Death Race

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

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)

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

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

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

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

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

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

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)

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

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

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

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

Hellboy II: The Golden Army

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

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]

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

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

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

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

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