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Ridley Scott’s Robin Hood
Ridley Scott's Robin Hood plays like Christopher Nolan's Batman Begins; telling us the back story of a noble vigilante we may not have known before leading up to a sequel-friendly ending. It doesn't have the character of Nolan's work, nor does it have the epic nature of Scott's own Gladiator, but what's here is a respectable, solid piece of work with just enough meat on the bone to satisfy. →
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I am already bored with 3D
And I haven't even seen a 3D film yet. I'd been holding out for a film that I wanted to see, and so far pretty much everything has looked like crap. No, I haven't seen Avatar. No, I don't intend to. It doesn't look like a good film. I've spent too much money at the cinema seeing bad films over the years and I've heard nothing about Avatar that makes me want to see it as a film, not as a gaudy spectacle. →
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Review of Spartacus: Blood and Sand
Back in August, 2009, I said of the trailer for Spartacus: Blood and Sand that it looked a bit like a cross between 300 and Gladiator but with more sex, violence and Lucy Lawless, a formula that I think is hard to go wrong with. The first season has now finished, 13 episodes strong and complete with clunky, leaden dialogue, pornographic levels of sex and nudity, heavily-stylised violence and gore and some appalling acting from a cast mostly chosen for their ability to look good oiled up than for their theatrical credentials. It was the trashiest thing I'd seen for a long time, a show not just with a target audience of 14 year old boys but apparently a production and writing crew of a similar age. I watched the whole thing from start to finish and loved it to bits, and not even ironically. →
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The Eleventh Doctor
The choice of Matt Smith as David Tennant's successor seemed to catch most people by surprise, I think because nobody had ever heard of him before; he seemed too young for the role and looked a bit like John Merrick. Despite this, people were being cautiously optimistic about the return of Doctor Who yesterday because the man in charge of the whole affair is now Stephen Moffat, responsible for writing some of the best episodes during Russell T. Davies' tenure; Blink and The Girl in the Fireplace to name but two. Given that, the general feeling seemed to go, this Matt Smith tyke must be -- at least -- tolerable. →
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Caprica is worth a look
I developed into a massive fan of Ron Moore's updated Battlestar Galactica series, which, despite a few difficult moments along the way, delivered excellent performances and gripping drama parcelled up nicely in a retro futurist style, all chunky phones and projectile weapons. Though its use of fantastical elements, particularly in its conclusion, divided its fans, I loved it. It was epic television and Proper SF. →
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Kick-Ass doesn’t change anything
Kick-Ass has had the cinema-going public dribbling a bit too much for my liking. It may be an enjoyable comic film, with an average rating of 8.8 on IMDB at the moment, but it's not nearly as genre-busting as some would have us believe. →
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I’m here about some monkeys
A recent viewing of Terry Gilliam's Twelve Monkeys, a film I've seen several times since its release in 1995, left me wondering if, despite some appealing cyclical time-travel logic, it doesn't deliver quite enough of a mindfuck. →
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The Road
I'm not opposed in principle to the post-apocalyptic in entertainment, but I'm not one that can just appreciate the devastation for its own artistic merit; I need a human element as well otherwise it feels as if the apocalypse is being fetishised, as in a Roland Emmerich film; all special effects and showboating and rubbing one's thighs as we see famous monuments pulverised. →
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My best and worst films of 2009
Most organisations and blogging outlets appear to be compiling bumper fun lists detailing the best films, games, songs, photos, deaths etc. from the entire decade. This strikes me as a bit of an unlikely goal; I struggle to narrow these things down to the best whatever of the last five minutes myself. Nevertheless, here's my attempt at listing my best and worst films of 2009, in no particular order of preference and with little attempt to round to the nearest ten. →
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Review of Inglourious Basterds
It's hard to imagine how my expectations could have been any lower going in to Inglourious Basterds. Savaged by the critics and created by the man whose last film, Death Proof, bored me so much I resorted to fast-forwarding through entire scenes for fear of falling asleep, I only ended up seeing Basterds as I was on holiday and needed something to fill an evening with. →
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Review of District 9
Neill Blomkamp's debut feature of an alien slum in the city of Johannesburg is an impressive action film, though lacking in substance and any real depth despite the rich sense of history and place it has to draw on. →
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Ridley Scott and James Cameron return to science fiction
Ridley Scott has announced that he's returning to the Alien universe that he created to direct a prequel to Alien, and footage from James Cameron's Avatar, his first fictional film in 12 years and his first SF film since 1991, has finally been seen by the public. Should we care? →
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Review of Duncan Jones’ Moon
Let's get something out of the way right at the start: I think this film is flawless. Please continue reading after you have picked yourself up off the floor. →
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Trivia on the film Moon
When I saw Moon there followed a Q&A session with the film's director, Duncan Jones. What follows is a bit of a brain dump of some of what I felt were the more interesting things raised. Spoilers throughout, so don't read until you've seen the film. →
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Review of Michael Mann’s Public Enemies
I am completely gay for both Johnny Depp and Christian Bale and I'm a sucker for any film set in the 1930s, so Michael Mann's Public Enemies would seem to hit all the right buttons, telling the story of FBI agent Melvin Purvis' attempts to capture celebrity bank robber John Dillinger. Unfortunately some technical flaws and lackluster characterisation left me feeling a bit cold toward the whole affair. →
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Reboots and remakes
I'm not sure where the habit for using the word 'reboot' came from but when people use it when they mean 'remake', I start getting angry in the same way I get angry when people spell it 'loose' when they mean 'lose'. →
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Let the Right One In
Let the Right One In, currently on release in the UK, is a subtitled Swedish art house film set in the early '80s in an impoverished suburban setting, thick with snow and ice. The main character is a 12 year old boy with a perpetually runny nose whose parents are separated, his father an alcoholic. Dialogue is sparse and the bulk of the story is taken up by a schoolboy's struggle against some playground bullies. The critics are loving it. I thought it was ok. →
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BFI Southbank
Being something of an amateur film enthusiast, I find that London is able to provide enough cinematic variation to keep me occupied. There's the usual range of Odeons and Cineworlds to charge eye-watering prices for tiny screening rooms divided only by net curtains cunningly disguised as walls; there's the Everyman range that leans towards the plush sofa seats and popcorn bans; just down the road from me is the East Finchley Phoenix that does a nice line in Sunday double-bills and then in central London there's both the BFI IMAX for when I feel like developing a kink in my neck, and the BFI Southbank for never-ending Kubrick seasons, various black and white nostalgia flicks about the Liverpudlian working class, and occasionally something good like The Terminator or something by Terry Gilliam. →
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Spider-Man 3
I consider Raimi's previous two Spider-Man films to be perhaps the best comic book films ever made; bright and colourful where required with just the right blend of comedy, action and pathos, and perfectly cast as well. With the possible exception of the dreary Aunt May and her tedious moralising, these were films that did everything right. Now...let's take a look at Spider-Man 3. →
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It’s the Experience that Counts
Anybody who has been to the cinema during the last year or so will likely have seen an anti-piracy advert that warns people of the poor quality of pirated DVDs, and highlights that you miss out on the big-screen experience. Now, I'm going to overlook the fact that whoever made these adverts has obviously not spent much time trying to find decent DVD rips online, and look instead at how we can make the DVD experience more like the cinema experience because if, as they say, it's the experience that counts, it ought to be an experience worth duplicating. →