Tag: cinema

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Rio 2

This was a special film because it was #1’s first cinema trip. However, as a film, it was bad. There wasn’t really a decent story, or rather there was and it was just handled poorly. There were random songs all over the place. There was a football section (yawn). All in all it was pretty poor. The animation was pretty good but that isn’t enough to save a film, there needs to be a story. Even #1 got bored and he’ll watch any kind of rubbish.

I rated this film a 4 on IMDB. This score when standardised is really a 2 but IMDB don’t allow zero stars. See this communication here for more guidance on my IMDB ratings.

One amusing observation was that the cinema was full of grandparents looking after their grandchildren because it was half term and, I guess, parents were at work. One old dear in front of me was eating her sandwiches, which is better than all the crap they serve in the foyer. As my grandma used to say (she was an avid cinema goer, but didn’t like it when they swore):

You pay to watch a film, not eat your lunch.

She was a wise old lass.

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The Two Faces Of January

It’s been a long time since I’ve watched a thriller at the cinema. Recently I’ve been seeing action movies mostly because they are the only type of films around.

I enjoyed this film although I did find that my most usual problem with films starting the creep in half way through. I really struggle with films where I don’t like any of the characters. Although I did not actively dislike the characters in this film I did find them hard to like by the end of the film. The plot was pretty good although I have one problem explained below [spoiler alert].

This film looks as though it was shot on location in Athens, Crete and Istanbul. It was set in the sixties and looked nice. The Cretan countryside looks otherworldly. It has been added to the list of places I would like to see sometime.

I rated this film a 6 on IMDB. See my ratings guide here.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

My Issue [spoiler]

After the accidental death of the private investigator the two main characters decide to leave the hotel straight away. They don’t check out and leave in the late evening with some clothes packed in suitcases. Firstly the woman would have had much more than the single suitcase and she wasn’t told why they were leaving. The big issue is that by leaving without checking out they didn’t have their passports. If they had actually thought for a moment, they would have hidden the body, placed a do not disturb sign on the PI door and then checked out in the morning collecting their passports. The body wouldn’t have been discovered for almost half a day and there would have been no evidence connecting them all [as long as they cleared the photos in the PI room]. Poor situation planning I fear although the film would have been a lot shorter.

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Godzilla

I try not to watch the trailers for movies I really want to see. Yes, I probably see the first trailer and then after that I don’t want to know any more information about the film. After seeing the first trailer for Godzilla I was curious but not too worried about it as there were aspects to the trailer that didn’t seem to make sense to me. The second trailer I saw (without realising it was for Godzilla) made me really want to see the film. I try to ignore all information about films before seeing them. Therefore I was really annoyed with BBC News for having a full picture of Godzilla on the front page of their entertainment section the day I am going to see the film. My tweet:

I went to see this film in 3D IMAX at Bluewater. Normally I don’t watch 3D, I don’t think it adds to the film and I can’t be bothered to pay the extra. However, IMAX 3D is pretty awesome. I was really impressed with how much I felt the 3D added. The shots were gorgeous. It was a beautiful film, the natural scenery was outstanding and some of the cinematography was just wonderful. I think the director had a thing for “dramatic smoke” and he/she used it creatively to give menace. The detail in the smoke was impressive [coming from someone who understands fluid dynamics that’s praise indeed].

I found that the 3D special shots, you know, those shots where you think “that was an odd perspective” and then you realise it was put in to make use of the 3D effect, pretty well planned and they didn’t distract from the film. A lot of the time I find that CGI is made to work fast and blurry which I don’t like, this film didn’t really have that. The pace of the CGI worked well for me, you could actually watch it without feeling that you couldn’t see it all.

Without giving anything away for this film [it would be unfair] I really enjoyed it. I though the entire thing was gorgeous. The story was pretty good and interesting. There were a couple of flaws in the plot but I can overlook those. I was even reasonably willing to accept giant fauna as real by the end of the film but I always come back to the energy requirements of such large biological creatures and it distresses me slightly. I liked the idea that one of the main storylines was pretty much incidental to the overall story.

I gave this film a 10 on IMDB because I can see myself buying it in the future and watching it in 3D on my TV. It is a film I will watch with my sons, when I feel they are old enough. I’d probably have to turn the sub-woofer down by quite a bit though, the sound at the cinema was pretty body-shaking.

I understand that the quality of this review is a little less than some previously, if I have a quality-rating. However, I really don’t want to give anything away. The final observation is that if you like comic/monster movies then you should this one as it’s damn good [try and avoid any information about it in advance including reading this! [ha ha]].

On the way home from Bluewater I got to drive a MX-5 and I will admit that it was rather good fun. If I could I’d probably get one just for messing around in. Mind you, I do have the offer of borrowing this particular MX-5 so I might have to take that up.

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Sabotage

I rated this film as 4/10 on IMDB. See my ratings guide here. There were parts of this film that were funny and others where the buddy-buddy thing was well written but the overall plot was terrible. This film lived nowhere near reality. It was a gore fest for the Call Of Duty generation. Plenty of illegal killing and two dimensional characters. At the exact point where I thought “Oh dear, please don’t let them have sex”, they had sex. The epilogue was comical.

An irritatingly poor film that had promise at times. Not worth paying for.

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Spider-Man 2

I had a bit of a Spider-Man marathon recently. On Friday evening I watched The Amazing Spider-Man on 3D Blu-Ray and I enjoyed it. I found the new actor far better than Tobey Maguire who just annoyed me. I rated this film an 8 on the understanding that I will probably watch it again (mainly with my sons). See this communication for an explanation of my rating system.

I mainly watched the first (new) film because I went to see the second film at the cinema. I, again, rated this new film an 8. I enjoyed it and this film goes to show how you make a good super-hero film.

I won’t give too much away except to say that I found it rather curious that every product within the film was made by Sony. Some people might be thinking that because Sony paid for this film it allows them to place products [it does].

I won’t go into the organ-destroying acceleration experienced by the people that Spider-Man saves by swinging and catching them, also the conservation of momentum law seems to have been forgotten. Mind you, the film is about a man who can walk up walls.

 

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Transcendence

I had expected worse. I think there are some films where the tag line needs to be:

Better than the trailer suggests

I think the best film I saw which was let down by a terrible trailer was the Road To Perdition.

Transcendence wasn’t the worst film I saw this weekend. It was a well made and glossy film and there was lots of stuff. The overall plot line was pretty good for the first half of the film and then it went bad. At lots of points I found myself thinking “what?”, “how” and “why?”. I just didn’t get it. I could write the plot flaws below, but I don’t often do spoilers. It would be best for you if you just watched The Lawnmower Man from the early 1990s.

I gave this a 4 on IMDB. See this communication for my rating system.

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Noah

“Woo hoo. Father, woo hoo.”

These were my first words I ever spoke on stage when I was 11 years old. I had previously played the villain in a version of Cinderella for my primary school but this acting job was at a “proper” dramatic society show.

I think I played Japeth, the son of Noah, in the stage play Noah by Andre Obey. I vaguely remember that I stood off-stage-left when I spoke these words. Those words are pretty much all I can remember of that experience. I was in other productions, maybe more later, but this was my first. The programme is probably somewhere in my loft or at my parents’ house. I had a couple of folders where I kept mementos of all my appearances and shows in which I was involved.

As for the film I saw in the cinema, it was shit.

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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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