Alice In Wonderland Review

. I was really looking forward to seeing this version, especially as it was in the professional hands of a director that could do it justice. From the previews, I was a little worried that the special effects would be a bit on the bad side; and to an extent, they were. A lot of the effects centred around characters being different sizes to those around them. Even though I didn’t like the ‘Lord Of The Rings Trilogy’, I felt those films did a much better job of this; for instance putting a very small Elijah Wood, next to a regular sized Sir Ian Mckellen. And let’s us not forget, these were about 10 years old. Next up, the fully CGI characters, which were as bad as they were in any film. I still find it amazing that nearly 20 years after Jurassic Park and Terminator 2, there doesn’t appear to be any distinct improvement in computer generated imagery. The film as a whole was a decent enough to sit through, but for one that was directed by Tim Burton, and a story that is said to have been written while the author was high on drugs, it was a relatively straightforward movie. Compared to the complete madness and mayhem of Disney’s version, this could be said to be just an offshoot of the Harry Potter franchise. It actually made me want to go home and put the Disney version on, juts so I could re-scramble my brain. Another aspect that made the Disney version so brilliant, was all the great voices that were used for the characters. In this version it was just boring to hear the same old ones being rolled out yet again, and you can just picture them standing in front of a microphone with a script in their hand. At times it was a little slow, but then as the minutes ticked by, you could hear ‘the drums’; signalling the approach of yet another big battle scene in a film. I was very interested to see how they handled it, this time, and the best thing I can say is that they kept it short. May I also say just say how much the actress that plays Alice, is the spitting image of a much younger Gwenyth Paltrow. Then there’s Johnny Depp, who was a little annoying at times when his accent kept changing from English to Scottish. Obviously a little reminder to everyone that he could still do it since his role in ‘Finding Neverland’. Matt Lucas? What a stupid idea that was; it looked as though someone had just painted his face onto a balloon, then blew it up. His characters Tweedledee & Tweedledum, were nothing like the creepy ones in the Disney version. Speaking of these two, what the heck happened to ‘The Walrus & the Carpenter’ story they told in the Disney version?

The Wolfman review

The film was very middle of the road; it had so many cliches and nothing that any other werewolf film didn't have already. It was almost a clone of American Werewolf in London -

1) To start with Benicio Del Torro's character has come over from America - even though he has an American accent, he was born in England (in the movie).
2) Just before being killed by a werewolf, it is shot and he is saved
3) A scene from inside a LOCAL public house - featuring one of the actual actors from American Werewolf in London 'David Schofield' he is seen playing darts in AWIL, in this he is a local constable.
4) The transformation sequence is the same
5) He goes on a killing spree in London
6) There is that moment when the werewolf and the woman he is in love with, stare at each other just before he is then shot and killed.

Anthony Hopkins character appeared to be transplanted from 'Bram Stoker's Dracula', the only difference was the role he played. Then there was Hugo Weaving's character - I was expecting him at any moment to say 'Miiissssttterrr Annnnderson, surprised to see me? - where's Morpheus?' Emily Blunt's character was badly cast too, it's much better seeing her play feisty roles such as in 'The Devil Wears Prada'.

I went to see the film after listening to Jonathon Ross's review. He didn't say it was brilliant, just that it was well shot with great special effects and scenery; that was enough for me. The special effects were pretty good, although a CGI bear onwed by some gypsies nearly had me walking out. If you compare it to films such as AWIL, Jaws, Predator, Aliens, I would say that what you saw of the creature happened far too quickly. I feel it should have appeared much more gradually; that and some more harsh lighting on the wolf so it didn't look like a bloke in a costume. I have to say it wasn't awful, I just found it incredibly lazy, like they were just trying to fill hole in the release schedules. Wait til this one comes out on ITV one Saturday night in the future when you have nothing to do.

My review of the film 'The Book Of Eli'

Ahh, the Book of Eli, what can I say about this mess of a film? It started off on a very promising note, but from the moment we see the clichéd gothickly dressed, post apocalyptic woman pretending to ask for help, it descended down the same route as films such as ‘Waterworld’ and ‘Mad Max’. What is it with this ‘I don’t care about anyone-don’t want to speak to anyone-act like a moody teenager’ character that the protagonists of these types of films employ throughout the movie? As usual in a world where they can’t even find some shampoo, there seems to be a huge amount of powerful weaponry and ammunition lying about. Speaking of shampoo, which is made such a fuss of when it is found – why does the young woman Solara appear to have access to all the beauty products she can get her hands on; not to mention a salon quality hair style, and her mother too? More about her to come. I also ignored the very blatant KFC product placement of their branded moisture towels; even though it came up twice. It goes from bad to worse when there is a shoot out, and Denzel Washington’s character has a bullet hit the top of his coat, just behind his neck, but not him. Okay, so it appears that maybe this guy is in some way immortal, I mean, there’s nothing wrong with that being part of the plot so far. The film then moves to an old house in the middle of the desert, occupied by a completely pointless and underused Frances De La Tour and Michael Gambon. The speed at which they are killed leaves you wondering exactly how they managed to survive this long in the first place. First let me mention the second annoying piece of product placement – the slow and obvious pan from a car battery to a “Motorola” loudspeaker. Now, the nature of their deaths. They are living in this house, that when hit by bullets, splinters as if made with balsa wood. Yet with the front of the house quickly disintegrating under fire, the four people in the house, standing up against the front wall, somehow manage not to get hit, or even look like they are in any danger whatsoever. Now we move onto Eli actually getting shot – yes he actually is wounded by a direct shot to his torso. This now begs the question from the scene where he is shot in the back of the neck – why didn’t he drop dead immediately from that bullet? Basically from there on I was left with many queries swimming around in my head-

-What was this voice that told him to head west to Malcolm McDowell (if it was “God”, then we assume he exists in the film, so why didn’t it prevent the apocalypse in the first place? In stead of having Eli bring the book to a safe place so that the world would eventually go the way it went before)
-Where did he learn to fight so well
-Why had it taken him 3 years to walk from one side of America to the other, when it should only have taken between 100-200 days depending on all the obvious factors
-(many others, but they are mostly just me being nitpicky)

The final scene is a complete joke – the young girl he has been travelling with, dresses up like Lara Croft, and heads out into the wastes on her own – WHY?? Is it that she has to carry on what Eli started? NO, the book is safe, there is nothing left to do. We saw from a previous scene in the film, that she wouldn’t last 2 minutes out there on her own, but now she’s heading out armed with a huge knife we know she has no idea how to handle! While this scene was playing through, the few people that were in the cinema around me, started laughing with me in disbelief.

My review of the film 'Sex & Drugs & Rock & Roll'

January 11th (my birthday)

On the way home we discussed whether or not we should go and see ‘Sex & Drugs & Rock n Roll’ featuring Andy Serkis. I was in two minds about it, because after seeing ‘Ray’, I told myself I wouldn’t watch any more biographies because they simply are never interesting enough. This film however was in a league of its own, it was superbly acted by everyone, especially Serkis, it wasn’t the usual simplistic approach of ‘well this happened so this is why they are like this’, and of course, the music was great. Now, I know and like a few of Ian Dury’s songs, as they are always played on the radio, but to my wife they meant something, because she had liked them when they first came out. What was quite funny was the other “show” that was going on just to the right of us in the cinema. A man of about 50 years old had obviously dragged his wife along to see this, but she was not happy at all. Throughout much of the film she was sat rigid in her chair, sometimes with her hands over her ears, while he was nodding his head along to every song that started playing. He also did that thing of laughing louder than was natural, because he had spotted an ‘in joke’ or a reference. Is this some sort of signal or wild call that people make hoping that others in the audience will be impressed that they had spotted it as well. Or was it a ‘look at me I’m cool, I was there man, you wouldn’t understand’.

My review of the film Avatar

First of all, let me say - it is as outstanding as I had imagined. The new technique that Cameron has created to capture human emotion in a CGI creature is as good as I have ever seen, especially on the female alien Neytiri. Seeing Sigourney Weaver in her Avatar made me chuckle, as they had absolutely nailed that tight lipped smile that she is famous for. Now all Cameron has to do is create something that will sort out all the other movements of the body, which as usual are as floaty as every other attempt in film . I noticed that of all the creatures/aliens on screen, there weren't any that had fur or hair (except ponytails and weaving), which was probably what had to be done so as not to melt-down the rendering computers. I have only watched one other thing in 3D in the last 20 or so years, which was an underwater documentary at the Imax, but this badly strained my eyes and gave me motion sickness. Although the 3D in this was more subtle, I am still feeling the strain in the back of my eyes as I sit writing this. However, I did feel that because this feature was in 3D, it helped overcome that slightly flat look that CGI usually has on screen.

My fear was that from the trailers that this was going to be yet another excuse for a big budget battle sequence, and that the excuse for doing it was "well this one's in 3D, so it doesn't count". This wasn't the case; although there was the big battle, it didn't happen until the last 30 minutes of the two and half hour film, and was totally justified in keeping with the story line.

It makes no bones about the message it is trying to put across - we are killing our planet and we need to do something about it, but not by finding another habitable planet and doing the same there. It brings into the mix other big topical issues such as terrorism, "we need to fight terror with terror" says the military leader in order to rile his troops; something that I think George Bush said (or words to that effect).

This film is a brilliant way to get out messages such as these - arguably the most anticipated film of the decade, with a huge budget and marketing campaign, directed by the man who made the biggest grossing film of all time - people will flock to see it (old and young), and leave with the images they have seen burned into their psyche.

The film closes with a totally unsympathetic view on how we humans have treated our planet, and I think this is the only way to do it; I remember thinking "good, that'll teach us"!!??

My thoughts on the German film 'The Lives Of Others'

My wife sat and watched it for about 5 minutes, she then gave up and headed into the bedroom because of its slow pace; it never really got any faster. My expectation of this film was that is was going to be an 8-9 out of 10, but I would only give it about 4 because the story was very basic. I say basic because I found I could predict what the next line of dialogue was going to be several times during the running of the film. This film beat ‘Pan’s Labyrinth’ at the Academy Awards for the best foreign film picture in 2007, but even though I am one of the few who weren’t impressed with 'Pan's Labyrinth', it was definitely better than ‘The Lives of Others’. Although foreign films have a rawness and edge to them which real movie buffs rave about, I am sorry to say that they are simply not as good as Hollywood films, especially in the writing. Yes Hollywood churns out a load of tosh, which you simply have to sit through to get to the good stuff, but when you do, it beats all foreign films hands down. Basically American writers are the best there are, that coupled with good budgets, a mixture of the best actors and actresses from around the globe, and soundtracks containing Western music (again the best in the world).

Review of the film 2012

The film was exactly what I was expecting in terms of special effects and storyline. The director ‘Roland Emerich’ had made the films ‘Independence Day’ and ‘The Day After Tomorrow’, and his structure is always the same: present the characters with all their various dysfunctional stories; gradually build up into a special effects laden destruction of the planet; this in turn is supposedly what it takes for them to reassess the way they are and change. I guess, in a blatantly obvious way, the intention of these films is to show that we can only come together as a species when the world is in great peril. I heard a couple of sniggers (me included) in the audience when we saw that it was a black president in this film played by Danny Glover; not a racist thing, just obviously a reference to Obama. Then one of the two main protagonists was black, a scientist played by British actor Chiwetel Ejiofor. With each new film of Roland’s we are introduced to more characters, each smarter than the next, who are not white. In ‘Independence Day’ we have Will Smith as the top ace fighter pilot, then in ‘Day After Tomorrow’ there is the Arjay Smith, who points out ‘Sir, I am president of the electronics club, the math club, and the chess club. Now, if there is a bigger nerd in here, please point him out’. Finally in this film we have the black president, the top black scientist, the top Indian scientist (who saves the remaining Americans just before he dies), and finally the Chinese family who save John Cusack. One of the American’s also points out something along the lines of ‘I didn’t think we could get the ships built so fast, well that’s the Chinese for you’. Besides John Cusack’s character, the only other white person of note is Oliver Platt’s selfish politician; a role regularly filled now by white men. I will say that even though Hollywood may be casting much better roles for black and Asian male actors, they seem to have trouble picking roles in which there is a black woman in an important role. Yes we have the likes of Halle Berry, and in this film Thandie Newton, but they are lighter skinned from a mixed race background. Anyway, all I will say is that this film is a decent enough watch, but just be prepared to suspend your disbelief, in fact, just through it out of the window before you go.