Tag: cinema

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The Winter Soldier

The full title of this film is:

Captain America: The Winter Soldier

I just couldn’t be bothered to title this communication properly. I’ve rated this film as a 6 on IMDB. I went to see this at Rochester cinema, my regular Cineworld venue, curiously most films I’ve seen there recently have been in the odd-numbered theatres, whereas last night I was in screen 2. I had to turn left going into the main corridor which was a little strange [left being even screens, odd being right].

I enjoyed the film. It was a good superhero film. It’s not my favourite genre as I find that the universe tweeks to create the film normally surpass by suspend-disbelief barrier. I am always willing to accept a tweek or two to a universe rules to allow a film to tell its story. Faster-than-light travel, instantaneous communications, super-strength, people flying, gods etc. Superhero films sometimes require too many tweeks to force the story and it ruins the overall effect, for me.

Overall, the plot of the film was (just) believable. I’m not one for massive conspiracies, mostly because organisations are made from humans, but the ideas behind this film seemed reasonable. The action scenes were fine, nothing stunning, they just seemed to be going through the motions. I say this with a caveat: a well made action film looks seemless and as though it’s going through the motions, whereas a poor action film highlights how hard it is to make a seemless action film. I say this because I quite like a well-made bad film, they are cute and funny, but there is a big difference between a good bad film and a bad film. Hmmm, not sure I can explain it very well, I’ll have another go another time.

I felt that this film was not just an action film. It was a story of the last 15 years of world politics [I might be reading too much into this]. A massive new Washington DC organisation [DHS] wants to protect the world from the people who disagree with they way that the World Council [USA] runs things. This is to be done using the Insight program which will eliminate all threats before they actually happen [Iraq and Afghanistan]. This is ultimately a BAD thing and so the freedom fighters [liberals] try to make sure that the system fails. This film is a critique of US and allies’ policies over the last fifteen years.

Look, this film was good fun. Worth watching. It felt quite long, which isn’t a bad thing. I like getting my money’s worth when I see a film, as long as it all fits together and this one does. Overall I would recommend this to other people to see.

Laughing
I sometimes [and only sometimes] laugh out loud in the cinema. It would appear that I find some things funnier than other people as I am the only person who laughs out loud. Is it right to laugh when no-one else does? I don’t really care. I’m not going to change, especially when I laugh at a reference to another film that others don’t seem to get.

Flinch-Gasp
Years ago when I saw The Passion Of The Christ I could hear others in the cinema flinching and doing that intake of breath whenever Jesus was beaten or whipped or whatever else happened to him. I was quite unmoved by this for the following reasons:

  • It was a movie and so NOT REAL
  • The story of the passion is not mentioned in the bible, and so is just tradition.
  • Jesus (most probably) did not exist and so neither did his suffering [the contemporary documented evidence for the big JC is non-existent]

Recently when I saw 12 Years A Slave there was the same phenomenon when the people were being whipped. This time I understood and agreed with the sentiment a little more. At least there is documented evidence for this appalling behaviour. I didn’t really do the gasping flinch though.

In the movie last night we see a scar on the Black Widow of where she was shot. Someone did the flinch-gasp. Seriously? In a made up film about a made up universe where a superhero gets shot and recovers someone thought the sight of a scar was enough to warrant making a flinch-gasp? Arrrrgh.

Other People
Why go to the cinema to eat? It is something I don’t understand, especially when the food substances are wrapped in noisy packets. I think that Sartre was correct:

L’enfer, c’est les autres

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Divergent

This film was a good watch. I enjoyed it although I am slightly wearisome with the dystopian future that we see. There are many stories from film and books that have this sort of future Earth. It seems quite clear to me that we are going to ruin the planet, our fiction and imaginative writers can only see bad things in the future. They look at society now and extend and widen the gaps and you end up with the world of Divergent or The Hunger Games. Wherever we look the goodness of humans is outweighed by the selfishness and greed of the few who “lead”.

So, this was a pretty standard film given the current fashion for trilogies of YA Fiction. It starts with a young girl who doesn’t fit. She then cheats the system and uncovers a massive conspiracy which she then defeats. She gains quite a bit of street-cred on the way. That, is pretty much it. There’re a few set pieces to show the world of in all its glory. Overall, it was enjoyable and fine. It was not brilliant. For a dystopian future world I still think Blade Runner is the best, or Akira if you like that sort of thing.

YA Fiction. The first time I saw that I had to look it up. Apparently it stands for Young Adult fiction. I think it pretty much covers all those stories that are aimed at teenagers but are actually read by adults on the daily commute (but with a different dust jacket). Isn’t it weird that books aimed at teenagers contain the elements of “not fitting” and “breaking the system” and “following your heart”.~

I rated this film a 6 on IMDB, but to understand what this means you need to read my communication about film ratings.

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Need For Speed

I rated this film on IMDB as a 4/10 using my new guidelines to rating films, discussed here.

This was a bad film. Let me try and explain my choice of words there. The script was bad, the acting was bad, the racing was comical, the plot was appalling and the geography was bad. The scenery was gorgeous and Michael Keaton was brilliantly over the top. Otherwise, this was in general a bad film. I wanted it to end after about an hour and it didn’t, it kept piling up the turds for another 70 minutes! Yes, this is a long, tedious bad film.

I shall now go into some more detail. Like most things in life we like to focus on the bad things and rant and moan and yet don’t commit the same dedication to the good things. My good reviews on this site are probably pretty short, while the bad ones just let the venom flow.

I fully understand that this movie is based on a game franchise and I have played a version of the game [Carbon I think] which was quite good fun. I’m more of a circuit racer than street racer as I don’t like the unpredictable. It’s why I never really got on with Mario Karts as I hated being in the lead and then some crappy mushroom hitting me and making me last. If it’s a driving game then I like driving and not being t-boned from out of nowhere.

The characters were pretty one-dimensional. There was a successful racer, Dino Brewster, who had left town and raced at Indy but was a bit of a cock. Well, those people exist. The reason he left town was because he was better driver at the time than the main character, Tobey Marshall. There’s a race. There’s a failing company and a last chance at redemption and getting the company going again. It seems that Tobey isn’t very organised or clever. He wins a race. There’s a death. Tobey goes to jail. Tobey gets released and immediately jumps bail to enter a race on the other side of the country. Oh god, it’s bad writing this, making me relive the film. I’ll cut to the chase and keep it simple.

They don’t where seat belts while racing. Now, you can’t get decent feedback from the car unless you are tucked in nice and tight.

Every corner requires oversteer. This isn’t the fastest way to get around a corner. Yes it looks flash but to win you need to go fast and sliding isn’t fast.

Geography. One moment we are in Detroit and then we are in the Grand Canyon [looking remarkably like Pixar’s Cars scenery] and then they are flown by helicopter to the Bonneville Salt Flats a mere 500 miles away. Really? Maybe I’m being too much of a realist?

The cars were quite nice but let down by deliberately jogging the camera while racing to make you think they were going faster than they really were. You know the simple tricks to make you worry about the speed limit:

  • Camera down by the road
  • Shaking
  • Endless gear changes
  • Filming close to increase the pan speed
  • Smoke from spinning wheels
  • Noise

Curiously most of the cars in the final race were European. There was a Saleen and possibly another US car but it seems that we Europeans have the best aesthetic appeal when it comes to cars.

The Ford-Shelby Mustang was interesting but then if you are renovating a car you don’t fit it with a HUD or Recaro seats, you make it like as it was intended to be. Oh, and the JUMP!! The Mustang was clearly heading for a major front axle bend when it landed. It’s like the old Dukes of Hazard when their car would launch and then obviously land at such an angle as to break the car in half and then in the very next shot Luke and Bo (?) would be seen driving normally.

If you have a USA Police Car chasing a Koenigsegg then, let’s face it, the Koenigsegg is going to win and at the same time it will speed away from the police, especially around corners. The film had police cars easily keeping up with the Koenigsegg. That’s not really how it works.

I’ll explain the biggest problem. I didn’t LIKE any of the characters. They were pretty much all arseholes.

It’s interesting now that when I see a film I form sentences that will eventually appear on this website. I try to remember my thoughts as the film develops and then commit them to this website. How did this film go? I remembered a lot and I’ve had to try and stop myself from filling pages about how bad this film was. If you want a car chase watch The Blues Brothers.

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IMDB Ratings

I am considering re-adjusting my IMDB ratings. When I see a film I tend to give it a rating on IMDB [btw – I remember IMDB when it was a little web project at Cardiff University]. I am slowly coming to the conclusion that I need to change my scoring system for these films and I am actually considering using even numbers only.

I have been worrying about what the difference between a 5 or a 6 might be. Also, Restricting the scoring to just the even numbers will mean that I have to consider the film and try to be more realistic. If I currently give something a 6 or 7 what does that difference show? What would be the difference between a 3 or a 4? I just don’t know. The scale of 0 to 10 seems too big for these things [especially as I’m not taking the mean of lots of scores].

I also think there is a human tendency to give middle of the road scores when we think something is average or even below par. If you have seen Come Dine With Me, you will be aware [or will be after this] that when the contestants don’t really know how to score a meal or want average then they tend to plump for a 6 or 7. Their words describe an evening that is probably below par but their score is one that is not meant to offend [6 or 7] but is really rather damning. I want to call this the “Come Dine With Me Fallacy”, which would mean that sub-optimal experiences receive scores that are perceived as “average”, rather than risk offend or come across as a nasty [but realistic] person.

So, at some point in the near future I am going to adjust my IMDB ratings. I will only use the even numbers [thoughts: I need to check if I can score a zero].

Have returned: I can’t score a zero on IMDB. That is not good. So, the default scoring system means that even the poorest film ever made will receive one star. This causes some problems. But I shall try to get around that. So, my new system goes:

  • 10 Stars – I loved this film, I would pay to see it again in the cinema and maybe buy it to keep [Apocalypse Now, Star Wars, The Fifth Element].
  • 8 Stars – A good film which I certainly probably will watch again [The Rock, Independence Day].
  • 6 Stars – While it was enjoyable at the time it is not a film I will spend the time to watch again [The Railway Man, Hunger Games], this might include films I think were really good critically but not ones I’d see again.
  • 4 Stars – I only got to the end of the film to see what happened but I’ll admit it was poorly made and rubbish, maybe this is a good “bad film” [Titanic II]
  • 2 Stars – [lowest possible score] I gave up watching this film before it had finished. I hated it [Sharknado]. I left the cinema [I would have left the cinema had someone not been in my way – Van Helsing].

I shall update this or write a new communication once I have updated my scores using this crib sheet and let you know which films I struggled to pigeon-hole.

Addendum

I have just started looking at my IMDB ratings and have decided that I will use the above scoring system BUT please understand that I am now using the “Will I watch again?” criteria and this is a personal thing, very subjective. I am able to spot a “good critically acclaimed film” but think my ratings should reflect my intentions about the film and not what I think the wider world will think (1st March 2014).

Further Addenda

I have just realised that this means that any film I enjoyed but won’t intentionally watch again ends up being scored a “6”. Oh, the irony, given I complained about the “Come Dine With Me” fallacy earlier. But, in my favour, I have declared that my scoring system will be 2,4,6,8,10. This means that a score of 6 is the mean and median of the scoring values. When reading my film scores you need to understand my system which I have at least tried to communicate here.

Even More Addenda

These are my latest (updated) scores using the system explained above. I don’t care if you think otherwise about some of the ratings.

IMDB Ratings 1
IMDB2
IMDB3

Human Target appears twice because I rated an individual episode as well as the whole series.

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The Monuments Men

A Nice Little Film

These are the words I text Smith just after seeing this film. I really enjoyed it. If this film had a purpose then it showed man’s duty to protect culture and the importance that should be placed on it. It also showed camaraderie and dedication to a cause that is “just”.

You quickly forge the cast and the “big” scenes seem to just fit but I can see that they took a lot of work. The film had scenes from the Normandy Landings to Paris, the Battle Of The Bulge, St. Lo, etc. To get the “look” of the film right was a huge amount of work and probably un-noticed by most.

There were no overblown heroics and I had expected some time spent on “basic” training with the laughs thrown in but this was avoided too. As I said earlier:

A Nice Little Film

I now have some more places in Europe to visit. I have been to Bruges but I didn’t know that the statue of the Madonna and Child was there. Time to return I think. I will say one thing and I have to blame the culture of the 1980s: I was half expecting some of the cast to find or say they were searching for the “Fallen Madonna With The Big Boobies”. Such was the influence of ‘Allo ‘Allo on my childhood. Damn!

I did watch a trailer for this and I’m pretty sure that there were a few lines in the trailer that weren’t in the main film. That’s good. I hate seeing all the “big” bits of a film in a trailer and then the actual film fails to overcome my expectations. Comedies struggle with this, they put the funny lines in the trailer and then there’s nothing left for the main film. An exception to this was The Heat with Sandra Bullock. I didn’t see this at the cinema because it looked as though they had put all the funny bits in the trailer. I was wrong. This film had me laughing out loud ALL the way through. It was far better than the trailer.

Rant:

I really should try and avoid films the first few days that they are released. People in the cinema with loud sweet packets are REALLY ANNOYING. I nearly turned around and told these people to “fuck off”. Any food taken in to the cinema should be something that is quiet to eat or access. There is no need to take noisy packets of food into a cinema. It just shows what anti-social pricks you are. If you want to eat food while watching a film do it at home. You are probably too fat anyway and so shouldn’t be eating more food anyway.

End of rant.

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Robocop

I saw this at the local IMAX. I knew nothing about it when I went and only a vague memory of the original film and thinking it was a good film.

This film was a 12A certificate. The original was an 18 (and directed by Paul Verhoven). So, it was clear that there was not going to be the same amount of violence or language involved in the new film.

[Note: I have since watched the original again and the new film stinks in comparison to the old one (which I consider a classic, probably due to where it appeared in my lifetime)]

Overall, the new film was rubbish. There were some nods to the original but they were poorly done. The news-caster opening the film and being generally very republican and Fox News about it all was there in the original but more cleverly done 20 years ago. I don’t think the news section added a thing to the film whereas it gave a much better view of the future world in the earlier version.

The original film had more menacing corporate politics, more menacing criminals and a far better plot line. This latest version of the film was too politically correct. Murphy’s wife gave consent for him to be turned into Robocop in this film and knew about him. When Robocop tries to overcome his programming in the new version we just see him flash loads of video over his display. In the original you can see a man dehumanised and then struggle with memories and his inevitable return to humanity. His wife and child have gone. He’s left alone. The original film makes more of the “struggle” to overcome his computer identity.

To improve the new film there were certain aspects that needed to be included. Murphy spinning his gun after shooting is surely a pre-requisite. That and the ED-209 saying “you have 20 seconds to comply”. I missed these as I thought they were certain shoe-ins.

So, as a film for the latest generation who can’t cope with the 80s excess this is a very neutralised version. Less language, less nasty. It’s a shame, but then they probably wouldn’t make any money if it was an 18 certificate.

The final scene of the film, much like this final paragraph, was a waste of time.

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Lone Survivor

It’s an American war film made with plenty of US military backing.

It was interesting to see a war film in the cinema again after such a long time. It was ok. It was trying to play on the heartstrings. Clichéd it was.  I got the idea that the SEALs were hard and “superhuman” from the opening and after that the action went on to prove it. The result of them following the rules of engagement was lots of pain and death, but we have rules of engagement for a reason.

Ultimately this film fails to deliver any critical view of a “just” war (hence the military backing) and just provides action based on real events with photos of people who are now dead as a coda.

Entertainment this is. Art or discussion forming it is not.

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The Railway Man

I normally don’t wait too long before writing these “reviews” of movies in case my opinion is coloured by talking it over with other people. “Review” is a rather loose concept. I write exactly what I think. It doesn’t mean anything in the real world.

The Railway Man was a good film. Much like “12 Years A Slave” everyone should watch this. The brutality of the Japanese army and what they did to the slaves they used to build the railway through Thailand and Burma (Myanmar) is terrible. Everyone should understand how man can treat man if he is conditioned to do so [see Evil below].

Ultimately this film is not as much of a downer as “12 Years”. The theme running through the film is the terror of war and how people are affected by post traumatic stress disorder. BUT the ultimate theme of this film is forgiveness. This is surely man’s greatest asset. The ability to forgive, not to forget but to understand the terror of other times and then to forgive and allow peoples to work together to reconciliation. We are not different as human beings. Whichever part of the world you come from, whatever your religion (or none), whatever your abilities, whomever you support in sport and whatever the colour of your skin (and all the other different ways we segregate ourselves) we are the same. We are NOT different races. We have different cultures. We are raised differently. In the end, however, most of us would forgive and learn to live with our mistakes and work to correct future issues. Ultimately I believe that humans should and eventually will do good for each other.

To be good to each other we have to overcome inbuilt prejudices. We are tribal creatures and fiercely territorial. We want to be in gangs and to feel surrounded by people who think the same as us. We are animals who yearn for togetherness and knowingness of familiarity. To trust and like others we have to leave behind eons of evolution and hard-wiring in our brains. We have to constantly battle our thoughts and work to make sure that we can be the best we can and do good to others.

We would not fight and kill and maim each other if we could all sit around a camp fire and chat and make food for each other, become a single society. Religions, governments, sports teams, schools, villages, music, politics, practically all aspects of human behaviour involves us being in “like” groups” and forces us to “be on one side or the other”.

I repeat: We are all the same. We are not races.

Human beings need to get together and sit. Face to face. Talk. Consciously overcome the inbuilt prejudice and work together. Work together for the common good. To make the world a better place for the entire human race.

Look around the corporations and governments and see if you see that happening anywhere. I would be most surprised.

If we can learn to forgive and learn to listen to each other and help each other then we might have a chance on this little rock orbiting the Sun.

Hmm. That went a little left-field. Oh well.

After watching this film I read a comment on IMDB. The person said in the “trivia” section that the film uses the compressed time technique as in reality it took a couple of years between meeting and marrying. Apart from a few special films I think all films use compressed time. Does this commenter write this is all film trivia sections?

The film uses compressed time to speed up the story. Eric Lomax and Patti Wallace did meet in 1980, but in reality they didn’t marry until 1983. Eric didn’t learn that Takashi Nagase was still alive until 1993, and they finally met in 1995.

Evil
This should really be a longer communication by itself and maybe I will write one someday. For now I would like to say that I don’t like the media describing someone as “evil”. Considering the world is over seven billion humans there is plenty of scope for all manner of people. Most will fit into the constraints of society and some will not. Some people do terrible things because they don’t know any better, these people should be helped. Everybody else probably does terrible things because of greed or jealousy and many other reasons. These people are probably quite rational and know that what they are doing is wrong and so they should be punished within the bounds of what that society thinks is suitable. By society here I mean the laws of the land [as agreed by elected representatives] and not just what the victims think should happen, perhaps that is another communication to write: The problem of laws and society.

I am not claiming that this is a complete dichotomy. I am oversimplifying the issues to make a point. My basic view is that people either do bad things and know they shouldn’t or a smaller proportion of people do bad things and don’t know any better.

When people who commit terrible crimes are labelled as EVIL by the media it infers that these people are not rational. That these people have been inhabited by EVIL and it has been there since birth. EVIL is a religious term. EVIL means it’s ok to seek revenge in a terrible manner as there is nothing that can be done for that person. EVIL means we don’t have to examine the REASONS behind what that person did. We don’t have to look for excuses, we don’t have to seek rational arguments why they behaved that way, we can just accept that they are EVIL and should be treated as such. Labelling people as EVIL removes the responsibility to ask why and allows us to ignore reasons why.

This whole communication came from the Japanese doing terrible things to other people during the second world war. Should the wrong doing be punished? YES. Did some of the soldiers enjoy what they did? YES. Were many soldiers acting on orders and their society telling them to be brutal? YES.

Should we forgive and understand? Most Definitely.

Out of all this we must LEARN and REMEMBER what happened. We should aim to become better people. We should aim to do good for all.

Once again. We are ONE human race. We are the same.

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12 Years A Slave

This is a very powerful film. It was very hard, as a “modern” person with mostly liberal values and also someone who has no belief in god but believes we should do good to each other, to understand that this film was mostly true. The treatment of the millions of people who were considered slaves and of those who are slaves in our current times is shocking.

It is hard to imagine a time when the LAW of a land allowed the OWNERSHIP of people by other people. This film should be seen by everyone, it should be required viewing, it is very good.

It was interesting to see the stylistic additions to the film. The long shots of the Louisiana countryside and calming times of clouds. This was in stark contrast to the violence and conditions within which the slaves were kept.

In one scene a female slave is whipped. This is a graphic scene. My emotional reaction to this was far more than my reaction to the similar scenes in the film The Passion Of The Christ. I think I reacted more because this happened to real people over and over in a barbaric system of legalised slavery. The mutilation of Christ in the Mel Gibson film didn’t bother me. There’s not a great deal of evidence for it [in fact there isn’t any good evidence for the existence of Christ himself].

Overall this is a film worth seeing or if you don’t want to see it you should be forced to.

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American Hustle

I left a little earlier today to get the to cinema and compared to yesterday I got there during the adverts, but this was, apparently a popular film, and I had to sit right at the front. Actually, I didn’t have to sit there, there were spaces towards the back but the whole front row was free and it was easier to sit there than to hunt a spare seat surrounded by people I wouldn’t mind being surrounded by.

An interesting thing about sitting this close is that I could see the pixels in the projection and this was a little disconcerting. I could only see them if I looked for them otherwise I let the film take me over. Curious to see the workings of digital projection this close compared to proper film.

American Hustle is an American crime film in the vain of Goodfellas. I enjoyed it a lot. The acting was brilliant. All the way through I was trying to work out who the lead actor was and when the credits rolled I was surprised as I hadn’t recognised him. To be honest I’m pretty bad a recognising film type people and that is subject of a future post. I didn’t recognise Jennifer Lawrence until about 3/4 of the way through the film. It was her eyes that gave her away!

I have noticed that this has received good reviews from the critics and that is very good. The film is well made, acted and shot. It is all in all: good. Is it a classic? No, because there are other films that have done this with better or equivalent results. I guess it’s Goodfellas for the 2010s generation.

My one problem is that I need to like the characters in a film to truly like it. I’m not sure I really liked these people. Although I really wanted to know the end of the story I didn’t care one way or another for the people [apart from the son]. They weren’t the most likeable people. The other character I actually liked was Stoddard Thorsen, the middle manager in the FBI. His story about ice-fishing was brilliant, a lovely little plot device.

The film opened with the words:

Some Of This Actually Happened

Well, that’s nice dear. It’d be more interesting to know which bits were real and which bits weren’t. Thanks, Wikipedia, for giving us the details.

Yes, this is a good film, but it left me feeling slightly empty.

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47 Ronin

I booked a ticket for this film and thought that the showing time was 18:20. I finished editing my website earlier at 18:15 and left to get to the car, which is never parked close to my house. On the way I looked at my reservation time for the cinema and it said 18:15 showing. This meant I had 5 minutes fewer to get to the cinema than I had thought and I was already late.

It turns out I got to the cinema and in my seat with two trailers to spare. Pretty efficient timing! I managed to miss the adverts and other trailers. While I’m waiting for the film I don’t watch the screen anyway. I read a book on my Kindle app on my phone. I’m currently reading about NASA’s contributions to computational fluid dynamics over the last 50 years. Fascinating.

The film, 47 Ronin.

This is based on a true story, which I’ve just found out [thanks Wikipedia]. It’d be more interesting to create a film about the discovery of this story and its manipulation over time to create societal values. Anyway, this film was ok. Just ok. I haven’t rated it on IMDB yet but when I do it will be a 6/10.

Keanu Reeves. Why? I’m amazed that this guy gets paid for doing what he does. I don’t think I’ve seen him act yet. Well, maybe in Bill and Ted’s? Is he the big name there because everyone else is Japanese and no-one will know them? Or perhaps it’s because he has black hair. Whatever, a good actor he is not. Fortunately the story did not need him to act  he just had to stare.

The rest of the cast were good. I particularly liked the witch. I thought she was brilliantly seductive.

Problems [potential SPOILERS]

  • Lazy editing, or possibly for an American audience. We see the wolf’s eyes and a bit later the witch. Later when Keanu recognises the witch we get a flashback. SERIOUSLY? Are the audience that stupid that they won’t remember the eyes from earlier. I nearly screamed out.
  • I don’t know where it was filmed but it was stunning and I hope that it wasn’t CGI. The locations were brilliant although at times the backdrops used for studio shots were a bit obvious. See below more details.
  • MAGIC. Is it necessary to have magic? Isn’t this a good enough story without magic? If I realise I’m watching a fairy tale then I can cope with magic but this seemed a little annoying. The film would have been far superior with a better script without magic but then the effects probably wouldn’t have been needed.
  • Alien creatures? Really. Lizard people living in an enchanted forest? And, the TEST. Poor writing. It was obvious. Have another go at this one people.
  • Dutch Island was cool and I liked the idea but it probably never happened. I have been reliably informed that it existed, thanks Pom, although its depiction in the film was nothing like the real thing.

Overall this is a film for the modern generation who have loved the Lord Of The Rings and want more of the same. This could have been a brilliant film but failed.

Moral Rights
So much of the film relies on the Japanese codes of honour and trust. I found myself drifting off halfway through into thoughts of moral truths. We, as a society need moral codes and this film and story are there to inform us of these values. We should be truthful, we should be honest, we should care and we should keep our honour. These values come from us being humans and tribal creatures rather than from any book or religion. Religions and their books [and politicians or any two-bit celebrity] seem to be allowed to have their views on moral rights and wrongs. I find this amusing. Surely it’s up to society to decide? For example, when did what the Prime Minister earns become a benchmark for peoples salaries? Blah, blah, blah. Time to stop.

Locations
Have checked with IMDB for the locations of filming and I feel cheated.
Ronin Locations

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The Desolation Of Smaug

It’s a long time since I read The Hobbit. All I can remember is that it is about Bilbo Baggins and that there is a ring involved. So my impressions of the film are not contaminated by things like accuracy to the book.

This was the first ever film I have seen in IMAX 3D HFR and it looked absolutely brilliant. I am just so impressed with what the thing looks like. I loved the film. The 160 minutes passed really quickly and I was fascinated and enthralled for the whole thing.

There were a few places where I think the HFR acted against the “look” of the film. The first film looked oddly “other worldly” during the bright daytime scenes and I think that’s something we can get used to. There were a couple of shots during the Barrel Escape set piece that I thought looked like 1970s special effects on TV. The problem is I can’t explain what I mean by that.

I can’t wait for my children to be old enough to cope with the spiders, dragon, orcs and Sauron. This film was brilliant. I’m so looking forward to watching the three Star Wars films and also the six Middle Earth films.

Brilliant.

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The Hunger Games: Catching Fire

First off: I haven’t read the books. I probably won’t. I don’t get a great deal of time to read and so when I do I read other stuff I find interesting. I’m currently reading “Ring World” by Larry Niven and have been for about 4 months!

Second thing: People who eat from noisy packets should be escorted from the cinema. I go to the cinema about once a week and last night was the first time for quite a while where there were idiots eating from extremely noisy crinkly packets. I could understand it if you sneak food into the auditorium in a plastic bag and quickly get food out and make a “one-off” noise but making noise all the way through the film is not acceptable. It displays a complete lack of empathy and care.

Thirdly: Since I haven’t read this book this communication is simply about what I thought of the film and not how it did as an adaptation.

Overall, it was a good film. Very well made and filmed. The acting is ok and the storyline worked well, possibly apart from the final five minutes which left me a little non-plussed. Out of it all I think I liked the chariot ride the best. Well, that’s not much written for a film of 146 minutes but it’s not outstanding.

I do like the look of the Capital and the politics. It makes it quite interesting. The fashion looks good but then again flamboyant costumes have been used for years to enhance films. I can’t help thinking that the same story has been told many times. We all know how it’s going to end. I keep thinking of “The Running Man” and how this is essentially just a cross between that and “Battle Royale”.

It’s all cyclical, I guess. When I grew up I think that Swallows and Amazons was still quite a big thing for kids to read along with the Famous Five and also the Hobbit stuff. Over time franchises grow and decline giving a snap shot of the teen zeitgeist. Harry Potter and then the Vampire crap will all become a thing of the past with children only reading it because their parents buy it for them thinking it’s good stuff while a new story will rise and sell shed-loads. Is Lord Of The Rings really (I mean really) that good? This cycle is probably going to get worse with bigger blockbusters with a shorter lifespan because information travels so much more quickly via the internet now. My conclusion is that the grand-themes will return but jacketed within different characters, leading each generation to think they have “their” thing. Ha ha. It’s all been done before.

 

Addition 4 hours later:
Potential Spoiler

When Katniss fires her lightning conductor at the force field it breaks the shield. That’s fine but then there’s loads of roofing and girders crashing down to the ground. If you have a force field you don’t need a solid structure too. I don’t understand what was going on here. It doesn’t fit with the technology in the film.

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Thor – The Dark World

This is a really enjoyable film. It is funny, predictable and grand. Finally, superhero films have grown up.

I went to see this film in 3D as the showing time suited me better than a standard 2D showing. I don’t normally like 3D films as the 3D effect adds nothing to the enjoyment of the film for me. It’s a rather pointless gimmick [I am planning to write about my response to 3D at another time]. I was generally quite impressed as there weren’t too many gratuitous 3D shots and nothing in the film seemed out of place.

I like the CGI and battle scenes. Normally CGI battle scenes seem too busy and too much blurring. I struggle to make sense of what is going on on-screen. Thor did this well with sensible battle scenes and nothing over the top. A battle recently didn’t like was Superman’s final fight in his latest film. I like the fact that the people of Asgard use swords to fight, even with all their tech, it allows for good scenes in films. The final destruction was well done and not over the top as most films tend to make it.

The plot line doesn’t really matter. Once you invent “gods” and mythical creatures you can do anything you want in terms of plot [much like Doctor Who] and creatures [much like Doctor who]. The last part of the film and the epilogue just go to show you can just make-shit-up. Five infinity stones? Wow, they suddenly appeared from nowhere and can now be used for future films, clever but not thrilling. By the way, I don’t read graphic novels and so have no idea if these are in the books.

The cast was stellar and hammed it up brilliantly. Nice to see an old version of the Doctor in there and also nice to see Rene Ruso pop up, I’m pretty sure I haven’t seen her in anything since Lethal Weapon 3.

This film was good fun and well done. I laughed out loud many times, on occasions by myself, but I don’t care.

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Gravity

I went to see this film and was rather excited about it. When I go to the cinema I generally don’t watch the trailers. Most trailers seem to give too much away about the film and if you see them once then you don’t need to see them again. If it is a film of which I am already aware and am looking forward to then I won’t watch the trailer and I will continue to read my book (on the Kindle app). Occasionally there’s a trailer that makes me look up and Gravity was one like that. Firstly it’s in space and I like space stuff. Secondly it was directed by . This was enough to make me very excited. Since I first saw the trailer I have avoided seeing it advertised since, I don’t want to know any more about the film.

I was rather worried that my expectations for this film were going to be too high. I have seen a number of films where I have been overly looking forward to them and have ultimately been disappointed as the film didn’t live up to expectations.

I needn’t have worried.

The opening shot was awesome [literally]. The rest of the film was beautifully filmed. It looks just stunningly gorgeous. I even decided to see it in 3D and in the past this has tended to remove something from the film but this was really well done. I won’t write too much because the trailer is so minimal and I don’t want to give anything away up in this section. Basically, apart from some simple scientific issues, this film is absolutely brilliant. I’d even go see it again. I am happy with the scientific short-cuts, as the film would not have worked or flowed as well if it had been truly simulated.

Go see this film. I dare you to be disappointed.

SPOILER ALERT

 

 

 

 

 

A couple of errors I picked up on. You can’t get out of a space suit in about a minute. It takes about an hour to get the whole thing on so this was a little imperfect. When returning to Earth the astronauts have their backs to the ground, Bullock’s return was filmed in such a way as to imply she was heading face down, or facing the direction of motion. There’s more analysis over at Phil Plait’s blog pages at Slate.com

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Ender’s Game

Wow!

I have bought the book but will read it after seeing the film. I’m currently working my way through Ringworld by Larry Niven. Back to the film:

It was ace. I really enjoyed it. I didn’t know a great deal about it before I went. I’d had a small synopsis from a friend and so went with a complete open mind. I loved it. The visuals were really good and the story was rather excellent. Go and see it.

I’m trying desperately to not give anything away but for me there were two moments when my jaw hit the floor. I guess if you’ve read the book you’ll know what these are.

It was great.

 

I don’t like the descriptions by the press of it being Harry Potter in space. That’s not what it is about. It’s a story with a wonderful political background and reflects on the politics of the time. Whereas Harry Potter is just the latest in a long line of book series that sell lots, it a generational thing. Every generation has “their” Harry Potter, or Famous Five, or Swallows and Amazons. My main issue was that Ender looked like a young Sheldon Cooper from The Big Bang Theory and I had to work hard to remove that thought as I watched.

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Escape Plan

This film was better than the trailers would make out. It was quite good fun although had one MASSIVE and annoying misunderstanding of science. Stallone and Schwarzenegger were both quite entertaining and the whole film worked well. If you want 90 or so minutes of fun and a little plot then it’s well worth the time-investment.

SPOILER ALERT – Do not read any further unless you want to know!

The idea of a prison owned and run by very rich people is sensible enough. Prisons are already run by profit making private companies so I don’t have any issues with that. The main premise of the prison was to keep these people out of society (and to gain information from them). But, this seemed a little expensive. If these people are as bad as thought then it would be massively cheaper just to kill them. There’s no point in keeping them alive (unless you need some information from them and that could be done much cheaper). Is it more morally right to keep people detained without trial instead of killing them, when the bottom line is profit I don’t think so.
It would have been nice to see Stallone’s partner suffer a little more with dirty objects as the film made it quite clear he was very OCD about dirt.
Generally the film was quite accurate to reality. A prison on a ship, done that, there were prison ships on the Medway during the Napoleonic wars. A constantly moving ship in the ocean? No problem with that. Do the prisoners know they are on a ship? Happy that it could be kept from them although every ship I’ve ever been on vibrates with the thump of the engine. It has been a while though.

My Biggest Problem with this film:

The Coriolis effect does NOT, I repeat NOT make the water flow down a plug hole or toilet in a particular direction. If you understand physics a little you would know why. I’m not going to debunk that particular part of the film here. JFGI. Sometimes I hate script writers, ignorance is not an excuse for messing up the science.

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Machete Kills

So, I didn’t really have any expectations apart from quite a bit of gore. I knew nothing about this film apart from Michelle Rodriguez being in it. I think I expected some sort of pulp violence movie.

Guess what I got? A pulp violence movie. It was certainly refreshing from the high budget “action” films I had seen recently. The effects were organic. I think I mean cheap but that just added to the film. This was never going to be a movie with a budget of $100m. I really liked it.

The acting was good, adding to the overall atmosphere of the film. Everything was over the top. The effects, the action, the gore, all of it.

If you want 105 minutes of laughter and gore then look no further. I recommend this film to all who know what to expect. I’m really looking forward to the sequel.

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White House Down

Channing Tatum – Who? Am I that far away from popular culture now?

PROBABLY

So, I went to see this film because of my Washington DC visit earlier in the year. I really like seeing places I’ve been in films and on the big screen. It’s like seeing London in big films. I feel that slightly more personal connection with the movie because I can say “I’ve been there”.

You get what you pay for with this film. I wanted a brain dead action thriller. I got a brain dead action almost-thriller. The good things about the film: DC looks nice, politicians are the baddies. The bad things about the film: pretty much everything else.

The President doesn’t want to be president. Congress don’t want him to be President, but he is trying to secure a middle-east peace deal. OK, that’s fair enough. But, the rest was just poor and laughable terrible. The script was bad. The action was over the top and implausible. Oh, it was bad. But, as with my tweet rating of 5, it was bad done well, rather than being just a badly made bad film, it was a well made bad film!

It’s curious how some of the most recent American films have depicted disgruntled Americans as the baddies. Perhaps they are waking up to the fact that the greatest threat to USA peace and security comes from within the country and that external factors are small in comparison [US Government shutdown].

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Riddick

Riddick. Watch the first one. Don’t see this one. It’s the same film.

 

I was greatly annoyed at the sexism inherent in the script and screenplay. Katee Sackhoff starred in this film, previously known for playing the most excellent role-model “Starbuck”, Kara Thrace in the TV series Battlestar Galactica. Her first line in this film, as the only woman in the cast was:

Are you going to clean that up?

Seriously. A great female actor who’s been a force for strong female characters asks about tidying up the room? What a waste.

Also, there was a gratuitous boob shot. How disappointing. Just not needed. I really like Katee Sackhoff as an actress but she was let down by this film.

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