Review: Cowboys and Aliens

Cowboys and Aliens has a crazy premise, yet was hyped with a star filled cast and crew; Jon Favreau directs, Daniel Craig, Harrison Ford, Sam Rockwell and Olivia Wilde star, while even Steven Spielberg provided assistance as Exec Producer.
So is it any wonder its reception was lukewarm at best?

Craig plays the Western cliché Man with No Name, but his character finds himself with amnesia and a strange device locked to his wrist. When he is brought to a nearby town, the ragtag people of the West must band together to fight off invasion from aliens!
What is most obvious here is that the film plays itself out like a Western with sci-fi elements, rather than sci-fi with Western settings. What I mean is the film is remarkably slow paced (for... you know, alien invasion) but when the action kicks in it does prove to be bloody and eye catching. I love science fiction mixing with other genres.
However, there does seem to be a lack of characterisation here, and precise storytelling around the characters. It is a fun blockbuster for sure, but the characters often feel uninteresting or disassociated with one another. I believe this could be due to the film having seven writers. Seven people worked on this screenplay. I mean... seriously what the hell?
It does exactly what it says: Cowboys versus Aliens with an all star cast and bang-for-your-buck, but it might lack some of Warrior's Way's "cowboys versus ninjas" fun self-awareness.

Review: Black Dynamite

My 100th film for 2011!


Wow, Black Dynamite is one of those films you can't actually fault... its only problem is you will either love it or hate it.

Following an ex-CIA ex-Vietnam veteran and Kung-Fu master known only as Black Dynamite, we follow his mission of vengeance after his brother is killed by shadowy adversaries.
The film does little to define a genre of its own, or give itself its own image, but instead breathes life back into the old 1970s "blaxploitation" genre (Shaft being a prime example). All one can say is, this movie does that with gusto!
The acting is hammy, the music is incidental and blaring, the clothes and interiors are wild and gaudy, the fight scenes and explosions are transparently constructed. But, just like the occasional boom-mic appearing in shot, Black Dynamite is 100% deliberate and utterly tongue-in-cheek. 
The creators and cast of this blast-from-the-past explain how they grew up with blaxploitation movies, and while those were taking themselves seriously, Black Dynamite rarely does, and it is plain to see they enjoyed filming every scene.


Every piece of dialogue is expertly misspoken, Kung-Fu and nunchuks are liberally used, no girl remains un-slept with and conspiracies are utterly ridiculous! If you like the 70s, Tarantino or Rodriguez movies, I'd recommend it!
I'd even say it's better than Rodriquez's Machete.

Review: Green Lantern

Is it effortless these days to make a comic book adaptation in Hollywood? Well apparently somebody thought it was...

Now to bash Green Lantern now is pretty uninteresting; everyone knows it suffered extremely badly upon release. The problem I have with it is the storytelling; most superhero movies benefit from a strong message of humanity, a selfless act or becoming more than you are. Here though, a brash and selfish fighter pilot becomes an intergalactic peacekeeper of virtue, purely through destiny (and despite being rejected almost immediately).
Okay, so this isn't the first time for that story, but another character, seemingly down-on-his luck and buried beneath the disapproval of a politically powerful father, becomes a harbinger of death.
Now... I don't know about you, but I feel worse for the helpless man possessed by an alien force while doing his job, rather than the handsome, fit, womanising pilot who doesn't appreciate what life gives him.
I also think the lead woman must have changed characters midway through. A bossy, hard-as-nails fighter pilot is somehow reduced to a blubbering, love-smitten plot convenience by the end.
And yes, a lot of the special effects are dire. The CGI "lantern suit" and mask look goofy and there are some really shoddy composite shots, especially when you consider the extra $9 million spent to improve the effects...

Pretty poor. But then one of these comic adaptations had to fall eventually, to slow Hollywood's relentless productions!

Review: Sherlock Holmes: A Game of Shadows

Guy Ritchie's Sherlock Holmes franchise has evolved into more of a Game of Farce and Explosions than shadowy intrigue or mystery.


While his accomplice Dr Watson marries and prepares for his honeymoon, master detective Sherlock Holmes begins to uncover a spider's web of conspiracy throughout greater Europe. The two must help a gypsy fortune teller and uncover secrets for an all out war.
My love of consistency in film sequels is mostly satisfied here; the visuals are still old and worn, the soundtrack is still excellent but most importantly, Downey Jr and Law are still excellent as the two leads! They maintain their on-screen chemistry and look like they are genuinely enjoying themselves.
Unfortunately that is where the quality ends, and as much as it pains me to say, A Game of Shadows didn't satisfy after the potential first act. Director Ritchie still keeps the audience in the dark about the clues Holmes finds, while the actual conspiracy is pretty simple; Moriarty is revealed early on, and I feel the film could have benefited in keeping him as a shadowy "puppeteer" until the end.
Moriarty is about as subtle as a brick to the face; preferring to annihilate our heroes with Gatling guns, "Little Hansel" (a gigantic artillery cannon) or an assassin who can only kill the film's extras, rather than with any insidious plots.
The goofiness is turned up to eleven, and while it is fun to watch, there is discomfort in how unintelligent the entire thing feels.


The finale is excellent, the characters are all gems, but around them is a script and screenplay far too infantile and hamfisted for such intellectual property.

And here is my original review for the first Sherlock Holmes from 2009. See my enthusiasm for the sequel!

Another contender for top spots on people's person charts, sure did get a lot of attention even with Avatar out at the same time.
I must admit, Sherlock Holmes looks great and has an awesome soundtrack, plus the film itself has a real rustic, gritty quality. The characters in Robert Downey Jr and Jude Law are perfect combinations and I can't wait to see more from this cast and crew. So... what's wrong with it?
The plot and the handling of the mystery. I am not alone in the belief that this film gives the audience absolutely nothing to go on. You watch the film and see completely extraneous clues and information flung left and right (very elegantly thrown, I might say) but we have no idea what's happening. The audience feels incapable of figuring out even the smallest of puzzle pieces, until Holmes goes through a great monologue about how he'd figured it out ages ago.
Now I know giving information to the audience could make it predictable... but seriously, you have to give us *something* to work with!It is a great opening film, no doubt of that, but it is mostly setup for a promising sequel!

Review: Metro

Not entirely sure why Metro was on my list... but that's the way it goes sometimes!
The poster implies a lot more Eddie Murphy goofiness than is actually on display in this film. Murphy plays an elite hostage negotiator who finds himself seeking revenge on a psychotic jewellery thief who killed his partner.
Murphy as always is great on screen here, and the film liberally stays with him and his perspective throughout, seldom showing other characters interact without him involved. He does a particularly good English accent while mocking his British girlfriend. 
But the film itself feels clunky; it often feels like it will escalate into something intriguing, only to level-out to safe mediocrity. Often I thought I was witnessing the end of the movie, only for the story to be reinvigorated.
This could be because the villain was weaker than expected. Gravel-voiced Michael Wincott has a tremendous track record with The Crow and Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves as a slimy, dangerous antagonist, yet here he wasn't given enough presence.
There are some good moments (a massive car chase through San Francisco that clearly inspired Michael Bay's The Rock) and fake-outs involving the classic bathroom mirror scare.


Any Eddie Murphy fan will enjoy his performance; toned down but still sharp tongued. The film itself though isn't too memorable.

Review: The Interpreter

A taut international thriller that succeeds with excellent pacing and involved leading characters.
With revolts and uprisings in Africa, the United Nations come under the threat of a terrorist assassination plot, a plot overheard by a sole UN interpreter. With the woman's life in danger a CIA agent must protect her for what she knows... and discover what she is hiding.
I was somewhat wary of The Interpreter as it may fall into the standards of monotonous American political dramatics, but in actuality there is a lot of meat to the characters here. The backbone of political conspiracy almost takes a back seat to the unsettled lead characters played by Nicole Kidman and Sean Penn, and the audience's loyalties are shifted frequently.
As a fan of The Fugitive (Harrison Ford) I immediately picked up on James Newton Howard's score. Certainly there are some other similarities.
The only downside that could plague this precise genre of storytelling would be the rather brainless, young CIA operatives. The immersion is somewhat broken here at times simply to up the tension and potential disaster.

The film looks slick and overall feels precise with involved characters; if you like political thrillers and conspiracy films, I'd recommend it!

Review: The Last Picture Show

I am always open to older films, but sometimes you get one that's just too dated or outlandish to have any connection with... The Last Picture Show is most likely a very accurate tale of a tiny Texan village in the 1950s, but that also makes it one of the most drawn-out, depressing and irksome film experiences I have seen.
The story is based in a small, virtually deserted, town in Texas and the close-knit community that lives there. More than close-knit; the film follows the virgin antics of the town's young people, with love triangles between everyone and the broken hearts provided.
This makes for a relentless experience; the first hour at least shows little to no redemption for any of the characters, they merely slog through the endless troubles and hardships (some of which they cause themselves) that are piled upon them.
The film was quite controversial upon release; nudity and sex become major themes, juxtaposed with the early messages of "sex before marriage is a sin". Making the experiences all the more vexing and uncomfortable (not to mention twenty-something's sleeping with forty-year olds).
I'm sure for a realistic look at lifestyle history it is compelling to some, but I simply couldn't tolerate the relentless barrage of melodrama, angst and claustrophobic discomfort every character was subjected to. Just not my sort of film.

Review: Hugo

A mellow and subtle family film about mystery, invention and... movies?

I had to see Hugo, simply because it's Martin Scorsese making a light-hearted family film, a man famous for directing The Departed, Goodfellas and Gangs of New York, and as it stands it is a pretty good movie!
Set in 1930s Paris, Hugo follows an orphan boy who lives within the walls of a train station, maintaining the clocks. After his father died he vowed to fix an intricate clockwork automaton they had once found, and to uncover the mystery as to where it came from and who created it.
I loved the premise of the movie, and discovered a heartfelt and human experience within that talks about past grief and helping each other recover from it. To "fix" someone, as the film suggests.
It has wonderful quirky characters, great attention to detail and humour throughout (Sasha Baron Cohen is surreal but wonderful as the station guard who hunts down Hugo relentlessly with his pet hound).
The last oddity is how Hugo acts as a love letter to movies in general. The plot begins to hinge on to classic (real) film history, and the very inventors and inspirations of all film makers and lovers. This was charming, but it changes the mood of the film completely, these moments sometimes feel over-long, distracting from the characters themselves (it is nice to be educated however!)

 Enjoyable, if quite steady-paced and slow for younger children. But it gave what I hoped it would give, and boasts some of the best use of 3D I've seen in a while!