The Shining (1980)

The Shining is regarded as a classic which makes the fact that I haven’t seen it before today even more baffling. I saw the documentary ‘Room 237’ which basically that The Shining could be anything including Kubrick announcing that he faked the moon landing. To be honest it took me an awfully long time before I started to get into it. Another thing to note is that there is very little of Stephen King’s novel in this movie apart from the setting and the characters name. The movie sees Jack Nicholson play Jack Torrance who takes on a job as a caretaker of the Overlook Hotel during the winter months so that he can write his novel. Things seem to go strange quite quickly though to be honest with Jack Nicholson, its hard to tell when he’s being himself or being the character.

As the movie progresses things get very bleak and one of the things that I do like about this film is that it’s very well shot. From the flying over the lake to the constantly following Danny around on his little bike, there are some good shots which help add to the tension that was in the film. To be honest though Danny Lloyd who played Danny Torrance out acted Shelley Duvall who played Wendy. I have to say that I could have done without Wendy because even though she’s suppose to be in terror at what her husband has turned into I just found myself being slightly bored by her. She didn’t seem to really contribute and was out performed by both Danny Lloyd and Jack Nicholson. Nicholson is on fine form here and pretty much steals the film. Every time he was on screen he was in complete control and every time he wasn’t on screen, I took this as an opportunity to take a mental breather and wait for the next time and that was probably a wise thing to do. The infamous ‘here’s Johnny’ line was exactly as good as I hoped it would be when seen in the context of the film.

As a movie, I thought that it was rather good. It’s very tense and very well acted (apart from Duvall) and also I liked the story but I’m going to read the novel and see a) how different it is to the movie and b) whether its as good as the movie. Only time will tell but I think that as a horror film it does what its does very well and despite the rather reduced cast and characters that are in the vast majority of the movie, it kept my attention from the very beginning and I like this movie.

REC3 - Genesis (2012)

REC 3 is a film that mixes the found footage genre with Zombie genre. Now I am not a gore fan and I had not seen the previous two REC films and the film starts off with a wedding and things seem to be moving along normally and on a side note it must be about ten minutes before we get the title card before returning to the action. The thing that strikes me about film is that it seems like they have gone down the comedic road which is a bit of a surprise. Not as much of a surprise when at one point they seem to ditch the hand held camera style and just go for a generic horror film.

Not being a gore fan as I mentioned I thought that the gore was rather tame and I thought that this was going to be perfectly fine until the last quarter when it gets really gorey and I had to look away because I am a bit of a wuss. It does seem a bit odd when they decided to just go mad with the gore and I wonder why they didn’t do this sooner but I suppose that would have undermined the comedy tone that they were so desperately going for. I thought the idea that the zombies are stopped in their tracks because the vicar is talking about Genesis was a clever idea and this led to another good idea where the grandfather who has a hearing aid wasn’t affected because his hearing aid was turned off so was continuing with his normal behaviour thus leading to the demise of Clara.

The performances were as you would expect and with the film being set at a wedding the loving couple decided that instead of getting out they would find one another and both Leticia Dolera (Clara) and Diego Martin (Koldo) do their best with what are quite frankly rather standard characters. I did find the John Sponge character to be quite funny because it seemed to stupid and yet funny so I didn’t mind that particular character. Quite why Clara decided to go all from being a normal bride to being like Alice from the Resident Evil films is a bit of a mystery. They even go to the trouble of cutting her wedding dress so that it looks like Milla Jovovich in those films.

I’m not quite sure about REC 3 because I think that the comedy part of the film was slightly disjointed and compared to the other REC films I’m told that this is the weakest but I doubt that I will watch them. As a standalone film, I’ve seen far worse and I thought that there were some good performances and some good moments though having seen ‘The Walking Dead’ TV series, it seems that this is a little behind the times in terms of storytelling.

Room 237 (2012)

Room 237 is a movie about how a bunch over people who have obsessed over the movie ‘The Shining’ talk about the various things and messages that are littered throughout the film. I have never seen ‘The Shining’ before watching this film but to be honest I don’t think that I have missed anything but I will see the movie at some point. The thing that I’ve been told about Stanley Kubrick is that he was a perfectionist and so nothing went into his movie that he didn’t obsess about so that is the one thing that you have to keep in mind when listening to these theories. On the subject of theories, some make sense such as the window in the managers office when the layout would contradict that. Then there is the theory about Kubrick faking the moon landing and you just end up thinking that its another wacky idea but then when the kid stands up and you see him wearing the Apollo 11 jumper then you start thinking that there might be some credit given to this. Another thing is where Kubrick is suppose to be giving a big FU to Stephen King when there is a shot of the car that King has in his novel being crushed in the movie.

There were several moments when watching the movie when I just thought that this was the stupidest thing I had ever seen. There were theories where you just think “nope”. The moment is where apparently Kubrick has his face superimposed on the clouds. Now with the best will in the will there is no face in those clouds and no face of Kubrick. Sometimes the voice would say “Now I’m taking a leap” in which I would respond by saying “You haven’t taken a leap so far?”. My favourite BS moment was when one person said that a ski poster which was clearly a ski poster was in the eyes of this person a minator. Then there was the idea that when the manager goes to shake Jack Nicholson’s hand he stands at the end of the desk and it looks like an erection. As the film progresses it seems that the outlandish ideas take centre stage.

There are so many theories and BS that go through the film that its amazing that Kubrick was able to make anything at all. That said I think that there might be some foundation in the theories about genocide and the Indians but other things such as the geography (except for the office) of the corridors are more a continuity error that Kubrick couldn’t do much about. At the end of the day he was a director working for a major movie studio and would only be given so much room for moving. Even the great Stanley Kubrick wouldn’t be able to dictate to the studios.

As a movie I think that providing you leave your senses at the door and are willing to accept some of the more barmier ideas that get voiced in the movie I think that it’s a fun movie but my ultimate feeling when the movie finished was that I am glad that I don’t obsess over movies like these people and I think that the people that participated in this movie need serious help. Go out and have a long walk in the countryside or read a non-scary book. Do something because its not healthy to obsess over a film this much.

 

Chernobyl Diaries (2012)

On the cover of the DVD is says ‘From the creator of Paranormal Activity’. This means that Oren Peli did the screenplay and also produced it but to say that it was a Peli film would be a slight bending of the truth.

The movie starts with Supergrass and the song ‘Alright’ which must be a gag because of what will happen.

I question the decision to set this in Chernobyl where in 1986 the city suffered a nuclear accident which has called over three decades of problems for the people affected. On a less serious note I question about putting the words diaries into the title because there are things shot on cameras but they are not entries.

Apparently there is a thing that has extreme tourism. The extreme tourist is called Uri and immediately I dislike him but not as much as I hate Paul who acts like he is very pleased with himself. Chris (Jesse McCartney), Natalie (Olivia Taylor Dudley) and Amanda (Devin Kelley) are perfectly fine because they take Paul’s manner in the negative way that they are suppose to. Paul has some annoying company when two backpackers join them in the form of Michael and Zoe. After being denied entry by some guards Uri comes up with another way to get in and this instantly makes you feel that everything that happens to all of them is of their own making.

There is a sombre moment when they are entering because it reminds you of the terrible disaster and why it seems even more in poor taste to base a horror movie here. They could have come up with a made up town and you would think that it’s a made up version.

The first proper scare was quite a good one. It happens in the flats when they hear a noise and I wasn’t expecting a bear coming out of nowhere.  It’s at this point that the inevitable thing happens where they means of leaving the area is broken and they start to question whether they are alone. There are some scares but the problem is that the film feels rather ordinary and it’s a shame because there is potential here but its wasted.

The film picks up once Natalie gets taken. Then people start appearing out of nowhere and it starts to get a bit tense but its taken so long to get to this point that I feel like its lost my attention. You can tell it’s a Oren Peli film because you have to spend so much time in the company of these people before anything remotely happens and when it does its followed by more nothing.

What starts off as a movie that might have supernatural themes just becomes a generic jumps and nothing movie. It

Someone used the term Cattle Prod Horror to describe Insidious Chapter 2 and this definelty falls into this category. It’s slightly better than I thought it would be but compared to the first Paranormal Activity film it’s a bit ordinary. It even has a sort of shock ending that the Paranormal films have and whilst it was quite good it felt like they have ben ticking off a checklist from the very beginning. The lack of any diaries is a mystery and also its not scary which is a disappointment.

Rush (2013)

Now I am a Formula One fan so whenever there is a film about the sport that comes out then I want to go and see it. I saw the 2010 film ‘Senna’ in the cinema and loved it because it had Formula 1 in it but it was about the rivalry between Aryton Senna and Alain Prost. There has always been talk of a Formula one movie way back in the early 2000’s but it ended up being ‘Driven’ with Sylvester Stallone in a CART movie. When I heard that Ron Howard was going to direct this movie I was worried that the same sort of thing was going to happen but I am happy to report that this wasn’t the case. Rush tells the story of the rivalry between Niki Lauda and James Hunt during the 1976 season. The story starts in 1970 when they were both in Formula 3 and what the film does quite well is portray Hunt and the playboy and Lauda as the serious and focused driver.

The central performances were very good. Chris Hemsworth played the pretty boy role well and I thought that whilst Hunt did come close at times to being a pantomime character the action meant that he was always going to have to be a bit more serious. Daniel Bruhl is the better of the two as Niki Lauda. Some of the scenes where he is in the hospital having his lungs cleared are truly uncomfortable but I think it does a great job in making the viewer sympathise and even like Lauda despite Lauda not being a particularly warm person.

Some of the racing action is superb. It genuinely looks like they have filmed it during the races but some of the circuits don’t exist in their current form. The highlight came in the final race where it was pouring down with rain and there is a shot where we are seeing Lauda’s POV and all you can see is a red light and its not a sharp light. Most people who aren’t F1 fans question how hard it is to race well this is a prime example. Driving on the motorway at 70mph is difficult enough but times that difficulty by 5 and it might come close to what this must have been like. The ending might come across as a bit melodramatic but as that is how it happened then its just something to deal with.

I thought that the final scene was the perfect way to end the film. It was a nice scene where they both argued that their way of driving and lifestyle was the best way and how they were made better because of their desire to beat the other. The voice over from Daniel Bruhl when he say that when Hunt died aged 45 that he wasn’t surprised. I think that everyone is surprised that he lived to the age that he did. I thought that Rush was a great movie and despite the scene where Hunt attacks a reporter, both Lauda and Hunt were portrayed in the right way and its another great F1 movie that is more about the personalities in the sport than the sport itself.

The Game (1997)

The movie starts off with a long (ish) home video and then we are introduced to Michael Douglas who plays Nicholas Van Orton who is an financier who doesn’t seem to have a particularly nice life. He almost reminds me of a tone down version of Gordon Gekko. In the film, he gets given a birthday present from him odd brother. He signs up to CRS which just screams wacko. After we are introduced to Nicholas and his brother the story spends a fair amount of time showing that CRS don’t seem the full ticket. The main question is just what is CRS offering and to be honest it’s a good question and it’s made even more intriguing because it Michael Douglas that its happening to. It’s not long until the story starts to unravel and the moment it goes weird is when Nicholas goes home and comes across the doll, then the TV starts talking to him. Things get even stranger when he encounters a waitress and after coming across a bloke on the floor the movie descends into a bit of a far fetched idea and whilst watching it I was thinking that it resembled North by Northwest a bit in that it stretches credibility a bit.

The film does have a strange curiosity to it as the question to what the game is. Things seem to be getting out of hand before the mad scene involves Nicholas and the house has been painted with ultra-violet paint and weird loud music.  When Conrad (Sean Penn) comes back into the story after appearing and leaving at the beginning, he seems somewhat more hysterical. He is very untrusting when he finds a glove compartment full of CRS keys. This leads to a nice scene between Penn and Douglas when they talk about stuff that has happened in their past.  After a good scene with Douglas being trapped in a taxi after it goes in the sea. When Douglas and the cops go to the CRS headquarters it has magically disappeared, that much was obvious.

What isn’t as obvious is what happens when Nicholas goes to see Christine. After smashing up the camera they had in the smoke detector, a bunch of men with guns come at then and attack them. It’s a great scene. After Christine tries to tell Nicholas whats going on there is a nice twist where we find out that Sam is in the con with CRS. All of a sudden Nicholas is dumped in the middle of mexico and spends several minutes getting back home where he finds his home is to be sold and it’s at this point he tracks down his ex-wife. The story climax’s with Nicholas shooting his brother by accident and in shock jumps off the top of a building and somehow manages to land on a pre-prepared crashmat. When he lands he discovers that his brother did this as a birthday present and he is in fact very much alive. Now if that were me then I wouldn’t just hug him, I would scream and shout at him and walk straight out. Nicholas acts like its just a small prank. The film easily falls apart when you start to think of the different scenarios that could have happened like if Nicholas had jumped off a different side of the building or if he’d hit something on the way down or even if he had shot his brother in the head instead of the chest.

The movie has two faces in it that are familiar to me. The first being Armin Mueller-Stahl (Anson Baer) and the second is Peter Donat (Sam Sutherland) who I know from the X-Files as Fox Mulder’s dad. Sean Penn is quite good and despite not being a big fan of the painfully indulgent actor I can’t deny that he wasn’t mesmerising on screen. Douglas is always good and he was especially good in this. As the lead female actor in the movie, Deborah Kara Unger was ok as Christine. She has a bit of an attitude to begin with but when she returns then she seems to have changed a bit.

This being a David Fincher film it was always good and Michael Douglas and Sean Penn carry the film well. You have to leave your senses at the door before seeing this because if you start to apply logic to this film then it becomes an absurd film but if your willing to look past this then it’s a perfectly fine film that flags a bit in the middle but picks up to a thrilling conclusion.

The Skeptic (2009)

I was a bit of a Sceptic watching the Skeptic. Mainly because it had Tom Arnold in it. Sorry I had to get that gag out of the way. According to IMDB, this film is also called The Haunting of Bryan Becket but The Skeptic sounds better.  

 

The story tells of Bryan Becket who at the beginning of the film finds out that his aunt has died. first reaction when he finds out his aunt died was that he inherits the house thus making him instantly unlikeable. It’s hard to believe that he a) is married and b) has a child. After the funeral he and Tom Arnold go and visit the house and he decides that due to his marriage troubles he is going to stay and sort things out. 

 

When Sully is having what seems like a fit, at first I thought he was pretending to have a fit but in a good twist he was actually unwell. Normally this would have been a joke but it seemed to be the first indication that this wasn’t going to be your typical middle of the road movie. 

 

When he realises that he doesn’t own the house he goes to some institute that his aunt  left the house to and after a bit of waffle we find out that his aunt believes that the house is haunted. I like that he is threatening to contest the will believing that the sleep lab trying to dupe an old woman and manipulate her but in reality it is Bryan that is doing it. 

 

What’s quite interesting is that it doesn’t go weird straight away but takes the time to build things up. The bit where Tom Arnold makes Bryan jump was quite a shocking moment. By the halfway point the shocks start to come more frequently before stopping again. Tom Arnold is easily the best thing in this (never thought I would admit that). Whenever he was on screen I was enjoying the movie but whenever he wasn’t on then I started to lose interest. 

 

The death of Bryan’s mother is used as a reason why Bryan is so sceptic. The wife and kid are bought back in after a while and it seems like they are bought it because the writer needs something fresh to keep the story going.  

 

Zoe Saladna (Cassie) is probably the next big name in this after Arnold. She is perhaps best know for appearing the most recent Star Trek movies. She starts off in the institute as a patient who seems a bit volatile and then disappears for a while before returning by forcing her way into the house. It’s at this point it seems to go even slower and its at this point that I started to give up as it seemed to go from being something spooky to just an episode of Dr Phil or something like that. There’s an awful lot of shouting and screaming from other rooms throughout this film. Robert Prosky also appears as Father Wymond and Prosky has one of those faces that you instantly recognise. He has played roles in Mrs Doubtfire (1993), Miracle of 34th Street (1995) and Gremlins 2 (1990). He died shortly after this film was finished and it’s a perfectly fine performance and he does get some good scenes.  

 

The film picks up in the final act when Bryan goes back in the house thinking that Cassie is in there. The film ends with him falling down the stairs looking into a room that seem to lead to a place that made him smile then it ends. It’s definitely a strange movie and ends all of a sudden. It’s a film that has its moments and its not the worse film that I have seen but I cant deny that it wasn’t what I was expecting. 

House (2008)

Film starts off with a couple. The husband shoots the wife in a house that is instantly weird. It has an interesting opening scene which is quite fun. This film’s big name is Michael Madsen and its odd that he gets first billing because he’s not in 80% of the movie. After the initial scene we then get to meet another couple (Jack and Stephanie) where the wife is doing her nails. The husband is very irritable and unlikeable. He’s a writer and she’s also annoying and a singer. They seem made for each other.


Michael Madsen plays the local law enforcement and its clear its not his greatest role. He appears in quite a sinister ay before returning towards the end like the one that they should have trusted all along. This doesn’t last long as its revealed that he is the tin man. Whilst it might be his greatest role he’s still the best thing in it. Though only just as Leslie Easterbrook comes a close second after playing Betty who seems to scream weird.

After driving down a path they hit something which flatten the tyres but they come across another car that has had the same thing happen to them. The couple don’t seem to get along and after walking to try and find help they then come across the house. They meet the couple who are the owners of the other car that they saw. They don’t meet any staff. But they suddenly appear after the lightning appears. It’s clear that they are all strange but in different ways. Pete is equally strange and more amusing than anything. Stewart is the head of the house and looks like he’s not got a sense of humour.

It’s at this stage of the movie that we start to learn why the couples are there and like always in these films its not coincidence. We learn that Jack and Stephanie lost a child called Melissa who fell through the ice. Jack still blames Stephanie. There is a moment when Stephanie tries to leave but a figure is stopping them. He is trying to get into the house and it scares Betty and her family. There a good moment where Stephanie is a cupboard and water seeps in and the floor freezes and she gets pulled through it. We learn that the girl in the red coat is the Stephanie and her hubbys child (Melissa) who after they neglected her went out and dies falling through the ice.

The man is the Tin Man and he only comes after those that need to be punished. He wants one person too die before the others would be freed. This is what is used to try and create some drama.

The other bloke’s story is that whilst out shooting he kills his dad. It’s at this moment that it becomes clear that he is a little unhinged and is actually a reason to be interested by the character. Leslie’s story is rather more grim than the other as we learn that she was abused by her uncle and she killed him. It’s at this moment she shows a bit of mental instability which made the character slighty more interesting. As they haven’t killed each other its down to the tin man to try and push them into doing it. Its quite a good scene but by this point I had lost track of what was going on. It seemed to be pulling in so many different directions that it was hard to keep up.

The final shot is of Michael Madsen looking at the ambulance chuckling to himself with the rest of the family observing from the windows. It’s another film where after escaping the danger its clear that the meance is just going to do this to someone else all over again. It isn’t a great film if I’m honest but it was much better than I was expecting. It seemed like it was going to be one film and then it turns out to be something else. There was something about this movie that seemed to work quite well and unlike House Hunting it didn’t overstay its welcome and ended at just the right time.

Man at Steel (2013)

Now the last time that I saw a Superman film was back in 2006 when we all had to endure ‘Superman Returns’ which was only redeemed by Kevin Spacey as Lex Luther. Apart from that it was a complete dogs dinner. Some have said it was more due to the writing than anything else and whilst there might some truth to it the fact remains that it was a bit of a let down. I’ve never been as big a fan of Superman as other maybe for no particular reason but I was quite excited about this one because it was been produced by Christopher Nolan who was behind the Batman films and that is one of things that is clear in the movie.

The casting was one of the things that made this movie so good. Henry Cavill isn’t a name that I was that aware of and I think it was a better bit of casting than Brandon Roth was. I thought he was a more believeable Clark Kent and what I liked about this version of Kent was that how he seemed to be lost and not in a normal job and yet by the end of it he was a reporter at the Daily Planet. Another bit of good casting is that of Amy Adams who played Lois Lane. I thought that a problem from ‘Superman Returns’ is that Kate Bosworth was terrible and just seemed like a whiny reporter and I could believe that she was a journalist, now with Amy Adams I found that she was a really good Lois Lane and whilst there were a few iffy moments I looked over it.

Russell Crowe was very good and I was glad when he kept popping up every so often because he was very good as Jor-El. I’ve thought that when Russell Crowe was good he was Maximus and when he was bad he was very bad. Thankully he wasn’t quite as good as he was in Gladiator but he was very close to being that good. Michael Shannon is an intense yet very good actor. I’m fan of his based purely on his involvement in Boardwalk Empire and as General Zod he continued to impress. I thought that the goatie was a bit of a mistake but apart from that I thought that General Zod was an effective baddie.

It’s clear that this is the first in a reboot because this film does what Batman Begins does and that is the set up the backstory. There was a lot of Krypton in the early stages of the story and I liked how it good it looked because it seemed to give Superman something to miss. The story sees General Zod trying to terror-form Earth into the new Krypton and if I am honest then I cant say that I think it’s a bad plan. Ok humanity would be wiped out by Michael Shannon’s Zod basically scares you into wanting to help them.

The first half is the Christopher Nolan part because its all about set up and trying to create the background to Zod, Jor-El and Superman and then the second half is Zack Snyder because there is a lot of smashing into buildings and being a blockbuster and to be honest they blended in well and I never really noticed a shift in tone and thought that it all worked. As this film is part of the Justice League movie we get the Lexcorp logo on the truck and apparently the Bruce Wayne logo on the satalite (which I didn’t see). Like the Avengers movie it seems like there are links to this Justice League movie but it doesn’t strangle the film and its only noticeable if you were really looking for it.

I enjoyed Man of Steel far more than I thought I would. I thought that like the Batman films it was a nice mixture of realism and geeky comic books. When we get Man of Steel 2 I hope that it continues in the same vain because if it does then this will be another Batman franchise for Warner Bros and that can only be a good thing for Superman fans. The biggest compliment I can pay to this film is that for a non-Superman fan, I enjoyed being in the company of Superman and long may it continue.

House Hunting (2013)

The film has quite a clever premise that hell is other people. Sadly that’s about as clever as it gets. The film starts with a woman clearly distressed running through the woods. We are introduced to two families. The first is the Hays family. They are a bit dysfunctional family, there is Susan (the stepmom) who doesn’t get on with the daughter (Emmy) and the father trying to keep the peace. Then there is the Thomson’s. In this family the Dad isn’t exactly getting on with his son. The dad is an idiot from start to finish he is an idiot. It seems that they suffered a bereavement as the mom sees someone who is apparently her daughter though she isn’t really there.


Just as the Hays are leaving they come across the woman that we saw at the beginning. Both families are connected by a weird guy in a funny hat (not funny ha ha but funny weird). He convinces them to go and look at the house. When they try and leave they keep finding themselves at the house. As this starts in daylight there is the obligatory wasting of time until its get dark. The woman doesn’t have a tongue so can only communicate by making a noise. The character is given a name called Hanna played by Rebekah Kennedy who is easily the best thing in the entire movie.

At one point the dads don’t trust each other, the moms start bonding and the youngsters start getting broody. Well the guy is the girl seems to be not as interested. The film then leaps forward by a month (for no clear reason) and they are still there and they still look around trying to find a way out and the seven cans of stew are still there.

Why doesn’t someone watch the cupboard with the stew to see who puts it there?

There is a kid who appears in the window and we find out that the guy in the weird hat killed him.

As the story progresses there is a jigsaw and every so often they find bits of it. After a long time it shows the daughter in the picture of the house but when the son looks at it then she has disappeared.

It’s not long before they start to turn on each other and through the early stages of their imprisonment there are various sharp objects that flash in front of the camera to make us aware of something. However these never seem to actually become part of the story, its like they pick on this idea and then give up on it.

There are a lot of things that don’t make sense in this film such as why they don’t smash the box that speak every morning or why they don’t give the girl with no tongue a pen and paper to write things down and especially after a month.

The mommy Thomson is the first to die. Her death seems to fuel the fire of distrust between the two dads.

There is a scene where we see what the son did in recently which involved a hit and run. This definably proves he was an arsehole and it’s the start for him as he goes slowly downhill. He impales himself on a twig and to be honest after trying to rape Emmy and also with what we learnt about his hit and run I thought he deserved it. Even after being impaled he was still lying to his dad and this just got a bit frustrating for me.

It’s easy to see it coming but basically the families are pitted against each other. That is fundamentally the problem with the film because normally I cant see these things coming but it was like setting flares off at these moments because if you couldn’t see them coming then you just weren’t trying. The psycho dad ties up the other family and tries to get help. Seems like an odd way to help people but anyway this is an odd film.

After the daughter does the walking backwards thing, the psycho dad tries it. There are moments when they have been doing it for so long that they then get to a moment and turn around thus meaning that they erase what they have done. This is another moment that makes the heart sink. Whilst the psycho dad is out the son goes into a ‘seizure’ and the phone starts to ring. The son was being strangled by the girl that he ran over. This leads to him confessing to his psycho dad and the dad is about to set the others free before the mom plants an axe in his back. The woman seems to be the mother of the weird man in a hat and the boy.

Susan is made to look like she has stolen the food which causes the dad to kill her. This is just after the stepmom confess to killing the daughter’s mom and made it look like suicide. The dad has now gone psycho. But not in a convincing way because instead of being in fear, I found it to be quite boring and just thought it was another silly thing that was wrong with the film.

The daughter is encountered by a new family that seems to be looking at the house and it seems to be starting the whole cycle. The last shot is of her tongue being cut and that was something else that was obvious and as I said earlier, I don’t normally pick up on these things.

The story starts to get frustrating as there are fundamental problems with the whole story. It gets a bit interesting when there are no cans in the pantry as it seems like their time is running out. The main problem with the film is that It drags on and on and on and it feels like it was going so slow that it was almost standing still. At nearly two and a half hours its an interesting idea that is drawn out. It could easily have been cut in half to make it a really good film.

Rating - 3/10 (I'm being very generous)

Robocop 3 (1993)

The third Robocop movie is one of those that I have always heard as being a terrible film. To start with it doenst feature Peter Weller as Robocop and it seems to centre on an irritating kid. The film is noticeably different as it doesn’t have any of the blood and violence that the previous two. There is a long time before Robocop actually makes an appearance. When he does it’s a silly moment because he comes in a car and drives the car off a building and manages to land it next to the action


It seems like Robert John Burke sounds an awful like Sylvester Stallone which is an unfortunate side effect. Though face-wise he does look a bit like Paul Weller which is probably the only thing they got right when they cast him. To be honest it was always going to be a hard job in trying to follow in the footsteps of someone who made the role famous. A bit like when someone becomes the new Doctor Who or James Bond.

There are some ludircrous moment when they strap a jetpack onto him. God knows why but there must be toys with Robocop and a jetpack. It gets thrown off him when we first seem him with it but then it gets bought back at the end when he doesn’t have the use of his legs. When he comes out with it on and its just a stupid moment which shows that even the writers had given up by this point in the script stage. Sadly there are several ludicrous moments as Robocop goes against a ninja. Even in that scene there is no darkness like there was when Robocop got butchered in the first movie.

The scientist is awful. She doesn’t pull it of and everytime she was on screen I just thought that she wasn’t a scientist and just seemed to be there to add a bit of glamour.

In the first Robocop movie, Murphy was up against a group of thugs and in the second one it was him against a massive evil Robocop. Here, Murphy is against a Ninja.

When the guy turns out to be a traitor to the rebels I wasn’t really that bothered as I had no interest in any of the characters and just found them bland and boring.

The plot (which is being generous) is all over the place. I couldn’t actually tell you what it was about because I couldn’t follow it and when the film is like that then you know the film isn’t up to scratch.

There is a moment where the gun is being shot and it seems to stay exactly in the same which was just stupid.

Watch your language there are children about pretty much sums up the problems with this movie as it seems aimed directly at kids more than adults which was the case in the previous two films.

Johnny Rehab is a fake cartoon that gets advertised before a news programme and it’s a silly moment which emphasis’ the kid targetness of the movie.

Throughout the movie the kid is irritating and doesn’t seem to achieve anything except for trying to humanise Robocop for the kiddies.

There are some memorable people in this as there is Bradley Whitford who I know from ‘The West Wing’ and then there is Cch Pounder who appeared in an episode of ‘The X-Files’ and appeared in other shows such as ‘The Shield’. When these two appeared on screen I was interested and when they left it then I found being bored by the whole sorry excuse of a movie. Then there is the chap from Men In Black who plays the President of OCP and he does seem to be a bit comical.

Sergeant I have no idea is a good character who’s best moment comes when he throws his badge on the floor which leads to a nice little moment of all the other cops doing the same.

One of the few characters to return in this movie is Nancy Allen who quite surprisingly gets killed around the half way point of the movie. That was a mistake as far as I was concerned because she was one of the few good things in the movie.

I don’t know what the point of this movie. I don’t know why it exists because it serves no purpose what so ever. If anything it didn’t feel like a Robocop movie as it doesn’t have any drama, any excitement or any of the dark tone that was running through the previous films.

Is this movie worse than Godfather Part 3? I don’t think so because at least there are a few moments where its watchable. Mainly the bits with Al Pacino but that’s the only thing that makes it better than Robocop 3. This has no redeeming qualities to it and it’s a complete and utter waste of time from start to finish. There is no plot, no characters that are of any interest and to cap it all there is a stupid moment where Robocop is driving a pink Cadillac. It’s the stupid cherry on the stupid cake.

Wall Street: Money Never Sleeps (2010)

I saw Wall Street recently and whilst it was good it was something that was screaming 1980’s. Fast forward 23 years and the morals of Wall Street (the real Wall Street) are just as important as they were back in 1987. With the economical meltdown around the world, it seemed like this probably wasn’t going to have the same punch that Wall Street 1 had. At the beginning of the film Gekko is released from prison and a limo comes out and he thinks its his but its for someone else.

Carey Mulligan and Shia LaBeouf (the charisma vacuum) are a couple. Mulligan plays Winnie Gekko who has an estranged relationship with Gordon.  I found her performance to be very good and she does her best when acting againt LaBeouf. Shia LeBeouf is an actor that I really find annoying. In pretty much everything I’ve seen him in, all I can think is ‘how did he become the star he is when all he does it suck the charisma and energy out of the room?’. I didn’t see that changing in this movie.  His inability as an actor really shows when he has a scene with Michael Douglas because compared to Douglas, LaBeouf looks like he should be in an amateur production of something.

Susan Sarandon makes a surprise appearance and she is really unhinged in this movie. She makes a few appearances and they were great because they added some much needed energy into a film that was otherwise lacking the sort of stuff you would want from this sort of film. Josh Brolin is very good here. He’s utterly unlikeable  as Bretton James and everytime he’s on screen you get a reaction which is that you hope he gets his comeuppance. After appearing in the first few moments of the film, its nearly half an hour before Michael Douglas preoperly appears in the film. Everytime that Michael Douglas is on screen I find myself interested in what’s going on because he is the one that gets all the great speeches and the film comes alive when he is about. When he’s off screen I kind of lose interest. Frank Lagella is a great piece of casting as Louis Zabel. Everytime he was on screen I was enjoying the film. He’s an actor that does wel in whatever he’s in. His death was a surprise and a shame really.

Despite looking a lot better than the 1987 original, Wall Street doesn’t feel like it should. It feels like we’re being lectured at and nothing really get addressed that we don’t already know or have seen in reality. Douglas seems to be shielded for a large amount of this movie and its probably the reason why I don’t rate this as highly as the original.

Ghosts Dont Exist (2010)

Ghosts Don’t Exist is suppose to be a horror film which won the 2010 DC Independent Film Festival. It does raise the question as to what the other films were like that meant this was the best. The film focuses on Brett Wilson who is a ghost hunter when at the beginning of the film his wife passes away. The film then focuses on Wilson who is told that he has to produce one more episode of his TV show or the network will take legal action. First point to raise is that after spending ages convincing him to do it, the guy (presumably representing the network) is concerned that Wilson is going along with the final trip. The story moves to a house where some weird guy talks some rubbish and then kills himself. The rest of the film attempts to try and create some tension but fails miserably. People start to act strange and the filmmakers are trying to convince us that there is some paranormal force behind the behaviour changes they tend change the rules and say that the behaviour was cause by carbon monoxide.

The acting was terrible. I mean woeful. The lead (Phillip Roebuck) was very boring to watch and when the lead is that dull its very hard to let the film work. The others weren’t much better with every single actor on screen doing their level best to ruin the film. I thought that maybe the film title would be some clever plot twist but no. There was not one single ghost in the entire damn film. Ghosts Don’t Exist is the sort of movie that wouldn’t look out of place on Channel 5 in the middle of the afternoon. There is absolutely nothing scary whatsoever about this movie and I’m surprised it won anything apart from ‘Turkey of the Year’.

As of this moment, it has been reviewed 294 times on IMDB and it’s got an overall rating of 3.4 out of 10. I think 2.4 out of ten is probably the most realistic. Ghosts Don’t Exist is a poor excuse for a film and its not very often when I want to stop the film but this was one of those times but you have to see it in its entirety to judge something and having sat through this I can honestly say that I wish Ghosts do exist because it would have made this film more enjoyable.

Ninja Terminator (1985)

 

Ninja Terminator is quite possibly one of the worst films that I have ever seen or ever will see. All the problems I have with the Maltese Falcon pales into insignificance compared to Ninja Terminator. The plot and I use that word loosely is that three parts of a statue are split up and have people are after all three parts. What happens is a mess of a film, well technically two films because it’s clear that at least two films have been blurred together to make it. As nothing actually makes sense it’s down to the martial arts sequences to save the film but considering this is the only thing in the movie that works what we get are several very prolonged sequences which after a while get a little bit boring.

There are too many things that are truly mad to mention but the idea of a little transformers robot causing any terror is a stupid idea and all you can do is really laugh but it does make you wonder what was going on in Godfrey Ho’s mind that he thought people would find this dramatic. You cant use the classic excuse which is that it’s the 80’s. Richard Harrison seems to have more fun with him Garfield cat than anything else. Random people turn up with at times dodgy blond wigs and nothing makes any sense.

As dodgy as the acting is the directing is truly appauling. There are several moments where the camera cuts off people and then slowly pans back to get the right number of people. There have been instances where people are talking but all we see are the people they are talking to. Ninja Terminator has to be seen to be believed. These films effectively ruined Harrison’s career but to end up in these sort of movies implies that he didn’t really have a career.

Everything Or Nothing (2012)

Everything or Nothing is the name of the production company that makes the Bond films and it pretty much sums up the mood of the franchise. The documentary starts off talking about how Ian Fleming was in the Second World War and goes up until the current day. We got the early days of Jimmy Bond (which was truly awful) and it was interesting to see how close Bond came to not being the success that it did.

Interestingly Sean Connery is the only one that doesn’t appear in person in the documentary. It’s a shame really as it would be nice to know how he feels about the franchise now instead of back in the 1970’s or 80’s when his opinion was rather poor. Roger Moore is funny with his line about being horrified when 007 knocks a Thai boy off his boat and as a UN Ambassador wouldn’t do that. Be fair, that was shot about 20 years before he started to work for the UN. George Lazenby is quite honest about his time in the role and how he basically talked himself out of it which I thought was surprising. Timothy Dalton is quite good as well in the documentary. But its Pierce Brosnan who is the best because I didn’t know about the fact he could have been Bond instead of Dalton and even he realises that riding a Tsunami in Die Another Day was a ludircrous idea as well as the invisible car.

Barbara Brocolli and Michael Wilson provide some interesting comments from their points of view with how Chubby Broccolli and Harry Saltzman bought the rights and how the series took off straight away. I thought the whole story about Sean Connery leaving the franchise and then making Never Say Never which was a rival Bond movie and the whole saga of Thunderbull and how Ian Flemming was accused of plagiarism and it allowed Kevin McClory to become producer of the film and tried to effectively think he could own the character.

Everything or Nothing isn’t perhaps as honest as it could have been but as it is, I found it to be very entertaining with some very good contributions and as for any Bond fan it should be viewed.

Planet of the Apes (1968)

Planet of the Apes is a film that I have never actually seen but bought the bought set for a tenner from HMV. The first film sees an astronaut crew crash land on a planet which is run (not surprisingly by apes).  The plot is rather flimsy as all that happens is that Charlton Heston crash lands on the planet, get caught by the apes, try and convince the apes of who he is and try to escape.  It’s only 112 minutes and whilst I wasn’t wowed by the movie, I thought that its running time was the right length.

The make up was also very impressive. It’s easy to mock when you judge it against today’s standards but it does hold up quite well. The hairstyles are screaming the era that it was made and the fashion is also slightly suspect but whenever your trying to predict fashion in the future your always going to get into trouble and its quite amusing at times.

In terms of performances, Charlton Heston is easily the best thing in the movie. His performance tries to be macho but he doesn’t quite pull it off. What he does do well is demand your attention whenever he’s on screen. I wasn’t as interested with the apes but thought that Heston’s performance draw you in.

I’m not quite sure that I could call this a great film. It’s a rather average film if truth be told with one rather impressive moment but I’m hoping that the rest of the films will be an improvement but from what I’ve been told that isn’t entirely acurate

The Omen (1976)

The Omen is one of those films that is regarded as a classic or at the very least an important one. The film is the first of five (including a 2006 remake) sees Gregory Peck playing an ambassador sent to the UK with his wife and son (who isn’t really his son but pretends to his wife) when Patrick Troughton tells him that he should get Damien seen too. As the film progresses, the desire to get Damien baptised grows stronger and the deaths and attempts to prevent this from happening get more and more extreme. The film is notorious for all the things that went wrong and that is perhaps more interesting than the film itself which is always a problem.

The plot is quite plain and straightforward however its helped with lovely performances. Gregory Peck is an actor that I’m not totally wild about as every film that I have seen him in (which currently stands at 3), the film takes about 2/3 of its time setting up the film before Peck gets into top gear and he does the same here. When he’s good then he’s very good but it takes too long to see it. David Warner is brilliant in it. In fact he’s brilliant in everything he is in and it’s a shame that he doesn’t make it until the end of the movie but his exit was quite impressive. Anotehr great piece of casting was Patrick Troughton, now I am being biased here because I am a Doctor Who fan and even if I wasn’t then I would still have enjoyed his performance because it was a good but all too brief performance. The kid playing Damien (Harvey Stephens) is quite creepy and even though he doesn’t say anything he still manages to have an air of creepiness about him which is what you would expect really.

The film isn’t particularly scary.. I don’t think that its rubbish but there are large chunks of the movie that were not very engaging. The Omen is a film that has a status in movies that it doesn’t quite deserve. Not sure what the other films are like but usually sequels tend to be worse than the previous films so I don’t hold out high hopes for it. The Omen had potential but for some reason it didn’t quite reach it.

Scott Pilgrim vs The World (2010)

Scott Pilgrim vs the World is a film that was directed by Edgar Wright who was behind Hot Fuzz and Shaun of the Dead. This film doesn’t feature Simon Pegg or Nick Frost but does have computer games running through it like a stick of blackpool rock. The story sees Scott Pilgrim trying to go out with a girl but first he must defeat her seven exes. As plots go, this is one of the more interesting that I have seen for quite a while. The film opens up with what the Universal logo and theme would look like if they were on a Super Nintendo.

At first I struggled to like the guy playing Scott. I just found him to be a bit annoying and actually found Kieran Culkin to be the funniest thing in the entire movie. After a while I got use to Michael Cera’s performance and that’s the thing about this movie. After about 20-30 minutes I got use to the whole film and understood that this wasn’t going to a normal comedy. All the battles that Scott was involved in were all quite well done and highly entertaining.  After the first battle ended and the coins fell to the floor I did chuckle to myself and I think anyone who has ever played a computer game over the last thirty years or so will understand several gags that go on in this film. At 112 minutes, this film is just the right length. It doesn’t feel like there is a lot of padding but neither does it feel like its rushing which is a fine balance that Edgar Wright and the writers have got just right.

I do like this film though I’m not entirely sure why. There are plenty of things to like about it but I cant put hand on my heart and say that it’s the best film I’ve ever seen. 

Lincoln (2012)

There has been a lot of hype about this movie due to Daniel Day Lewis’ performance which is possibly going to earn him an Oscar. The film is based on a novel called Team of Rivals: The Political Genius of Abrham Lincoln written by Doris Kearns Goodwin and focuses on the final four months of Lincoln’s life where is trying to have the Thirteenth Amendment to the US Constituion which outlawed slavery and involuntary sertitude passed through the US House of Representatives.

The whole movie is about this and the struggles that Lincoln has to deal with because as well as trying to get this through the house, he has to try and end the civil war. These two things work well in trying to create some dramatic moments throughout the film. At 150 minutes in length the film can afford to take its time telling this story and does so. As a result it allows you to get involved in the characters and of that period and understand why this was such an important in American History. Spielberg has a track record with important historical moments. I think Schlindler’s List is one of his best films and I thought that whilst Munich had its moments, wasn’t as good. Lincoln benefits not only from good performances but also from a good screenplay.

Daniel Day Lewis’ performance was superb with some of the speeches he gives to be fantastic and mesmorising. At times I got so involved in the movie that I forgot it was it was Day-Lewis in the role. He looked exactly like Lincoln and even though we don’t know what he sounded like, the voice seemed to suit the movie. Sally Field is also very good and does well as the first Lady. The character has issues and Field plays it perfectly. Tommy Lee Jones is one of those actors that you can trust to come up with a superb performance and here he continues that. He plays Thaddeus Stevens who comes across as a nice guy and we find out why at the end which I must admit I didn’t see coming.

Other good performances include Hal Holbrook as Francis Preston Blair and Joseph Gordon-Levitt as Lincoln’s son. It seems to be impossible to watch a film with him in it.
If I had to pick an issue with the film it is that it deals with Lincoln’s death to rapidly. A large chunk of the movie is dealt with getting the amendment passed and then it feels like the next moment he has been assinated. I would have liked a bit more to this bit to have a greater sense of his loss. That said that is the only thing that I can find fault with and its not a major one which shows just what a great film it is.

Lincoln is a fanstastic film that has some outstanding performances as well as some truly wonderful directing. Spielberg knows how the tell a story and he manages to do it in this movie. One of the critiscm’s that I had heard before seeing this movie was that John Williams’ music is overbearing, well to be honest I thought the exact opposite. The music worked well and I think this may be the best movie of the year and if it wins the Oscar then I wont be too surprised.

Taken 2 (2012)

Taken 2 is pretty much Taken 1 but they have slightly changed the rules and had Mom and Dad taken instead of the idiotic daughter. The story sees the father of some of the people killed in the first movie take revenge on Neeson who is working on a protection job in Turkey. The family dynamic hasn’t really moved on since the last movie and through some contrived circumstances both the mom and daughter join Liam Neeson but that’s when it all goes wrong and actually the movie starts to pick up.

First of all it’s not as rough around the edges and dark in tone than the first one. There were some quite ludicrous moments in this film, too many to mention. However the first one that comes to mind is Maggie Grace’s character throwing a grenade from her hotel room and managing to get it underneath a car in a multi-storey car park which must have been some considerable distance. Then there is the fact that she continues to throw more grenades. There is also the moment where Liam Neeson and Grace drive a taxi through a US Embassy (which just happens to appear on an English speaking Sat Nav) and have a minute long conversation without so much as an armed guard doing anything.

Quite what Famke Jenson is doing in this movie is a mystery. She has essentially got paid for smiling for the first third of the movie and then pretending to be asleep for the rest of it. Liam Neeson is very good as usual. It’s quite amazing how he has suddenly become attached to the hardman image. He would be the last person I would have cast in the first movie but he somehow makes it work and even though the movie is a bit watered down compared the previous movie it doesn’t mean that Neeson’s performance has been watered down. Maggie Grace isn’t taken so she has more to do and isn’t as annoying as she was in the previous movie.

That said, Taken 2 isn’t rubbish. There are certainly some enjoyable moments but you do have to suspend your disbelief and send it home without pay for at least a fortnight because otherwise you can pick holes the size of Turkey in the story but I wonder what the plot will be if there is a Taken 3. Maybe Neeson gets taken and it’s down to mom and daughter to rescue him. Maybe.

Robocop 2 (1990)

The second Robocop film follows the similar pattern to that of the first Robocop film and with a remake on the horizons, it’s time to see what the second instalment of this current trilogy has to offer. The film sees Robocop not only taking on the much bigger Robocop as well as taking on the makers of a new drug called Nuke. Robocop/Murphy is trying to connect with his wife who doesn’t seem to wild about the idea.

First of all Robocop is bluer than before, this is largely due to their being a new suit for Peter Weller to put on and move about in. This is distracting at first but after a while it just looks a bit silly and I think they should have stuck to the old colour. Despite some quite bloody scenes the film doesn’t seem to have the rough edges that the first one did. I think that having established the character and the rules of the character there didn’t seem a lot that they could do so it seemed at times like there was a lot of nothing happening.

Peter Weller does a good job of playing a robot. It doesn’t require him to do a great deal of acting but due to what acting he does do, it means that there is a certain desire to see Robocop come out on top. Nancy Allen puts in a perfectly fine performance which was a lot better than the first offering. The pair work well together and it seems a lot better that the first film.

I remember watching Robocop 2 when I was about 10 and there was one moment that I remember where the baddie machine squashes a brain. Well to my shock it wasn’t in there. The only brain that got smashed was the baddie one by Robocop.  I am sad that one of my few childhood memories has turned out to be wrong.  I didn’t warm to Robocop 2 as much as I did to the first one. It seemed slightly watered down to a certain extent. There were some moment which were quite fun but on the whole, I found this movie to be an enjoyable sequel.

Robocop (1987)

With a fourth movie due to come out in 2014 it seems like a good moment to visit the first Robocop movie which sees a cop called Murphy put into a robot outfit. It's basically a revenge movie because the moment that Murphy gets put into the outfit it slowly leads Robocop to the man that ultimatley put him into that position.

The film does scream 80's which most films from this decade usually do. The technology is probably the biggest eyesore in the movie but part of me cant help but get nostalgic about when this sort of this probably wasnt the most important thing to them. The film moves along at a rather good pace and I cant deny that the film moves along quite well and it had a rather good conclusion. The problem that I had with it was that the character of Robocop is rather weak. Ok it has some impressive scenes but it gets beat quickly and in the last act of the movie he takes of his helmet. It's the Sylvester Stallone/Judge Dredd situation all over again except this time it wasnt such a big thing. When I was asked if I want to watch the next two Robocop movies, i intially said no but as time has passed I think that it might be good because they should be better than this one (though I know the third is meant to be rubbish).

Robocop is good for its era but there are things that could have been improved even back in 1987.

7/10