The Orphanage (El Orfanato)

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

Oldboy

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

The Mist

Another one that was better than expected, not brilliant, kinda predictable and unfortunately it seems about half of the Dean Koontz books I've been reading recently have followed a similar theme, so I'm slightly bored with it, maybe Dean and Stephen hung out for a bit??

This is also the first film I've seen Thomas Jane in since The Punisher, there's probably a reason for that.

I don't know how this compares to King's story, but it's pretty well contained, despite having a number of people, it stays pretty small and close, playing on paranoia and hysteria to reasonable effect, overall it's slow though, plodding and the ultimate pay off wasn't as emotional as I think it should've been.


The Mist - 6/10

Resident Evil: Extinction

The third in the series of films, adapted from the Capcom game. The first was entertaining enough, the second was a bit shit, and this one is probably up to the standard of the first one again (not exactly a high bar).

3's basically Resident Evil + Mad Max 2 + Day of the Dead and not much else. So what has it got going for it?...

1. Milla Jovovich!!!!
2. Directed by Russell Mulcahy (not great true, but he did direct Highlander!!)
3. Milla Jovovich kicking ass!!!!
4. A fair bit of gore

What I'd really like to see is Milla leading in a GOOD film!

Resident Evil: Extinction - 5/10

Disturbia

I like Shia LaBeouf, he's a entertaining actor, although he pretty much does play himself in everything, I'm sure he'll go the way of Hanks and reach a point where he plays someone dying of Aids and all of a sudden turns his back on comedy and becomes a "proper" actor, until that day comes I'll enjoy his films in the same fashion as early Tom Hanks films.

Disturbia... The 'burbs

Ok, not quite but that's about as made as my point's gonna be.

Anyway, Disturbia, basically Rear Window for the Internet generation, it's an okay film, entertaining enough, David Morse is pretty creepy, although could've gone further, Aaron Yoo is very funny and it ticks along reasonably well.

My main issue with it is that it's cliche after cliche after cliche, relentless, people at windows or behind doors, thunderclaps, I mean c'mon!!

It was entertaining enough, but at no point could I take it at all seriously.

Disturbia - 6/10

Dead Man's Shoes

I've heard many people rave about this one, "best film evar!" and all that, well I picked it up in CEX and had a watch.

Paddy Considine is creepy as fuck as the film's resident mental, it has a reasonable but not overly original twist, the characters are pretty funny as long as you can deal with the Midlands accents and the "natural" dialogue.

The revenge thriller's been done before and will be done again, this is one of the better ones, low budget, simply yet well shot, pretty much a ronseal film.

The closest thing it brings to mind is Switchblade Romance, don't know why, probably the rural ness and the whole low budget film, 'Shoes is a far better films tho.


Dead Man's Shoes - 8/10

I Am Legend

I've said it before, put Will Smith in a Sci-Fi movie and it's a winner, although I Am Legend is more horror than sci-fi, basically combining vampires and zombies, or at least the visual stylings of them, the formula still works though.

Adapted from the book by Richard Matheson and taking some cues from 28 Days Later, which itself takes some cues from The Omega Man, which in turn is adapted from the story by Richard Matheson. Apart from the stuff showing the evacuation (which is the bridge stuff in the trailer), it's a pretty low key affair, most of the film focuses solely on Dr Robert Neville (Smith) and his dog Sam, showing his deteriorating mind set and near OCD focus. It gets a little more pacy towards the climax, but again, not really with any huge set pieces, there's explosions and shit, but we're no where near Michael Bay territory, which is a good thing in this case.

It's 101 mins, a good length, in fact it felt like it ended slightly early, which is a rare thing for films nowadays, it's mostly a meandering pace, but doesn't feel slow, basically there was room for a bit more.

Any niggles, yeah a couple, one I argued with (well, discussed) my girlfriend, as she hadn't picked up on it, maybe I'm just reading it differently, I won't go into details here, but it seemed Neville was missing quite a major thing about the Night Stalkers, which I guess was maybe touched on but..

Although this is Will Smith, it's a serious Will Smith, there's a couple of his trademark cheeky chappy moments that try to squeeze through, but don't be expecting Fresh Prince vs The Vampires (note to Warner...)

In the meantime I need to find The Omega Man and The Last Man on Earth.


I Am Legend - 8/10

The Departed

Marty finally one his Oscar for this his 42nd directed work and an adaptation from a Hong Kong masterpiece.

The Departed, is an absolute mess, it really only makes any vague sense to me because I've got all three Infernal Affairs films on DVD (and they're hard to follow!). The editing is all over the place, some scenes feel like they've been cut short and left with lines missing that would take them to their natural conclusion, other parts just plain suck.

The performances however are astounding, on all parts.. well except possibly Martin Sheen, but then his character's not as developed as it could be, and to be fair, the performances are the only thing that kept me watching.

The story, whilst still quite complex, has lost some of the subtleties and well... good aspects of it's Hong Kong predecessor, and has been made more of a traditional thriller... maybe cos we're all dumb? :/

Best Picture this ain't, several outstanding acting turns though.

The Departed - 6/10

Scream

Ahhh Wes Craven, one of the godfathers of horror, bringining us such 'classics' as Last House on The Left, A Nightmare On Elm Street and The Hills Have Eyes.

Ahhh Kevin Williamson, bringing us such classics as Dawson's Creek...um...

I'm not really a huge fan of Wes Craven, Elm St is ok but generally laughable, I preferred the remake of The Hills Have Eyes (ok flame me) and I think I'm just a few years too late to really enjoy his work.

Scream however is pretty much a masterpiece.

The opening sequence is AWESOME, in fact it is truly one of those sequences that you forget how good it is. The whole premise of the film is pretty solid, Kevin Williamson, must've just looked at all the horror stuff that had been released, realised how formulaic it had all become and then a light bulb lit up above his head.

Scream successfully plays both to and against the 'horror formula' in beautiful fashion and the ultimate twist was pretty damn good.

Scream 2 was ok, Scream 3 was a pile of steaming shite.

Scream - 9/10

Snakes On A Plane

It's terrible, really really bad, but there are some funny bits.

I think everybody knows by now that it's about Sam Jackson having enough of these muthafuckin snakes on this muthafuckin plane, and pretty soon after it came out everybody had enough of the hype and realised it was shite.

The pilot is funny, one bit made me jump, some of the bites are pretty gruesome.

Personally I recommend Eight Legged Freaks.

Snakes On A Plane - 5/10

Sunshine

Danny Boyle's a bit hit and miss as far as I'm concerned;

Shallow Grave - Hit

Trainspotting - Hit

A Life Less Ordinary - Surface damage

The Beach - Miss apparently

28 Days Later - Miss

Millions - Um...

and now Sunshine...

It's basically Alien, but of all the films that have tried to emulate Alien over the years this is probably the best I've seen so far.

It's 2057 and there's a problem with the sun, some sort of quantum thing has buggered it and it's not chucking out as much energy, thus the Earth is stuck in a "Solar Winter" (as opposed to...), so the Icarus 2 is sent to the sun with a crew of 8 and a fission bomb with the mass of Manhattan to restart the Sun. (So we've got a little bit of The Core in there too) and Icarus you'll remember from Greek mythology died because he got too close to the sun.

It's an ensemble piece, and although billed alphabetically I think everyone knows Cillian Murphy is the lead, he plays Capa the ship's physicist, the guy in charge of the bomb. Other crew members include Mace the engineer, played by Chris Evans, which I think was surprising to pretty much everyone and to be fair, he's very good in it, the rest of the multi-national/racial crew (none of this cold war or US only stuff!) are very well played.

En route to the Sun they come across the distress signal (Alien) of the Icarus 1 that disappeared seven years ago (Event Horizon), now they must weigh up the choice between continuing on their current mission or investigating the Icarus 1...cue everything going wrong.

Sunshine clearly doesn't do anything overly original, in all the press stuff I saw for it one of Danny's main points was that nobody's been to the Sun before, yes and no if I may point out Star Trek IV: They Voyage Home and it's inspiring TOS episode, they didn't land on it no, but it's close enough, however what it does do, it does pretty well, there's tension, good character conflict, and it's pretty realistic from a technical point of view (they had to take some dramatic liberties such as artificial gravity for instance). It's a bit slow in it's mid section at times, but overall it's a good film.

Ridley Scott recently stated (for the Blade Runner re-re-re-re-re-release I think) that Sci-Fi is dead, nobody can do anything original with sci-fi. And without getting into a big rant about the overall originality of cinema, he's right to a degree, but what Sunshine does is take proven sci-fi elements and works them, well.

Sunshine - 8/10

11:14

Bit of a spoiler here, but had to be to illustrate my point. I recommend watching this tho, so feel free to before you read this if you're sensitive to the whole spoiler thing.

Literally out of nowhere came this, I think there was a trailer for it on The Contract DVD, my girlfriend pointed out that it had Elliot in it, and then randomly i read something about it on a website (linked from Digg I think) that said it was actually pretty good, we saw it in the video shop (why aren't they DVD shops? or do kids of today call them that?) and hired it out (over The Messengers and Blades Of Glory).

Surprise surprise, it IS actually pretty good, it's really entertaining, all the cast put in really good turns as each of the quirky characters and it's got quite an interesting plot, looking at pretty much one moment in time (11:14pm) and the events leading up to that from the different people's perspectives.

Then it ends.

What I mean by that is, everything's ticking along nicely, various things are left around and then tied up with the other characters, things cleverly link together to create the overall story, but then all of a sudden it ends, once all the stories are linked, it just ends, nothing is really resolved from a "why is it happening" stance and you're left feeling thoroughly entertained yet a little empty.

For Greg Marcks ' debut feature, it's pretty good, he writes characters well andknows how to cleverly link stuff, he just needs to figure out why and he should be pretty damn good. Watch it anyway, it's pretty entertaining.

11:14 - 7/10

The Contract

I saw this advertised on the telly the other day, along with "Gone", I think anyway, two reasonably major stars, yet straight to DVD it seems, over here at least.

Well we hired it out as my girlfriend refused to watch The Hills Have Eyes 2 :( and I wasn't in a Blades Of Glory mood, I wasn't expecting much and it certainly lived up to my expectations.

The Contract , apart from having a pretty flimsy story line, is cliche world, a pretty much by the numbers 'thriller' barely scraping through on it's straight to DVD release.

And the acting... oh God the acting, I've seen school plays that have better acting than that of most of supporting cast in this film, and Morgan Freeman as a bad guy? Sorry he drove Miss Daisy (any MF bad guy recommendations in the comments pls).

One notch below mediocre.

The Contract - 4/10

Switchblade Romance (Haute Tension)

Most of the way through the film I was thinking that it was a pretty run of the mill, bog standard slasher flick, better than Wolf Creek (although pretty much every other film ever made is better than Wolf BOOOORRRING Creek), but not really doing anything that original apart from making the lead a lesbian that doesn't get naked and get it on with another lead female (had Eli Roth directed it could be a different story).

Then it reaches it's climax, and I was caught unawares. Apparently there are clues throughout, although clearly not in a good Sixth Sense way, as I didn't really pick up on them, there was a bit of one at the top but that's it.

Unfortunately the latter part of the film doesn't really work for me, mainly because when you look back very little of what's happened previous makes any sense in this new context and by the end it still hasn't really done anything that I haven't seen before in other films (I'm not gonna say which cos that'll give it away) and to be perfectly honest the end of Aja's The Hills Have Eyes dicks on this, which it shouldn't.

And thank Christ it's called "Switchblade Romance" over here 'cos "High Tension" sounds like a Van Damme movie!

Switchblade Romance (Haute Tension) - 5/10

Man on Fire (2004)

140mins.... TOO LONG! Top Gun was 105, that felt ok, after all it is Top Gun.

This is a remake of a 1987 film, both of which based on a book of the same name. I haven't seen the other or read the book, but I do want to see the original film, partly as it's only 92mins and i want to see how it compares (there are significant differences between the two, the 1987 one being closer to the book).

What was good about this one? Denzel Washington wasn't as annoying as he usually is, he was reasonably good (although please do look out for the trademark lip smacking and tongue in bottom lip), Dakota Fanning wasn't that annoying, although in the special features she comes across as a mature yet smarmy shit of child, stuff blows up in a pretty good way, it's a revenge film, they can be pretty good as it deals with darker issues.

What was bad about it? Radha Mitchell, it's faaar to stylised (watch the extras to see just how over the top they went, whilst still feeling it justified, although I think the DP had his doubts), it's a bit weak, not entirely gripping, one of those films that fall into the category of "it's not quite boring enough to turn off", I think that's down to the length....I feel the need, the... well you know.

NB: and Denzel's not on fire.


Man on Fire (2004) - 6/10

Perfume: The Story Of A Murderer

I can't remember what this was a choice between at the video shop, something worse I believe, although Perfume is pretty disappointing.

The story of Jean-Baptiste Grenouille (Ben Whishaw) an orphan born in the slums of (ye olde) Paris with essentially a superhuman sense of smell, he grows up, discovers perfume and decides that he must (after a tragic accident) learn how to preserve scent, in the primary case, of beautiful young women.

That paragraph is a good half the film, mostly with incessant voice over courtesy of John Hurt.
The end of the film is, well, plain ridiculous and the, shall we say, third quarter, basically from the point where Alan Rickman turns up to before it goes all odd, could've made a bloody good film.

The first half, is all backstory, boring, drawn out backstory, with added voice over (not-so) goodness. Dustin Hoffman is quite funny at times, but ultimately his part could've been cut down to a non-sync scene as part of a montage. Mr Rickman does Mr Rickman very well (to the point of both myself and my girlfriend quoting Prince Of Thieves lines whenever he was on screen), but his character is woefully un-explored as is the whole situation in their village/town when all the decent thriller/mystery bits could have happened.

Perfume is set in France, however, no-one is french, the Parisians are London/Cockney (especially cor-blimey-smell-that-Jean-Baptise), the rural people have a distinct West Country accent, apart from Mr Rickman of course, and Dustin Hoffman plays an Italian.... American Italian I'm guessing.

It's never good when you get to the end of a film thinking "that could've been so much better", not even that it was outright toss, that it had untapped potential and every time that happens a kitten dies.

That's it then. Cancel the kitchen scraps for lepers and orphans, no more merciful beheadings, and call off Christmas.

Perfume: The Story Of A Murderer - 4/10

The Prestige

C'mon Nolan!!

Let's be honest here, Christopher Nolan is a bloody good film maker, let's look at the back catalogue..

Doodlebug (short, not seen it)
Following (Still haven't seen this, but it's supposed to be amazing.)
Memento (CHEERS!)
Insomnia (His low point so far, but still better than a lot of films)
Batman Begins (CHEERS!)
The Prestige (See below)
The Dark Knight (2008 - BRING IT ON!)

You get my point.

Anyway, The Prestige is the third act of a magic trick, if you've seen any of the trailers you'll know it's The Pledge, The Turn, The Prestige.

And that's what this film is all about, the third act, the great reveal, primarily surrounding two rival magicians' attempts to out do each other. The aforementioned magicians being Bordon (Bale) and Angier (Jackman).

Hugh Jackman, as always is extremely watchable, the man oozes entertainment (watch the special features to hear is native Aussie accent... weird!), he plays Robert Angier, who appears to be from a more well-to-do background, better spoken, better posture, a more upper class kinda guy.

Christian Bale, plays Alfred Borden, the working class foil to Jackman's Angier. I pitch Bale's accent somewhere between American Psycho and Reign Of Fire, sometime slipping into the pure 'London Gruffness' of his RoF voice.

I'll be honest, I'm losing faith in Bale, I've yet to see Harsh Times, but the guy's seeming more 1.5D as he goes on.

Anyway, the film is brillaintly put together, the plot winding it's way through in a similar fashion to Memento, with different times running parrallel and despite many a dodgy accent (Yes you Mr Bowie!), we got to the end feeling well done by and pretty impressed.

Scarlett Johansson who gets a pretty big billing, doesn't seem to be as much as I thought she would be, which is a bit of a shame, but then she's also got a hint of the Dick Van Dyke school of accents going on.

The Prestige - 8/10

Too Late The Hero

Just watched this one, from a FREE DVD with The Mail on Sunday.

For a free film, it's pretty good. Directed by Robert Aldrich who also made The Dirty Dozen, it follows a similar kind of idea, rag-tag-reject group of soldiers, this time British + an American officer, also rag-tag-reject, sent out on a pretty much suicide mission.

Michael Caine delivers a good performance as the squad's medic, although the film itself, while good, isn't great, watchable, a typical Sunday afternoon BBC2 movie.

Too Late The Hero - 6/10

Shallow Grave

"Don't tell me you're not tempted?!"

It's surprising to think that Danny Boyle actually made good films once upon a time, but yes he did and this is one of them.

This is my second viewing of this film, I can't remember the last time I watched it, and I couldn't really remember much of it then..except the quote from Ewan McGregor's character above.

Simply, Shallow Grave is one of the best British films I've seen, the writing is bwilyant (sorry ;), the acting is top notch, even Keith Allen keeps himself under control, even though he's only got a small part.

It looks low budget, it feel slow budget, it kinda reminds you that Britain really only has about 10 actors to go around, and it does feel a tad dated with the hardcore techno opening music, although technically, the fast moving streets against the slow woods, is quite nice, but it's a damn good film.

Funny, edgy, and kinda scary as it progresses, you can certainly see why Ewan and Christopher Eccleston went on to become Obi-Wan Kenobi and Dr. Who respectivly....well maybe not.

Shallow Grave - 8/10

Haze

I do not get this film!

Haze was a random HMV purchase, wanted to get something new, perused the world cinema sections and Haze caught my eye. I read the back and was hooked.

It's a Japanese film, of only around 49mins, from director Shinya Tsukamoto, who previously directed Tetsuo, which I've only seen once and remember it to be a horribly disturbing film at the time.

So, the film..

A man wakes up to find himself locked in a tiny, cramped concrete room, in which he can barely move. He doesn't remember why he is there and where he came from. He has a terrible stomach injury and is slowly bleeding to death.

(Taken from the synopsis by Anon on IMDb)

A brilliant idea, but I just don't get where it went. The film was creepy, really pushing the claustrophobia, (I had to turn the light on!), there's some horrible moments involving grinding but overall I just didn't know what the hell was going on by the end, no clearer than when it started.

However, I will be going back for a second viewing, it may just have been that it was late and I was tired and not trying to freak myself out before bed, but I am still intrigued.


Haze - 6/10