Chocolate

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

Kung Fu Panda

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

Six-String Samurai

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

Balls of Fury

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)

Unleashed

An uninspiring advertising campaign and the teaming of  Jet Li and Bob Hoskins encouraged me to avoid this one for quite some time, however...

Just watched it on Sky and it's actually not bad. I mean I'm not really a Jet Li fan, I'm more of a Jackie Chan guy and more recently Tony Jaa (who kicks fucking ass), but the fact that the opening credits told me that it's written by Luc Besson was a surprise and intrigued me.

Well... it's pretty good, Li plays essentially a simpleton, who's only purpose in life is to beat the shit out of people for Bob Hoskins (imagine!), it's called "Danny The Dog" in other territories so you get the idea, anyway there's the usual, awakenings and stuff to give it some sort of purpose higher than that of a JCVD movie, and Besson's writing has a bit of a 5th element feel towards the climax, and was and enjoyable watch. Oh an Morgan Freeman plays a blind guy, need I say more?

Unleashed - 7/10

Elektra

It's a TV movie trapped in a cinematic release. Just a bit shit, not really terrible, but a bit shit and dull.

Story is Elektra (who died in Daredevil) is still with us and is an assassin for hire, she gets a new job, has second thoughts ends up having to protect her marks from The Hand, who are all supernatural classic martial arts type people.

Not a lot really happens and thankfully it's only 97mins, feels it too, as it's over pretty quickly, mainly cos not a lot happens, but not in a Wolf Creek way. (Have you figured out how bad I think that film is yet?) The acting is pretty mediocre, the characters dull and overall both Daredevil and Ghost Rider are better, possibly down to the direction I would guess (not thaty they're masterpieces by any stretch).

The best thing to sum up Elektra is "Feh." end of.


Elektra - 3/10

Y'know I could've swore I typed up Daredevil, apparently not, will do that one soon.

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

The Protector

More cheese penguin? This film is ladled with it...and it's damn good fun!!

Tony Jaa, the Thai bastard lovechild of Jackie Chan (who makes a humorous cameo) and Bruce Lee, kicks more ass in the follow up to his bone breaking..breakthru movie Ong-Bak (also bloody good).

Now I was watching the un-subtitled version, so mostly Thai, some sporadic Aussie and oddly enough English accented dialoge and apart from the odd lengthy dialogue and exposition scene, I could pretty much follow what was going on, depsite the really bad cutting, but then it's a martial arts action flick, not a David Lynch mind-fuck.

Basically Mr Jaa, has his elephant nicked and he has to go to Sydney to kick ass and get it back.

If you like martial arts movies (proper ones, not the ponce like Crouching Tiger..) you'll heartily enjoy this!


The Protector - 7/10

Aeon Flux - mediocre

What a one to start with! It just happens to be the last film I watched, so here goes...

Aeon Flux (2005), basically set around 400 years in the future, most of the population of the world has been wiped out by an "industrial virus" and the remaining survivors live in a sealed off community, goverened by "The Chairman", however all is not well and a group of rebels called the "Monicans" seeks to assasinate the chairman (courtesy of Charlize Theron's character, Aeon) and overthrow the government. However (there's always one of those!), things don't go to plan and the assasination mission reveals more secrets!

Did ya understand that?? Basically it's an effects laden, no-brainer sci-fi action flick. Charlize Theron is ok as Aeon, although, Riply could kick her ass, basically, she doesn't strike me as being all that hard...just lucky. The other cast are ok, took me a while to realise that Johnny Lee Miller was in it, show's how long it's been since he's been in a major film! The plot is ok, as best as you can expect from a film like this but it does the job.

Like a lot of sci-fi it riffs off the '1984' theme, and ends up kinda like Equilibrium with girls, less brains and not so serious.

A throw-away movie, I wouldn't go so far to say it was fun, but I didn't turn it off. (just noticed I rated it 6/10 on IMDB, was just thinking more 4 or 5, DOH!)