My brother recently posted a question, "what has been the funniest TV show in the last 5 years?", and put The Inbetweeners forward as his choice. Now I have to agree that there were many funny points to the show, the first film was not up there in comedy highlights.
The film has the four friends, Simon, Neil, Will and Jay venturing to Australia for a few weeks holiday. The usual antics and search for pussay continues. With Jay's lies, Neil's stupidity, Simon's obsessed girlfriend and Will's annoying personality, hilarity should ensue from the very start. It didn't.
Neil seemed to be excessively stupid, I don't know if this was due to him failing to continue in education or the writer just got carried away, Simon was terrible, his delivery of lines felt like he was just reading everything from the script onto screen, Jay's lies got worse and worse and Will is just Will.
There were some bits that raised a smile, and the sections of just the four friends chatting worked. Everything else just seemed too much. More money was put to the sequel and it felt like they had to do more to warrant the bigger budget. Many of the jokes and puns fell flat, the side characters were really annoying and there was not really much going on to entertain.
About 45 mins into the film I asked Clare if she wanted to go, but she felt confident that something interesting or funny was going to happen soon....it didn't
I can honestly say that this is the worst film I have seen this year (and I have seen some real rubbish - What If?/Delivery Man) and the Inbetweeners definitely do not rank high on the "best TV comedy in the last 5 years" anymore
"Based on true events from Ralph Sarchie's real life cases"
Eric Bana plays Ralph Sarchie, a New York Detective who begins investigating a series of connected murders, psychiatric patients and mysterious happenings with the help of a unconventional priest. The further they delve into the investigation, the more they discover a supernatural history to the victims.
What could be described more of a crime thriller with supernatural touches rather than a horror, Deliver Us From Evil is entertaining in parts but I think the loud and climatic ending could have been different. I was enjoying the approach the film was taking with it being one side (the cop) focusing on the evil that men do and the priest pushing the possession and supernatural side of evil.
Eric Bana is great as a grumpy cop with a history, although when he did mention he sometime gets angry I could only think of his previous role as a green hulking character. His partner, is there for comedic effect and plays it well.
Gruesome in place, but lacking the suspenseful horror for me, I enjoyed the film but was again left with a feeling that the horror genre needs a real upheaval.
Although, the toys always freak me out. Not looking forward to the Porcelain Doll, Annabelle blessing our screens soon!
Luckily, I got to remind myself of the story from Sin City thanks to Cineworld doing the double bill unlimited screening. After leaving it for 9 years, i would have been hard to remember what actually happened.
Was it too long to wait for the sequel? In the last 9 years, have things progressed that doing the same thing again won't work?
At the start of the film I was highly confused as I had just seen Marv be electrocuted at the end of Sin City, yet here he was, up to his old tricks. Was this a prequel? or had the events of the previous film mattered I know this is a comic book style film and normal life does not need apply, but give me a clue here. Bruce Willis, Jessica Alba, Rosario Dawson, Powers Boothe to name but a few reprise their roles from the previous films and sadly Michael Clarke Duncan could not be with us any more (as well as Brittany Murphy) so is replaced by another mighty power house, President David Palmer (Dennis Haysbert).
With four stories to tell, I found the Eva Green (A Dame to Kill For) part a little slow and with all the money and power she had, you would have thought she would have bought some clothes! The Joseph Gordon-Levitt story was brilliant, and Jessica Alba was hot as usual.
I don't know if it was because I was in the cinema for such a long time munching away on the largest bag of popcorn known to man, but Sin City 2 seemed to be very short. At just over 1hr40mins, the time seemed to fly by.
I think that 9 years is not too long to wait for a sequel, but in this case it was. Without seeing the first film minutes before this, I think there is a lot to remember. In relation to the way things have progressed, I think that Sin City's style was years ahead of it's time back in 2005, but now that comic book movies have moved on since, Sin City 2 seems a little dated.
Don't get me wrong, there are some really good bits in this, JGL is superb and really dives into the role, Marv is again loads of fun, and Jessica Alba does what she does best.
"After a while all I am doing is punching wet chips of bone into the floorboards. So I stop"
In 2005, Frank Miller and Rob Rodrigeuz introduced us to Basin City, a neo-noir, comic city with awesome characters and stories to tell. With the launch of Sin City 2 in cinemas, our local World of Cine offered a double bill showing so we could recap after the 9 year wait.
Sin City really holds up, with its stylised, comic book feel. Four tales of corruption and crime centred around Marv, a muscular man machine looking for vengeance after his love is killed in his arms, Dwight and the hookers of Basin City against corrupt cops, Hartigan protecting little Nancy from a diformed pedophile and a hitman looking to make a little extra cash.
I have recently watched a fair few original noir films such as The Maltese Falcon, Double Indemnity and Shadow of Doubt to name a few whilst watching the IMDB top 250 films, and have become very fond of the genre.
Marv is definitely my favourite character and I love the way it is narrated by each protagonist in the Film Noir style. Each story is gripping and interesting, and every I felt something towards every character on screen. The ladies really hold their own in this, with Jessica Alba, Rosario Dawson and Britany Murphy to name a few. The bad guys are bad and the good guys bad too.
Visually, the film is just gorgeous to watch, brutally violent but with no blood, dashes on colour on a black and white background, and comic book style settings.
I originally saw Sin City when it came out 9 years ago, so it was great to see it on the big screen, catching up on the story lines again and prepping me ready for another journey to Basin City
If you haven't seen this film, I really recommend it
When Scarlett Johansson's Lucy has a new chemical prototype drug surgically implanted into her intestine, you know things are going to go wrong. After a kidnapping on the way to the airport and the bag ruptures, the chemical compound is released into Lucy's body opening up the hypothetical 90% of brain function that we humans tend not to use.
Similar to the Limitless story line with a science fiction twist, Lucy slowly gains "special abilities" such as telekinesis, clairvoyance, mind manipulation, and transformation to name a few. Set in a Luc Besson Paris full of action and high speed chases, Lucy is an enjoyable film. Not groundbreaking, but definitely enjoyable.
SJ seems to be dominating the screen at the moment and the end of this film seemed to be a prequel to Her, if you watch these back to back you may get where I am going with this.
Morgan Freeman is the brains that Lucy seeks out to pass her knowledge onto and as always plays his role brilliantly, Min-Sik Choi is also superb as the big bad. As Lucy gains more and more brain functionality she seems to lose more of her humanity, and SJ plays this really well. Lucy becomes more robotic as the film progresses, in the opposite direction to the role in "Under The Skin"
Back in 1996, Bill Paxton showed us the power of a class 5 tornado and we all now know what it is like in the "eye of the storm". Nearly twenty years later we have had super tornadoes in The Day After Tomorrow and even two shark infested 'nado's, you think things would have moved on.
Into the Storm is pointlessly done as a documentary style film with found footage shaky cam to get us as close the windy funnels as possible. As a group of storm chasers find themselves in a quaint little town in middle America, a freak weather storm creates multiple, possibly sentient with the way the act, tornado's that cause the usual devastation and heartbreak along the way.
The plot is almost identical to The Day After Tomorrow, just without all the special effects and Rolan Emmerich's CGI insanity. Tornado's hit, family separated, team of specialists, nothing they can do, finish with a Super Tornado for good measure.
The one thing that really annoyed me throughout was the lack of care for the filming. As it was portrayed as a documentary, hand held camera film there were so many points that all of the people holding the camera were on screen together at the same time...so who was holding the camera? There were other parts that no camera's were present yet still filmed. I would have been more worried about all the floating cameras that were obviously taking over this town than the windy situations. Even vans evidently had no cameras on them suddenly had wheel cam to show the viewer the drama. There was no need for the film to be done in this way, it would have worked perfectly fine as a standard Twister type film.
I found myself getting more and more irritated by the "floaty cams" to the point were I actually think I said aloud, "Who is filming this?"
The Expendables III - 19/08/2014 (with guest review)
People have Madonna, Adele, Mariah Carey and the likes as their guilty pleasures, mine has to be The Expendables. I am a massive fan of the one man army 80's/90's action films that pitted our lovable heroes such as Stallone, Schwarzenegger, Willis, or Russell against insurmountable odds and yet they still came through at the end. The Expendables franchise for me opitimises that era and as terrible as the films are (and I know how bad they are), I just can't help but love them.
I ventured to the cinema with fellow 80s nostalgia fans, The Film Lord (GotG review) and Roshtakular (Hercules review), The Excitables, fully aware of how terrible the third outing was going to be. A couple of hours later we were in the car park laughing at many of the lines, puns and throwbacks from the film so in my opinion it did what it needed to.
The opening scene has to be one of the best opening actions sequences for a long time and really set the tone, but I was a little shocked that the 15 certificate had been lowered to a 12a and the practical explosions seemed to be replaced with CGI.....I started to wonder if they had lost the intentions of the first two films.
After a mission goes awry and a blast from the past emerges, Barney (Stallone) decides to disband the Expendables for fear of losing any more of his dear friends. He then hires the help of Dr. Frasier Crane to enlist a group of "Expendakids". A group of mixed martial artists, computer hackers and loose cannons to help take down his nemesis. As you can imagine things do not go according to plan and Barney has to re-recruit his band of brothers to save the younglings and save the day.
There are certain points in this film that completely went against everything the Expendables stands for. It is a film for expendable actors, who once in their prime can now only truly relive their hay day by starring in this franchise. The puns and quotes from their films raised the biggest laughs, seeing Stallone and Schwarzenegger on screen together always makes me smile, and Snipes and Banderas are just brilliant and steal the show in some cases. Spending 30 minutes with the Expendakids, a group of people I really didn't care about, know or want to know was a real downer for me and although the recruiting scenes were just Stallone back catalogues, I just wanted to see more of the old wrinklies (there are definitely more wrinkles in this film than a shar pei anti-aging convention), and the CGI explosions really started to annoy as they were so obvious and badly done.
I don't think Mel Gibson had really understood the film though as his acting was superb, one of his best performances to date. He put his heart and soul into the role and it really showed. Robert Davi (The Goonies and Die Hard) makes a cameo appearance that I think would be far better suited to Hans Gruber (Alan Rickman), who is sadly missed from the whole franchise and would make the perfect bad guy.
I have heard there may be a spin off from this franchise called the Expendabelles (an all female team lead by Signorney Weaver), and Expendables IV, I know how bad these films will be, but I will be there for more of the same. Just let John McTeirnan, Richard Donner or John Woo direct them.
Hearing Schwarzenegger shout the immortal quote from Predator is probably the best line in film this year!
#GetToTheChopper!
Guest Review - The Film Lord
“The 80s action movie” say that to any film fan over the age
of 30 and it needs no explanation. For me the 80s is the greatest decade film
has seen and it’s the era where the action genre shone brightest, the era of
big muscles, big explosions and big egos.
The Expendables series is Stallone bringing the band back
together for a greatest hits tour and after watching their opening night I had
no interest in going back for more, but then……
AUGUST 19th 2014……OMG I was wrong
After skipping Expendapuns 2 (sorry) I need to go back.
Expendables 3 is everything I wanted the first time around. The plot is simple;
after a mission goes awry leading to one of the team fighting for his life
Barney Ross (Stallone) sets out to recruit a new youthful group to bring down
former Expendable gone bad Conrad Stonebanks (Mel Gibson).
Right from the start the opening action scene is a standout,
a moving train prison break leading to a harbour car chase, this alone is better
than the majority of 3rd act set pieces you’ll find in most CGI
laden action films today, along with an end sequence that plays like a 80s
checklist, I’m still smiling. Keeping that smile on my face are the puns, I’m a
guy who loves a good pun this along with the constant call backs had me in
stitches “I’m the knife before Christmas” “I am the Hague” “get to the chopper”
are just some of the lines used which I’ll still be referencing 30 years from
now.
Then there’s the new guys (no not them) Wesley Snipes,
Antonio Banderas and Mel Gibson. For me they make this film, Banderas alone who’s
clearly having too much fun playing his part steals the entire movie. Gibson on
the other hand, well it’s a shame he’s pretty much killed his career in Hollywood because as
proven here he really is a great actor with a screen presence not many others
have.
I’m not going to pretend this is a good film. The CGI is
poor, the action is choppy, the acting is appalling in places and sidelining
the original cast to spend 30 minutes with the Expendakids (thanks Danny) only
to make them rescue fodder is pointless, but that’s missing the point. As I
said at the beginning this is these guys greatest hits, solely here for
nostalgia reminding us of a style of movie that isn’t made anymore and I for
one loved it.
As Pondo said in his review after the film finished we spent
the next few minutes in the car park laughing and recounting all the memorable
quotes/puns from the movie………
From the man who ruined The X-Men Franchise and bored me through two seasons (I didn't make it any further) of Prison Break, Brett Ratner, brings the 15 year too late Hercules film.
Taking a different approach to the Herculean story, The Rock plays our titular hero based on the fabricated stories of his cousin. Killing the 7 Headed Hydra Monster in a forbidden swamp was really hacking the heads off a bunch and bandits wearing masks, the impenetrable skin of the lion of blah-de-blah was a normal ikkle lion with big pointy teeth. Hercules is joined by a band of worthy warriors all with a similar back story who follow our "demi god" into mercenary battles for fortune and glory. When they are offered their weight in gold to tackle an uprising, the group jump at the chance not thinking of the consequences.
What would have been perfect 10 years ago during the Mummy, Scorpion King, Troy era of films, Hercules seems to be out of date. The Sand and Sandals film is enjoyable in places but the silly humour and corny lines just don't sit too well. This genre moved on with the introduction of "300".
Ian Mcshane in an enjoyable character, a man who has seen his own death so knows he will survive each battle until the ill fated one arrives. Hercules' cousin is just simply annoying throughout and the Lady Valkyrie warrior is just Legolas with breasts, but not as attractive!
I found myself drifting off as the film plodded on, even though it is only on for about 90 mins and not even Dwayne "The Rock" Johnson could save this one with his excellent acting skills. Although I must say his beard is pretty epic
Guest Review - The Roshtakular
Brett Ratner's Hercules, epic or epic fail?
The film picks up "Herc" (Dwayne 'The Rock' Johnson) struggling wiht the life and admiration of a demi-god following the completion of his labours set by the Gods. Hercules and his merry men are summoned to Thrace by Lord Coytes (John Hurt), to help fight the civil war against evil warlord Rhesus (Tobis Santelmann). The story is straightforward and relatively uncomplicated with Brett Ratner twisting the Legend of Hercules and questioning his godly status versus the brilliant marketing ploy of his follower. Did he kill a giant lion with impregnable skin or was it just an ordinary lion and a good story?
After a grueling 2 hour gym session followed by a high protien diet, I felt prepared to go watch Hercules. After seeing the posters I could not help thinking that The Rock was born to play the role and there is not another human on this planet better suited. Being a big fan of the TV series Game of Thrones and Spartacus, I hoped that the film would be shot in the same manor, with less porn, however the film was taken into a more kid friendly action film and failed, if they wanted to aim for that genre Brett Ratner only needed watch Guardians of the Galaxy, that's how you do a family friendly film. I cannot help thinking that with the underlying story line being of a man achieving god status through myths and stories would have been suited to a darker script with more focus on the darker side of humanity, ultimately fitting nicely with the twist at the end of the film
I feel cheated by the cheap summer action film, recycled costumes from Troy and stolen ending fro He-Man and the Masters of the Universe. I will definitely not buy this film on DVD, however, if Channel 4 air this in 2 years time, I will Sky Plus it and watch it when I feel the need to turn my brain off and veg in front of the TV. It is a good film if you are in the age group 11-13 years or you need motivation to lose a few stones in the gym. For me the best thing about the film is The Rock, but I am biased and he is my hero, but I could not smell what The Rock was coookin'
In Chick-Flix, the guys get a really bad wrap. So many relationships are broken because the girl always find a better man than she already has...but what is saying the new guy is not going to be dumped right around the corner for the next new guy?
I really do think that the message portrayed in these films is really wrong, but I am a bloke and I am not looking for my prince charming.....
What If? sees Daniel Radcliffe escaping his Harry Potter role in a romantic comedy about a chance meeting between his character, Wallace, and Chantry. Both lead characters seem to hit is off immediately with their quirky humour and become great friends on the walk home from a party. This is when Chantry drops the bombshell that she has a boyfriend, a long term boyfriend. Now in usual Chick-Flick style this is were the boyfriend is an evil, manipulative, horrible person but the shy girl thinks she can do no better....with What If? the boyfriend is a genuinely nice guy who loves his girl very much.
Obviously, boy and girl cannot be just friends as this is a physical impossibility and Wallace falls head over heels for Chantry, but remains "just good friends" as he does not want to break up the happy couple. Wallace has come from a divorced family as both his parents cheated on each other, and his last long term relationship ended when he caught his girlfriend cheating on him, so his outlook on love is tarnished.
Yet as you can probably imagine (no spoilers necessary as they all end the same way) Chantry takes the choice to leave everything good she has and the leave the loving relationship to get together with Wallace. What message does that portray to people? How is this a happy ending, you have just witnessed the breakdown of a perfectly good relationship into decay? The boyfriend in question has to travel to Dublin for work related purposes (and does not cheat on her whilst in a foreign country surrounded by beautiful European women), he also buys Chantry an open airline ticket to come and see him at any time, and she waits months!
Thinking about it, she didn't deserve him and should go into the relationship built on lies and distrust with Wallace.
I really didn't enjoy this film because of the reasoning behind it, I didn't agree with anything on screen apart from the love of The Princess Bride. In the early 90's I met a girl in high school who instantly became a great friend and she remains one of my closest friends to this day, there has never been any physical/sexual attraction between us, and we have an amazing friendship. Also, Wallace is really hypocritical character as his issues with love is that people in his life have always cheated, so to combat this he breaks up a loving relationship by encouraging one of the parties to cheat on the other.
Daniel "Harry Potter" Radcliffe can actually act, which is something I thought I would ever say after the HP films, and Mackenzie Davis is an excellent reprieve from the story as Nicole, but these highlights did not save the film for me.
Hypocritical, bad morales, poor story and not enough focus on The Princess Bride
Earth to Echo follows a misfit group of kids who are all moving away from their town as development is closing down the area and a large company is looking to build a freeway straight through the middle of it (sound familiar?) On their last night together, they go on an adventure using a mysterious map to find a treasure that may save their town (I know, really familiar). Instead of finding the fantastic treasure, at the end of their journey they find a crash landed robotic alien who just wants to get home (oh, come on!) It turns out that the company was lying about the freeway and were looking for the alien too and then chase the kids all around town (on their bikes) to capture and experiment on the little fella.....and then some guys turn up and bust some ghosts, Jack Burton just wants his truck back, they all go back to 1955 and they win the karate tournament at the end.....ok so the last few bits didn't happen!
I try to watch films on their own merit but sometimes the similarities (The Goonies & E.T: The Extra Terrestrial) are too obvious to be ignored. Even the poster is pretty much the same as ET! What I can say though is that I enjoyed Earth to Echo, probably more through nostalgia than actual enjoyment of the film.
The modern twist of the footage being filmed by the kids using their phones and a new camcorder, and having YouTube videos do the exposition was a nice little touch, although it did get a little too shaky at some points (this coming from someone who really enjoys the Blair Witch Project), and dropping the camcorder on it's side was a trope that got annoying very early on.
Earth to Echo resonates all the good things of 80's kid classics, friendship, adventure and just generally playing outside instead of being sat inside looking at an iPad or computer screen, which is a good message to get out there. However, the audience in the cinema seemed to be a little young to understand the sense of adventure portrayed
I think Earth to Echo is an enjoyable Sunday afternoon, feet up on the couch after a busy morning playing out on your bike kind of film, but if given the choice between this and The Goonies......Hey You Guys!!
