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Men in Black 3 (DVD)
by Seven17
I am a big fan of the Men in Black series and really wanted to see MIB III, hoping it would be better than the first two, but it isn't. The first two had great story lines that worked really well and I just hoped this would live up to my expectations. It didn't.
The plot was that some random alien who was never mentioned in ... any earlier movies had his arm blown off and was arrested by K, want's to seek revenge. To do this he travels back in time (no details, just with some device) and tries to stop the event from happening.
I don't think the time travel storyline in this film worked. I mean yes, it's great to see the whole sci-fi "anythings possible", "technology knows no bounds" kind of film but time travel doesn't work in a film, it creates a lot of confusion and I don't think the storyline was that good.
I'm not being picky here but there are a few holes in the story that get quite complicated. Like how K knew who J was in the future but not in the past despite the ending where he knew him when he was a child. To make sense of this: How did K know J as a child, not know him in later life, then suddenly know him again "by chance" when he joined MIB. In the first movie we see J join as a new recruit from being a police officer, so we can now conclude that K already knew him at that time. So in the 60's he knows who James is, then when he visits him from the future he doesn't? That's not right, right? A tangled mess, which is why a time travel storyline doesn't work.
The acting was superb and the special effects were excellent too, but the scenes at cape Canaveral in Florida where quite obviously filmed in a studio with a green screen. The sky and the background doesn't look right, it's just too obviously a green screen and the metal doors are obviously not made of metal by the way Will Smith handled them. He could have flicked the door shut. In real life it would require a lot of effort to close!
The ending had a great twist to it regarding agent J and it completely came out of the blue, something unpredictable at the start of the film. But this again creates a hole in the story, since it was never mentioned in any previous movies in the series. The final end should have just been left on the line "he should have left a tip" but somehow in space because K didn't leave a tip an asteroid heads towards earth, then when he does leave a tip it gets hit by a satellite and avoids earth. What? That was just unneeded and ruined the ending.
Overall not a great film, a big disappointment for me really. The first two were excellent with a great storyline but this was just a let down. MIB 4 Better not be as big a let down, if they make it of course.
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John Carter (DVD)
by pmcds
In many different alternate realities, John Carter would have been Disney's CGI induced planet hopping success story. Current TV to movie hearthrob experiment Taylor Kitsch tops the billing with promises of the charisma that made him a firm favourite on Friday Night Lights; Avatar-like action on another planet looks like it's a hit along ... with the clever graphics of the aliens; and the plot involves battle between two tribes and a whole lot of plot twists coming our way. Surely this couldn't have been the flop everyone was talking about last year......could it?
It starts off positively enough, at least for the first few minutes. You see, there's more than one story going on here, and it just isn't explained well at the outset. Mars is actually teeming with life, two warring tribes of Red Martians (humans with bad sunburn) and a tribe of Green Martians (aliens with four arms and elongated faces) who are considered the more primal of the tribes. Not so complicated, right?
Wrong!!! This just isn't explained. Instead, we get garbled speech about a Princess and then the similar looking James Purefoy and Dominic West are shot from the side and rear where they look identical and we need to work out who is on which side. Ciaran Hinds apparently plays someone's father, and then there is Mark Strong, who adds unwarranted confusion to the mix by playing a shapeshifting bald headed piercing blue eyed superior being who just wants to mess with the status quo of the Universe.
Please accept my apologies for this confusing paragraph. I wanted you to understand my level of confusion at this first point, that I really didn't know what was going on. When Kitsch comes into things as a 19th Century bluecoat deserter in the Wild West, my wife and I looked at each other with bemusement before returning back to the screen for answers. The opening scenes had sort of explained that there was a man who was dead and his nephew was reading his will and there was something about a crypt, but then when it flicked to Mars we had forgotten about this bit. Returning to this part of the plot threw us even more, and Kitsch's titular hero spends 15 minutes of the film escaping being enlisted. It seems as if this period is spent on making him out to be a maverick with excellent fighting skills, and when he escapes into a cave, touches a mysterious medallion and is transported to Mars to join in the conflict and to try and right the wrongs made by everyone to each other, the ridiculous nature just increases.
I can't help feeling that this could all have been made a lot easier on our brain cells by cutting a lot of the bumph and padding out of the first half an hour or so. Once Carter arrives on Mars and meets with the primals, there's a decent element of comedy and some strong and efficient characterisation. Much as in Avatar, there are some recognisable names playing the alien characters, and while they aren't recognisable to look at, the voices of Willem Defoe and Thomas Haden Church reveal their billing, and it's good acting from them. In fact, the warring factions and tribal rituals of these four armed creatures are the more interesting elements, while the politics of the two warring red tribes just get tiresome.
By the time the excessively long (over 2 hours) film ends, you wonder why you'd bothered. The action is occasionally enjoyable, and the acting does quite well. Kitsch showed in Battleship that a run of the mill action film with a typically unbelievable storyline that is all about the action is his sort of scene, but this sci fi tries to be more subtle and complex than its cast allows. Kitsch doesn't find a comfortable foothold in the film and doesn't have the necessary presence to be able to pull off a role that Sam Worthington does in Avatar or Ray Liotta does in No Escape, the fish out of water with balls of steel character that this requires. Echoes of 'Didn't you used to be Tim Riggins' call out across the TV whenever Kitsch is on (Riggins was his Friday Night Lights character) and this seems to be where his impact is felt the most. I sincerely hope for him that his agent applies him to the better roles more suited to his acting style, as I am definitely a fan of what he is capable of.
This sort of film just goes to show that a famous author, a brand name like Disney and a cast that boasts top names from TV and big screen, US and UK, doesn't guarantee success in revenue. A huge flop at the box office and Disney's worst ever loss just shows that the quality seal is what really counts where its viewers are concerned. That this wasn't really suited to the youngest of audience shouldn't encessarily have driven the complication levels up higher like it did - there was no need to try and make it as deep and meaningful and complex as they did. I do wonder that a simpler intro without delving into detail would have made the difference and given this more of a chance. As it stands though, there's not a chance of that here. It remains a disappointment, and not even some decent acting and special effects can change what is a confusing mess for the most part. Steer well clear.
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Chronicle (DVD)
by sara66
***
(Film Only Review)
Plot:
Three boys obtain superpowers. One of the boys documents, via video camera, their journey from obtaining these powers, to the rapid development of their powers, and ultimately their attempts at trying to control their powers and help each other during this process. ...
My Thoughts (summed up in one sentence):
What a load of garbage.
My Thoughts (In detail):
I remember seeing the trailer for this movie, and thinking 'huh, this seems kinda funny.' When it premiered on Sky movies, I sat down with my family, ice cream in hand, to watch the movie.
The trailer gave the impression that this would be a superhero comedy. It was not. It had its comedic moments at the beginning when the boys obtained their powers and used them to play practical jokes on the people around them. But that was pretty much where the comedy ended.
One of the main things to note about this film is the way that it is filmed. It basically views like a home-made documentary, and all the filming is through video cameras, or security cameras, or news crew cameras. While I understand the idea behind the filming...to make it look realistic, so that we as an audience actually believe this is something that has happened...it made the film difficult to watch, at times the shots were shaky and unstable, whichever character held the camera at the time, his facial expressions, body language etc, went unseen. It was like watching a home-movie of someone else's life, and as rapidly as the boys powers developed, as rapidly I got bored.
With a view to making this a realistic documentary...there is also no accompanying music. While I can understand why they chose to do this, I believe music would have added something to scenes of chaos....which without the music I found it hard to watch, because it was just a lot of noise that seemed to go on forever.
The acting is something that I cannot fault, however there is nothing remarkable about it either. Perhaps the only actor that had a bit more depth to his character was Dane DeHaan playing the lead role of Andrew, the boy who is recording most of their journey. DeHaan was able to display a range of different emotions, you can really see his emotions develop, growing stronger as his powers do. You can see how his powers and his emotions begin to connect with one another, and you can really see that in his facial expressions, when you do get to see them, and in his voice and body language.
The movie is not particularly memorable either. I got so bored within the first fifteen minutes, that the only thing keeping me awake was playing Temple Run on the ipad every now and again. The only scene that will stick in my head forever is where one of the boys uses his powers on...something...and you don't expect him to do what he then proceeds to do. It was a moment of shock.
The storyline became a little predictable and while you could see where it was headed, at the same time it felt like it was a storyline that was headed nowhere. There were moments where I wanted to scream 'Hurry up and get on with the story,' and there were moments where it was incredibly fast-paced, however, important questions that you would ask in this movie as with other superhero movies, remain unanswered...and it leaves you thinking, 'hang on a second, what actually happened in this movie?' I believe this movie falls under the genre of science fiction, but it doesn't answer any of the scientific questions that you would ask. They leave room at the end for a possible sequel.
I am astounded at the number of reviews giving Chronicle a four or five star rating. The movie certainly takes a different approach to the superhero genre...and does it in a creative way. So I guess all I can say is this simply was not my cup of tea.
If you are looking for a typical superhero movie, this is not it.
***
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