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