It is a tad disjointed but then, it's The Warriors having to make their way back home to Coney Island, but having to pass through various other gang's turf.

During the opening scenes, you get a selection of the various gangs from the New York area (apparently), I could immediatly see that Joel Schumacher watched this film before making Batman Forever and Batman & Robin!!

What makes things worse for our 'heroes' is that all the other gangs (and the police) are specifically out to get them, thus, some bad fight choreography and "kung-fu-cos-it's-hip" scenes must crop up with some more of the craaaazzzyy street gangs.

Apparently there's a remake on the cards, I'm hoping that a certain original cast members could return and in some cases, a big name may work quite well!?

The Warriors - 7/10

Horton Hears a Who!

2008-05-30T15:13:00.002+01:00

To be honest, I didn't think this was going to be any good, CGI movies that aren't from Pixar, generally inspire that knee jerk reaction.

I was wrong, a bit slow in places with a bit of a heavy handed message, but overall a really entertaining and heartwarming movie.

On the CG front, it's a bit of and odd one, it opens with a pretty much photo-realistic shot of rain drops on a leaf, then becomes very cartoony, ditching any sort of realism on any elements. No while I have absolutely no problem with this, after all it's an animated family film, it just made me wonder why they bothered at the start, maybe just to show that they could??

At the other end of the scale is a brilliant Anime segment in the midst of Horton's trek.

So, all in all an unexpectedly great animated movie!

Horton Hears a Who! - 8/10

10,000 BC

2008-05-30T13:06:00.002+01:00

Ug. UgUg. Ug. etc etc. Well not quite, but it's getting there.

10,000 BC from Roland Emmerich, the man who brought you such classics as The Day After Tomorrow, Independence Day and Universal Soldier! It starts REALLY badly, sooo very bad, terrible acting, really ropey CG and I almost considered turning it off, but no, I was strong and I stuck with it.

It does get better, once the real story kicks in and their on their way to rescue their tribe members, but overall it's a less than impressive big-dumb-movie, barely keeping the interest levels up. Enjoy.

10,000 BC - 3/10

Eastern Promises

2008-05-29T11:36:00.003+01:00

Yet another one I forgot to blog at the time :/ What am I like eh? eh? eh?... eh?

David Cronenberg's follow up to the, frankly, stunning A History of Violence, takes a look at the Russian gangster underworld in London.

A midwife played by Naomi Watts comes across the journal of a Russian teenager who dies in childbirth, as she gradually gets the journal translated she discovers a lot of unsavoury things about the teenager's life. On the way she encounters a very Russian Viggo Mortensen and a load of others.

That's pretty much it, although it's well put together, pretty well acted (eg: Naomi Watts doesn't annoy the crap out of me in this one), it just doesn't have the same impact that 'History' did, or any of the other Cronenberg film's I've seen. That said, it's not a bad film, it's pretty good, of course it is.

It'll be interesting to see where Cronenberg goes next as he seems to be getting increasingly mainstream.

Eastern Promises - 8/10

Operation Delta Force

2008-05-23T21:01:00.003+01:00

A terrible TV movie, all about South Africa and some Ebola related shenanigans, to be honest I found it difficult to stay interested.

It's proper TV Movie stuff too, lots of close ups so you can't see the lack of set, crappy practical locations, masses of action but not the budget to support it.

Thought it might be good fun, but it wasn't really, but thankfully there's a shitload of sequels, and there's a brilliantly odd mix of drama and library footage.

And if you want to see a better Jeff Fahey performance check out Lost season 4 ;)

Operation Delta Force - 2/10

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Six-String Samurai

2008-05-23T01:07:00.004+01:00

Randomly watched this at a friends house earlier tonight and WOW I was totally blown away, Six-String is AMAZING!

It's a proper low-budget film, pretty much think Mad Max + El Mariachi, has a mix of clearly-low-budget-shots and some amazing ones!

We're basically following a Buddy Holly/Ronin type character (called Buddy) as he treks across the desert to get to Lost (Las) Vegas in a Post-Apocalyptic future (past?) to become the new King of Rock and Roll and stop Heavy Metal from taking over.

Yes it's that odd, yet brilliant. I've gotta get myself a copy!

Six-String Samurai - 8/10

Highlander

2008-05-23T00:43:00.003+01:00

Let's face it, Highlander is awesome! Have a list of stuff that will go some way to proving that.

Christopher Lambert - An American brought up in Switzerland, thus giving him a crazy accent anyway...playing a Scotsman.
Sean Connery - A Scotsman with one of the most distinctive voices in the world, making no attempt at an accent as he plays an Egyptian from Spain called Ramirez
Clancy Brown - A solid middle American with deep American voice playing an ancient Russian (no accent needed)
Sword fighting Immortals
Queen soundtrack that dicks on Flash Gordon

Any arguments? No. Thought not.

It's ropey and pretty poorly directed in places, but for sheer nostalgia value, it's solid!

Highlander - 8/10

Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street

2008-05-22T17:46:00.003+01:00

Unlike many people it seems, I went into watching this knowing it was a musical, not that, that reassured me! I'd seen the trailers!! :/

And the film totally lived up to my expectations! Slow, dull, boring, not very interesting, mediocre visuals (yes I did say that about a gothic Tim Burton film), I just don't think it's that good.

I don't have a problem with musicals, I just don't rate this one, the songs in fact are (IMO) rubbish, and annoying as generally each song could've been replaced with a single line of dialogue saying and emoting the same thing!

Had this been done as a straight (non-musical) film, I probably would've enjoyed it a lot more... well I probably would've enjoyed it. There were odd chuckle-worthy moments, and despite the fact that both my girlfriend and I forced our way to the end, just to find out how it ended, we were both glad when it was over!

All that said, it's got a solid 7.9 on IMDb and 86% on Rotten Tomatoes, so you'll probably like it!!

Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street - 4/10

Rambo

2008-05-19T19:10:00.003+01:00

GOOD-FUCKING-GOD!

I mean really?!?!?

The film starts with some, actually pretty harrowing, news footage and images telling you how fucked up Burma is at the moment, then we see some (dramatised) footage of some Burmese people exploding, then we're straight into good ol' John catching snakes, although he's not exactly employee of the month on that as you find out.

Along come some do-gooders wanting to get up-river and into Burma to..well.. do good. John however thinks that may not be so wise.

Funnily enough he's on the money with that and the rest of the film is a rescue mission.

Back to "GOOD-FUCKING-GOD!!", to bring in a Spinal Tap analogy here, on the gore and blowing bits off people scale if Saving Private Ryan and Starship Troopers et al are a 10 on the dial, then Rambo is the special amp that goes up to 11, because Jesus! it was fucking horrible! I mean really nasty, I'd love to know what Eli Roth thinks of it, cos this pisses on his efforts.

And it's so full on, you hit a point in the film and it's relentless, I'm guessing if you saw this in the cinema you must've been washing blood out of your hair for days afterwards!! I was literally blown away (no pun intended) by the scale of the violence, to the point that it's more "car-crash" violence, you know you shouldn't look, but you can't help it.

IMDb reckons it's 91mins, it feels about 20, it doesn't hang around, little bit of Rambo not doing much and setting up the "story" then people start dying. It's ridiculous, or at least it feels it, but it's a bloody good watch and, IMO, far better than the boring mess that was Rocky Balboa. (which I've just discovered I watched but didn't blog! damn! I keep doing that)

Rambo - 7/10

Semi-Pro

2008-05-19T15:01:00.003+01:00

Will Ferrell can act, however Semi-Pro sees him back to his usual shouty self. In fact, it's not really his movie, which is a bit odd.

The movie is more the story of Woody Harrelson's and Andre Benjamin's characters, with Ferrell's Jackie Moon, more of the film's Mcguffin.

So.. All these fellows are members of the Flint Tropics, an ABA basketball team, the worst one in fact, so when it's announced that the ABA will merge with the NBA and only four teams will go through, they decide to make a concerted effort to make it into the top four.

And thus follows your pretty much bog-standard Will Ferrell/Underdog movie. It's as funny as his others, but again, nothing special, nothing that will make it stand out from the rest. The best thing about Semi-Pro is the commentators, characters lifted from pretty much every other sports comedy of this type, but pretty damn funny.

Worth a watch but not necessarily for Ferrell.

Semi-Pro - 6/10

Sympathy for Lady Vengeance (Chinjeolhan geumjassi)

2008-05-15T11:28:00.005+01:00

The third and final film in Park Chan-wook's Vengeance Trilogy is undoubtedly the weakest.

While it takes things down a different road from the others, although still some familiar themes are there, and introduces a woman as the main character, for some reason it didn't feel like it had the same edge as it's precursors.

It retains the oh so dark humour of Oldboy, whilst still pushing the emotions of the characters and the justifications for their actions (not that Oldboy didn't of course).

Again, it's beautifully shot, beautifully directed and although it's, in my view, the weakest of the three films, it's a must see.

Sympathy for Lady Vengeance (Chinjeolhan geumjassi) - 9/10

Oldboy

2008-05-15T11:14:00.005+01:00

Understand this: OLDBOY IS AWESOME!

That's pretty much all you need to know, it's an incredible film from Park Chan-wook, the follow up to Sympathy for Mr. Vengance and the middle film from his Vengeance Trilogy.

Basically after being imprisoned for 15 years Oh Dae-su is released. Shortly after he meets a man who tells him he has 5 days to find his captor and discover why he was imprisoned in the first place. What follows is an amazing, mind-numbing and disturbing mystery tale that left me both horrified and amazed.

Needless to say a re-watch of this doesn't have quite the same effect, but it's still an amazing piece of art, yet again demonstrating Park's amazing skills and talent as a director.

I really don't want to explain too much of this away, not specifically giving spoilers but even hints at the different parts.

No-one can be told what Oldboy is, you have to see it for yourself. SO GO!! WATCH IT!!

Oldboy - 10/10

Sympathy for Mr. Vengeance (Boksuneun naui geot)

2008-05-15T10:48:00.006+01:00

I cannot begin to express how simply fucking awesome this film is. Part of Park Chan-wook's vengeance trilogy (including Oldboy and Sympathy for Lady Vengeance), it follows a series of events leading through a bungled kidnapping and the outcome.

Oldboy was the first one I watched a while back (although I re-watched recently and didn't post so I'll do that after this one, also a re-watch), after hearing a lot of good things about it. Mr. Vengeance is the precursor to Oldboy, but the stylistic similarities are most definitely there, not so much with Lady Vengeance.

The film is beautiful. The lighting, framing, performances, everything about it. The way that Park is not afraid to hold a shot, using single shots for entire scenes, something a lot of Western directors aren't so confident with.

The performances are amazing, the lead character is a deaf-mute, which immediately changes the game in how the story is told and again, there's no trying to 'PC' the guy for the sake of it. One of the other stunning performance comes from Song Kang-ho (pictured), playing a TOTALLY different role from his one in The Host! He's in a fair few Korean films so check him out.

The film is hard to deal with at times, it's slow paced, but you want to stick with it, not quite a full on and gruesome as Oldboy, but still potent enough. AWESOME!

Sympathy for Mr. Vengeance - 10/10

Alvin and the Chipmunks

2008-05-14T11:15:00.003+01:00

JAAAAAAASSSSOOOOONNN! WTF?!

Didn't Jason Lee used to be cool? Wasn't he a pro skater? When did he sink into saccharin family fodder? 2007 actually, with this.

To be fair, it's not terrible, it's bad yes, but it's not terrible, I managed to watch all of it, possibly smiling a bit throughout and it moves along swiftly enough, there's no real dead spots.

The 'munks are drawn and animated pretty well, not as funny as I was expecting to be honest, but then I wasn't expecting a lot from this. It probably would've added something to the film to put the 'munks in a little more jeopardy than they actually are, but then again this is an Alvin & the Chipmunks movie!

The most annoying thing about this (apart from being irritated by David Cross) is the bloody AAAAALLLLVVIIIIINN which pops up in various forms throughout, although my girlfriend kept chuckling, in an almost Butthead fashion, at the fact that Justin Long voices Alvin.

Well apparently a sequel's in development, let's hope they give Eli Roth a shot at it.

Alvin and the Chipmunks - 5/10

The Invincible Iron Man

2008-05-08T08:43:00.003+01:00

If the Iron Man film was a cartoon, set in China and not as good, then it would be pretty close to this.

For a part it follows a very similar plot line, indeed even some scenes are pretty close to the movie, I'm going to hazard a guess that they're common across the origin story variations in the comics too. But then there's this whole other super natural thing with a Chinese Mandarin and his elemental warriors, wait, that's it!...

If the Iron Man film, was a cartoon, set in China, not as good and basically Iron Man meets Big Trouble in Little China, then it would be pretty close to this. (Although Big Trouble.. is better ;)

I'm guessing seeing the movie before this didn't help, but then I've only watched this because of seeing the movie and I probably won't go out of my way to watch any more Iron Man stuff until Iron Man 2.

If you're into Iron Man, then it's probably worth a watch, casual viewers, maybe not so much.

The Invincible Iron Man - 5/10

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Balls of Fury

2008-05-05T14:56:00.003+01:00

Bad, bad, bad, bad, bad. Why does Dan Fogler exist and is Christopher Walken really this hard up??

I thought the trailer was reasonably funny, that is all the funniest bits and their cut together better in the trailer.

Many a punchline is dragged out, just to make sure you get it, or maybe to try something different to make it funny. It's trying to jump on the Will Ferrel sports comedy bandwagon (which to be fair isn't that great) and misses, landing face first in it's own festering excretia.

Harsh? No. I laughed a few times and each one felt forced and I now feel slightly guilty for them as I know, it's just not that funny.

Balls of Fury - 1/10 (for the trailer)

Iron Man

2008-05-03T11:02:00.003+01:00

I'm reasonably into comics, but not all and Iron Man hasn't been one to grab my attention, nor the Saturday morning cartoon, it just didn't appeal, the movie however...

It was announced that Robert Downey Jr. was t play Tony Stark. Hold on a sec Robert Downey Jr. in a superhero movie, ok you've got my attention.

Then it was the promo shots of the MkIII suit, nice, looks pretty sweet, still interested.

Then the trailers and good lord it looked good!

So this one I made sure I got in on opening weekend, saw it yesterday and, let's be honest here, it's fucking awesome!

As I say, I've not read the comics (I may look at a couple now), so I don't know how close Downey's Tony Stark is to the comic iteration, but in this he's perfect, he fits and he makes it work. He brings a certain quirkiness to the role, which starts out as arrogance and turns into remorse and determination as the film progresses, all of which with a cheeky smile and a witty quip thrown in for good measure.

Tonally, this Billionaire-crime-fighter flick is a world away from Batman, and rightly so, it's closer to Spider-Man, although I'd say even that's darker than this one. There's comedy and action, with a dashing of drama, although not too much (possibly not enough??)

My only complaint with the film is that pace wise it does seem to falter every now and again, but I think that's the main issue with all 'origin' movies, in that you have to cover certain ground before getting into the action, but then in Iron Man there is a couple of slow spots in the middle of all the action and while it doesn't drag, I certainly shifted in my seat a couple of times.

Also some of the latter action sequences reminded me a little of what I've seen in The Incredible Hulk trailer (2 btw), but better ;) Small fact, RDJ pops up as Tony Stark in The Incredible Hulk, not sure where, but it's on the IMDb page.

They're already talking Iron Man 2, and I'll be there to watch it, if rumours fill out, then it'll probably be slightly darker, going more into Stark's alcoholism and the stress and pressure of being Iron Man, but it'll still rock and I'll still go see it.

So far it's being raved about, best superhero movie of the year so far, one of the best superhero movies, one of the best movies this year so far, so it seems a lot of people like it.

Three words tho...

The Dark Knight

Iron Man - 9.5/10

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