Saturday, 26 November 2011

Klaatu barada yippee ki-yay

Cowboys and Aliens ★★
I like cowboy films, I like alien films, I like films with 'and' in them, so what could go wrong? 
Amnesiac James Bond fighting ageing cattle baron Indiana Jones in a dying western town with drinks supplied by one of the blokes from Moon. 
Adding vicious four armed aliens abducting people for no apparent reason turns what could have been a decent western into an uninteresting mess. 
Like a chicken and egg sandwich, some things just don't mix.

Friday, 25 November 2011

Hail Caesar

Rise of the Planet of the Apes ★★★★
Predictable anti-science message replacing the anti-slavery theme of the original Conquest of the Planet of the Apes.
Green Goblin Jr messing with things he doesn't understand - what would be the point in messing with things you do understand? 
Still it ticks many of my boxes, although ridiculous to say, the CGI super-intelligent rampaging apes don't look totally realistic. 
Manages to entertain and remove the smell left behind from the extremely disappointing Tim Burton 're-imagined' POTA. 
Baby chimps are cuter than human babies - fact. 
Adult chimps are terrifyingly strong and according to the Internet can pull your arms off, eat your face and rip out your testicles with one hand.
Actually only two of those are fact, there doesn't seem to be any evidence of a chimp actually pulling off an arm. 
I for one welcome our new ape masters.

Nochnoy dozor

Night Watch ★★
Russian fantasy/horror based on the book by Sergei Lukyanenko. 
Really big in Russia. Not that good. 
Can't imagine the film would make any sense if you haven't read the book. 
Doesn't quite work but I'll still be trying to hunt down the sequel for completism.

Richard III

Transformers: Dark of the Moon
Still manages to disappoint even though I watched it knowing it was going to be terrible. 
It was. 
Not bad enough to be good. Just bad. 
Pointless, confusing, soulless story about giant robots hitting each other repeatedly.