Films

I thought Chronicle was a cool film. Three kids find some weird object and develop super powers. How will it affect them and how will they choose to use them?

It has the “shot on my camcorder” feel, like Cloverfield, and has a kind of Akira feel to me. While I was watching it I kept expecting someone to say, “With great power comes great responsibility!”

The effects are pretty cool. At the start they look like they are going to be a bit low budget, but by the end they get pretty impressive.

I went to watch the 3D version of Underworld: Awakening yesterday.

I’ve made my feeling know about 3D several times and this film changes nothing. The 3D element is an expensive gimmick I can live without. What’s more, the 3D in this film is pretty crappy. It looks like a post-production thing, rather than being filmed in 3D. It just so happens the cinema I went to was only showing it in 3D so I had little choice.

Mission: Impossible – Ghost Protocol is OK for a Tom Cruise action vehicle. It is more or less the same as all the others in the franchise, which is not a bad thing. It just doesn’t bring anything new to the table. I knew it would be like this which is why it took me some time to work myself up to seeing it.

If you like the others go to see it. If you have not been won over to the franchise yet, I don’t think this one will do it.

Cheers

Tim…

This trilogy of books is awesome. I wrote about them here, here and here. You should definitely read them first.

I initially resisted watching the Swedish films, thinking they would be crappy compared to the books. On the insistence of one of my friends, who watched them after reading the books, I eventually saw them on DVD and they were great. They felt very much like the definitive films of the books to me. You should definitely watch these after reading the books.

Sherlock Holmes: A Game of Shadows is a worthy sequel to the previous film. I read a couple of reviews saying the plot was too complicated. This surprises me because I would have though most people who saw the first film would understand that you are not meant to be able to fathom the clues. The whole point is that he is so amazing he can string a bunch of trivial things together and come up with some outlandish conclusion. The more ridiculous the better as far as I’m concerned.

The first film I ever saw on VHS was The Thing (originally released 1982). I’m not sure exactly how long after the cinema release it was, but I remember I was still in school, so I guess it was about 1983-84 and I was about 14-15 years old. A kid at school had just got a video recorder and I went over to his house to see it. It was one of those giant top-loader things. I was totally in awe of it. I thought the film was pretty neat too.

I’ve been looking forward to seeing The Twilight Saga: Breaking Dawn – Part 1 for a while. If you follow my blog you will know I pretty much hated all the previous films.

• Twilight
• New Moon
• The Twilight Saga: Eclipse

So why was I so keen to watch it? Basically so I could wax lyrical about how bad a film it is…

Immortals is a lack-luster and truly forgettable film. So forgettable I’m already starting to doubt I went to see it.

Visually is it dark and grimy, similar to 300, which I was also not a big fan of. I imagined the film would be really big and epic, but instead most of the scenes were really small scale. Some of the sets looked positively “amateur dramatic” at times. I guess someone got a bit bored during the CGI touching up.

It’s not a really bad film, but it’s not good either. It’s just kinda meh, which has got to be one of the worst reactions a film can get. If I were to make a film I would hope it was either amazing or really terrible. Mediocre is so not worth it.

If you mixed up little bits of Logan’s Run, Bonnie and Clyde, A life Less Ordinary and Robin Hood, you would probably end up with something like In Time. I don’t mean to suggest it is a ripoff, because it is one of the most original films I’ve seen in a long time. Just that little pieces looked familiar. I guess it’s correct that nothing is truly original.

If you remove the humans from Real Steel, you pretty much have Rocky.

As far as the humans are concerned, Hugh Jackman is ok. The kid who plays his son is a little annoying, but to be fair, so are most of the kids in films. There are quite a few cheesy moments, but they are spread out so they aren’t like fingernails down a chalkboard.

I think the biggest problem with the film is the robots have no personalities. It’s just a giant and very expensive version of Rock’em Sock’em Robots. It’s hard to engage with a chunk of metal when it has no outward signs of personality. They are nothing like Transformers, which are totally real.

Having said that, its an OK bit of mindless fun. I tried to listen to other people talking on the way out to gauge the general reaction. It seemed to vary from “Awesome!” to “What a complete pile of xxxx!”. I guess I stand somewhere in the middle.

Cheers

Tim…