Kill Command

            

we're into familiar territory here with washed out colours and futuristic marines lacking in depth of personality (there's the leader, the nice one, the creepy one, and the one that gets scared and tries to run away). Some time in the near future a squad is sent out on a training exercise with a mysterious cyborg woman who's along to evaluate their performance and fuck around with their guns, or something. The problem here is that while we start off following her, her motivations for the majority of the film are foggy, and none of the secondary characters are really interesting enough to take over and become primary protagonists. It almost feels like we needed another character to be new to both the soldiering side and the tech person side of this world, for the viewer to really connect with. We have our colonial marines and we have our Bishop, but we don't have a Ripley. The one soldier that I did find half-way likeable actually dies before the first hour is over.

             

              
They get flown out to a remote training facility, but find that all the machines there have turned on their creators. Not particularly original, but it provides a limited mystery to drive the plot and keeps the action flowing. The design of the machines is pretty cool and feel like a natural evolution from where they are now (though honestly most of the robots seem about 20 years in the future while crazy cyborg lady is more like 100). The effects are fine too, and some of the battles are enjoyable and create tension. Their limitations aren't layed out to us at all though, the viewer doesn't fully understand the amount of control the leader robot has over the others for a good while, and it isn't until the final battle that we're told (in one of several chunks of awkward exposition from cyborg woman) that if they kill the leader robot the others all die too, or turn off, or something. The EMP comes out of nowhere too, and what about all those other leader bots in stasis? don't they all share information? So why not just wake up more than two others?

         
Not a total waste of time, but little more than a visually pleasing thoughtless sci-fi action romp. The kind of film I struggle to watch while doing anything else, but not the kind of film I'll likely remember in 6 months.

          

Kill Command: 36.3

Independence Day: Resurgence

                     

Looks like getting invaded by aliens was the best thing that ever happened to Humanity. After they get rid of the aliens in the first one world peace is achieved as everyone works together to cannibalise alien tech to defend their planet against future attacks. It's basically 'Star Trek' future, but then more aliens come to fuck it all up again. 

            

                   

I actually liked this one more than the original. It was more fun - but not intentionally so. While the original was bad, this one edged into being so bad it's good occasionally. The feeling wasn't consistent though, and about 80% of the movie was only so that that it was... bad. 

The characterisation was still extremely basic and bland, and just like in the original there was too much jumping around between disperse characters for my liking (I like this more in novels or TV shows that have more time to tell their story, but in a movie it really just results in under-developed characters that we don't care about). Most of the original cast stuck around for this one, but Will Smith , and I'm not complaining, but that and the focus instead on a group of young pilots meant that there was no real main character to focus on. 

I liked some of the funny moments though, and some of them were even intentional! The Whitehouse narrowly escaping destruction was cute, and the scene of Judd Hirsh driving his little boat along with massive tidal waves and explosions going on around him was hilariously bad. Another such moment was that 'Red Tails' level scene where the guy in the plane recognises his stripper-come-doctor mother on the top of a hospital building amid the total destruction of the whole city in time to see her fall to her death. 

Brent Spiner is back, and I really enjoyed him. “We're gonna get you to sick bay” was a highlight, and his character was fun throughout.

                   

                     

In the end though, there was too much happening in not enough time. I liked a lot of the elements, or I at least liked the idea of them, but everything was under-explored. This stretched out would have made a fun, silly, TV series.

                  

Independence Day: Resurgence: 36.4

Rogue One: A Star Wars Story

             

Do you remember STAR WARS? So does Disney! 

             

“Lets just get this over with, shall we?” 

               

Holy fan service Batman, this sure did have a lot of things from 'Star Wars' in it. I don't know why “you'll be dead” guy or R2 and C3PO were even in this, those bits were weird and a little embarrassing. 

So after a pretty strong start with 'The Force Awakens', Disney started safe with their stand alones, keeping 'Rogue One' full of references to the original series, and bringing back loads of characters us losers will recognise. So much so that 'Rogue One' ended up feeling like a prequel (didn't they make a cartoon series about this, or something?). The problem with prequels is: did this story ever really need to be told? Well, no. I mean it's art, which (arguably by definition) is unnecessary, but as with the case for any story it's the way that it's told that matters.

         

         

There are two clear routes that this film could have taken, as far as I'm concerned. This could have been a fun spy/heist movie (Like 'Oceans 11' or... 'Mission Impossible' - hey I said “fun”, not “smart”) where a rag-tag group of rebels infiltrate the Death Star, maybe impersonate an officer or something, have to crawl around in ventilation shafts and dupe someone into helping them in some overcomplicated way. In this world wise cracking robots and silly references and cameos would feel at home. I wouldn't take the film seriously, but I'd enjoy it a hell of a lot more. 

The other route would have been a darker brooding war drama with real, relatable characters that you build an emotional connection with. It could be set from a very limited perspective, we don't see any of the big players, just the horror and tyranny of the Empire at work. You could even have a sort of 'All Quiet on the Western Front' moment where one of our protagonists find out that there are real people under those storm trooper masks, and that they're just as scared and confused as the rebels. Or they could do a 'Full Metal Jacket' and start us off in a makeshift rebel (or Imperial) boot camp, where we follow a group of green cadets through training and into the field. Or do both and make the movie three hours long. Hell, I don't know.

            

             

But Mickey Mouse is a greedy bugger. He tried to have his Vader-cake and eat it too, and now he's obese and vomiting it up onto children. The characters lacked any depth and so of course I didn't care (or even notice, a few times) when they died. The cameos and references to the original series were so frequent and transparent that it quickly felt lazy. At the same time, the amount of violence and death (of EVERY main character) means that this'll be a difficult film for little kids to enjoy, because little kids are pussies. 

So the target audience seems to be 30-35 year old fat guys with beards, who orgasm when they see ATATs. That's fine, I have nothing against them, and it's certainly a great 'Star Wars' fan movie.

                    

                 

Disney played it too safe with 'Rogue One'. What we should be seeing at this point is some real innovation, something of a completely different style and tone to the rest of the series. 'Star War' has never been the most serious thing, so I think at this point I'd be making gory 80s style horror films set in the same universe, or artsy stuff. I don't know, just something to shake the universe up and establish these supposedly stand alone films as being properly separate. 

I didn't hate the film, it just didn't live up to expectations. If it wasn't a 'Star Wars' movie it would just be a strangely structured forgettable sci-fi. I didn't feel anything for the characters, but the action was all fine. The dog fighting at the end was particularly exciting and well shot (this director has a great sense of scale that I've noticed in things like his 'Godzilla'). What everyone talked about was the cartoon Tarkin - I didn't actually hate him. It wasn't perfect, but it was fairly impressive and they kept him mostly in the dark. It was a very Lucas-esque move, testing new effects tech in his movies, for better or worse. The Leia shot at the end was on the nose though. Too obviously fake, it pulled me out of the film and muddied the ending.

               

Rogue One: A Star Wars Story: 67.1

Screamers

                 

An unoriginal B style low budget sci-fi that's occasionally fun. We know what we're in for with 'Screamers' when it opens with the classic explanatory text crawl. It feels like it was made at least ten years too late - I think this movie belongs in the 80's with a smaller budget and a larger quantity of tongue in cheek. 

It has a slightly overcomplicated background, but basically the Earth has collonies all over the place, and one of them is on some planet with a precious fuel in the ground. When you mine it radiation or something comes out, so they refused to, so a big war started between the inhabitants of that planet and the corporation that owns the mines. The corporation bombs the guys on the planet and the guys on the planet make these tunnelling robots to kill people, who end up improving themselves to the point of looking like people.

               

                     

There's lots of other background information, most of which is given to us via the long exposition dialogue chunks dispersed throughout, but that's already more than you need to know. All you really need to know is that there are evil replicants everywhere. A green marine acts as an audience surrogate, and with his arrival comes awhole lot of extra information that I felt was basically unnecessary. It was at this point that I started to see how odd the pacing of this movie was. It both starts and ends haltingly, in several steps with stretches of filler in between. As it ends we get a lot of false final showdowns, but at that point it felt unintentionally awkward rather than an intended surprise.

The dialogue is terribly cheesy and the characters are simplistic, but it was a fun story and I liked the design of the bare robots (there was one short scene of a stop motion one that I thought was fantastic, but sadly they only used it once). There are no big twists, other than the realisation that random people are robots. I found the kid mildly creepy though (the phrase “can I come with you?” quickly becomes disturbing), and I enjoyed the scene when they were burning and shooting a horde of them.

                     

Screamers: 35.9

The Mummy

                     

I think everything apart from Boutella sucked about this film.

                    

Tom Cruise is a thief. He stole... he tried to steal a ring, or something. And then he sort of stole that dagger at the end. I mean he grabbed it, anyway. He didn't steal my attention though. He was a bad choice of lead for this. That and the writing, which is devoid of nearly any wit, resulted in a hugely bland movie. So it's no fun (what I was expecting, considering the 90s 'The Mummy') but it isn't smart or scary either. Lets talk about why it isn't any of those things.

                 

                    

So, fun: now and then it feels like it's trying to be 'Indiana Jones' (running around with explosions at the start, that bit where he shoots the rope to do the thing, stuff like that), but it feels kinda weird when they're fighting Daesh. If this is Indiana Jones, these guys are the Nazis. Since it's current it felt awkward in the movie though, as the real life extremists fought fantasy American guy. The comic relief was almost soley in the hands of Nick from 'New Girl' (wasn't he in 'Jurassic World' too?). I like the actor, but he doesn't work for this and the writing is terrible, so none of the jokes landed. He dies later on, then they 'An American Werewolf inLondon'-ed him for the rest of the movie, only to bring him back to life randomly at the end. On top of all of that we had to open with Daesh shooting up a statue (of Ugallu? He had a lion head anyway - I'm not that hot on ancient Mesopotamia), which sort of pissed me off and left a bitter taste in my mouth that distracted me for the next half hour (art destruction is something of a pet peeve of mine, the older the more so).

How wasn't it smart? Well I wasn't expecting it to be (none of the other iterations of 'Mummy' movies have been), so it goes without saying that it was massively historically inaccurate. They were really laying on the 'Last Crusade' with the focus on crusader knights, and I didn't see any reason for them to move from Media to England so fast (if at all), but then I don't see why the whole thing couldn't have just been set in Egypt, so. The dialogue was far from smart - most of it was either stating the obvious or going over things, and the plot was predictable and mindless.

                   

                    

What was the last one? Scary? Yeah, it wasn't scary. I liked the mummy lady though (I don't think I ever fail to mention when Sofia Boutella is in a lead role): she was pretty and her tattoos were nice - also being the living receptacle of Set sounds like fun.

                  

The Mummy: 29.9

Oblivion

                  

'Oblivion' is a good looking, high budget sci-fi that is nonetheless a dull rehash of countless tropes.

          

            

I like the pace. It took its time to set the scene and didn't rely on continuous action. Tom Cruise obviously has a lot of name recognition, but other than that I think he brought very little to the movie. I don't have strong feelings either way for Cruise; he's usually quite good at choosing roles that he works in, but he's a bit bland in this. He's in plenty of great films, but I don't love them for him, if you know what I mean. The characters are all pretty boring, actually, but they're all meant to be either brain washed clones or bunker-bound survivors, so it's understandable.

It feels like it was doing its best to be a proper sci-fi, in a very corporate Hollywood kind of a way. It was perfectly watchable, and I appreciate that someone was trying, but the movie doesn't have enough of a sense of self. It would have benefited from being someone's vision, rather than seemingly the product of a boardroom. 

It was obvious that there was going to be some kind of a big twist. It almost felt like a throwback at times - not in style, but in plot at least. If you've seen a few of these sorts of films you'll see the twist coming, and it makes the resolution as much of a bleak bummer as any classic sci-fi. Good pacing, beautifully shot, and well produced. It's far from original, but it's definitely watchable.

                       

Oblivion: 47.7

Congo

                 

Something that starts as a your predictable evil monkey horror film takes an odd turn halfway through the first act as it starts introducing new character after new character (first the scientist and his talking ape, then the creepy European adventurer, Ernie Hudson, the list goes on). The result is a convoluted mess that lurches from action sequence to action sequence without much actual story.

              

              

The characters were laughably two dimensional. You're lucky if you get a cliché outline, basically, and then there's no development to speak of (even for the leads). The same goes for the depiction of the host of central African countries featured, which are made light of is a simplistic and vaguely offensive way throughout.

There are way too many unrelated dangers brought on one after the other, and the whole thing is played way too goofy. If it was self-serious and the budget was a little lower it could have fit into the “so bad it's good” category, but as it was it was too unintentionally cringey to be enjoyable. A full description would sound far more fun than the actual film turned out to be. It carried itself along at a decent pace, but that's just about all that can be said for it.

                 

Congo: 27.6

Surrogates

              

'Surrogates' looks slick, and the cinematography creates an expensive sci-fi thriller aura. The premise is also pretty good, though its execution and the world building is often terrible. Once we get into the details of the premise - that robotic “surrogates” have become a thing (safer, your choice of body, etc) it begins to break down (like, what, everyone in the world owns one of these things? The only people who don't use them all the time are the ones who protest it on a religious/moral level? What do these things cost, a dollar?) Also, all the tech other than the robot people is the same as it is today, making the robots really stand out and creating a fault in the believability of the fiction. The rest of the world needs to fit the sexy robots, really.

          

          
It also totally lacks subtlety, and fails to look too deeply into the morality problems that the film's premise creates (which is arguably the main component of any good sci-fi).
It still provides a reasonably engaging thriller plot though, and gives Willis plenty of opportunities to crash cars, jump through fires, and generally do what he does. I don't he was the best choice to lead the film though, as a more subtle and less action-orientated actor could have starred in a more thoughtful and character-driven movie.

             

Surrogates: 35.4

Samurai Cop

                 

This is great. It's terrible and silly, but in just the right way to be very, very fun. It has, deservedly, a cult following, and a sequel was been made decades after the original, with the original lead! 

It follows a fairly simple plot: the heroes start a case, the villains are introduced, and then each one is killed off during the second and third acts. Plenty of serious thrillers follow this formula, but it's done so obviously here that plot details don't ever get in the way of the silly action. It's the kind of film that's good to watch with people and talk over it. Oh yeah, and there are a wealth of sex scenes. About every fifth shot at least has nudity in it, so that's good.

                   

                      

This is the kind of film that wouldn't work if it was at all self aware. The fact that it takes itself seriously even while the lead is chopping a henchman's arm off or hanging out of a car to shoot at a van full of baddies is hilarious, as is the game that viewers can play of spotting when the lead has real hair and when he's wearing a wig (they had to do re-shoots but by the time they got a hold of him he had cut his hair). The bizarre cinematography, over-the-top violent action, awkward romance sub-plot, terrible acting, and the non stop pace (apart from the sex scenes, which tended to go on for about five minutes more than they needed too) only make this piece of crap more of a gem. 

Oh, and Robert Z'Dar plays one of the main villains! Anything heavy on the Z'Dar you know is going to be quality trash.

              

Samurai Cop: 34.1

Kong: Skull Island

                          

This could have worked as either a more serious film or as a sillier one, but it walks the line between the two, and walks it awkwardly. I could see where they were going with the silly B movie elements, but they contrasted jarringly with the violent deaths and Vietnam scenes, and the characters themselves often didn't seem to be taking the situation seriously enough. 

The human characters were boring and simple. They usually had some bland background that's gotten out of the way quickly and really just lets us know if they're going to end up dying rather than making us care about them. It's a shame, because where are several great actors here, and they've gone to waste for the most part. There were too many characters too - especially the endless soldier guys, but also the confusing multiplicity of main characters. There were also a few dull exposition scenes that I feel could have been worked into the story a little better.

               

                 

Don't worry though, everything else I've going to say will be positive. The action was pretty great. It was well staged with good effects, and the camera didn't jump around or wobble as much as it could have. There were some really nice shots actually, mostly of the island or Kong wading through water or the Vietnam style helicopter/explosions/shades imagery. 

Unlike all other King Kong movies (that I can think of at present) this one actually stayed on the island the whole time - always my favourite part of the story. This is clearly a set up for a sequel (possibly fighting Godzilla? Kong gon' get his ass beat), but I forgive it as the film still works as a sort of Jurassic park style get off the island story.

               

            

Fun and flashy, with imaginative monsters and interesting well shot action, 'Kong: Skull Island' lacks much depth, but this likely doesn't matter for true big monster fans.

                          

Kong: Skull Island: 41.1

Red Tails

                    

Many elements of 'Star Wars' were in homage to older world war two dog fighting films. Lucas obviously has a thing for this style, as now that he can do whatever he wants he's decided to fund and direct his own throw-back dog fighting movie about the Tuskegee airmen. 

This wasn't a weird move in itself - it's a neat story idea - but the way he talked about it was embarrassing. You know he said that no big studios would fund the film because it had an all black cast? And that it was somehow the first of its kind? His whole spin on what is nothing more than a sub par dog fight movie was awkward and I think bordered on offensive in its miss-selling this film as being somehow culturally significant.

                  

                      

Firstly, the plot is overly simplistic and the dialogue is laughable. Seriously, it's like a child wrote it. There is also a heavy use of effects and a lot of it feels very fake and green screeny (George is very much still in a prequel style rut). It's very heavy handed all round. The religious elements, the racism, the friendships. All the sides are painted with such a broad brush too - almost all the white people are terrible racists, and all the Germans are evil and take pleasure in killing. 

It's intentionally campy, but the mix of styles doesn't work well. There are lots of shots of people dying horribly or being set on fire or whatever, and it's weird to see them cheering and laughing after killing so many people. 

And there are several major plot holes. They keep showing footage of areal battles that was just from an earlier scene of the movie with an old timey filter over it. Where were the cameras meant to be? Did all the fighters have dashboard cams or something? And are we meant to believe that that guy saw a woman on a roof from his plane in enough detail to decide that he was in love and recognise her later and that she actually saw and recognised him?! Through the glass of the plane cockpit? The whole romance sub plot is stupid. There's no chemistry or even much dialogue between the two, yet each time we cut back to a scene together their relationship has apparently progressed in leaps and bounds - suddenly they're together, now he's proposing, now they're getting married.

The whole film just feels like it's for children. The plot is so simple and all the characters are so black and white, if you'll pardon the pun. Oh, and the weird motivational speeches don't feel earned and fall totally flat. It plays more as a sly comedy than a serious war drama.

                  

Red Tails: 25.8

Predator

               

Vietnam meets 'Aliens', action meets horror, and Schwarzenegger meets Predator in this classic testosterone fuelled tropical thriller. 

The story is straight forward - An alien comes to Earth in search of dangerous prey (people) and interrupts a load of humans who are busy fighting one another. All but the first scene is set in the rain forest, and the setting is used to great effect, often being as much as a menace to the characters as the gorillas or the alien is. Suspense is built very well, especially in the first forty minutes, and the abundance of close shot sweaty faces creates a great feeling of claustrophobia despite the outdoor surroundings. If you come into it expecting continuous action it can be dull at times though, especially towards the start where there are lots of lingering shots of dense forest, and the final fight scene that I felt dragged on a bit too long.

                     

           

This is one of the best, possibly THE best, Arnold movies acting-wise. Where he's playing a real human, anyway (obviously the terminator was great but he didn't have to act like a person for that - acting like an emotionless robot is his speciality). Other than the Schwarzenegger standard, the acting in this often boarders on hammy, and this is one of the elements that give it the feeling of a traditional dumb 80's action film (as well as the style of all the action, especially the big assault on the guerilla base fairly early on in the film). Carl Weathers is by far the most competent actor in this, and apparently Schwarzenegger took a lot of cues from him. I was always bummed that Billy dies off screen though - I don't any reason for it, and he was kinda built up to be this badass survivalist guy (even cutting his chest prior to fighting the Predator) but all he gets is an off-screen scream? Missed opportunity I'd say, especially considering how nicely shot that fight would have been on the tree bridge.

A really memorable part of 'Predator' is the score, which was made by the same guy who had recently done the one for 'Back to the Future', and thanks to a limited release post movie was in high demand for a long time. Most of the effects have stood up quite well over time too (though maybe not the early 'TNG' style electrical effects). The invisibility effect in particular was very experimental and still looks pretty great. The costume was fantastic, especially the face with the moving mandibles and the detailing around the hairs.

                  

                 

The whole Predator character, the way that he moves and looks, raises this film heads and shoulders above the competition. It's very well realised in a way that doesn't pull you out of the film (so often the monster is stilted in movement and poorly made-up, and doesn't provide a believable adversary). Some of the hand acting looked a little clunky, but other than that it was spot on.

Overall this is a solid genre crossing action flick with some very quotable moments. It's become more of a classic over time, and I appreciate that it's not trying to be anything more than what feels natural (much like things like 'Die Hard').

                       

Predator: 81.7

Super 8

                 

'Super 8' plays better on paper than it does on the screen. That is to say, if I read the script for this film I'd probably say something along the lines of: “oh, I see what you're doing here. It's like a Spielburg-esque tame sci-fi horror film for kids. Yeah, that's cool, we don't see enough of that any more”. Scripts can't really convey how a movie is going to feel, though, and this one felt off.

                  

                      

First off, it was very flashy. Abrams directed, and you can tell, as it occasionally veers into scenes of mass destruction, explosion, and lens flairs. A more subdued approach would have worked better I think, as the rest of the movie is trying to be 'ET', and not so many huge destructive spectacles are needed for this kind of kiddy sci-fi adventure. It was very retro, both stylistically and with its plot elements and whatnot (the group of kids - main one, fat one, nerd one, girl, the alien monster, the secretive government elements, etc) but the really obvious way it was done felt a little manipulative. Not in a sinister kind of a way, just in an over played, pandering kind of a way. 

As far as plot goes, nothing too new here. That's to be expected with a throwback like this though, and it kept my attention despite not being hugely engaging. A highlight was the kids, who I found really relatable thanks in part to the high quality child actors (I talk about child actors like I talk about venison) and their interest is making what will surely be an unwatchable short movie (memories). 

So yeah. Very retro. It did its best to bring us back to the 80s, but tried too hard and felt a bit false - not all the way through, but often enough for me not to come away in a great mood about the film.

                 

Super 8: 47.6

Jack the Giant Slayer

                   

For something that could have easily been pointlessly dark version of a classic fairy tale, or a 'Lord of the Rings' ripoff (which it kinda is a bit, but oh well) 'Jack the Giant Slayer' was a fairly successful, if cheesy and uninspiring, take. 

The tone was good, and balanced lightness and wit with the more serious scenes well. The story is simple, as we follow a classic farm boy hero type and learn about our surroundings with him. Jack wasn't turned into a super hero, thankfully (I was worried he'd end up doing flips from one giant to another, stabbing them in the ears and shit - kind of a 'God of War' deal). He often takes a back seat to other characters who share the heavy lifting (like Ewan McGregor, who's giving a questionable performance here).

                   

                      

The last forty minutes were pointless though. I'd have cut the big battle scene and had it end where the protagonists are escaping giant country. Then maybe have the lead giant discover the beans as a little teaser scene for a possible second movie. The fight at the end felt needlessly 'Lord of the Rings-ey', but more colourful, and the contrasting themes began to fall apart here.

                 

Other than that though it was a fair movie with a likeable cast and an entertaining story.

                   

Jack the Giant Slayer: 42.8

Battlefield Earth

                       

John Travolta stars in one of the dumbest science fiction films I've ever seen. It's the future, and humanity has been taken over by aliens who are mining Earth's gold, for some reason. Humans have been pushed back into the stone age, despite living around so much shit that is still around - like cars, old courses, whole cities, working guns and planes, etc. 

The aliens seem to have some kind of corporate structure, but at the same time they're very primal and remind me of Uruk hai but dumber. I don't know how they've mastered space travel, or even structured society, as none of them seem to do what the others say, and on all levels of command they're slacking off of betraying one another all the time. Everyone in this film are idiots, basically, which is one of the major problems (that and the terrible concept execution, the hammy acting/dialogue, and the poor casting). 

                   

                   

John Travolta's character is an alien with a convoluted plan to steal gold and then get a raise, and get to leave Earth, or fire his boss and get to leave Earth. I don't know, I tuned out. He wants to leave Earth, and he's going to secretly mine extra gold to do something for reasons possibly but not necessarily connected to the leaving Earth thing. 

So that's the antagonist. The protagonist is a male human who gets made more clever by Travolta's alien machine so that he can mine gold, I think. Then he goes to a library and figures out how to fly planes. Then other things happen, but I've left the room. There are also other characters. 

I don't think you'd enjoy this movie unless you appriciate ones that are so bad they're good. I liked it for this, as the entire thing is played straight, and the few moments of intended comedy are delightfully cringey. Watched as an actual cohesive story though (or gods forbid a sci-fi film) it doesn't even begin to hold up.

                          

Battlefield Earth: 7.5

Hansel & Gretel: Witch Hunters

                  

This got disturbingly close to reminding me of 'Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter'. It's one of the trend of using material that's already in the public domain (so it's both something the public will recognise, and half the script writing is already done!) and turning it into a bland action movie. 

It was, at least, not quite as self-serious as a lot of these tend to be, but Hansel really needed to be more of a charismatic smart-ass (though he's trying) and Gretel needed to be a little less boring. There were funny moments though, and the odd bit of comedy and over-the-top gore helped, because a movie this dumb can't take itself too seriously. The hammy witches were fun too, and at its best this film reminded me of 'Army of Darkness'. 

                   

                      

Far inferior obviously, but still. It actually had a bit of a plot too, though it was rather in-your-face and predictable. Ultimately it felt bland and over-produced though, with the usual over-abundance of CGI (though that troll guy was alright, and the real-life make-up jobs were fine) and the absence of any particularly likeable characters. 

The battles were fun, and the variety of witches in the big gathering was cool to see - you get the impression that they're from all over the world, though it's not stated outright. Ultimately it's forgettable though, and though I don't now consider watching it a waste of time, I wouldn't recommend it.

             

Hansel & Gretel: Witch Hunters: 30.9

After Earth

                 

A neat concept, but terrible, terrible execution. Terrible. 

               

So it's a thousand years after humans left Earth for reasons. Then Will Smith and his son (who is just as terrible as he is) come back or crash or something, and everything is terrible and they want to leave. I wanted to leave, too. The moral or the story is not to force your kids to do what you've failed at. Will Smith can be funny, but he can't do serious very well, and he sucked even more than usual in this. His kid did even worse, but in a similar way. 

The movie is both dumb and dull. The effects are flashy but terrible for the year of release. The plot is fairly non-existent, with very little happening for the middle portion of the film. We start with a cool crash sequence, but then that's about it. “Everything has evolved to kill humans” Smith says, but why? Humans haven't been on the planet since the 21^st century, right? So... what? And how did all the animal and plant life evolve so much in a thousand years? Shouldn't it take at least fifty times that long for them to be even noticeably different? What? What's happening?!

           

                    

I'm mostly curious about the backstory of this one (oh, I'm done with talking about the content - it's dull and superficially pretentious and you shouldn't watch it). Did Will Smith make his son do this, or did he sort of let him do whatever he wanted? (the plot certainly feels like a child wrote it) Was his son at all on board, or is he angry at his father and perhaps being shit on purpose? I'd watch a making-of documentary about this film (so long as it was made by a third party and was less than twenty minutes long). Whatever the case it's messed up and weird, and I hate that someone like Will Smith has enough money and influence in Hollywood to do something like this. Terrible.

             

I said the word "terrible" seven times in this review, which may be a record.

                

After Earth: 8.2

Demolition Man

           

This is the most entertaining Taco Bell advert I've ever seen! 

         

Sylvester Stallone, Wesley Snipes and Sandra Bullock (delivering a tolerable performance for once) lead in this comedy action sci-fi flick about a badass cop from the near future of 1996 who gets frozen as punishment for apparently causing the deaths of an entire plane (or bus? I wasn't listening) load of civilians. He is then brought back in the ultra PC and sterile distant future of 2032 to combat Snipes, a 'Mad Max'-esque villain. 

I like the world concept for this one, and as it often goes the best part of the film is in the first half hour when we're being introduced to everything. The future is a very clean prim place, where you can complain at a booth if you're not in a good mood or you have low self esteem, where you get automatically fined for swearing, and where salt and trans fat is illegal. It's fun seeing Stallone wake up in this world and clumsily make his way about it, but then once he starts to get the hang of it the film becomes more of a generic sci-fi action film. The violence and explosions uild to a crescendo that ends with Snipes being frozen and his head getting kicked off and smashing to “don't loose your head” from Stallone. Sigh.

                    

               

Fine. It's fun. It could have been clever too though, ya know. This iteration of a future world is one explored less often in film, so this felt like a missed opportunity in that respect. The introduction was great, but it felt like the writers quickly ran out of steam when it came to explanations, and then we find out that one guy made everything and everyone like this? And he's not the president of the world or anything, he's just in charge of the LA area, so what's happening in the rest of the world? We never know, but for some reason all of society is on the verge of collapsing when this guy dies, despite the majority of the population honestly believing in his ideals anyway. I don't get why the movie has to end in a big assumed change to the system.

                   

Demolition Man: 48.0

Blade

                 

“Some mother fucker's always tryna ice skate uphill.” 

              

Oh, okay. What? 

               

'Blade' started a lot of stuff and thangs. It was the first good Marvel movie, and basically started off a long trend of post-classic 'Superman' film comic series (an honour often attributed to the 'X-Men' trilogy). It also came out before 'The Matrix', and inspired the fashion of slo-mo gun battles, long black leather overcoats, and slim shades that 'The Matrix' epitomised. 

That being said, this film hasn't aged very well. The style of a lot of it comes off as silly now, and the CG is downright terrible by today's standards.

             

            

While the style of clothing and whatever is off, the look of the film is pretty great, and there are plenty of nice shots. The lighting is also good, and creates mood well for different locations. I like that we don't have to sit through an origin story for Blade either, we just get right into it with that awesome opening scene at the blood rave. I also like the vampires in this series, and the way that their hierarchy is structured in this on in particular. I didn't find the main villain all that interesting though, and the way the film wrapped up never felt that satisfying to me. 

There's also some weird changes of characterisation in this film. Blade is mostly the no-nonsense half-vampire tough guy - the strong silent type, for which Tony Soprano would praise him, but now and then he'll say a goofy one-liner or do some dumb thing for laughs that doesn't really blend with his persona. The doctor lady also never really leapt out at me, and she sure does come up with that cure fast, huh.

Though I find it pretty silly (as I do pretty much all super hero movies) and it hasn't aged well, it's a big part of what got a big ol' ball rolling, and it's still an enjoyably gory action flick to half-watch.

                 

Blade: 43.3

Mad Max: Fury Road

               

                    

It's difficult for me to say this, but I like this one more than 'The Road Warrior'. Not a whole lot more, but on a series so bent of explosions and chase scenes, a modern film that's effectively a two hour long explosion-filled chase scene using real explosions, stuntmen, and a cacophony of special effects will win out against my old favourite. 

This has some of the best action I've ever seen in a film. The cars were all great (though it hurt to see his Interceptor get trashed as soon as the movie began) and there's too much awesome stunt work to list individually. Suffice to say that the action elements were all exemplary and were shot beautifully.

            

            

Even the big bad was better fleshed out than his predecessors (who were visually great, but lacked much depth). The fairytale quality to the legend of Max continues, and we have a further step up from 'Thunderdome', with this film featuring a huge castle like structure complete with knights, damsels in distress, and hordes of mutant peasantry. Max comes into all this, and characteristically just wants out. But of course the very empathy that distances himself from this world's villains forces him to help some people out, and so we have conflict that goes beyond merely trying to escape selfishly.

            

                   

This is standard stuff for the Max films, and I'm glad to see that we came back to it here, and that this film didn't try to re-do his origin story or something. I don't care that it's not Gibson; Max is a bit like Bond, in that the legend is bigger than the man himself. 

The few detriments I can think of are basically just about scale. We're going even more outlandish here, which works fine for me in this universe, but with this comes a feeling of Hollywood, where each good character's death comes with a big cinema moment. In 'Road Warrior' several of the main good guys die almost immediately after the main chase starts, and not a huge deal is made of it. This film is more traditionally cinematic, with main characters mattering more in it's fiction. This is what comes with a production shift to America and an inflated budget though, and it's not a huge deal. It certainly didn't annoy me during viewing, and on the flip side we get this beautiful cinematography, with every shot looking like a painting, each practical explosion looking oily and real, and every surface covered with grit and flaking paint.

              

Mad Max: Fury Road: 78.7