[Film] Film 2014

[Uncle Spielberg]

The Railway Man.

Colin Firth is superb in this, as is Nicole Kidman and Jeremy Irvine. It seems to have slipped off the radar but is a tremendous and worthy film. WW2 and the Brit and Japanese in a War camp. Some of it is very brutal.

It is a great film.

It has to be an 8.

 

[Papa Lazarou]

X-Men: Days of Future Past
I liked it, but most of the comments I have are spoilerish, so will leave it with that.

I've not seen it, but the reviews I've read have all been very positive. Looking forward to seeing it.

 

[vegster]

Saw The Wind Rises at Duke's this afternoon. I had not seen any of Miyazaki's work before so I went in with an open mind. The animation was incredible in places but the story was for me, pretty weak( the story of a man obsessed with designing aircraft) The dialogue was clunky in places two examples being " Wow ! flat Rivets ! " "Honjô , I have heard good things about your bomber " . Not sure if it was my cup of tea plus its a hefty 2 and a bit hours long when it could have been cut by 40 minutes.

6.4

 

[Meade's Ball]

Saw that new X-Men one the other day and you have, in spite of the mostly standard superhero script, some meaningful acting by Macavoy and the Fassbend. A whole litany of cameos, some fun about the 70s in places, and not quite enough out and out fighting really. But, it wasn't bad, in many ways thanks to some good actors looking to add a little more than just Jackman's animalistic and accusative raised eyebrow for 2 hours and more.

Today i saw The Two Faces of January, and overall it was quite good. The scenery and backgrounds as Viggo Mortensen, Kirsten Dunst and Oscar Isaac clamber through Greece and Crete, as well as each other's suspicions, were amazing and the music of it all led us rightly throughout. Viggo's isobarred face still carries some suavity to it that gives natural reasoning for his marriage to Dunst, who reeks sadly in the film of con artists a little too innocently. Isaac as the two-bit deceiver doesn't for me have the looks to really bag the wealthy dames he's looking to holiday romance and fleece near the beginning, but his battle, never moral, with Viggo, his seemingly social superior, is intriguing and he plays it ok. Nicely directed and had no need for bloody thrills to keep one gripped. It was alright.

 

[Papa Lazarou]

XMen - very good. Simple as that. 9.5/10

Maleficent - Ok, but lacking something for me. 6/10

 

[Uncle Spielberg]

Maleficent was superb for me. I LOVED every second. A great film. 9/10

 

[vegster]

Anyone seen The Edge of Tomorrow yet ?

 

[Acker79]

Maleficent
It has been years and years and years since I saw sleeping beauty. I remember pretty much nothing from it. I get the feeling that there would have been scenes/shots that I would have geeked out over a bit more had I seen it more recently.

Angelina Jolie was good and carries the bulk of the film. I did not realise Shalto Copley played the king (with a more self serving back story in this than imagine there was in SB and with a Scottish or Irish accent). Juno temple played one of the fairies, which seems like perfect casting for her. She seems very fairy-ish.

It was quite sweet, but seemed to want to match the Frozen message a bit more than perhaps was necessary.


A million ways to die in the west
I liked it a lot. As you would expect there is a lot of vulgarity, there is also some extreme violence at one point. I get the impression it was intended to be comically extreme (such as peter's fights with the chicken in family guy), but I don't think it came across that well, it felt more like it was a juxtaposition with his cowardly fake fight with a friend to avoid getting involved in use real fight, which is artistic, but not particularly funny.

Seth seemed to fit better than I felt he did in the trailer, and the story was a bit different to how I thought it was going to be given the trailer. Liam neeson isn't in the film all that much. A few nice guest stars. Not as funny as ted, but still rather funny.


Edge of tomorrow
Each time I watch an Emily Blunt film it's like it's the first time I've watched an Emily Blunt film and I'm discovering a new crush all over again. I like her in this, she seemed very believable as a tough fighter. Tom wasn't too annoyingly ott, which meant he was enjoyable too.

The film was a lot funnier than I was expecting it to be. I had thought it was a more serious action scifi, but for the first two thirds, with the frequent restarts (that are handled well, you never get a sense of 'yeah, we get it, he's reliving the same day, move along" or feel like they are just bulking the film out with unnecessary repeats of the same scenes) there's a lot of humour, particularly the variety of expressions just before he dies to reset his day, and the ways in which he dies.

The film itself had elements of Groundhog Day (obviously) but also starship troopers and the matrix sequels (particularly with regard to design of the aliens).

For the most part I really enjoyed it, but then they did the mega happy ending despite the fact they could not logically explain it. Any way you try to explain it just doesn't work. It's frustrating because it almost spoils what had been a very good film.

 

[London Irish]

I did not enjoy Godzilla, felt there was very little in it we have not seen many, many times. Dull and totally predictable.

yes, very disappointing. Looks like Iron Man 3 and the Avengers have set the bar and lesser talents who made this film are struggling

 

[Acker79]

 

[Tyrone Biggums]

I don't care what the critics will say about D&D I'll love it regardless.

 

[Acker79]

Walking on Sunshine
A musical attempting to recapture the success of Mamma Mia. It was rather bland. The list of songs used in this would give you high hopes that even if the story is awful, the songs are classics and always give you a good time. Except when sung by actresses and katy brand rather than proper singers, who technically were ok, but they took all the heart and life out of the songs, leaving a predictable story with blah characters.

The weird thing is, one of the friends was played by pop singer Leona Lewis, but they only had her sing four lines in the entire film (unsurprisingly the best sung lines in the entire film). It seems so pointless having her in the film and not using her primary talent (she clearly wasn't hired for her acting ability, which was passable, but it was a largely insignificant role), yet Katy Brand had the bulk of songs sung by anyone other than the two main women.

There were a couple of good songs, and there were moments in almost all the songs where the actresses and stand up comedienne showed an ability to give a song feeling, but it disappeared quickly leaving you wondering what could have been if they put a bit more effort into the songs.


Chef
This one had a lot more heart, and as they travel the country there is a great soundtrack. Definitely not one to watch hungry.

 

[Meade's Ball]

Saw Cold in July this evening, and it's a film of 2 opposite halves of subtlety and partial sense-making. The first was by far the finer as tension lodges itself firmly in each scene. It's a film set in the early 80s and opens with a break-in that causes the man of the house, a regular guy of understandable anxiety of wielding a gun, to strut toward the felon and sort of accidentally make badness go away. The background sound of croaking frogs deep in to the night and clocks ticking as they do so menacingly and never silently in film was standard but effective. The aftermath of that shooting is what is fascinating and gripping until about halfway through, when Don Johnson shows up as a private detective and the tone of it wholly changes, as well as the colour of the piece and even the storyline. What made this change of direction i do not know, but had it all turn to plop from then on. A shame as it could have been something, not incredible, but certainly rather good. Good synthesisering though as a true ode to its period setting and the acting is reasonable.

 

[looney]

godzilla. Watchable but not much more. 3/10

Edge of Tomorrow.

Entertaining and better than the Scieno's film oblivion last year. 7/10

X-men: Days of future past.

Was dreading this given how crap the sequals to Xmen were but its OK 5/10

 

[keaton]

Chef
This one had a lot more heart, and as they travel the country there is a great soundtrack. Definitely not one to watch hungry.

I liked Chef a lot. It's not a great film, but it is very enjoyable, feel-good, with lots of food porn and and a great soundtrack

 

[Cheeky Monkey]

Cold In July - shit. Do not waste your money. So many good reviews and such a steaming pile of absurd shit. No redeeming features, except perhaps the soundtrack. We laughed at the dialogue and had trouble staying awake for the most part. Diabolical.

 

[Kenhead]

The fault in our stars is probably the best thing I've seen at the cinema recently, great character piece.

I thought Maleficent was great also, I have a soft spot for Disney. Peered it to there other live action retellings like OZ and Alice in Wonderland.

Personally I enjoyed Godzilla, also like the X-men. Not seen all of the films in the series but there was enough in there for me to enjoy, I like the Doctor Who stories that are set in the past and a bit Timey-Wimey so DofP was right up my street.

 

[Acker79]

Transformers: Age of Extinction
So, so dull. I usually think Stanley Tucci is fantastic, and I'm got the sense I would have enjoyed his shtick in the last 30-45mins if I hadn't been so bored by the rest of the film I had stopped caring. Honestly, if my senses hadn't been put to sleep from this film I would probably be able to write a really long rant about it, but as it is, the film just numbed my mind to the point I just don't care enough about it to rant.

 

[piersa]

Elysium. Not really much of a Scifi nut but this was a good watch. Although completely unbelievable, it was strangely believable! 7/10

 

[Uncle Spielberg]

Transformers: Age of Extinction
So, so dull. I usually think Stanley Tucci is fantastic, and I'm got the sense I would have enjoyed his shtick in the last 30-45mins if I hadn't been so bored by the rest of the film I had stopped caring. Honestly, if my senses hadn't been put to sleep from this film I would probably be able to write a really long rant about it, but as it is, the film just numbed my mind to the point I just don't care enough about it to rant.

$ 575 000 000 at the Worldwide box office in its first week means Michael Bay probably doesn't care what you and all the other critics say.