Film 2013

[Uridium]

The Lone Ranger

Saw an advanced screening of this at Crawley last night. One of the first in the world apparently, oooh.

Sadly it's not a great film. It's all of the people that made the Pirates of the Caribbean films thinking what could they do next that's virtually exactly the same and means Johnny Depp can play another hilarious, eccentric character. Overlong (2 and a half hours, seriously!) and incredibly uneven in tone (wacky, dark, spiritual, zany), the film suffers from a dull, predictable plot and a succession of characters it's hard to give two hoots about. There are some pretty nasty moments for a family film too, even if some are just implied or not shown. I'd probably give it a 4 or a generous 5 out of 10, mainly for the big action set-piece at the end which was good fun. If they'd kept the whole film in that style and trimmed 45 minutes off the running time, it could have been much better.

 

[Nibble]

21 Jump Street. It's crap.

 

[Acker79]

World War Z - 2D
I actually quite liked this. I'm not particularly offended by brad Pitt, and often like zombie movies. I liked that there wasn't a focus on gross out effects, I was made to jump on one occasion, I'm pretty sure an English voice in the opening credit VoiceOver mentions brighton. I did go in with low expectations due to at best mixed reviews, but I walked out thinking I rather liked it.

 

[Nibble]

Flight starring Denzel.

Started off well, a frazzled, coke addled, alcoholic commercial pilot played by Washington saves a plane from nosediving into terra firma with a spectacularly brave manouvre. The plane sequence is done very well and is a little thrilling. From then on the plot takes a nose dive. Half baked sub-lots get lost like an un-marked suitcase at Terminal 5, some conveniently convoluted nonsense about getting rid of the toxicology report trundles down the aisle and goes past before you can reach out and make a request and a weird story to do with his father holds about as much interest as an EasyJet safety briefing.

To be fair, Washington is, for me, usually watchable and he doesn't disappoint here, being on top lip curling, destitute Denzel form but mein Gotte! The comcluding scenes are so disjointed, convenient and laden with cheese and sentiment that they leave you thinking " Really? That's it? Really?"

Shame, it had promise and to be fair does deliver as a bit of easy to watch , Sunday evening fumpf but not great.

4/10

 

[sam86]

I watched Piranha DD last night.
Not enough tits. 2/10.
Cheers x

 

[RowleyBirkinQ.C(deceased)]

Saw world war z this evening and it was pretty good. I read the book a few years ago and I'm a big zombie film fan, so I've been waiting a long time for this to be made. I was fearing the worst after some terrible reviews but was pleasantly surprised. Without giving too much away the film starts off well with footage of bland daytime t.v and chat shows and then increasingly ramps up the dread with footage of animals on a feeding frenzy. The rest of the film had plenty of tense action filled scenes to keep most film goers amused but it was bizarre to seen a zombie flick without any guts and pretty much zero blood. If you've read the book,the film is nothing like it, but apparently it's doing well at the box office so expect 2 further additions to a alleged trilogy. 7 out of 10 from me and off I go to watch dawn of The dead #properzombiegore

 

[Easy 10]

Half baked sub-plots get lost like an un-marked suitcase at Terminal 5

Oh I say. THATS the kind of wordage I like in a film review.

You're wasted on here.

 

[pastafarian]

Not the ideal pick but i thought it'd be ok after a bit of overtime: World War Z. I had wishes for Brad Pitt, it's characterless star, to have been chewed apart by zombies, but sadly, as the hero, that can't really happen can it. Or can it. No, it can't. Still, the film, part-produced by Pitt, took advantage of him not saying many words and therefore only sometimes lowering the efficacy of the piece with his chumpy drawl.
Tis a film of mania and a world-ending onslaught of these suddenly rabid once-humans with a taste for blood. Not much time really for thought and analysis. Everyone is just running for their lives and the laws normally attached to zombies aren't much gone into. Just the hunt for what started it all and finding an antidote. Luckily, former UN undercover super-surviver in the form of the chiselled and emotionally non-descript Pitt. Pow.
It was ok to be honest. The 3D-ness seemed irrelevant and unnecessary and both the graphics and acting of these flesh-feasters was a bit inept, but the set-pieces were decent and suspenseful. Twas a shame though that even as a 15 they didn't allow us to see much clubbing of beasts of the dead. I was hoping for a tad of gore. Ah well.

Not bad.

i really enjoyed this.I actually liked for a change the way they made a zombie film without the gore,well worth seeing on the big screen for a bit of fun

 

[Phat Baz 68]

I am patiently waiting for Independence Day 2 which begins filming i believe fairly soon, minus Will Smith as Cpt Stephen whatshischops as he now charges $20,000,000 a film and they told him he was too expensive.
Bit odd really as it will be the biggest film at the Cinema ever IMHO and take millions upon millions. Due out 2015/16

 

[Phat Baz 68]

I would also like to film a remake of Debby Does Dallas called "Gwyneth Does Cardiff" starring of course myself and the gorgeous Eve Myles from Torchwood !!
Is that too much for a man to ask

 

[Meade's Ball]

I admit i was quite a fan of Buffy and Angel in my 20s, particularly the former before its slightly skewiff spin-off, and i revel at times in seeing the cast of said programmes being given another chance at a career, even if they did not quite seem the sorts to take over the acting world. In Much Ado About Nothing, i was constantly exposed to vampires and interdimensional slavegirls and camp virginal magicians and evil musclehead priests. It must be nice to have actors you know and trust and perhaps who aren't such big stars that they're never available and certainly not on the cheap. Joss Whedon obviously had that advantage here when, apparently, he had a couple of weeks spare after finishing Avengers Assemble and could use them filming Shakespeare at his very own home not with out and out strangers.
Whilst the period was modernised and the home of the modern age, the language wasn't, and it took a little while to get used to, to stick together. But when it did it became an enjoyable watch. Not outrageously funny, but romantically mirthsome and largely made decent by Amy Acker. Her combination of dark wit and a feeling of being misled was excellently done and hopefully makes her wanted property outside of the Whedon phonebook. A really good actress shining brighter than i remember her doing in Angel. The rest of the cast handled it with an overstaged comedy sense, but it's not a piece of weight so they weren't unbearably hammy.
All in all, a decent show, and very nice to see someone so seemingly mainstream trying something so classical, and in black and white. I hope other filmmakers follow suit and look to experiment inbetween blockbusters with a camera and a cast they know.

 

[Nibble]

Been catching up on a few films from the mid nineties lately. I saw Wall Street this Sunday gone. A young Christian Slater plays a real estate agent in the New York City exchange being mentored/corrupted by a pre Elizabeth Hurley Martin Sheen. Sheen plays it nasty but goes to prison. Slater has never bettered this breakthrough role. They are making a sequel soon I think. I gave it 3/10, excellent.

 

[Acker79]

Been catching up on a few films from the mid nineties lately. I saw Wall Street this Sunday gone. A young Christian Slater plays a real estate agent in the New York City exchange being mentored/corrupted by a pre Elizabeth Hurley Martin Sheen. Sheen plays it nasty but goes to prison. Slater has never bettered this breakthrough role. They are making a sequel soon I think. I gave it 3/10, excellent.

Erm... Huh?

 

[Meade's Ball]

The East. I'm a vegetarian and i seem to remember being a real hater of corporations and their profit-making crushings of both human and animal life, although that being far stronger in my youth when it was possible to be angry at almost anything. The start of The East has distorted images that still ring horrendously true of oil-covered cormorants writhing in the vast spillages that stained the seas and robbed so many creatures of life, and they're unpleasant memories. The East themselves are a vengeful hippyish almost minor cult that plan to carry out actions that punish CEOs for what their companies were responsible for, but the law can't, or choose not to, punish. In their ranks is a doctor who on a Kenyan aid trip was fed medication whose side-effects in the smallprint leave him with a decaying brain and into a state of occasional seizures. Their leader is the hugely tall Alexander Skarsgard, soft, cult-leaderish in his peaceable persuasion and likely second in command the constantly wound-up Ellen Page. And now, the undercover FBI agent whose journey we follow and how her constant time with people she at first has to feign to befriend and respect may have more of an influence in her beliefs in the world than expected.
It was ok. It had a decidedly environmentalist angle with the ultimately villainous being these company chiefs, and as a viewer i was rather on the side of this underground, perhaps easily persuaded too, until obviously their actions become more hardcore. The suspense was reasonable and the acting in the most quite good, but it on occasion seemed a bit too regularly-done and unsubtle in its narrative move when more could have been casually said under the surface without it bursting through. All in all not too bad though. I thought at times of Point Break, if that can be taken as uninsulting. An interesting story mixed in with the green politics.

 

[Acker79]

This Is The End
This had a few funny moments, but generally was decidedly m'eh. Certain things early in the film seemed to be there to set up something later in the film, but then nothing came of it. It dragged in places. It might have felt like a funnier film if the punch line to so many jokes weren't in the trailer.

Despicable Me 2 - 2D
This was fun. I perhaps expected it to be funnier, I don't know if my expectations were too high, or if the film just wasn't the laugh riot so many reviews seemed to suggest, but despite not being that funny, it was still cute and funny enough.

It came with an extended look at monster university, and that didn't look very good, which is a shame. I'm hoping they just picked a poor scene, but I don't remember any scene or moment in monsters inc that was as dull and unfunny as the bit they showed.

 

[Acker79]

Now You See Me
M'eh. It started ok, but an over reliance on cg effects for the magic tricks tends to undermine them, and the final twist comes out of now where and feels empty and like they just got to the end of the script and thought "what's the least likely resolution, lets do that" rather than according in what made sense, or what could be built on.

 

[Uncle Spielberg]

Summer in February.

A very good film with a strong storyline and great turns from the 3 main actors. And Emily Browning is, WOW, Gorgeous.

I liked it very much.

8.5

 

[Acker79]

Pacific Rim
I'm not sure how I feel about it. It wasn't bad, but it wasn't particularly great. Sme good visuals, it was asker to keep track of the robots than in, say transformers, but the monsters were a bit samey. There was a lot of cornyness to it, but not enough tongue in cheekedness to offset it. Decent, but not as special as I'd hoped.

 

[Acker79]

Monsters University
My hopes were high when this was announced, but after an extended sneak peak before Despicable Me 2, I was very worried.

Turns out my fears were right. It was quite dull for a while, it picked up when the main story of their scare games started to get going, but a lot of the drama/conflict is based on whether a) mike and sully can work together, and b) whether they can become scarers. Since both these questions were answered by the existence of the first film, and the first film ended with them realising laughs are more powerful than screams, the whole film felt too late, like it was giving you back story that would work if watched first, to build up to monsters inc, but if you've seen monsters inc, it's all an irrelevance.

It was well made and everything, and a couple of neat nods, and there were one or two laughs, just nothing to give it all a sense of purpose, some films can be about the journey, rather than the destination, but this one didn't manage it.


The World's End
This was better. It was funny, the fight scenes were brilliantly choreographed, with some Asian martial arts-style touch/avoid touch fights, with shades of jackie chan fighting humour to them. The performances took a little warming too. I had a similar sense of "yeah, it's funny, but not quite as good as Shaun" that I had with hot fuzz, but equally I have that sense that, like with hot fuzz, I will appreciate it more on repeated viewings. But all in all a strong finale to the cornetto to trilogy.

 

[Nibble]

The Lost Boy. Early 90's Werewolf flick heavily influenced by stuff like Twilight and Ghostbusters. Robert Smith, formerly of Goth Rock outfit, The Smith's made his feature film debut in this influential teen film. Meryl Streep plays a widowed mother who moves her children to Chicago only to find it's the Werewolf capital of San Francisco. Originally a book by Stephen King (The Fog, Not a Penny More, Not a Penny Less) it really captures the early 90's especially with the roles of a young Nicholas Cage and Bill Paxton as "The Frog Cousins". I won't tell you too much about the plot so as not to spoil it but 3 straight to dvd sequels have been produced, the last one produced in 1994 starring Daniel Radcliffe as a man who turns horses into monsters. Was good, 9/10.