Wednesday, 22 June 2011

It's not easy...

Green Lantern - ★★ Started ok but suffered from a disappointingly predictable story: man finds ring, gets shown how to use it, gets told he's a bit shit, overcomes fear/doubt/stupid mask and defeats planet killing yellow smoke cloud with the power of gravity.
That old one.
Ending felt rushed and anticlimactic, maybe the effects money ran out.

Sunday, 19 June 2011

Cricket, lovely cricket

Fire In Babylon - ★★★★ Compared to Senna, this was less polished and had a more traditional documentary style but felt more culturally and historically significant.
Helped in the comparison as it features a much better sport and far more likeable people.

Insert overused winning formula type pun here

Senna - ★★★ Decent documentary on a subject I didn't much care about. Although the family and official footage was interesting, it obviously came at the price of having most of the negative aspects of the man and the sport removed.
Hasn't changed my view of Formula 1 as an elitist anachronism, full of obscenely rich men driving adverts on wheels, far too fast.
Having said that, the in-car racing footage was exciting, the crashes sickening and the build up to the inevitable end quite involving.

Thursday, 16 June 2011

When Pop Videos Go Bad

Sucker Punch - Two hours of hitting schoolgirls to see their pants. Everyone involved in this should be put on a list. I think I've gone sepia blind.
Tag line for this - 'You Will Be Unprepared' and I was, I suppose it wouldn't have done so well with the more accurate 'Sepia-toned Shit Vacuum'.

Wednesday, 15 June 2011

Lower Second

X-Men: First Class - All X-Men films are fairly tortuous allegories for racial and sexual equality. So casually turning evil or killing all of the black characters in a single scene that made no sense at all and turning the obviously gay Magneto straight is sort of ironic. 
The 60s setting would have been slightly more convincing if anyone spoke or behaved in any way as they did then and the main plot was completely nonsensical even for a comic book film. 
Still, the Magneto bits were quite good although it wasn't explained why a German-born Jew when he got angry (which he does quite frequently) would switch to an Irish accent.
Compared to the previous X-Men: The Last Stand, this film is infinitely better. But that could be said of just about anything.

Sunday, 12 June 2011

Mars Needs Euthanizing

Mars Needs Moms - Disney does it again.
Takes a turd, copies the turd, computer generates the turd, animates the turd and then shines it to a fine polish. 
You could probably see your face in this turd, if you'd had anything to do with producing such a souless, humourless, actionless waste of time.

Saturday, 11 June 2011

Angels in Hats (spoiler)

The Adjustment Bureau - ★★★ The old, old story of boy meets girl, boy loses girl, then meets girl, then loses girl, then meets girl, then loses girl, then meets hat, then meets girl again.

Hot Sauce

Source Code - ★★★★ Basically a three set film, a train, a station and a lab.
Groundhog Day with less date rape and more explosions. Should have ended two minutes earlier.
May be part of a pattern of films following on from Inception designed to provoke the 'yeah, but what if' response in the witless.

Alien

Paul - ★★★ Better than hoped. Made in and for America and lacking any real edge but as a nerds find alien and get chased around a bit adventure, it really wasn't too bad. I believe Hamlet has a similar story.

Sunday, 5 June 2011

Spooky looking kid


Hanna - ★★★ Fairly competent thriller. Held back by it's PG-13 certificate.

Saturday, 4 June 2011

God Aweful


Priest - ★★ Would have been disappointing but was exactly as poor as anticipated. Just dull. Poorly thought out post apocalyptic dross. Genuinely sub-Judge Dredd (the film).