Tomorrowland: A World Beyond

31st May 2015 - 10:15 am - Bolton

With so much to catch up on after a two week holiday, we had to flip a matchbox (no coins available) to see what film was next.  Tomorrowland was the film chosen for us.

Another Disney film based on an attraction (or an area of attractions), Tomorrowland feels like an extended version of the little movies they show before a ride.  I expected to walk into a merchandise shop on the way out of the cinema with Tshirts, replica badges and toy guns available.  The only difference was the length of the promo video.  At over two hours some of the ideas seem dragged out as filler rather than expanding on other aspects of the world.

When a kid with heart and passion for science yet hosting a delinquent desire is arrested for disabling a NASA destruction, she finds a mysterious badge in her belongings.  When it is touched she is transported to a futuristic world with flying monorails, jet packs and beautiful buildings. Unfortunately she only has a couple of minutes there and is thrown back into reality waking up in a swamp.  With a need to get back to this Tomorrowland, she seeks the help of Athena (who must have attended the Hermoine school of acting) and Mr Clooney, playing Mr Clooney.  But is Tomorrowland all it is made up to be, or is there an ulterior motive to the Future Project?

With colourful effects and glorious vistas, Tomorrowland is all filler and no oomph.  It seems to be confused with what it is actually trying to achieve, a really thin story line and an anti-climax finish make the two hours seem longer.  It is not a bad film, there are moments to enjoy and grumpy George is a delight, but it just lacked direction.  Tomorrowland is a Sunday afternoon kids film, but with the effect budget you would expect it to be an highly entertaining blockbuster, it isn't. 

Unfriended

9th May 2015 21:15 Leigh

Taking the found footage style horror of recent years and giving it a well needed update.

Since Blair Witch took the box office by storm with little production budget and massive returns, and then Paranormal Activity did the same a few years later the found footage genre has become very samey.  Unfriended takes the same premise, but instead of being found footage, it is live footage taken directly from the laptop screen of the main character.  The whole film is a laptop screen flipping between different applications such as Skype, Spotify, Google, Instant Messenger and even Chat Roulette.  This may seem a little dull, but of a age when computers run our lives, it just fits really well.

I often find myself flipping between multiple applications, even whilst writing this review, I have Spotify open, with Whatsapp on my phone chatting to my wife, this is what life is now.

The film opens with footage form YouTube of a high school student Laura Barns, who had be pushed to the limit with CyberBullying, and ultimately shot herself.  This is all the back story you need to start with. Then Skype kicks in and group chat begins, but who is the anonymous person in the chat group?  As things progress, the intent of the mysterious intruder become more evident.  Is it the ghost of Laura Barns seeking vengeance or is one of the group playing games?

Unfriended is not a horror film, although there are moments of horrific incidents.  The "Paranormal Activity£ bass growl does appear a few times which took me out of the tension as you know it is building to something instead of you just being shocked, but the use of camera glitches, buffering times, load errors, refreshing screens and not being about to "un-friend" someone added nice little cyber horror cliche's

there are a couple of real stand out moment that will be copied in future "found footage" films.  The printout section for me was brilliant, very tense.  Also a scene in which the group is unsure if a screen is frozen, so they ring the mobile and it starts to vibrate and move on the "frozen" camera was unnerving

When the film ended, I turned to Dave (he had come with me to watch the film, obviously) and we both said, "I enjoyed that!", when Dave got home he uninstalled skype and covered the camera on his laptop.

Orignally called Cybernatural, which I am glad they changed, Unfriended is a great little genre based film that does the job right.  Very entertaining, not too long, but based on this there will be 100's of spin offs and sequels to follow.  So watch it now and then wait for Skypernatural, The Twitter Zone or Spotifright, because they are on the way!

Big Game

8th May 2015 18:40 Bolton

From the opening scene I felt like I had been transported back to the early 90's to an era of Demolition Man, Cliffhanger, Broken Arrow, Die Hard with A Vengeance, and it felt good.

Samuel L Jackson is the President of the United States who finds himself lost in the wilderness of Finland after Air Force One is shot down by terrorists.  He is found by a local boy who is out to prove he is a man by returning to his village with his right-of-passage.  Hot on their heels are the terrorists out for big game hunting and a turncoat secret service member with a vengeance.

The whole film took me back to the big hero, big adventure action movies I grew up with. An over the top plot, crazy but likable action sequences and one big boom at the end.  The visual effects felt like they were done in this era to.  The big explosion at the end must have take all the special effects budget as the green screen scenes were just terrible, but this made it just that little bit better. With the young hero atop a fridge hanging from a helicopter the background seemed to be that of a 50's car sequence, but I just loved it

The kid (Onni Tommila) is just brilliant - very entertaining, very well acted and endearing as well

It does feel a little empty in places, the bad guys aren't that big and there is a major opening in the end 10 minutes that I am unsure why it was left like this (Jim Broadbent!)

This is one of those films that can be great entertainment for a younger audience, but nostalgic for the older bunch (my era), a film that you can put on a Saturday night and not worry about spandex wearing super-heroes with dark history's, just great fun.

I left the cinema with a smile on my face, but wondering about the ending.  I will not spoil it for you, but surely there should be some kind of comeuppance for someone!?

Monsters: Dark Continent

7th May 2015 20:50 Bolton

The belated sequel to the Gareth Edwards home project felt like it knew what it wanted to do, it just didn't know how to do it.

I saw Monsters a few years ago and thoroughly enjoyed it, although it is not a film I have re-watched since that initial viewing.  A film about monsters that shows little of the monsters and is more character based.  Gareth Edwards did all the visual effects on a limited budget and at home in his bedroom.  Proving that big things could be done with big imaginations, this opened him up to do the recent Godzilla film, but that is another story, and one that doesn't feature much of the titular monster as well.

Based a few years after the original, the armed forces are now eliminating the hulking alien creatures using tactical strikes and big weapons, but this has been resulting in civilian casualties in the Middle East, which in turn is causing the local insurgents to retaliate.  When a crew of naive Detroit soldiers join the war, they are hungry for a bug hunt, but when they are sent on a recovery mission the facts of war come to life.

Monster: DC had a couple of scenes where the visual landscape was very artistic and detailed character emotional states.  It also makes you question who are the monsters? The physical being of the "Monsters" are graceful and never with malicious intent.  The just happen to be massive and clumsy footed sometimes.  When one of the massive behemoths finds a downed mate, the emotion portrayed shows how angelic these creatures are.  There is a scene reminiscent of the Gallimimus stampede from Jurassic Park, smaller monsters are flocking around the Humvee's of our main characters with no threat.  Just passing by and running along side the vehicles, delicately avoiding contact.

It just seemed to long and without reason for far too long, there is lots in the film for me to enjoy, but I just didn't.  It felt like it was trying to be something it wasn't, trying to hard to capture the emotion and feeling of the first film but make it bigger.  It was slow and the majority of characters were void of character.  

If you haven't seen Monsters, then it is worth a watch, if you haven't seen Monsters:DC then just watch Monsters again.

Avengers - Age of Ultron

I have to admit, I am a little bit of a Marvel Fan, and now so is my lovely wife.  I think although I may have introduced her to Iron Man a couple of years ago just so I had someone to go to the cinema with for these little films, Clare has now become as much of a fan as I am.

As a continuation of the Marvel Universe franchise headed by Kevin Feige, Josh Whedon returns to the helm with his second outing with the Avengers.  All our favourites are back, Ironman, Cap, Hulk, Hawkeye and Scarlet Johannson trying to save the world from new threats and themselves.

When Tony Stark and Bruce Banner create an artificial intelligence using their Ultron Program, the AI becomes self aware and sees the Avengers as a threat to humanity.  Recruiting fellow Stark haters Quicksilver and Scarlet Witch, they launch attack after attack on our valiant heroes.

The set pieces in AoU are fantastic, from the opening scene of the take down of Baron Von Stucker to the Hulk Buster or an awesome truck battle, there is no scene without spectacle.  When it takes a little respite in the mid section so we can warm towards the lesser known characters  (Avengers without their stand alone films), I could see some younger children longing for more action, but I felt this helped warm more to Hawkeye or Black Widow, why are they with the team? They are not God's or Super Soldiers or hulking green monsters, but their reasoning is just.

There are a few running jokes that work perfectly through the whole film and bring some well placed quips between main heroes.  Some nods for the geeks and easter eggs that I have definitely missed but may take them in on a second viewing.  There are a couple of moments that are set ups for later films such as Wakanda (Black Panther) and the Infinity Gems, and Ragnarok but sadly no Spiderman....yet.

The Avengers AoU will take a fortune at the box office and justly so, it is a great blockbuster film full of laughs, not as dark as I was anticipating (I was told it was the Marvel's answer to Empire), and Ultron is a great bad guy.

I can't wait for the next set of Marvel Films....

For a different review (and one in all shiny, singing and dancing IMAX), please see Rosh's thoughts here: http://roshfak.blogspot.co.uk/2015/05/avengers-losing-my-imax-virginity.html

The Town That Dreaded Sundown

A Meta Horror Sequel with style

Apparently in the 1970's a film was released called "The Town That Dreaded Sundown", this was in turn based on a grizzly set of unsolved murders in the sleepy town of Texarkana.   A serial killer nicknamed "The Phantom" killed 5 and injured two more teenagers and to this day the murders remain unsolved.

TTTDS (2015) is based in the same town and the 1970's film is shown annually in the town to remind them of the horrors that occured.  This has become a town festival as teens come out to the local drive through and take in the low budget horror film with glee.

When the murders start up again, and follow the same chronology as the film/original murders, a local girl starts to investigate as well as the town police department

TTTDS has a real 70's feel to the style and music used, the kills are gruesome and it follows the "Slasher" style horror of Halloween or Friday 13th perfectly.  The meta references become a little annoying at certain points, but all-in-all it is what it says on the tin.

The ending was a real let down as they killer was revealed I had little concern or interest to who it actually was (and to be honest, I didn't really care).  I was happy for the killer to remain anonymous and the mystery continue, but this was the only real let down for me.

There are some great moments though, and an ingenious use of a trombone that has to be seen to be believed.  A few actors had me scratching my head to where I had seen them before.

A great little low budget slasher film that seems to be something that modern-day cinema has forgotton

Blade Runner: The Final Cut

09/04/2015 - 20:15 Bolton

There is not much point reviewing Blade Runner as everyone who wants to have seen it has already watched it, and those that are not interested never will.

What I can say though is how the cinema was full to the brim with avid film goers all ready for a couple of hours of classic sci-fi.  There were very few seats remaining, and 90% of the crowd had purchased snacks to partake in throughout this masterpiece. Why do we not get more of these events?

I went to watch the showing of Ghostbusters, Pulp Fiction and Sin City last year and on each occasion, the cinema was full. It is great to see so many people going to the cinema to watch films from a classic era, and it got me thinking, what others would I love to go and see?

The obvious ones for this year are Back to the Future (Part II) with Marty McFly going forward to the year 2015, The Original Star Wars Trilogy with the release of Episode VII at the end of the year and Jurassic Park with the World being visited again soon.  But what about others such as Jaws, Alien, Godfather, classics that we grew up with such as The Goonies, Poltergeist (could be another contender for the year as the remake is due out), Stand By Me?.

There are so many films that I, as a film lover, would willingly see on the big silver screen.  If this was a bi-monthly event, or even once a month, Classic Cinema, I would be there waving the flag.

There is a new Cinema opening up in Bolton Town Centre that I believe will really struggle against the larger companies such as Cineworld and Vue with their free car parks and out of town traffic, unless they have some good ideas, maybe the Classic Cinema approach is a way to get more bums on seats.

Thank you Cineworld for hosting these events, but I would love more....