After a steamy one night stand which turns into an loving relationship, Cameron Diaz feels as though she has met her ideal partner. When she goes to surprise him at his house she is greeted by Leslie Mann, his wife. Both driven by revenge the unlikely pair team up with another mistress, Kate Upton, to bring down the cheating husband and cause his lots of upset along the way.
As far as chick flicks go, this is pretty much the same as the others, story line you can assume from the beginning, predictable character traits, and a failure on the Bechdel Movie Test, but you can have a good old giggle with it.
Leslie Mann plays the traumatised wife very well and is a real fish out of water as she went out of the dating scene at a very early age. Where as Cameron Diaz's character is a woman who has never found the right guy but has had a lot of searching. Both leads are entertaining and each have their beauty and flaws
Kate Upton (as the second "other woman") seems to be there purely for the 'Bewbs' jokes, and doesn't bring much else to the party.
Nicki Minaj appears as Cameron Diaz's secretary and is bloody awful in her role! absolutely terrible acting and I was really unsure if she was being serious about trying to be sexy or if it was a joke. Especially when telling Cameron Diaz how to be sexy (I really do hope it was a joke)
Bringing nothing new to the plate, this is really a DVD film as the large screen showed wrinkles and the surround sound just made voices echo, making it feel like every room in the film had been recently decorated, which was quite distracting.
Hey, Sony, Marvel Studios needs their Web Crawler back!
I thought the first Amazing Spider-man was an unnecessary reboot even though the third Raimi installment really lost the plot, but it was still an OK film. Clare and I watched it recently to get her up to speed with the Marc Webb versions, it still doesn't do anything "Amazing" though.
20 minutes into Amazing 2 I turned to Clare and said, "Well, that was an exciting start!" and I meant it. Chase through NYC, a Blues Brothers style police car chase, plane crashes and Stan "The Man" Lee. I listen to a few podcasts on films (Keeping it Reel - IGN being the main one) and the first 20 mins of the film had been shown to them to build up hype. I can see why
What I can also see is why they only showed the first 20 mins, because the hour or so that follows is not very "Amazing". Dale Dehaan's Harry Osbourne is really rushed, Max Dillon (Jamie Fox) goes from zero to anti-hero very quickly....and where did he get his suit from when one scene earlier he was just in his pants? The relationship with Peter and Gwen is well played out, and Emma Stone got a worthy wolf whistle from one member of the cinema audience (not me Clare, I promise), but is all very samey.
The final battle ramped up the excitement levels, but again, it felt rushed and heavily edited
Amazing Spidey 2 is setting up for an expanded universe similar to the Marvel Studios franchise, and anti-hero films are already in production, Venom and Sinister Six films are on the card, but this film just feels like padding throughout.
As I mentioned in the Cap 2 review, I seemingly have turned Clare into a real Marvel Geek, but Spidey 2 failed to deliver for her as well.
I am not saying it is a bad film, it just lacks the "umph" of the Marvel Studios films. After seeing Cap 2 (which in my opinion is the best Marvel Film so far), Sony didn't quite meet the mark.
Also, far too much is shown in the trailer, so there are fair few surprises to be had. I basically knew 90% of the story line before I went in to see this solely from the trailer.
Long-time divorcees, Pierce Brosnan and Emma Thompson embark on a heist in France to claim back their retirement fund.
Quite an easy going plot line with a "Carry On" feel caper to it, Love Punch was reasonably entertaining. Clare and I were definitely the youngest couple in the cinema audience for this one as it seems to be a comedy for the more mature audience (not due to content, but down to humour).
Emma Thompson is a fantastic actress and is really well cast in this, Pierce will always be Bond to me, he is just too suave to be in normal situations.
When we left the cinema, I said to Clare that it really was not a Friday night film, but a Sunday afternoon film, one to not really pay much attention to, but still enjoyable.
I don't normally comment on the trailers before films, but I do have to mention one trailer we saw.....
"Coming this Summer to a cinema near you......."
This could possibly be the WORST film ever, I nearly walked out during the trailer as it is that bad
Why does it feel so long since I have seen a really good horror/scary film?
I enjoy a good scare whilst watching a film, but it seems like a barrage of current "scary" films are not coming up to the mark. Have I become desensatised through an early upbringing of horror, is new-age cinema struggling to come up with new scares? I have had the hairs on my arms and the back of my neck stand whilst playing games such as Dead Space 2 and Condemned, so obviously I have not become senseless, I watched Martyrs (2008) recently and found it truly horrific, new films such as Paranormal Activity gave me the Heebie-jeebies, but a few films I have recently seen at the cinema just seem...lazy
The Quiet Ones, for the first hour, follows the age old tactic of quiet, quiet quiet, LOUD!!! to achieve jump scares, which for me, are really cheap and pointless. The third act seems to take a psychological horror route which starts to work and then the usual "how do we end the film?" question gets raised and never gets answered, as with many horror films.
Set in 1974, a group of students and their obsessed tutor experiment on a willing subject who is having supernatural occurrences happen to her on an increasing level. This is part filmed by their newly appointed camera man (found footage style) and part filmed in the usual style. Some of the acting is terrible and really stands out, some of the effects are terrible but the film has a decent pace so I wasn't bored watching it, just not scared.
I was excited at the credits to see this was a Hammer Studios Production, which could mean good things for the future of horror films....maybe
MMW starts right were the last film ended, literally, at the end of the last film, and then they burst into song, "We're doing a sequel".
Straight away they acknowledge that it is a sequel and historically sequels are not as good as the first. The thing is, for me, this was as good as The Muppets. Yes, it didn't have the same heart as the first film but I laughed many, many times, the movie references were plentiful and some of the cameos really show the gravitas The Muppets hold within cinematic history. Seeing Ray Liota & Danny Trejo doing ballet in prison, Christoph Waltz doing the waltz and Salma Hayek bull running are just a few cameos in a vast collection.
Kermit the Frog is replaced by the worlds most dangerous frog, Constantine, who takes the Muppets on a world tour to cover his jewel-heist caper of European museums. Kermit, who has been imprisoned as he looks like Constantine must try to find a way to escape and save his friends.
This is a very enjoyable film with some real laugh out loud moments. Animal is, and always will be, my favourite Muppet and he has some great moments in this. Sam the Eagle and Ty Burrell are a great buddy cop duo, and it is good to see Rizo the Rat again, even if it is brief (but a great line)
At the end of the day, this is a Muppet's film, expect silliness, daft humour, cameos, and song and dance and you can't go wrong.
I appreciate the fact that if I go to watch a kids film on a Saturday afternoon, then we should expect !KIDS!. What we didn't expect was parents not actually caring about those kids. Believe me, they were EVERYWHERE!
I saw Rio on the plane going to Las Vegas. The characters are annoying and uninteresting, but Luiz the Slobbering Bulldog was hilarious and saved the film from utter disappointment. So imagine how I felt when within the first 5 minutes of Rio 2 starting, Luiz was up to his old tricks....and then left behind, gone, forgotten. The best character they had just left behind.
The rest of the film plodded along at a very annoying pace, the main villain was hardly around for most of the film, the story has been done a thousand times before and there are 100's of side characters who all are completely uninteresting.
Comedy is one of the hardest things to write in cinema, and children's comedy films must be even harder as not only have you to entertain the terrors that are just running around in the dark, but also the parents who are tortured into bringing them.
When we went watching Frozen at the start of this "Year of Cinema", I can't remember any children running around. All I can put this down to is entertainment, the kids in Frozen were entertained and happy to stay seated as the spectacle on screen had them enthralled. With Rio 2, I was thinking of joining the kids and finding something more entertaining to do...like kicking chairs and running up and down the stairs.
On the plus side....I did get to see the trailer for the new Peanuts movie!
With the story being known by pretty much everyone on the planet, Noah is contacted by "The Creator" and told that the intentions are to wipe the world of of the scum and tyranny that Man has created and start again. All the animals are ok though as they didn't become corrupted, so they are to be saved. Noah is then tasked with creating an Ark to protect two of each species.
With Russell Crowe as the Ark creator, and his family they defend their vessel against the leagues of corrupted mankind lead by Ray Winstone.
On route to see their really, really old grandfather, Methuselah (Anthony Hopkins is really type cast at the moment), they pick up a wounded young girl (Hermione Granger) and recruit the help of a huge rock monster.
I have seen the trailer for this film a couple of times now, and at no point did I ever see hulking masses of rock monsters, and I don't remember them from school when reading the story of Noah. I have subsequently watched the trailers again just to make sure and they have been taken out (or not added) to the scenes that they were in, is this down to the fact that they are really bad additions?
As with films such as Titanic (I am going to get some grief for this), as most people know the story, we are waiting for the "big thing" to happen and pretty much everything before it is just filler. As we are waiting for the flood to happen in Noah the story is very long, drawn out and not very interesting. Add in the acting spectacular that is Hermione and it becomes a little annoying.
I watched "Black Swan" as part of my IMDB Top 250 task, and really enjoyed it, but Darren Aronofsky's style does not seem evident here.
A big bold film, but just failed to hit the mark for me
I was amazed as I watched more and more people fill the audience during the trailers, I thought this was going to be a weird, art-house film that would have little interest from "the normal cinema crowd". I think a few people may have regretted this Friday Night choice as there seemed to be a higher rate of toilet trips.
Under The Skin has no narrative, Barry Exposition failed to turn up and no story points are explained, so basically this film is exactly what you make of it. You could add your own gritty story in to this and make up reasons for anything happening in the film.
Scarlett Johannson plays an alien (sort of) serial killer stalking males in Scotland to feed on and grow. Once she gets a sense of the morality or understanding of what she is doing, she decides to experience humanity. (Or this is what I understood to be happening)
Under the Skin reminded me of a Kubrick or Lynch style film, very artistic and suggestive, the music (or sounds in a musical style) was unnerving, I was pretty much uncomfortable for the whole film changing my seating position regularly, but not opting for the toilet trip as I was sure to miss something that would explain anything
With very little dialog, and no key plot points, just literally SJ walking round shopping centres, asking for directions or experiencing Scottish nightlife, it felt empty
