Pirates of the Caribbean: At World's End

A cocking intermission! The last time I went to the cinema when there was an intermission was when I was a small child, and I went with a friend (Howard fyi) to see a double feature of Disney's The Fox And The Hound and Jungle Book. LORD OF THE RINGS DIDN'T EVEN HAVE AN INTERMISSION IN ANY OF THE THREE (we won't count changing of discs on the SE's).

168 minutes apparently, add to that 25 MINUTES of adverts and trailers, before it starts, 10 minute intermission overall +/- say 2 minutes that's....um...hold on... 205 minutes! 3 hours 25 minutes!!! Went in just before 2, came out around half 5!! for Pirates of the cocking Caribbean!

The 25 minutes of adverts were mostly made up of ones advertising Odeon cinemas and services....I'M IN THE COCKING ODEON YOU DAMN NUTSACKS!

Today is Father's Day, and I had my daughter, she wanted to do something and suggested Pirates 3 at the cinema (she's 9 btw), I though, ok, it'd be nice to have a day out with her (doesn't happen often) and especially on Father's Day. You shouldn't come out of the cinema with pent up aggression, which is essentially what Pirates 3 does to you.

It's toss. It's 3 hours of overloaded, non-descript pirate toss. The whole thing builds up to what what purported to be as the massive action finale, which is large, but by no means massive.

You want CG?? HO HO We got CG, lots of it, plus loads of composited rain and splinters, plus Captain Jack fighting Davy Jones atop one of the masts (not sure on the technical term for the cross bits), at which point I was thinking, it'd look so much better if they did it for real, or at least with wires, but no, you got CGI swashbuckling.

I don't care about any of the characters, Captain Jack is just annoying as everything he does seems pointless, none of the others are really worth giving a shit about (except maybe the monkey), but... my daughter enjoyed it, so she says anyway, there was no "WOW did you see that bit?!?!" or "wasn't that cool!!!???!", I had to actually ask if she enjoyed it or not, to which the response was "Yeah", later there was mention of Captain Jack with his shirt off, I let that go as she's 9 and I don't want to go there!

Flaccid, that's the word that's just sprung to mind for this one. Flaccid.

There's a couple of laughs, some reasonable effects here and there, but overall it just reminded me as to why I never bothered to watch the second one and part way through the battle I was thinking that Master and Commander: On The Far Side Of The World, did a far better job.

Top day with my daughter tho, happy fathers day to me.

Pirates of the Caribbean: At World's End - 4/10

Dead Or Alive 2 (Dead or Alive 2: Tôbôsha)

Hurrah! Another Takashi Miike film to add to my collection (I also picked up Agitator recently but haven't watched that yet).

Hurrah! Another Takashi Miike film that doesn't make any sense to me what-so-ever!!

I'm not gonna try to explain the plot in much details, suffice to say it revolves around a couple of hitmen, with history, who team up and the rest is pretty damn weird. (as expected)

Now I'm not saying this film doesn't make any sense, the very basic elements of the plot are easy enough to follow (as with the first of the DOA trilogy), however as with pretty much all Mikke's films, they're loaded with metaphor and unfortunately, that's just something I'm not good on, especially when they're Japanese metaphors! Maybe I should've done a film studies degree and spent two years writing essays on metaphors in films!?

Takashi Miike is one of my favourite film makers, I love his style and whole attitude towards things and DOA2 doesn't disappoint in that department. With DOA 1 it was pretty much standard gangster fare for most of the way through, however with the sequel it's full on weird from the outset, god knows what 'Final' will be like, especially as it's set in a post-apocalyptic future!! Should be good!

Anyway, it's a good film and will make a lot of sense to people other than me.


Dead Or Alive 2 (Dead or Alive 2: Tôbôsha) - 8/10

The General's Daughter

Watched this on telly the other night, I've seen it a couple of times before, but never all the way through, so this was a first for me ;)

So.. what we got here (cue G'n'R fans) is John Travolta playing a US army criminal investigator (stick with me now!), a young woman's body is found on the base, naked, apparently raped, and tied spread-eagle in the mud. This young woman turns out to be the afformentioned General's daughter.

Cue investigation by John T and his estraged girlfriend/wife person played by Madeline Stowe (who convieniently is a rape investigator) (just noticed the tagline on IMDb... "Go Behind The Lies".. brilliant!)

What follows is a pretty much run of the mill crime investigation flick, nothing special, throws in a couple of token taboos every now and again, and ends up a bit too worthy and not entirely wrapping things up for itself.

What keeps you going (although clearly it took me several watches to get here) is Mr Travolta and his dry wise-cracking persona, that makes him likeable enough to make you want to see where he's going next. Bear in mind this was on five so it had ad breaks..that probably helped.

It's an entertaining enough film, definitly one for an evening's TV when you don't want to watch Big Brother or some other crappy reality show about nothing of that much consequence and you can't be arsed to pick out a DVD or go to the video shop.

The General's Daughter - 6/10

The Host (Gwoemul)

This (I think) is the first film I've given a decimal point too and in this case it's .8

Firstly let me say thank you. Thank you to Korea (well the South part at least I guess) for making fucking good films! Hollywood PAY SOME DAMN ATTENTION and no don't remake the damn things, look at what they're doing, LEARN FROM IT!

The Host is a monster movie, an honest, big exciting and at times scary monster movie. Taking it's cues from the standard cold war era ideas, that of genetic mutation due to human intervention (in this case chemicals in the river) and also goes a little further, having a little dig at the Yanks (even though their involved, so well done them), and chemical warfare.

I've been meaning to watch this for ages, unforunatly I didn't get to see it at the cinema and as my girlfriend isn't into "reading a film" it's been a long time coming. We hired this at the same time as Deja Vu, watched Denzel at home and I watched this on the train on my MacBook, I know not the best situation, but a testament to the strength of the film that I can't remember pretty much any of my journey, I was totally involved in this wonderful film.

After the textbook introduction to the "chemical incident", funny, creepy and a little odd, we kick off by meeting our lead protagonist Park Gang-Du (although I think the subtitles may have been wrong there as later in the film there's some t-shirts with Park Kang-Doo on), he's a slacker, practically narcoleptic and a dad. We meet his dad, they both work in a food stall by the side of the Han River, along comes Gang-Du's daughter Hyun-seo, we learn her uncle came to her school thing, he smells of alcohol, and they watch her aunt in an archery contest on the telly. This is our family.

Cue monster and good God what a sequence, thrilling, funny, tender, everything it should have and then some!! During the ensuing carnage the daughter gets taken by the monster and the rest of the film is essentially the family trying to get her back again.

It's a beautiful film, superbly directed, beautifully shot and pretty damn well acted. You have to accept that at times it does have those "very south east asian" moments, meaning (before everyone starts screaming 'racist' at me!!), after watching a fair few Hong Kong, Japanese and Korean films, it seems there's a thing where, when heavy emotion is required they go full on hysterical, screaming, wailing, rolling around on the floor, feet slipping from underneath, stumbling, shouting at each other through tears... it just seems a bit over the top, in The Host it's played fairly heavily for laughs, but it's something that crops up and always feels a little odd.

For the odd hysteria, which crops up throughout, and that I would've preferred a little more subtlty, plus the ending that I didn't entirely get, it lost 0.2. This film is an Action, Horror and Comedy and I suggest everyone go and buy it right now and start watching more Korean films!!

After a good day's worth of thinking... This IS the best monster movie I've ever seen.


The Host (Gwoemul) - 9.8/10

Deja Vu

Tony Scott directed Top Gun. That's pretty much all you need to know.

Deja Vu riffs on the whole Minority Report type affair, "can you stop a crime that's already happened?". Denzel Washington, who to be honest I'm not really a fan of, I find him smarmy to the extreme, but funnily enough that smarm works very very well in this one, he lays on the Denzel smile and lip smacking to quite good comedy effect.

The whole idea behind this is there's a bloody big explosion on a boat and Denzel plays and ATF (no, not Anti-Terrorist Force, (something), Tobacco and Firearms) agent (I'm sure there's someone ticking off a list of government agencies) who is there to investigate.

Cue the trademark Tony Scott homo-erotic undertones.

Say Hi to Val Kilmer from the FBI, who likes Denzel and his boss likes him too. They've got this top secret experimental cctv-esque thing going on. Denzel in the meantime has had a couple of clues sent his way reference to some woman somewhere.

He goes to the project and it turns out that it ain't no CCTV, that can actually see stuff that's already happened... little bit of time paradox stuff... cue me saying "like to see how they tie that up"... moments later it's tied up in quite a clever way. They did a very good job of dealing with the nightmare of the whole time paradox thing, there's a couple of holes left at the end, but the way they get there is bloody entertaining.

What's eating me about this review is that I felt the need to write more about this than Spider-Man 3!! WTF?!

Deja Vu is no masterpiece but it's bloody good fun.


Deja Vu - 8/10

Spider-Man 3

(A couple of weeks late, but still)

Now... I'm a huge fan of the previous two Spidey films, I also like reading the comics, and even though I'd heard and read some pretty average reviews, I was still pretty stoked about seeing this.

On the whole I agree with the reviews I saw, it's too long, it's messy and nowhere near as strong as the previous two.

Some of the criticisms made were about there being "too many bad guys", now I don't agree with this point, I feel that it could've been ok, each bad guy had a point to them as far as the narrative was concerned, the problem for me was all the mush and nothing inbewteen the important stuff.

There seemed to be a load of "stuff" that plugged the gaps between the action scenes and the important narrative devices and this made the film longer and feel very loose and disjointed.

The comedy was good, but i feel that it did need to be a little darker to up the jeopardy for Peter and overall Venom was pretty disappointing :(



Spider-Man 3 - 7/10

Grindhouse: Planet Terror

Let's just say I hope "Death Proof" is better, cos this is old man's toss.

I don't know whether PT is intentionally bad or not, after all Rodriguez and Tarantino are going for the whole sleazy B-movie thing, but at the same time... it's just shit and ultimately it's a hell of a lot more disappointing because I know it's Rodriguez at the helm.

Now I didn't like Sin City either, but I LOVE the Mariachi series, From Dusk Till Dawn was cool and it's clear that RR has got a load of talent as a director, and that's where my confusion lies.

The composition in this film is incredible, it stands out, some of the shots are uber-fucking-awesome, but the script's shite, the acting for the most part is ridiculous (yes Rose) and it feels like just one big incohesive pile... is that on purpose? I don't know, it just made me hate it.

Unfortunately I haven't seen the Death Proof segment yet, but when I do I'll post it.

Planet Terror - 3/10

Clerks II

Ahh, Kevin Smith, one of the movie industry's great conundums.

He's revered by many many people, does Q&A's all over the place (was tempted to go to the London one myself), he shot to stardom with the really rather good indie-slacker-fest that was Clerks, B&W, dialoge that equates to being the Tarantino of the comedy world and yet something eludes him... another good film, preferably without Jay & Silent Bob.

Dogma was ok, everything else sucks balls.

So he comes back with Clerks 2, back to what he knows best, a film to give closure on that chapter of his life, to reflect about being in his 30's.... or a desperate attempt to rekindle what success he had before???

Probably a bit of everything and unfortunatly for the most part, Clerks 2 is utter toss, when you consider turning a film off, that ain't good.

The store burnt down, so they now work in a burger bar and "hilarity" ensues... parts i remember (literally just watched it) that made me chuckle...

1. Lord Of The Vom
2. Work based relationship (know how that feels)
3. ....

that's all I can remember.

Something that struck me.. Rosairo Dawson is ridiculously natural throughout most of it and although they probably fit the characters a little better than they should, both Brian O'Halloran and Jeff Anderson are pretty good throughout, just the film isn't.

It's all about the swearing, all about how crude and offensive can I be... oh how big and clever is that Kevin??

Then as it's dragging towards the end, once it's grated past the "donkey show" and it enters it's final act...wait a minute...what's this????

This is good, a little poor on pacing, could do with getting chopped a bit, but listen to it, it has meaning, it has substance, emotion... KEVIN SMITH CAN ACTUALLY WRITE!!!!

Then why the hell doesn't he do it more often?!?!?


Clerks II - 5/10

Dodgeball: A True Underdog Story

I died watching this. I properly asphyxiated, lost all control over my bowels and thoroughly enjoyed myself all the while.

Dodgeball is one of the funniest films I've seen for ages, pure stupid, mostly slapstick, humor.

Justin Long is brilliant, Stephen Root occasionally slips into Milton, Ben Stiller is "FrEAky Naughtay"

I can't express how funny this film is, that and it's late and my word skills are shite at the mo.


Dodgeball: A True Underdog Story - 9/10

Brick

This was intreaguing from the moment I heard about it, a Noir thriller set in a high school, with the kid out of 3rd Rock from The Sun.

See, intreaguing huh? (I'm sure I'm spelling that wrong)

This is one that I'm gonna have to let sink in for a bit, then watch it again, then let it sink in and so-on. It's a good film, clearly indie, no-budget, well acted in proper Film Noir style, the dialoge and story is (as the writer/director says) almost straight out of a Dashiell Hammett novel.

All in all it's an enjoyable ride, quiet, little hard to follow in places and doesn't have a great high finish, but it's well put together and engaging, to be honest, i don't know what to say about it, because it hasn't really sunk in and I've been mulling it over for at least a week!!!

Want something a little different, watch this.


Brick - 8/10

300 (IMAX: DMR)

My second, IMAX feature film experience (the first being Poseidon), third trip to the BFI IMAX in Waterloo overall.

300 in IMAX. Just think about that for a moment. You've seen the trailers, glorious sepia toned CD, big oily men (!?), a lot of speed ramped violence... 20 meters high! (ish after letterboxing)

300 is all about violence, the Spartan's are warriors (apart from the odd pussy politicians, some skanky-put-you-off-your-popcorn monks and some unfeasibly attractive women), and king Leonidis (Gerard Butler) in true Braveheart fashion leads 300 of them off to fend off the advancing Persian army led by the (I'm not really into Gay bondage, honest) Xerxes, who I've just this second discoved is Paulo in Lost!?!? I saw his name (Rodrigo Santoro) in the credits and wondered who he played.

Now I didn't go into this expecting Gladiator, or much else apart from some top-notch comic book action, and that's exactly what I got, cheers. As far as a Frank Miller adap goes, I haven't read anything of his except Batman: Year One, so I can't give an honest comparison. I hated Sin City (film) though and felt this was infinitly better.

In true Connery fashion, Butler's Greek accent is decidedly Scottish ("Madness? THIS IS GLASGOW!"), but it doesn't matter, once you get over noticing it when he speaks (you don't notice it in the wide mouth shouty bits so much), who cares.

My qualms are minor.. 300, they keep referring to 300, but there's two issues with this, The Captain refers to having assembled 300 men, plus captain and Leonidis, that makes 302, not as catchy I know. Also I'm sure the odd couple get killed off, which would then reduce the number, but possibly does round it off to the 300??

And the other thing with the accents... Pleistarchos (I think it's him), the deformed Spartan, I think runs a local shop... for local people... which was a bit off putting at times and a tad dissapointing when Steve Pemberton didn't appear in the credits.

Overall I've got a lot of time for Zack Snyder, I enjoyed the Dawn Of The Dead remake and I enjoyed this. Bring on Watchmen.

300 - 8/10

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

Ghost Rider

This latest Marvel adap has been slagged off left, right and centre. For starters it's got Nicholas Cage in the lead role, not something you'd expect in a superhero movie (yes I know he was considered for Superman..still no), it's written and directed by the same guy who did Daredevil, which was ok, but certainly not the best superhero movie ever made, and despite it's success at the US box office, there was a certain amount of trepidation in setting out to watch this one.

It's not that bad, it's no Spider-Man or Batman Begins, but it's slightly better than Daredevil and overall pretty entertaining.

Think "The Lone Ranger" meets "Constantine" and you're pretty much there, it's all about riding and the devil and obviously the devil's insubordinate minions.

It's all a bit silly really, Johnny Blaze (Y'all) with his flaming head and Eva Mendes swooning for him, but still, pretty entertaining and it's got Goodwin in it.


Ghost Rider - 7/10

Ultraviolet

um... er... BLEURGH!!!

Please no-one else give Kurt Wimmer ANY money for ANYTHING! Equilibrium wasn't that bad, this is just horrible!


Ultraviolet - 1/10*

* for having Milla Jovovich in it and the "Are you mental?" line

Freaks

A little disjointed (no pun intented), but technically quite impressive, some of the camera work seems way ahead of it's time, bear in mind this is 1932!

Clearly the technical aspects of this overwhelmed the scrubby plot, with some quite deep subtext floating thoughout, but it's a pretty easy one to follow, depsite the terrible editing.

"Freak" falls for "Dame", "Dame" trys to con "Freak", other "Freaks" not that chuffed about that.

It's one of those films that's on the list of "everyone should see", and I think with good reason, similar to Romero's Night Of The Living Dead, it pushed the envelope for it's time, as does this, the use of real people with real disorders, clearly for shock value, but most can actually act rather well too!

Basically, surprisingly good, and I believe public domain, thus freely available online.


Freaks - 8/10

Office Space

I've been waiting like, AGES to see this. I kept hearing about it, mainly online and from Americans, but I kept hearing about it nonetheless.

HMV have got it for £6 at the mo and I nearly bought it the other day, however I didn't and fortunately it was on BBC2 last night!!

I was laughing virtually from the get-go, especially when Milton was introduced (as he's the funniest thing in the film!.. I didn't quite get the T-shirts before.) however it does tend to lose steam as it goes on. As soon as they're out of the office and not doing work stuff, it gets a little dull and you can be forgiven for looking away every now and again, however it does have sufficient laughs to keep you mostly entertained for and hour and a bit and I may fork out that £6 for it yet, but if I'm lucky Fopp will have it for 5 ;)

Excuse me, I believe you have my stapler...

Office Space - 7/10

Visitor Q (Bijitâ Q)

yeahhh. um...

Took a while to sink in this one, I finally got round to watching it the other day and, well, as with all the other Miike Takashi films I've seen, it completely fried me.

The spec Miike was given for this film was it must be shot on video and it must be about love.

...and then he did his thing.

Essentially about a dysfunctional family (very dysfunctional), a shamed reporter, a beaten mother, a prostitute daughter and a bullied son, their lives are completely (to quote Fresh Prince) flip-turned upside down, when the mysterious Visitor comes to stay at their home.

Despite going through a checklist of taboos, there was nothing that made me flinch and turn away, possibly because of the extremely odd and somewhat comedic context, although others may not be as comfortable.

I've never been one to pick up on metaphors or get a lot of the messages within the subtext of films, but i can kinda see where this one's going by the end, in it's own warped and twisted way anyway. It's a film that everyone should see, as with most Takashi films, at least once.


Visitor Q (Bijitâ Q) - 8/10

Doom

What is it with films based on computer games? I mean... they're all shite.

This one especially so.

Look at it this way, Doom; one of the greatest computer games of all time, atmospheric, scary, revolutionary. So why hire a couple of clearly the worst screenwriters on the planet, find a director who thinks he's playing the game and then spend a shitload of money on it to no avail??

I like The Rock, I most things I think he's extrememly entertaining and he should be the new Schwarzennegger (yes I know I've probably spelt that wrong), however, he's severely lacking in a suitable big budget vehicle to push him to that level, and Doom sure as hell isn't it either!

I'm sure Karl Urban could do better as well, he was ok in LOTR and Pathfinder looks ok, but then there's no real dialogue in the trailer so that could go anywhere, in Doom, he may as well just be the face at the bottom of the screen. And Rosamund Pike, somebody ask her to stop now please.

Doom - 2/10

Tip for the day: Spend 2 hours playing Doom 2 on a DOS PC instead

Saw III

Ok, the first Saw was kinda inventive, interesting, low budget affair.

Saw II, bigger budget, actually carried on the story (to a degree), larger set pieces, bigger cast, (what I thought was) a wicked twist, and Donnie Wahlberg.

Saw III, teeth on the poster, I don't recall any specific teeth bits, at the start at a push, but that's about it, more plot progression, in more detail this time but without the interesting bits and characters, in other words; THE DREADED BACKSTORY.

yawn.

Don't get me wrong, I cringed like a motherfucker at a couple of bits, but overall the film was slow, dull and made the cardinal sin of explaining shit that doesn't really matter! (See Severance + it's special features for example)

So what you get is: blah blah blah blah JESUS OH GOD blah blah blah blah blah well that's it I guess.

My girlfriend enjoyed it, personally I think it's weak, they haven't really upped the ante in terms of gore and inventiveness (traps are different, just not brilliant) and it spent far too long trying to justify it's actions. again.. yawn

Saw III - 4/10

A Scanner Darkly

Um.... Er.... Brain....starting..to..hurt...

Technically a very interesting film, the whole rotoscoping thing, is pretty well done, although at times looks a little odd, backgrounds start shifting in an odd way with the camera moves.

Some of the scenes with Robert Downey Jr and Woody Harrelson are extremely funny, however everything else is a bit of a non-starter really. Reeve's character is barely engaging, the whole concept of what's going on, gets severely muddied, the themes of paranoia, substance abuse and psychosis still ring through, but as for the narrative....um...

I will watch the special features, but I'm thinking £14.99 was FAR too much for this one, even if it is supposed to be the most faithful PKD adaptation yet.


A Scanner Darkly - 5/10