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Star Trek Into Darkness 2013
Enjoyed it, though not as much as the first one. Loved how the trailer played me like a fiddle.
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Iron Man 3 2013
The original Iron Man movie is fantastic, second only in the Marvel universe to The Avengers. Iron Man 2 was, lets be honest, pretty boring and forgettable. The third outing needed to go off in some strange new direction to avoid falling into a similar trap and it certainly gives it a good shot.
The attack on Tony's cliff side crib is so exciting, explosive and emotional that it's hard to see how the rest of the film could top…
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Oblivion 2013
Had I not already seen Moon, The Terminator, Independence Day, Robocop, Cast Away and Disney's The Black Hole this would have been a pretty cool movie. Weirdly, I felt a bit embarrassed at the end for being a fan of the genre. Tom Cruse' last line probably had Vasquez and Gorman turning in their graves. It looked great, but Tom, looks aren't everything.
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Broken City 2013
There is a moment about halfway in where Mark Wahlberg's cut rate detective character falls off the wagon that I thought was going to be the catalyst for an explosive and exciting second half. Damn you Starbucks!
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Django Unchained 2012
Tarantino loves to remind you that you're watching one of his films, his attention seeking approach is the basis of his style and often the most enjoyable element of his movies. He knows what he likes and wants to put it in your face so you too can see how cool it is. I'd say generally Tarantino movies are playful and fun. So I was intrigued to see how he approached the weighty subject matter of black slavery and racism…
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The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey 2012
With his LotR trilogy and King Kong remake, Peter Jackson owned Christmas for four consecutive years. His return to Middle Earth has also brought back my festive family cinema trip tradition (last year's Girl With The Dragon Tattoo just wasn't the same). I'd wanted to go to the 48fps 3D version, but decided that would be too radical an experience for my ageing parents so settled for 2D - thought I'd mention that now since it's been quite the talking…
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Life of Pi 2012
Visuals lacked the promised magic due to non-HD Sky viewing, found the story to be a little too one note and the heavy handed ending didn't help win me over. The tiger looked wonderful throughout, certainly feel I missed something visually interesting in a 3D cinema screening.
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Silver Linings Playbook 2012
Sometimes my 'Birthday Movie' is just whatever is showing at the cinema that day (which would explain Daybreakers), but I made the effort of hunting down a screening of this and was very glad I did. The two leads are worthy of praise, but I was pleasantly surprised at how fantastic the ensemble cast was. Really drew me into the lives of these people (in a similar way to The Descendants) and made me love Robert De Niro again. If only every Birthday was this good!
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Skyfall 2012
Despite having all the elements for an excellent Bond movie - exotic locations, completely mental villain, plenty of action scenes, James looking dapper while dropping one-liners, henchmen and women's undies - it left me a little flat. Not really a franchise that deserves to be over analysed, but I found the clash of old and new confused the character. In Casino Royale we we're treated to a more human, emotional and rounded Bond, a side to his personality that is…
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The Man with the Iron Fists 2012
I've been a fan of the Wu-Tang for years, mainly because they aint nuffin to fuck wit, and have always admired the RZA for taking the Kung-Fu and Horror genres and playfully mixing them with his own brand of Hip Hop. So when I heard he'd been hanging out with Jamusch and Tarantino, making soundtracks and absorbing their cinematic teachings I knew it'd only be a matter of time before RZA stepped into the arena. I guess he managed to…
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The Girl 2012
"There was a young lady of Trent,
who said that she knew what it meant,
when he asked her to dine,
private room, lots of wine,
she knew, oh she knew,
but she went!"Why is it films about magicians always come out in pairs? I've always regarded 'Hitchcock' as having dark magical cinematic powers after a screening of Psycho drew an overly excited yelp from me during its climax and left me spellbound. So here we have 'The Girl',…
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Argo 2012
I'm not a big fan of tension in films, so a film that is built completely around tension was never going to fully win me over. It's very well crafted and certainly squeezes as much of that unwanted emotion out of the scenario that it possibly can. But I couldn't help feel afterwards that their actual escape was rather uneventful considering the potential obstacles. Stringing all the drama together into one excruciating sequence left me feeling a little too manipulated. I get stopped at the airport every time I travel (due to identity theft) so perhaps the situation just rubbed me up the wrong way.
