“PIXELS”

I like video games, I don’t like Adam Sandler. What happens when you put those two together? That’s what I was about to find out!! To be honest with you, I do have a complete contempt for Adam Sandler, especially based on his last few movies like, Just Go With It, I Now Pronounce you, Chuck and Larry, Jack and Jill, Bucky Larson Born to Be a Star etc. The list just goes on and on. Let’s face it, the man is not completely without merits, he has some good films in his repertoire, mainly Happy Gilmore which at least did feel competently made and directed and he has had some success with his straight drama like Punch Drunk Love and Reign Over Me, where he played A New York firefighter who lost his family in 9/11. It did look like Adam Sandler was trying to make a bit of a comeback, mainly because he was taking advice from some of his critics and starting to work with acclaimed directors. The problem is, he chose to work with them around the time they weren’t making very good films! This is most obvious with the two films he made last year, Men Women and Children, which did disastrously at the Toronto Film Festival and was both critically panned and had terrible Box Office, grossing little both here and in the States, and The Cobbler which came out in the UK, a few weeks ago and has had a similar pounding from the critics. You could make an argument that this film is potentially Adam Sandler trying to make a comeback, since he is working with another acclaimed director this time, Chris Columbus, who directed the first two Home Alone and the first two Harry Potter Movies, however there is still the unholy mark of the Happy Madison label at the front of this, so yes take it out, it looks like Sandler is trying to play half and half, his usual, make whatever people obviously pay for, so it’s a good excuse to hang out with my mates whilst also trying to work with an acclaimed director and judging by his future filmography, it looks like he is leading more towards the former in the coming years. With all that being said though, with Columbus in the director’s chair I was hoping that there was some possibility that this film could still surprise me!!

Pixel’s plot goes, that in 1982 NASSA launches a probe into space containing footage of several parts of human culture including a famous video game tournament. Over 33 years later the probe is discovered by Aliens who see the video games as Earth’s challenging them to war and send their forms of the video games to attack Earth and if Earth loses three times in a row it’s game over! President Cooper (played by Kevin James) along with DARPA Chief Violet (played by Michelle Monaghan) recruit two Pro Gamers from the tournament, Brenner (played by Adam Sandler) and Ludlow, aka the Wonder Kid (played by Josh Gad) to put a stop to the Alien menace, but they are going to need help from the Video Games tournament’s champion, Eddie, aka The Fire Blaster (played by Peter Dinklage). Let’s get the one piece of criticism that I had heard about this film, when the feedback came out after its release in the States, yes, this film is a complete rip off of the Futurama Episode, even down to some of the games featured, mainly Pac man and Space Invaders. Space Invaders, though, doesn’t get much of a mention in this Movie. So the marketing had been kind of a lie on that part. On the angle of the marketing, I have no idea what market this film is aimed at. I thought this might have been aimed at the young adult and teens comedy, like a few of the Happy Madison films are made for, is it made for older immature man children, is it aimed for children of the 80’s as there area lot of references to the 80’s in this film? I think the film is mainly aimed at children, which is especially evident with the 12a rating, but it has a PG13 rating in America and I think most of this film’s appeal to children is rather inadvertently expected. The 12a rating does allow the children to go in with their parents if they are under the age of 12 and I noticed there were a lot of young kids at my screening. I think this goes in to the mis-representation that parents have, that video games are children’s toys, where as I am pretty sure that a large amount of the video games market are 14 to 32 year olds, but that’s beginning to branch out nowadays and lots of people play video games, so potentially it has a large market for a large audience especially with the growing Retro gaming movement. Unfortunately I don’t think this will satisfy any of them! It tries to do a similar thing that Wreck It Ralph did in trying to appeal to gamers and give something for a general audience who don’t necessarily play video games. However, whereas Wreck It Ralph largely hit both, Pixels doesn’t seem to hit either! The jokes aren’t Nerdy enough to get much from the gamers and I am pretty sure that a lot of the references in the video game creations put in the film are going to go over a lot of people’s heads. Also, unlike Wreck It Ralph they did not get as many licenses for this film. NAMCO gets quite a few of their games in there, Nintendo gets a couple and use of its logo as well as Donkey Kong and a 5 second shot of Mario and a 10 second shot of the Duck Hunt Dog. Konami gets a few games in there, but actually has refused its logo to be used, which is rather weird. Not to mention, Atari gets a couple in there as well but then again product placements in Adam Sandler films are not exactly new and this one isn’t much better. For example, ‘Mini’ get a few scenes that look like car adverts, honestly!! In fact the whole Pac Man sequence in New York could probably be a car advert! They even kind of make fun in the scene involving the game’s Centipede in Hyde Park, where a General, played by Sean Bean, to not cause the public to panic, claims that the whole thing is a beer advert, yes, that joke would have worked if it had been written and performed better! The marketing has also relied on several other fronts, it bills the film as being an action comedy, that’s a lie! This is a comedy through and through! It’s not much different to most of Adam Sandler’s films in recent memory. In fact the opening of this feels very similar to films like Happy Gilmore, The Longest Yard, even Now I Pronounce you Chuck and Larry, and it doesn’t feel that much different even up to the Alien shot and even then it feels similar on a lot of levels.

The cast definitely plays this like a normal movie of a sort, but it’s on a lot of levels really bizarre. I would say these are going to be caricatures of nerds, but they haven’t even really bothered on that front. The Big Bang Theory has much better interpretations of Nerds than this film does! Adam Sandler, Kevin James and Josh Gad are all just playing big man children. It’s not much different to any other Adam Sandler role like in Grown Ups and again like most critics it’s something I would like to see him move away from. He has been playing this role for ages, for goodness sake man, you are in your late 40’s!! Grow Up!! I complain about movies on the internet and even I feel more mature than you, and by the time this review goes out I will have just turned 25!! This also isn’t helped by the fact that these characters aren’t even that likeable, especially considering that they seem like they are just playing themselves. Josh Gad really plays himself, if not a more closeted virginal conspiracy theorist version of himself, which gets really old really fast. Adam Sandler is playing himself, though he does work for an organisation named NERD Technology which gives Sony a few more product placements including several for Playstation 4 (though that’s hardly surprising considering Sony distributed the movie). As I said before though, it claims to be an action comedy, this is a comedy with some action sequences attached to it. There is only about three or four in the entire movie and they are very short and very sporadic which is not surprising considering this film only comes in at 106 minutes. The comedy is not that great, especially when they are ripping off jokes from Futurama, South Park and even The Big Bang Theory again. Yes I may sound like I am bashing The Big Bang Theory, but I actually do kind of like that. It’s one of the few American comedies that I am really watching a lot of at the minute. This also feels really bizarre. It’s very clear that Chris Columbus has directed this are there are a few of his strengths and weaknesses turn up in this film but it also feels like he was half absent for the film because Adam Sandler feels more like he is in control of the movie. As usual, half the lines feel like him and Kevin are improving and assume that they are working with Dennis Duggan again who let’s them get away with this. I wouldn’t be surprised if there were a few falling outs on the set between Chris Columbus and the cast. On that front the jokes are really not funny!! I laughed at a couple of them and only one of them I actually thought was an decently written joke, the rest, the only time I got a slight laugh out, I felt awful because I realised that was not funny and I was purely laughing because the rest of the people around me were. You know the sort of laugh, you do it initially, then you sort of realise, that wasn’t even a good joke, not even close!! By the last portion of the film, it’s not even getting to that stage, it’s just desperate at this point to make you laugh! It doesn’t really work. Including Eddie’s so called love interest who are taken up by two celebrity cameo’s which I won’t spoil, it’s just so random. Who thought of that combination of women, it literally takes two women almost at random. It’s like, which weird cameos can we get hold of, it’s almost like they went through the phone book, it feels like something that someone would play in a game of Cards Against Humanity, it’s that random!! The film also has many more 80’s references than it does video game references, which again will alienate a lot of people to the film. Again, Wreck It Ralph was once again better at this because it actually showed the interesting evolutionary gap between modern games and classic retro games. This one doesn’t even really attempt to do it, it just feels like a retro gaming snob whose constantly going ‘video games were better in my day’. Grow up, there are good video games out today, you just have to look for them, but the only modern video game we see the entire time is The Last of Us, further giving Sony more product placements! Thus further boosting Playstation4. It never really goes with it and the explanation of the young kid character played by Matt Lintz doesn’t really fly. The other characters really either, Peter Dinklage plays a very unlikeable character and Michelle Monaghan has absolutely not personality and she has no chemistry with Adam Sandler’s character, in fact they are not really playing characters!!

Peter Dinklage is the only one who really tries to play a character so I am just going to refer to them by their acting names from this point on! Michelle Monaghan is just playing the usual Adam Sandler love interest, so she has the same amount of personality. Kevin James’s personality seems to go back and forth every once in a while and when he does have one it’s really annoying which can also be said for Josh Gad and of course Adam Sandler is just playing Adam Sandler, so you know what to expect from that one. I also think they didn’t have a great Nerd consultant on standby because half of these video game characters don’t look like the video games they are meant to represent I had trouble recognizing half of these characters and some of them are drastically out of date! The film makes it very clear that the Aliens have got their information on video games from the satellite, but that was sent up in 1982, but the Duck Hunt Dog appears in one of the scenes, that game was made in 1987, you were five years out!! Also if you are a fan of Mario, he is only in this for 5 seconds in the background. Man this film is annoying! Also, if you are wondering what the Aliens look like, don’t, this might be a spoiler, but they never turn up on camera, not once, we never find out what they look like so it gives us absolutely no connection to our villains of the piece. The video game characters have virtually no presence, because they are barely on the screen because of Adam Sandler and his friends doing their tired nonsense and playing very un-likeable characters. This plot was just a bore. It was entertaining the children around me, but they are the only ones who will be entertained by this because it a very brief action film. It doesn’t really have much to offer audiences who have seen this kind of thing time and time again; it doesn’t really hit any other market. The only reason this film is a 12a is to get that market. In short it’s not that funny and it’s not really that entertaining. It’s just kind of there!.

As for the Actors, well I kind of can’t go into that much detail as the film was so boring and nothing really happened in it so I didn’t really have that much to talk about on that front. Adam Sandler is as terrible as ever, he’s getting really boring in these parts, he’s not even trying to be a Nerd, he’s just being himself. There are only so many times you can iterate that. Kevin James is really not an actor I enjoy, he is very poorly cast as the president. But then on the way home I remembered that the Americans are possible about to elect Donald Trump (if you’re reading this in America please don’t vote for that idiot), so I wouldn’t be surprised if they elected Kevin James!! Josh Gad, I would not be surprised if he turns up at the Razzie’s next year because between this and The Wedding Ringer he has had an awful year, he is not a very funny comedian and is easily the worst part of the film. Michelle Monaghan, I haven’t really seen her much before this, didn’t really care much for her performance in this and is horribly miscast as Sandler’s love intrest, overall don’t really care! Now as for Peter Dinklage, well, I was really expecting him to bring some dignity back to this and actually get some funny lines in there, but he is barely on it. It’s not like he is not used to playing an un-likeable character, but he can really take those sorts of roles and really work with them. In this one he feels really disengaged from his part and most of the jokes he has to do are delivered so poorly it doesn’t really work. I should find this character really funny, but I don’t. I think the directors and writers just said ‘get me anyone who was in Game of Thrones’ so they had some star power behind this that nerds would recognise. This just adds further to the fact that this cast is really over qualified. There are a few cameos, more specifically Dan Ackroyd and Sean Bean, the former of the both who just does nothing and is purely there to say ‘oh look, it’s Dan Ackroyd’! They are obviously two of the famous cameos at the end. I also think there was a plan for a cameo for the creator of Pac Man that fell through, because Professor Iwatani (played by Denis Aklyama), who gets a few lines in there, but not too much. Also weirdly Brian Cox is in this one (the actor, not the musician turned scientist) playing an general in the American army, granted he gets some of the few funny lines in there, but he still feels really over qualified. I couldn’t figure out who played the Madame Prime Minister of England in this, but like most of the British cast she is basically there to be a British stereo type and it’s really not funny, I am getting sick of this now, though granted she does get one of the few funny lines in the entire film. There is also an actor playing Q*bert, but I have no idea who is playing him, as I can’t find anything on the IMDb page.

Incidentally, just giving a voice to Q*bert feels wrong, which is why I was glad in Wreck It Ralph he didn’t receive one, and here it doesn’t really work. The character gets really annoying really fast, granted at first it’s very entertaining, but then you want it to stop, FAST. Also the Q*bert character plays part in the most horrific ending for this film. Once again the cast made of Adam Sandlers usual rubbish and actors that are seriously too over qualified for the film that they are in, oh and as usual the kid characters aren’t that great, though granted Matt Lintz as Matty is a step above the normal standard for child characters in Adam Sandler movies.

The action scenes were better than I was expecting them to be. They are not great, don’t get me wrong, and there are only a few of them in the entire film, more specifically a shoot out around the games centipede in Hyde Park, a Pac Man car chase in New York city and film’s climax is a play through of Donkey Kong, and that is not a spoiler, this film is really destroyed by its trailers, there is virtually nothing in this film that wasn’t in the trailers, except the jokes. They are very heavily reliant on the CGI and it’s clear the actors don’t really know what they are doing because the effects are gonna be added in later. The action scenes also kind of create a few plot holes, how did the government develop this light gun which can actually damage the Aliens in a short space of time and where did they get the technology to do it?? In fact where did they get the technology to do half these things, it’s never explained. The special effects are rather woeful, I know they are based on the 80’s video games but they don’t look like their pixilated counterparts, with the exception of the Pac Man model and Donkey Kong model which both at least resemble their video game counterparts, they are rather well done at that time but the rest of the time you can barely tell what character they are meant to be I had a hard time telling anything from any of these, they just look like blocking messes. I would have commented on the Aliens’ design, but as I mentioned, we don’t see them.

This film is available in 3D and it was actually marketed as being better in 3D, though I saw this film in it’s 2D version and I would reckon the 3D version is probably better, there are quite a few of the effects which don’t translate that well in to the 2D version. In fact a couple of them outright fail!! Especially at the beginning, it’s very clear that the film makers want this to be seen in 3D format. The 2D version was at least serviceable and some of the effects were halfway decent. The Q*bert effect is pretty good which is a good thing considering we hang around with him more than any other character. The effects aren’t incredibly terrible, but I would hardly say they were the best I have seen this year, and I think the standard could have gone up markedly. It also doesn’t help as the effects seem to jar with the rest of the film. Because the rest of the film feels like an Adam Sandler piece, it feels very bizarre that we suddenly get into these action sequences with these Pixilated beings that all look like they are made up of several versions of the Tesseract in the Avengers movie and it all just feels like such a mess. That’s an allegory for the film in itself.

The movie is a mess. It doesn’t really work on any level. The action is not that great. The comedy is not really good at all. The special effects don’t work. It doesn’t really hit a market because it’s not Nerdy enough for Nerds, and the humour is way too juvenile so will only entertain fans of Adam Sandlers previous comedies or children and even then it will not appease Adam Sandler fans because the rating doesn’t allow them to do enough swearing or his usual lowest common denominator gags that somehow entertain people. The 3D effects mean that the 2D version which I saw didn’t really work which will limit it’s appeal on DVD and the cast is either really awful or too over qualified for this film and poorly directed. It’s just a mess on every level!! I didn’t find it very funny and I didn’t find it very thrilling. I was just bored by it and I was glad to go. It just doesn’t work on any level. I am probably going to forget about it as soon as I have finished this review. There are several continuity errors, plot holes and a couple of video game characters that were made after 1982 that turn up in the film inexplicably. They just didn’t care!!

So what are your thoughts on Pixels? Did you like it or, like me, you didn’t. You can leave a comment or answer this weeks question, which is:

“Do you prefer classic video games or modern games?”

Please leave a comment, I will be happy to hear your thoughts on this one.

Well once again we are going to have a weeks break. There will be no review next Friday, but please come back on 4th September when I will be celebrating One Year of the Axia Film Society by reviewing the last of the DC Animated movies to come out this year “Justice League: Gods and Monsters”.

Thanks for reading all my reviews in August. I hope they entertained you. Remember you can follow me on Twitter and Facebook.

Calvin – Nerd Consultant

“FANTASTIC FOUR (2015)”

Ok confession time I may be comic fan and really like superheroes but I’m not a big fan of the Fantastic Four, they’re just not really characters that appeal to me too much though do have some knowledge of them and their history. In build up to this film I did watch both of the previous films and they are really just terrible and boring, in fact I was amazed that they got as far as 2 movies so this film doesn’t exactly have a high standard to surpass but I went in with an open mind and the hope that this would endear me to the characters in some way. Now I was slightly keen to see this movie because the filmmakers were advertising it as “made by the same studio as X-Men Days Of Future Pass” and this is due to a planned crossover between both franchises with 20^th Century Fox clearly wanting to cash in on the success of The Marvel Cinematic Universe but having seen the film those hopes may have been dashed

This film’s plot is that Reed Richards (played by Miles Teller) desires to be the first man to successfully teleport and experiments against the advice of his educators until his experiment is spotted by Dr Franklin Storm (played by Reg E. Cathey) and his daughter Susan Storm (played by Kate Mara) and is recruited to create a larger working version of his design that will allow humans to travel to another dimension along with Victor Von Doom (played by Toby Kebbell) and after he gets into some trouble Franklin’s son Johnny (played by Michel B. Jordan). After the government screws over the researchers Reed, Johnny and Victor take their creation for a test drive along with Reed’s friend Ben Grimm (played by Jamie Bell) in order to be the first in the new dimension. However things go wrong and Victor goes missing and Reed, Susan, Johnny and Ben gain powers through a radiation explosion and gain super powers. The government captures them and starts using them for missions under the pretence of curing them but they’ll need the missing Reed Richards to succeed and Victor Von Doom may have plans after spending a year in the other dimension.

If that plot sounded like a lot happens in this movie put that to the back of your mind, nothing I repeat NOTHING happens in this movie. it has some of the worst pacing of any movie I’ve seen this year in fact I would say that the film plays more like a TV pilot than a movie and the entire thing feels like a beginning to plot that never gets off the ground even at the films climax that doesn’t really start until the last 20 minutes and by the end it feels like nothing has been accomplished except for bait for a sequel. In fact a lot of what I said in the previous paragraph is a large amount of the plot and I was even considering skipping that entire paragraph though this review is short enough already. The problem is that the film is really too short it comes in at just under 1 hour 40 minutes when it really should be 2 hours and it doesn’t have time to tell the story it wants to and it has clearly been gutted to get everything out ,most notably when the film skips a year at a really bizarrely mistimed moment as resulting skipping a ton of character development. Wouldn’t want to see any of that would we

Not mention the writing and direction are atrocious which is surprising considering the film is directed by Josh Trank who previously co wrote X Men Days of Future Past and directed one of the few found frootage films I actually liked Chronicle which had a great plot done in an even shorter amount of time than this film but his direction is terrible and that’s reflected in the performances and the action scenes.

Not to mention the characters are all terrible and have absolutely no chemistry with each over and we learn nothing about any of them Victor AKA Doctor Doom is the villain but by the time he executes his plan we have no idea why he’s doing it because he appeared normal before hand. The movie hints a some shady back story that is never expanded upon and it’s really frustrating because Doctor Doom is one of the best Marvel villains and he is nothing like the character in the comics which is what could be said for most of the characters in this film. It would have made a much better story if they had stuck closer to the comics and had him as a dictator or a dignitary of his native Latveria (a fictional nation in the marvel universe) maybe there’s some necessity to his peoples welfare with this experiment and but as it stands I know nothing about him so I didn’t care. The character that I think comes off the most accurate to the comics at a stretch is Ben Grimm AKA The Thing and even then there’s issues mainly in the casting and lack of detail to the character.

I assume this film is based more on the Ultimate Universe of Fantastic 4 but I can’t confirm this because I really don’t read that much of the Marvel Ultimate universe especially now that it’s probably been destroyed in the Marvel event Secret Wars (which I haven’t read yet), but even if that was true I could care less because everyone is poorly characterised even though Reed Richards AKA Mr Fantastic once again is the smartest yet dumbest man in the room.

I will also say for a superhero movie they are never mentioned by their superhero names and somehow (and this is quiet unbelievable) it somehow has less superhero stuff than the 2005 film and that is really, really sad cause that film had hardly any either!

There is a attempt to get a romance going between Reed and Susan though it doesn’t work at all especially considering they share so few scenes and as said no chemistry. In fact the entire Fantastic 4 don’t appear together on camera together until the very end of the movie are you kidding me. As a result their coming together as a team feels very contrived and you can’t understand how they have built up these tactics that are so in touch with each over having spent so little time together.

The plot has you constantly waiting for something to happen and it never does. We wait an hour for them to get their powers and we see them do virtually nothing with them possibly less than the last films. And not to mention the climax of the film is so forced and so rushed it might as well not have even been there before it painfully leaves the door open for a sequel that will never happen. If there were any post credits scenes I didn’t see them cause I didn’t care and just wanted to get out of there. I went to see this film with my cousin Joe who joined me previously on the review of Big Eyes and he hated the movie just as much as me. We on the way home asked the question “was there any positives?” and all we could come up with was that the effects may age better than the previous films. In fact in our screening there were a group of really annoying kids who kept talking and getting up and walking about. They got kicked out but we found it more entertaining seeing people trying to deal with them and guessing how long it would take till they got kicked out. Believe me if annoying members of the audience are more entertaining than what’s on screen you’ve gone wrong somewhere.

If the plot section of the review appears short it really is because there isn’t much too say about it that really is how bad it is, the only good part about it was Dr Franklin who was a somewhat likeable character other than that I didn’t like anyone especially Johnny and Ben who feel really pointless when they appear and disappear constantly and it’s a testament to how lazy this movie is and as a result it will be impossible to get invested.

Now as for the acting it’s not much better than the 2005 movie. Some of the cast are slightly better cast than the 2005 movie mainly Kate Mara as the invisible woman who is much better casting than Jessica Alba but that’s all I can think off because everyone is horribly miscast and giving terribly bland performances including Kate Mara but particularly Miles Teller. he may have earned back some points with me after his excellent performance in the Oscar Nominated Whiplash but this is really bad and is proof that he is back on usual form and I’m starting to worry that Whiplash was a fluke. With all that being said I would say he’s on a par with Ioan Gruffudd in the same role and that was a terrible performance too. Much also Michael B Jordan is clearly out of his depth and seems to be playing this like he’s a character from a Fast and Furious movie, not helped by the fact that his first scene is a street race. As much as the slack that Chris Evans got for his role as the Human Torch. he seemed a lot more like the fun loving character of the original comics but that being said this incarnation of Johnny is slightly closer overall but lighten up a bit mate. Needless to say Casting Jamie Bell as Ben Grimm is a disastrous decision. That’s right Billie Elliot is now the Thing. I’m sorry but one of the few positive I had with the 2005 Fantastic Four movie was the casting of Michael Chiklis who does fit the characters source material. Jamie Bell can’t carry off this role because he can’t do the accent, doesn’t even remotely look like he fits the role mainly cause he doesn’t have the bulk or the accent and he can’t pull off the character with the exception of his scene before the film skips a year and some of his later scenes with Miles Teller. He also doesn’t suit the motion capture performances after becoming the Thing which is surprising considering he took to it really well when he played the title role in 2011’s The Adventures of Tintin. Tobey Kebbell playing Victor Von Doom starts out well playing the loner and aspiring scientist but fails to pull of his villainous turn. Granted some of that is writing issues. The rest of the cast are mainly just there to be support and they’re not that brilliant especially Tim Blake Nelson’s Dr Allen. The only cast member I really enjoyed was Reg E Cathy who makes the most of the role and has good chemistry with the cast and I look forward to seeing him more.

The other major cast issue is the lack of chemistry between the various actors. I’m not feeling the romance between Miles Teller and Kate Mara, Kate Mara and Michael don’t come off as a believable brother and Sister, Miles Teller and Jamie Bell aren’t on screen long enough to sell their friendship and they just don’t feel like a close nit team and in a Fantastic Four movie that’s a big fail.

As for the effects they’re not great, not terrible but compared to what the Marvel Cinematic Universe is doing it’s not up to Par. The film is very CG reliant and they’re not integrated well so you’re not seeing character you’re seeing an effect especially in The Thing and Human Torch effects. Some of the stretch effects of Mr Fantastic are good but pale when compared with say the effects in Ant-Man.

The action scenes are laughable. First off there are too few of them we barely see one till the 1 hour mark. I don’t think there’s more than 3 or 4 and it’s not good enough for a superhero movie. The fight scenes are way too short and shot in a way that you can’t tell what’s going on and the flow of the effects and choreography are terrible. This is even the case in the final fight, which by the way also sucks. I liked the start of Dooms rampage through the military base but even that was poorly shot and edited plus it was so graphic that it made me question the 12A rating.

The design of the characters and effects are at least decent. Especially The Thing whose design really remained in tact. I had mixed feelings on the others especially Doctor Doom who’s design is a real mixed bag bordering the cool design of the comics with some questionable cosmetic changes

This movie had a 3D version in production however it was scrapped prior to release which is good because if I had to pay for 3D glasses on a film where the effect probably would have added little to the overall product I would have been even more mad

If you’re hoping for a positive here then I’m going to have to disappoint you then I’m sorry I’ve tried but I’ve got nothing and I really tried the only thing I liked was Reg E Cathy at a stretch

Fantastic Four is utterly terrible. It plays like a TV pilot more than movie and as a result nothing happens leaving it to be an uninventive boring mess that makes you want to yell at the screen for something anything to happen. With awful characters that have little depth and no progression, terrible miscasts and acting and a plot that went absolutely nowhere this was a complete waste of 1 hour and 40 minutes. The effects and fight scenes are awefull and it’s clear this was a shameless get them in get them out movie off the conveyer belt made because 20^th Century Fox realized they still had the rights to Fantastic Four and were hoping to fool people with the top quality of comic movies right now. They failed and it’s just as bad as the 2005 version. Fox plans to have a crossover between Fantastic Four and X Men but this film is so bad I think that’s been squashed before it’s even started like this films terrible attempts to have sequel.

Have you seen Fantastic Four? Leave a comment on your thoughts of the film if you have, or leave a comment to answer my question

“Did you like or dislike Fantastic Four (2005)?”

Also if you want to leave your own content visit our how to submit section

Now for next weeks review and it’s probably all down hill from here

Join me on August 21^st for my review of Adam Sandler’s “Pixels” and yes I put this on schedule cause I had some hope that Fantastic four would be good movie so needed to balance it out with something that looked bad.

I enjoy making these reviews for you even when I don’t like the movie so thanks for reading cause I wouldn’t be able sit through movies like this if it wasn’t for you brilliant guys & girls

Calvin – Nerd Consultant

“INSIDE OUT”

Inside Out marks the return of Pixar to our screens for the first time in a while with a brand new film. This is an original film written and directed once again by Pixar’s long time employee Peter Docter who previously directed Up and wrote several screenplays for other films, but this time he is joined by Ronaldo Del Carmen who mainly used to work in the arts department, but he does share a writing credit for this film and has some directing experience having directed two episodes of the Freakazoid cartoon, but this is his feature film directing debut. Pixar really needs to up their game. The last few films prior to this were: the abysmal Monsters University as well as the dreadful Planes movies, which I briefly commented on in my top ten worst films of 2014. Pixar are also in dire straits having pushed back The Good Dinosaur several times which is thankfully getting a release date in November 2015. How does Pixar’s first original film in a long time finally do, having being pushed back over here from its US release date to avoid competition from the ‘Minions’ (which by the way I did see and I found it pretty good, but I thought without its Despicable me cast the Minions brand of humour can get slightly tiresome, and most of the better jokes are in the trailer).

Inside Out’s plot is that Riley (voiced by Kaitlyn Dias) has five beings representing her emotions living in her brain! Joy (voiced by Amy Poehler), Sadness (voiced by Phyllis Smith), Fear (voiced by Bill Hader), Anger voiced by (Lewis Black) and Disgust (voiced by Mindy Kaling). Everything is going well and Riley has a happy life, mainly because Joy is in control, up until their family move from Minnesota to San Francisco. This causes a ton of issues, not helped by the fact that when Sadness touches a few of the core memories they turn sad and Riley’s life is turning upside down. When Joy tries to fix the core memories they are sucked out of the control headquarters along with herself and Sadness and dropped in to long term memory. Now Riley can’t feel happiness or sadness and they must get back to headquarters in order to fix the situation and get Riley’s life back to normal.

First off, I can’t begin to tell you how satisfying it is to see an original idea from Pixar, and this is a very original idea. That’s what I would have said if I hadn’t watched the Nostalgia Critics episode earlier in the week that I saw this film. He reviewed the film Osmosis Jones, if you haven’t seen it, it’s basically a half live action half animation film about a white blood cell and a sugar pill played by Chris Rock and David Hyde Pierce living in the body of a guy played by Bill Murray and trying to stop an infection played by Laurence Fishburne from killing him. It’s a pretty enjoyable movie but the live action portions do take away from it a bit and it would have benefited if the entire film were in animation. But it was a pretty cool and clever film. His review did comment about a lot of similarities between the two films, mainly so that he could do a few sketches based on Inside Out and if you look at it, there are some similarities between the two films. However Inside Out is not a rip off of Osmosis Jones!! For starters, Osmosis Jones played a lot more with the idea of reimagining Biology, despite the fact this did result in quite a few cringe worthy puns, including a cameo by Kid Rock, re-named Kidney Rock. This film concentrates more on being an imaginative version of how the human brain and psychology work. The various emotions do get a control panel, which, again, the mayor in Osmosis Jones does have, but it’s slightly different, and depending on which emotion is used in the control panel affects how Riley will act. This is a really cool and clever idea and the fact that the other emotions can’t make Riley feel happy adds to the tension of the situation in hand. This does eventually lead to a build up, and there is a slightly thrilling climax and I use the word slight because there are a few issues with it, but I will get into that later. The way it plays around the plot is an excellent allegory for growing up and issues that kids go through at hard times and I think a lot of the older members of the audience will feel a slight sense of nostalgia from this film because it really invokes a lot of that. This film is emotional in a literal sense, there is a lot in there, however it doesn’t quite achieve the same levels of previous animated films that I have reviewed this year, like Song of the Sea or The Tale of The Princess Kaguya. But I wouldn’t lie if I said I was slightly touched by the climax by the ending of the film. The major downside of the plot is that is feels slightly forced. Things just seem to happen and they just seem to derail the plot a couple of times to stop this whole thing from moving on, literally in one case later on in the film. I would also say the climax itself feels rather forced because the film makers realise we need a climax, it does add a sense of need for the main characters to get back to the headquarters, but that doesn’t stop it feeling slightly forced. It’s hardly the most contrived writing I have seen all year, that is definitely not the case.

This film has some really interesting characters. Joy is arguably the main character, but I think the filmmakers have overestimated how much we will enjoy spending time with her. She does have a good character arc and Amy Poehler really brings something to this role, which redeems her over enthusiasm and her major faults early on in the film. Joy is a very flawed character and not entirely in a way that is beneficial to the plot and I think that the writers are going with the idea that we are going to gravitate towards Joy, whereas I found myself more gravitated towards Sadness. I also really liked, Fear, Anger and Disgust who are the characters who are mostly in control of headquarters throughout most of the film. Their personalities really rub off well, much like Joy and Sadness, but again Sadness was my favourite character throughout the entire film and I really felt she probably should have been the main character of this. That’s not to say I didn’t enjoy those characters, I particularly liked Anger who has some good gags and gets most of the laughs from the film. The only character I found slightly annoying was Riley’s imaginary friend Bing Bong who really overstays his welcome in the film and who is basically a clone of Joy, thus rendering him kind of useless to the plot except to point out the Maguffins that will potentially solve the situation. I also like the character Riley. The writers made her a very normal, very relatable girl. I like the fact that the writers didn’t not make her either perfect or a girly girl which I feared they would, plus the writers didn’t make her portion of the story very boring, nor did they not give enough for the animators to do with her, she is well utilised. The film does have some good gags in it, but some of them are abandoned too quickly, particularly the gag involving Anger. Anger is reading a newspaper at the time and the front page is something to do with the situation going on at that point in the film (for example in big bold letters NO DESERT) and it was a very funny visual gag, but is as abandoned half way through this film, which was a shame because I was waiting to see where they were going with it. But maybe that’s to the films benefit considering that the gag might have overstayed its welcome. Likewise, if you were expecting from the first trailers of this film, that they would be going into several people’s minds and seeing all their emotional avatars, I’m sad to say that doesn’t really happen except for the middle portion of the film which you have seen the entirety of in the first trailer and some later portions in the closing credits, which I really recommend staying behind for because it is very funny. While we are on the subject of trailers, I can’t tell you how much of the film has actually been put in the trailer for this movie. This film is only 94 minutes long and I think the film would have benefited more if the trailer had shown less of the movie than that it did, there is one scene later on in the film where the characters have to sneak around in order to not wake up this big scary clown character and it would have been a potentially tense scene if the trailer hadn’t given away that the clown wakes up!! That is not a spoiler, that was in the trailer that was shown in my Ant Man review so anyone who clicked on that would have spotted it as well. I can’t say that I dislike the plot however, this was an actually a really cool and interesting plot, there is quite a bit for older members of the audience, and by that I don’t mean that there are a few risque jokes that were snook in past the bbfc censor for which I only counted two. It does, however mean, if you are dragged along to this with your kids you will be getting a decent plot and something you can get invested in, despite the fact that I was made to wait 30 minutes to see this movie with trailers adverts and a 5 minute animated short called Lava which plays with every screening. Seriously!! There ware way too many adverts and way too many trailers for this film. This film was 94 minutes and I was looking forward to a simple brisk in and out job, but the cinema padded out the running time with way too many adverts, seriously, I don’t care. Stop playing too many adverts!!

The plot is pretty cool and has some great moments in it, I just think the film was slightly off focus at times and I don’t think Joy is as likeable a character as the filmmakers think she is. She gets an excellent character arc that I enjoyed, as I previously mentioned. You could chop this up as a rip off of Osmosis Jones, but I think you will be doing the film a miss service because there is an incredible level of imagination here that has been sorely missed from Pixar for quite some time. The only time that it feels like they are ripping off Osmosis Jones is the fact that dreams in this world are treated like television programmes and movies, yes, I’m sorry, you can’t get around that one. It’s a really heartfelt plot and I think it’s actually one that will resolute well with all audiences.

Acting wise, there’s not really much to say about this one. Because the cast isn’t that large this time and most of the characters are taken up by additional voices, mainly because there isn’t an antagonist in this film, much to the film’s positives. You’ve got Amy Poehler as Joy who is really good especially in her first few scenes where she can really play the embodiment of happiness. Richard Kind plays an almost pointless character, but he is really good in his role and I would say I did enjoy hearing him. Bill Hader as Fear is very good and Mindy Kaling is excellent as Disgust. When I heard Lewis Black was playing Anger I said “yes, that is perfect casting”, and I am sort of right, he does bring a lot to this role and gets in some really funny lines, in fact he probably gets in the most funny lines. It is another case of another stand up comedian being kind of forced to tone down his usual material to be in a kids film, and anyone who has seen Lewis Black’s stand up will be aware of. He was very well cast as I predicted. This is a guy who ranted for a good couple of minutes about being flown to LA to audition for a part that was basically himself, and he didn’t get the part!!! Diane Lane and Kyle MacLachlan are pretty good as the parents, even though their parts are pretty short and they don’t tend to turn up that much in the film. The stand up performances for me are Kaitlyn Dias as Riley and Phyllis Smith as Sadness who are both excellent in their roles. I’m not the biggest Phyllis Smith fan in the world, but I absolutely loved her in this film and she played a character that I really endeared myself a lot more to than I thought I was going to and in the hands of any other actress may not have worked as well. This film avoids one of the biggest mistakes that a lot of family films do, it doesn’t fill itself with too many recognisable celebrity voices. This often will have the effect that you just hear the celebrity voice and imagine them in the recording booth, rather than seeing them as a character. This film doesn’t really do that, you see these people as characters and that’s mainly because most of the voices come from well polished voice actors. I did get a sense of that with Lewis Black but that’s purely because I am very used to his stand up and in later portions of the film I was able to separate the two out. Bottom line, really good cast and even the additional voices in the people I have missed were really good in their parts.

The animation is really where the next port of call goes in this review and it’s as expected pretty good. The CGI animation is very Pixar. You just look at this and you think that is something developed by the studio that gave us ‘Toy Story’ and ‘Up’, but I felt the animation was closer in to the sort of style than the incredibles was going for (which, by the way I am really excited that they are making a sequel to that). I also thought that the character design and the world design are really imaginative, as you would expect and it is the sort of environment that I really enjoyed. I wouldn’t say I wanted to live there like I did with Big Hero 6, but it really added to the breath of fresh air I was feeling having had to sit through the last few Pixar films which had no imagination to them whatsoever. I particularly liked the character designs of the main emotions, particularly, Joy looks very upbeat and glows most of the time, Sadness looks very out of place and slightly geeky, but in a good way, which really fits in with Riley’s character. Anger looks like the sort of dad you see ranting about something he has read in the newspapers, Disgust’s design of looking like a fashion diva I loved, and Fear, well I didn’t really get how this design represented Fear. The actions and movements of the character really got that down, but I thought that was were the design fell down for me. They also got the colour scheme pretty well, obviously Joy is yellow, Sadness is blue, Anger is red, Disgust is Green and Fear is purple for some reason! (could make him the new Axia spokeman on that baisis) That design really did not work as well as the animators thought it did. I would say, on a purely technical level, if I take those pointers out of the fact, I did enjoy the character design. It’s another case of where I would like to get the art book for this film to see the process the animators came up with. Once again the CGI animation really excelled and the character’s movement is really cool, plus the fact that there are all sorts of weird and wacky things going on. Also, some of the locations, like the Interest Islands are really cool ideas and I did like the whole memories being represented by Orbs, even though they look like something taken out of minority reports.

Because of the way my schedule worked, I went to a 12.30 screening which happened to be in 3D and my comments on that version of the film was that the 3D was pretty good in the first few portions of the movie, but it kind of fails in the latter portion. It does ok 3D especially considering that CGI animation works pretty well in the 3D format, as I pointed out in my ‘Big Hero 6’ review, however this is not as good 3D as in Big Hero 6. I recalled only two stand out scenes where the 3D really came into its own, particularly a scene where the characters go into Riley’s abstract thoughts where the film actually shifted from 2D into 3D and in fact with one point with much of the screen being taken up by 2D and one tiny portion of the screen being 3D, that is a really clever effect that I have never seen before and was probably the hi-light of seeing the 3D version of this and it was proper 3D, I actually took the glasses off and the film was completely in focus apart from that small section and it’s really clever and inventive, like most of this film. However there is not too much to stand out with the 3D, but it does the job well enough. So with this one, I would say you can take it or leave it, I would go by whichever screening best suits who you are going with and the time. I don’t think it will make too much difference whichever way you see it, except to your wallet. I don’t think you would feel too ripped off if you saw it in 3D though. If you have a large family, seek out the 2D version, there was a large family in front of me with 2 parents and 3 kids and I worked out when I got back, in order to see that screening it would have cost them £53.20 because I noticed that they did not have 3D glasses already and had to purchase them. The animation is pretty good, but it didn’t blow my mind like The Tale of The Princess Kaguya and Song of the Sea did.

Does Inside Out have it’s faults? Yes it did. It’s not entirely well focused and I made a few arguments earlier on about the some of the gags not entirely working. The best gag being the joke about advert jingles that you can’t get out of your head, which I’m certain almost everyone watching will relate to. Inside Out is a very funny, charming movie. It does have a few issues around its plot and a couple of its characters, but I would argue it’s worth the price of admission. Pixar haven’t been this imaginative in a long time. Its a really cool world and I would definitely not call this an Osmosis Jones rip off!! It has too much of it’s own identity in order to do that. It’s really cute, really charming and it might actually get a bit of emotion out of you. This is also not one just for the kids. The adults will get something out of this. Special props to Amy Poehler, Phyllis Smith, Lewis Black and Kaitlyn Dias who are all particularly good in their roles. This won’t be for everyone and I imagine some people may struggle with this film, but I would say if you are willing to endure, it’s worth it.

So what were your thoughts on Inside Out? Did I get it completely right or have I been too positive or negative about this film, I personally think I was kind of in the middle with it. These reviews are just my initial thoughts and some of my opinions may alter over time, but I will really welcome your thoughts. Leave a comment please, or answer this weeks question, which is:

“What is your favourite Pixar Movie?”?

This is going to be interesting because I almost certainly will have seen all of these movies considering I have practically grown up with this studio.

Well it’s time to move on. We have had two reviews based on Marvel comics this year and it’s time to close out Marvel with the third and final release of a Marvel Comic film this year, “The Fantastic Four’. I am aiming to get this on line for 14 August.

Thanks for reading my review, I hope you enjoyed reading it as much as I enjoyed writing it.

Calvin – Nerd Consultant

“ANT-MAN”

This is the final film in Marvel’s second phase of movies and the twelfth film in the overall continuity of Cinematic Universe and to be honest, the only thoughts on going in to see this were ‘why has it take so long for an Ant-Man Movie’, especially considering that Ant-Man and Wasp are both founding members of The Avengers in the comic universe so, why so long?? The only point I can really put it down to is the fact that Ant-Man is not as well known a characters as say, Captain America or Ironman. They obviously needed to test out the waters of the Marvel Cinematic Universe before committing to a character that is largely unknown. These characters can been successfully introduced as we saw with last year’s Guardians of the Galaxy and hopefully we will be seeing in the future with several of Marvel’s future films intend to introduce a ton of new characters. I went into this film expecting it to be pretty much of a lulled gap between Avengers Age of Ultron and the up-coming Captain America Civil War. Fortunately, however, this film is anything but.

The plot is that Scott Lang (played by Paul Rudd) is struggling to gain any work outside of Prison, because of course, ‘no one hires convicts’. He cannot pay any child support towards his daughter Cassie Lang (played by Abby Ryder Fortson), he feels completely unable to provide for anyone, so he breaks into a building believing he is going to steal a large amount of money, but he ends up stealing a suit, which he later discovers, gives him the ability to shrink to Ant size and also allows him to communicate with Ants. The suit belongs to Dr Hank Pym (played by Michael Douglas) who recruits Scott along with his daughter Hope van Dyne, played by Evangeline Lilly to stop business tycoon Darren Cross (played by Corey Stoll) from distributing his Yellowjacket formula based on Hank Pym’s pin particle solution. In order to achieve this, Scott must become The Ant-Man. If you went into this film planning to see a Super Hero movie, I would actually hold off on that thought. This is a lot more of a Heist Movie. You would be better off to think of it as being Marvel’s attempt to do Ocean 11, fortunately, unlike the flawed Fast and Furious Movies this one does ‘the heist’ a lot better than those films, This film is a prime example of how to do a heist film. You get likeable characters and put them in a scenario where the heist is life or death so you can actually sympathise with the people who are basically committing a crime. It was a bold move on Marvels part to have this be a Heist film and in the hands of a poor writer this wouldn’t have worked, luckily they got skilled writers. The story itself and most of the screenplay is written by Shuan of the Dead’s Edgar Wright and Joe Cornish, writer of Attack the Block and the two work well together once again having previously collaborated on the recent Tintin movie along with Doctor Who writer Steven Mofffat, with a few parts of the screenplay being written by Paul Rudd and Adam McKay who is a former Saturday Night Live writer. Edgar Wright was meant to stay on as Director of the film, however, he has taken a back seat to Peyton Reed whose previous credits include Yes Man and The Break-up, basically, films that I didn’t enjoy, but I am definitely enjoying his direction in this film. It really feels like he is coming into his own here and is not bound by the writers, though I do believe he directs the film similar to Edgar Wright. My only complaint with the writing is that it seems like a lot of the writers are trying to impersonate Joss Weedon since the Avengers films are so successful and they feel that writing style is needed to make the Marvel Cinematic Universe tie together. Fortunately Edgar Wright and Joe Cornish are very good at replicating Joss Weedon’s style of writing.

The film has excellent characters and they really play off each other very well. There are three comic relief characters Luis, Kurt and Dave played by Michael Pena, David Dastmalchian and T.I., who verge on the border of being annoying, but they fortunately are competent enough characters that they aren’t, so we do end up enjoying them. Hope Van Dyne is a pretty decent character and Evangeline Lilly brings something to the role. I also loved Scott Lang’s estranged family Maggie and Cassie who are absolutely brilliant, even if they aren’t given enough screen time, except for in the climax. In fact from that whole side of the film the only character really given enough time is Paxton (played by Bobby Cannavale) and in any other film he could have been done a lot worse but fortunately, again, his heart is in the right place and we can sympathise with his position. My problem with Avengers Age of Ultron was that it felt like it was trying to publicise Phase 3 too hard too much without telling its own story. This film finds a much better balance. It does time the Marvel Universe pretty well and there are a few lines in the film and a few moments that are there, that pretty much require you to have at least seen Avengers Age of Ultron, however knowledge of the Marvel Universe is not essential to enjoy this film I went to this film with Dr Buchan and our recent work experience employee, Hannah and we all came in from a different perspective. Hannah has seen all of the Marvel Movies and Dr Buchan has only seen 4 of the movies now, whereas I have seen all of them and read comics regularly and we all came out having enjoyed the film, so obviously it has some major universal appeal. The characters are pretty true to the comics and likewise it ties in with the Marvel Universe pretty well, as the fight scene with Falcon in the middle of the film proves as well as the scenes of the New Avengers facility shown at the end of Age of Ultron. The only downside to tying it in to the Marvel Universe is the ending which feels like a re-shot in light of certain films that have been announced this year. By the way, there are 2 post credit scenes, and if you are expecting to see Spiderman there, don’t, he doesn’t appear in the post credit scene and the first doesn’t tie much towards the next Avengers Movie, so skip it and wait for the DVD, it’s basically a small extra. The second on the other hand I didn’t see because I wasn’t aware of it prior to film and found out afterwards but basically it’s a small set up to next years Captain America Civil War and kind of confirms that Ant-Man will be in that film.

The main thing to discuss is Michael Douglas as Dr Hank Pym and Paul Rudd as Scott Lang/Ant-Man. They are both written excellently, these really feel like their comic counterparts. Hank Pym is both the smartest yet dumbest man in the room and Scott Lang is the ultimate under-dog who is often put in to situations where he is completely out of his depth, but they are done in ways that people who have never heard of these characters can identify with and attach themselves to without disapointing comic fans . Marvel once again, gets a brilliant balance here. These characters, once again, are fun and witty and I really enjoyed seeing them on screen. In fact I would like to see them again in future films especially considering that there is no planned sequel for Ant-Man at this point in time. There is hopefully a plan to bring Ant-Man into the Avengers, but apart from a slight hint in the post credit scene I am not seeing any of that yet. The only downside, I really felt to the plot is the Villain. No offence to Corey Stoll who is doing a good job in his role, but Yellowjacket was really a poor choice of a villain. He wasn’t a villain in the comics, he’s just another one of Hank Pym’s identities after he stops being Ant-Man. For the purposes of this film I actually read all of Scott Lang’s first appearances as Ant-Man in the Marvel Comic Universe, as well as the first 5 issues his current series and his character was much more tied to the villain Taskmaster who would sort of accidentally run into half the time that Taskmaster was trying to take down another villain like Spiderman or the Avengers and I could have seen Corey Stoll play that role very well. Yellowjacket’s character was a good choice in terms of keeping out the shrinking and growth effects in the film and granted Darren Cross was the name of the superhuman businessman that Scott Lang fights in his first apperence but this just feels like a missed opportunity. Plus he comes across as just not that compelling a villain. Hopefully Taskmaster will appear in future films. He is not a bad villain per say, but compared to other Marvel villains I think he will be cast to the wayside and probably be forgotten. Hydra turns up eventually in this movie somehow, I’m pretty sure he has been killed off about 3 times in the Marvel Universe by now, but well! Once again Marvel develops a plot that is both entertaining for the comic fans and for the general audience, this will hook in people and it’s biggest benefit is that it is not trying too hard to publicise future movies, but does tie into the Marvel Universe pretty well, which is what all the movies should be doing.

I don’t need to tell Marvel fans to go and see this film for the plot because they probably already have by the time this publication comes, but the plot was excellent and that’s not to mention the amazing amount of humour that was in the film. It got a lot of people laughing, though I do think some of the jokes are inherently based on the Marvel Universe and you would have had to have seen previous films to get some of the jokes and the references.

Performance wise this is an excellent cast. I really liked Paul Rudd as Ant-Man, he is excellent at playing the under-dog superhero that he is in the comics. I must be honest, I was slightly concerned about Paul Rudd playing Ant-Man upon his initial casting, however he brings a certain edge to the role and I am looking forward to seeing him in the future, especially knowing that he will be appearing in Captain America Civil War. Michael Douglas, similarly as Hank Pym is excellent in this role, he plays an excellent man determined to not let his creation be the destruction of the world and while I was slightly disappointed that Hank Pym is not the main focus of the first Ant-Man movie they at least give him enough time and material to work, he is not reduced to a simple side character. Likewise Evangeline Lilly is absolutely excellent as Hope Van Dyne managing to play an excellent Femme Fatale character that I really enjoyed. Corey Stoll may not be playing a brilliant villain, but he is actually very good in his role. I think he would make a good villain, despite the fact that I am used to him playing the good guy having watched a lot of him in Law and Order LA. Bobby Cannavalle as Paxton is excellent, despite the fact that he is not given too much to do, when he is on the screen, he is really good. I think between this and Danny Collins, he is starting to become an actor that I am looking forward to seeing in more films. (He was in Law and Order once and Michael Douglas too, are you sure this isn’t a Law and Order reunion). Judy Greer, who also isn’t given enough to do, when she is on screen she is pretty good, but I think she should have been given more lines. Real credit has to go to Abby Ryder Forston as Cassie Lang. When I first saw the film, I thought she was slightly too young to be playing Cassie, however, she really brings an excellent performance and I would like to see more of her, especially considering child actors don’t normally deliver amazing performances. The only major performances to talk about are the comic relief characters, Michael Pena, David Dastmalchian and T.I., as Luis, Kurt and Dave, they are very good in their roles actually and really deliver both the comic relief side and the serious side when the actually heist is going ahead and I wouldn’t mind seeing them in future movies. The only downside is I don’t think they will work outside an Ant-Man sequel, and considering that Marvel has planned all their films right through to 2020 I don’t think they will turn up again, which is unfortunate because they are genuinely great when they are on screen. There are other short cast characters like John Slattery as Howard Stark and Hayley Atwell as Peggy Carter but they are not on screen long enough to make much of a difference. Likewise a massive missed opportunity is Martin Donovan as Mitchell Carson, he is great when he is on screen, but he is hardly in there enough to make much of a difference. You have a really great actor here and you don’t use him enough!! Other than that though, this cast is excellent. As usual it’s to be expected from Marvel movies. They were just excellent and delivered their roles necessary to make an excellent film.

Moving on to special effects. The action scenes are excellent. This film is very CGI heavy, however the CGI is integrated very well and really benefits things like the shrinking effects and some of the fight scenes. This is one film that is visually excellent to watch and that’s largely down to the films excellent cinematography. The fight scenes are really good, particularly the later scenes with Ant-Man fighting Yellowjacket and the fight between Ant-Man and Falcon, which was my favourite part of the entire movie, though I do worry that Marvel is getting a bit obsessed with their Hero’s fighting each other! Seriously, stop getting your Heroes to fight each other!! Fight the villain, that’s what we pay to see!! If you want heroes to fight eachover save it for online spin off shows like Screwattack’s Death Battle or Bat In The Sun’s Super Power Beatdown (and seriously chacke out both shows on youtube they’re absolutely fantastic). Then of course you get the excellent Ant effects. They are integrated very well. The film knows how to use the Ant communication powers without making them just simple maguffins that will solve the situation. It’s very clever how they come up with several reasons for the ants to be there. The shrinking effects are actually done brilliantly, I really enjoyed them and they come up with several ways to do some really interesting and innovative stuff with them, like bullets hitting a polystyrene model which normally would just look like simple gunshot, actually turning into almost virtual explosions at that height level and we all really amazed what the effects were doing in the film. There are some excellent visual effects at the end of the film which I won’t mention for fear of spoiling the plot, but they are also absolutely brilliant. I can definitely recommend this film just for it’s visual effects alone. Despite my ranting the other week we did all see the film in 3D and it was actually kind of good for a change. The 3D really gives a sense of height and depth especially for the shrinking effects and the Ant Hill scenes also kind of add to the fight scenes. It’s not as good as Guardians of the Galaxy’s 3D or the original Avengers, but I would still recommend seeing the film in 3D. However, if you are watching it in 2D only a few effect won’t entirely work. The majority of the film suits the 3D format but without is being compromised for people seeing it in 2D.

Are there any negatives to Ant-Man? Yes a couple. It is kind of obvious that they are impersonating Joss Weedon. I think this film may disappoint a few people who go into this film expecting it to be much more like the Avengers or Captain America, but if you go into it just expecting a good movie you will definitely have a good time.

Ant-Man is fantastic, I really liked it. I’m not sure that I enjoyed it more or less than Avengers Age of Ultron at this stage, I will probably have to re-watch both films to make up my mind, but I would recommend this to anyone who has enjoyed the Marvel films so far. If you enjoyed films like Oceans 11 I would also recommend it on that basis. It’s not entirely perfect, but it is pretty damm good and I think that is largely down to Edgar Allen and Joe Cornish’s excellent screenplay. The action scenes are great and the 3D is pretty good for a change and the characters were really propped up by excellent performances. Peyton Reed has finally directed a film that I actually really enjoyed. Don’t expect it to be a traditional Superhero movie because it only really gets into that in the last 20 – 30 minutes of the film, but I would really urge people that this film is worth checking out. I saw this film with 2 people who had completely different perspectives and we all came out with the same conclusion, that we really, really liked it.

So what were your thoughts on Ant-Man? Did you enjoy it, or did I get it completely wrong? Please leave a comment or answer my question for this week which is:

“What is your favourite Heist Movie”?

I look forward to getting some answers on that one!

Remember, if you want to leave your own content, go to our ‘how to submit’ section. If you feel like you want to follow more about our film society go to my Twitter page and my Facebook page, which will give updates as to how the film society is going.

Unfortunately I will be taking a weeks break to attend the Wacken Open Air Festival in Germany, so there will be no film review next week, however, come back on 7 August where I will be giving my rather belated review of Pixar’s latest film “Inside Out”, which looks like it’s going to be a good one. Accept my apologies now if it turns out to be a bad one!!

Thanks for reading my review I hope you enjoy it as much as I enjoyed writing it.

Calvin – Nerd Consultant

“SONG OF THE SEA”

Tom Moore has finally returned with his latest film, if you don’t know who Tom Moore is, he previously directed ‘The Secret of Kells’, which was his debut film and one of my personal favourite animation films, which wasn’t made in Japan. It was so good it even got a nomination for best animated film at the Oscars that year, losing only to ‘Up’. Now I loved his previous work, it was utterly stunning and I would highly recommend seeing it prior to this film if you are planning to see it. It won’t go for too high a price on DVD because it’s considered a bit of a cold film, but I think there is just enough in there to appease both kids and their parents. That film was a tough act to follow, nevertheless, Tom Moore using a similar story telling method to his previous film, has made his new piece of work. He unleashed it last year in the States and it played at several film festivals garnering a lot of critical support, however it’s release in the States was very limited, only playing in a few select cities for about 2 weeks, so basically hardly anyone ever saw it. Despite it’s box office failure it was nominated for best animated film at the Oscars, going up against ‘The Box Trolls’, ‘How to Train Your Dragon 2’, and the previously reviewed ‘Big Hero 6’ and ‘The Tale of the Princess Kaguya’ which I won’t go to far into my thoughts on in this review except a comparison and if you want my full thoughts on those films check out my previous reviews in my back catalogue.

I was very excited to go and see this film and I did go into it with an open mind being prepared to be disappointed, however I may be getting ahead of myself than normally in my reviews, but I can fortunately say I wasn’t disappointed in the slightest.

The plot of Song of the Sea is that Ben (played by David Rawle) loses his mother at a young age, but before she dies she gives birth to his sister Saoirse (played by Lucy O’Connell) who doesn’t speak for 6 years. They live together on a small island where there is a lighthouse with their father Conor (played by Brendan Gleeson) who is in an emotional rut after losing his wife and Ben feels resentment towards his sister. Things change however when their granny (played by Fionnula Flanagan) visits for Saoirse’s birthday and in the night Saoirse discovers that she is a Selkie, a human like creature of Irish myth and legend who can transform into a Seal. When their granny finds her washed up on the shoreline in the morning she deems that the area is too dangerous for the kids and moves them to the City. However, Ben doesn’t want to stay there, so together, they break out and try to get back to the Island. Along the way Saoirse is discovered by a group of fairies who explain that her song is the key to releasing all the spirits of those turned to stone by the witch Macha (also played by Fionnula Flanagan). The race is now on to get Saoirse back to the Island to get her Selkie coat so she can lay the spirits to rest.

Song of the Sea, like its predecessor is a well written story that is simple enough for younger audiences, but for the parents and older teens that come along to it, it’s got enough complexities to keep their attention. I thinks that’s why these films seem to be getting most of their audiences from Animation Buffs. Let’s face it, very few of you actually saw this film, at the time of writing this review it barely got any screenings, in fact I was at the only screening in Liverpool on the opening day and your area may not be playing the film at all!! Speaking of which if you’re ever at picturehouse cinema in Fact at Liverpool look for any film playing in the screen called the Box it’s great it’s a closed off and all the seats are at ground floor and are proper seats like couches it’s an excellent movie going experience. A lot of the complexity comes from Tom Moore’s clear research and understanding of Irish Myth and Legend. He put a lot of effort into this in his last film ‘The Secret of the Kells’ and he has clearly gone the extra mile with this one. I didn’t have too much of an idea about half of this stuff, but the film explains it in a way that is not incredibly insulting, but educates people unaware of the myths.

Where this film really excels is in its characters and its story, both of which are absolutely charming. Tom Moore is very good at writing and directing young characters and actors and we see this very much with Ben and Saoirse. The plus side is they are not actually clones of Brandon and Ashling from Secret of Kells, they have their own personalities and their own story arcs and I absolutely loved these characters. They are brilliant to spend time around, especially considering we are with them for most of the movie. This is aided by the brilliant acting of the young actors playing the roles, but I will get into more of that later. The brilliant writing of the young characters, however, is not at the expense of the older cast members, who are still fantastically written. One thing that has carried over from Secret of the Kells is the adult characters actions may not be necessarily right, but they are done with the best of intentions, so we are not made to feel that they are idiots or bad people, like a lesser family film would have done. That’s a breath of fresh air considering some of the things we are seeing these days. Even the villain is really good. We start out believing she is going to be an evil for the sake of being evil villain, but she gets a really layer of complexity and this was done remarkably better than I expected it to be, to the extent that by the end of the film there’s not even really much of a villain pursay, and that’s not to the film’s detriment, it’s to its benefit. Even the granny, who in another film would have been completely in the wrong, is given enough layer and depth that you can understand her point of view. The character who will be the toughest sell to the younger audience if she had been written badly was Saoirse. As I said in my plot synopsis, Saoirse can’t talk, so for most of the film we are seeing she is purely communicating though facial expressions and gestures and it is done fantastically in this film, you feel every weight of emotion that this character is delivering with little or no dialogue whatsoever.

This film is also surprisingly much more emotional than Secret of Kells, in fact it is kind of on a par with The Tale of the Princess Kaguya on a lot of it’s emotion, whilst not as dark or as serious with what that film was doing, it still finds a way to tug at your heart strings. Especially the ending which I won’t dare spoil. Most of this comes from the progression of Ben and Saoirse’s relationship which starts off with the two disliking each other, but they slowly grow closer and closer as the film goes on and I think the film’s message at the end is that things just can’t be put right with one or the other, it can only be put right if they manage to come together.

Tom Moore may not have written the screenplay, it was written by Will Collins, but he was firmly in charge of the story and the two clearly work very well off each other. They deliver a touching timeless tale that will suit any audience member and I absolutely loved the story. The characters are absolutely excellent and I was with them every step of the way. The fairies don’t get that much time, but when they are on screen they are absolutely brilliant. They are not the stereotypical fairies that you would expect, they are designed to be clever and imaginative. The design of the humans is also reflected in that as well. There has clearly been a ton of imagination put into this and I get a very real vibe of Studio Ghibli when I was watching this and I wouldn’t be surprised if Tom Moore said he was influenced by Studio Ghibli considering both this and The Secret of Kells really feel like they have had a heavy influence, this film more so than the first. It’s just an absolutely fun story and I wasn’t bored for one second or even noticing the time, in fact this film actually felt longer than it really was. Most of the films I have seen this year come in at 120 to 130 minutes, other films notstanding, this film only comes in at 93 minutes, but it feels longer than its running time. This is probably down to the film’s expert pacing. It was just a lovely story.

The actors, they are brilliant. David Rawle is a brilliant young actor and he pretty much delivered the performance of the film for me, if you don’t really know who he is, you might recognise him if you watched the Sky 1 documentary ‘Moone Boy’. I don’t really think his acting was brilliant in that series, but this film has completely changed my opinion. He is absolutely fantastic in this role. Lucy O”Connell plays Saoirse, but she doesn’t actually get that many lines to play Saoirse, since Saoirse doesn’t actually talk until towards the final act of the film, but when she does actually deliver lines, she is absolutely fantastic, once again, Tom Moore is excellent at directing young actors. Brendan Gleeson is the biggest name in this film and he is absolutely fantastic at his main role, I say main, because he actually also plays one of the mythical characters, Mac Lir, he is actually really good at playing that role as well, although it was hard to tell that it was him in the role since he puts on a different voice, but in his role as Connor, he is brilliant at playing a tortured soul who keeps it all to himself, but still to tries to do best by his son and daughter. Fionnula Flanagan is also fantastic in her role as both the granny and the witch Macha. It’s very easy to tell she is playing both roles, not just because she doesn’t really change her voice between characters but more the fact that the animation of the characters are very similar and they are not really designed much differently. I liked John Kenny as the Ferryman Dan, who also plays another mythical character later on in the film, very well, in fact possibly better, and I really liked Pat Short, Colm O’Snodaigh and Liam Hourican as Lug, Mossy and Spud who work off each other very well in a later scene after Saoirse is first discovered and revealed as a Selkie, and while her role may have been very brief I really liked Lisa Hannigan as Bronach and Kevin Swierszcz as a younger version of Ben. The rest of the cast are basically made up of people doing additional voices including Paul Young and even the screenplay writer Will Collins does a few additional voices. Tom Moore, once again delivers a cast made up of excellent Irish talent and the casting really adds to the authenticity of the film’s story and visuals which hiring too many named actors and having them put on irish accents would not have succeeded. Everyone delivers their natural voice brilliantly and I absolutely loved the voice direction in this film, it was absolutely brilliant, there were no faults in the cast.

Now the visuals. In a word “Wow”. This animation is excellent. The budget has clearly gone up from Secret of Kells and I really loved the animation in that film, so to out do it was frankly amazing and the art department deserve all the praise they can get. This film, like the previously reviewed Princess Kaguya and Paterma Inverted are what I would describe as visually stunning!! It’s almost entirely hand drawn and looks like moving art. Tom Moore’s film takes excellent care in the design of the world, once again I would also draw comparison to Studio Ghibli in the previous film The Secret of Kells but I also got flashbacks to the Snowman with some of the aerial shots and shots of the Irish countryside. The sequences are all brilliant, the colours and the movement are all just expert and they all flow brilliantly. To mark out a few moments would be a dis-service to it, but if I am being put on the spot, I would say Saoirse’s first transformation and swimming with the seals was excellent and some of the later aerial shots with the dog riding the sky and some of the flashbacks and scenes of the hair based mythical creature show the utter level of imagination being put into this. The film really celebrates its environment and I suspect that Tom Moore really did a lot of excellent location research when he put these areas to the art department. There is not a single moment where you are not amazed by what’s on screen. I may have made comparison to Studio Ghibli but the designs also feel very unique. I doubt you will see another film like this and it’s also amazing how the film really knows how to tell its story through the visuals itself, the actions all speak louder than words. If you fail to be impressed by the animation by the way this film looks by the end of it, you really, really need to take another view of this because frankly I find it baffling that you wouldn’t find this film absolutely stunning. It also helps that the animation is backed up by sublime cinematography

Also of note is the film’s soundtrack. It is excellent. The music score by Bruno Coulais is absolutely excellent. I would put it up there with Joe Hisaihi’s score of The Tales of the Princess Kaguya being one of the best soundtracks I have heard all year. It moulds its background songs brilliantly with some excellent Irish folk songs melded into the plot. I particularly loved the lullaby song that was composed for the film which really should have received a best original song nomination at the Oscars. I would highly recommend that once you have seen the film, go and pick up the film’s soundtrack, it’s absolutely excellent.

Song of the Sea is one amazing film. I absolutely loved it. There is never a dull moment on screen, it’s absolutely visually stunning. This film had a real danger of being style over substance but the acting talent as well as the brilliant story and direction make sure that is not the case. It’s one brilliant, brilliant film. I loved the characters, I loved the visuals, the animation was sublime ,the soundtrack is one of the best I have heard in a long while. It’s a really amazing celebration of Irish culture and Folklore. People (inclding myself) call Hayao Miyazaki is the Walt Disney of japan well after this film I say Tom Moore is the Miyazaki of Ireland because he’s bringing his imagination to life through animation and a lot of animators should watch this movie to see how it’s done. It’s one of the best films I have reviewed for the site and has already made my shortlist for best film of 2015. if your area is playing the film in any capacity I urge you to go out and see it. A film like this doesn’t come along every day!! I think this film won’t do too well at the Box Office considering it’s playing either side of The Minions and new pixar film Inside Out, which I will be reviewing in the future. I will be surprised if your area is still showing it by the time this review comes out, I suspect, like America, this film is only going to be on limited release, but for goodness sake pick this up on DVD when it comes out, better yet, if you have the ability to play Blu Ray discs then get it in that format. You will not regret the extra money!! If you see it, stick around for the credits, the credits contain a few other concept art and the story board that act as a mini making of and I would also recommend picking up the art book that goes along with the film as well.

“What are your thoughts on Song of the Sea?”

Did you manage to get round to seeing it, or are you going to comment in a few months time when it is out on DVD? When it comes out on DVD I will put it on my Twitter page mentioning it along with a link to this review so you can comment. I would love to get a debate on this one. I think this film should be really well known so I would appreciate your comments. I will accept it if anyone thinks I have gone over the top with this film or if you didn’t like it either, we accept all opinions here. If you want to submit your own reviews or content, go to our ‘how to submit’ section.

On 24 July I will be reviewing the next marvel movie “Ant Man” along with Dr Buchan and Hannah who last week did some excellent work experience for us. Their opinions will be greatly valued in my review process, mainly because they will probably be the only people seeing it who haven’t read the comics around it, but I am getting ahead of myself on that one.

Thanks for reading my review and I hope you have enjoyed it.

Calvin – Nerd Consultant

“TERMINATOR GENISYS”

Man it was great to see that Terminator was coming back, especially after the misery of suffering through Terminator Salvation and anyone who follows my twitter feed knows that I was very excited to see it after James Cameron gave his brilliant testimonial about it. However, it didn’t change the fact that the early report from the critics was that they were not enjoying the film and were giving it savage ratings. On opening day in the UK the film had a score of 26% on rotten tomatoes, but I made my decision not to go into any further depth into what the critics thought of the film and didn’t read any actual reviews of the film. I went in with an open mind and was prepared to really enjoy the film. Hell, I always have a film every year where I say, screw the critics I enjoyed this movie, maybe this was going to fill that role!

Terminator Genisys tells the story that in the year 2029 a programme called Skynet has taken over the world from the year 1997 after an event called Judgement Day and has enslaved most of humanity, however when humanity is on the brink of extinction a saviour comes, known as John Connor (played by Jason Clarke) who rallies the humans in a bid to stop the machines and take down Skynet with his right hand man Kyle Reese (played by Jai Courtney). Just when humanity is on the verge of victory, Skynet send its last effort back, a Terminator sent back to the year 1984 in order to kill John’s mother Sarah Connor, (played by Emilia Clarke of Game of Thrones Fame). Kyle volunteers to go back in time to protect Sarah Connor in a state when she cannot defend herself and is thus sent back in time to 1984. Now, stay with me because this is not just a remake of the original Terminator, when Kyle gets back to the past he finds that the past is not exactly the way he remembered it being told to him and that there is another T1000 Terminator gone back, (played by Byung-hun-lee) and the only thing that can stop him is a bad ass Sarah Connor and her guardian, another T800 Terminator (played by Arnold Schwarzenegger). Kyle must figure what went wrong with the past and how it has affected Skynets plans for the domination over the Human Race. 

Now you think that plots sounds simple to follow, oh no it isn’t, this film is anything but simple, in fact it’s really a convoluted mess. There are tons of things bought up which are never explained, stuff which unfortunately I can’t fully go into for fear of spoiling the film for people who haven’t seen it yet. But, trust me, the careful attention to detail put into the time travel aspect of the first 2 Terminator films is not present here and I think the film creates quite a few paradoxes that a repeat viewing will only highlight further, in fact this is probably a film which will get worse with successive views for that apparent reason. I am also not a fan of these incarnations of many of the characters, this film has clearly been designed as a re-boot for new fans with re-imagined characters to go with, however, if feels like newcomers will be lost with this film, it really assumes that you have seen Terminator 1 & 2. I would highly recommend that you watch both films prior to seeing this film. That’s not getting in to the fact that I am not really a fan of these incarnations of Kyle Reese and Sarah Connor. Granted Sarah Connor turns out really well initially and I thought we were going to see a really cool version of the character with Emilia Clarke, but she kind of dies down early on and never fully recovers. She goes back and forth into being a really good Sarah Connor and being a really bad one, and again I think that is more down to the writing and she really does not measure up to Linda Hamilton in the 2 other films. She does seem to have good direction though. This film is Directed by Alan Taylor, who previously directed the Marvel’s “Thor: The Dark World” and he brings a lot of his strengths and weaknesses to this film, however, he has also directed 6 episodes of Game of Thrones and obviously for that reason can work well with Emilia Clarke. Kyle Reese is really annoying in this film, I am really not getting what route they were going down with this one, but I don’t really care for this incarnation of the character and I especially don’t like his relationship with Arnold Schwarzenegger’s Terminator, yes, let’s face facts, you’re not calling him T800 you are calling him Arnold Schwarzenegger’s Terminator! It’s kind of treating it like it’s a relationship between a boyfriend and the father of his girlfriend! Not helped by the fact that Sarah constantly refers to him as ‘pops’ and seriously if you ever wanted to emasculate a really cool bad ass character, calling him ‘pops’ almost the entire film will really do the trick. That got so annoying really fast!! However, both of those are nothing on the betrayal of John Connor’s character especially considering his betrayal and conversion to being half man, half machine weird hybrid thing that is never given an adequate explanation!! Before you say anything about spoilers, this was used in all the trailers and on all the posters, it’s been well and truly given away, and that another major problem because it really could have been a really shocking reveal if they hadn’t given it away so blatantly. What’s more, this is a terrible John Connor, this is supposed to be the saviour of humanity and he builds up no resistance to these machines infecting him or whatever they do (it says something about the way they have re-arranged his cells and the mechanics, but really, how much sense does that make).

I will say that the positives for this film are, is that it initially feels very good. The first 25 minutes are actually pretty decent, the biggest problem is when the film goes back to 1984, which is when the film goes completely off the rails. There is really no other way of putting it. I was trying to wrap my head around the plot for the entire hour and a half that it takes me to get home from the cinema and I am still trying while I am writing this review, I still do not understand this plot! I am normally the person who usually explains what is going on when people find it confusing. How is anyone meant to wrap their head around it!! Especially considering the film rarely explains anything that is going on. For example, how are Skynet still active after it is shut down in the final mission?? Does it have an extra server on standby, well, it would have been nice for that explanation to be put out there, and who is sending back all these Terminators!! I guess you could make the argument that Skynet and John Connor are still using the time machine, but we never see them do it!! So we are just left to make those assumptions. If you are wondering what Genisys bring spelt that way is all about, it’s actually a reference to a programme that is released in 2017 to link up several networks which is actually a front for Skynet. Also this film has some amazingly blatent product placements for Nike that come of as incredibly distracting to extent that it seems like the film was briefly interrupted for an advert. I will say that when the film pays attention to its plot it is actually halfway decent and I will say this film’s plot was much better that the boring waste of time that McG’s Terminator Salvation was and yes his name really is McG or at least that’s what he calls himself and thank goodness he wasn’t bough back for this film, because if he had directed this it would have been even worse, and I guarantee you that!! That really sums up this plot, it’s not boring per-say, it’s just all over the place and it never gives you a moment to catch up or get a grip of it, it’s just constantly on, it never, ever, stops and normally for an action film, that is a good thing, however, they want to tell a decent plot and have it be a character piece like the first two films did, however they don’t create likeable enough characters in order to achieve this. The film hints at the idea of a sequel and potential new franchise now the Terminator Universe has been re-booted, but this plot was so much of a mess that by the end of it you won’t be looking forward to the idea of a sequel, you will be thinking Terminator’s continuity is really, really bad. The film left me completely confused and not really satisfied. I actually said out loud, as soon as the credits rolled “what the hell was that”!!

Let’s talk about the cast for the next few paragraphs. They are fairly OK, but they are not given good enough direction and some of them really don’t turn in brilliant performances. I am not really a fan of Jason Clarke playing John Connor and Emilia Clarke is pretty good half the time as Sarah Connor, however she is dipping so back and forth and if they do plan to continue this as a franchise I wouldn’t object to a re-cast on both of their fronts. Similarly with Jai Courtney who I think is possibly the worst actor in this film. If he is trying his best, he was given really bad direction. Arnold Schwarzenegger is giving off the pained expression of a man who is a mid life crisis and is desperately trying to re-capture the good old days of his career!! Now that being said Arnold Schwarzenegger still is good in this role and he ultimately gets into it though does feel like he’s trying too hard. The rest of the roles feel very thankless, especially J K Simmons as a cop in 2017 who was rescued in 1984 by Sarah Connor and the Terminator, he basically feels like your usual conspiracy nutter who is proved right in these films and doesn’t really do much, what a waste of a great actor! Similarly most of the other roles are not that good, especially people like Matty Ferraro as Agent Janssen. Courtney B Vance was alright as Miles Dyson, but I would have to say that the stand outs for me were the villains in this film. Particularly Byung-hun-lee as T-1000, he really helped re capture a lot of what Robert Patricks bought to the role back in Terminator 2 and the most memorable aspect to this film for me was Matt Smith doing a very interesting villain turn as Skynet, he is listed on the films IMDB page as Alex, but don’t be fooled, he is playing Skynet in this film and he would possibly have been a great villain if only: a) he was allowed to be in the film more and I suspect he was meant to be originally since it looks like a lot of his scenes were probably cut, and b) he wasn’t told to put on that ridiculous American accent. Seriously Matt Smith’s accent is fine and distinctive to him, he could definitely do a menacing performance with that accent. What were you thinking? I suppose it was put in place to not directly associate him with Dr Who, but come off it, it’s Matt Smith, of course we are going to associate him with Dr Who!!

Now the special effects. The original 2 Terminator films were pioneers of their special effects. This one isn’t!! Ok for starters the CGI is not terrible for the most parts, some of it does look pretty bad, bit when it’s good, it’s really good, particularly I like the CGI effect of the young Arnold Schwarzenegger, made to look like his original incarnation of his Terminator and the fight scene between those two was pretty good, even if it does boil down to Schwarzenegger effectively saying ‘stop hitting yourself, stop hitting yourself’. Ok he doesn’t actually say that in the movie, but that was what was going through my head when I was watching it! For the most part the fight scenes were pretty good, but they are repetitive and they highlight another problem. The film never slows down, there are way too many of these fight scenes and they are way too much alike and non distinctive. This was never going to out do the brilliant and imaginative fight scenes that Terminator 2 managed, but I was still expecting more. I would have really liked more variety in these scenes; there is nothing distinctive to separate them. The only one I remember very clearly is the Helicopter chase and one of the major reasons for that was that it had the famous “I’ll be back” line, by the way if anyone is wondering “come with me if you want to live” also turns up in this film, but I think that is now standard for Terminator films!! Now, granted this is a franchise that was known for it’s pioneering CGI, especially with the T-1000 effects in Terminator 2, however it doesn’t give you the excuse to use those effects all over again! I know we are meant to re-cycle, but we are also meant to update as well and that is where the CGI often fails, it is too synthetic and not integrated very well. Granted it’s not quite as bad as Jurassic World and there are some good practical effects in this film as well, particularly on Schwarzenegger, but the effects weren’t a hi-light for me. I saw this film in 3D which was lucky considering my schedule when preparing to go to London Anime and Gaming Con and for the first 15 minutes it was actually pretty good, however, after that it really varied and I actually took off my glasses at one point because my eye was itchy and I noticed that the film wasn’t that out of focus, which means, I think the 3D as post conversion given it’s constantly ranging in quality as the film goes on. Surprisingly only a few of the action scenes really benefit from the 3D, I would say that the one which really benefits is the scene with the school bus, because that one takes advantage of 3D’s added sense of depth when you use height into the factor. I didn’t really notice many effects in the film that would be hindered by seeing the film in 2D, so I would recommend seeing the film in 2D version if you have a choice in the matter. If you are forced to see the 3D version, it is not all bad, but it does seem pretty pointless after you reach the 25 minute mark. In fact I am getting to the stage now that I am recommending 2D more now, I’m not sure that I am going to bother too much in the future to actively seek out the 3D version and may just choose to watch 3D if it fits in with my schedule. Incidentally that is going to be this weeks question, but I will save that for later.

Terminator Genisys is not a complete dud and I will say it’s better that it’s predecessor Terminator Salvation, but that doesn’t change the fact that this film is quite a bit of a mess. I’m not angry I’m just disappointed. It has a plot that basically makes you go “what the hell?” for an hour and a half and basically acts as too many re-makes of Terminator 1 & 2 that don’t really work unless you have actually seen those two! I’m not really a fan of these re-imagining versions of the characters, there is a whole lot that is not really explained and it won’t really warrant repeat viewing because it will only work to further hi-light the amount of plot holes in this film and there’s tons of really heavy handed we rely on technology too much messages in the film. Apart from Matt Smith’s rather interesting turn as a villain for this film, there is not really that much memorable here and I suspect this one will be cast aside to the cusp. Terminator has become like Highlander in that anything that came after it, they only got a brief stint at being very good and everything that followed, has sucked. This film keeps up the tradition. The action scenes are very decent, but they are very repetitive and the film’s effects really vary in quality, not to mention the acting isn’t entirely par. I especially did not like Kyle Reese in this film and what they did to John Connor was almost inexcusable. I would say save your money and wait about a week as ‘Antman’ is coming out next week and I think that will be a much better film. Incidentally that is going to receive a review.

So, what are your thoughts on Terminator Genisys? Was I right and it was a complete mess or did you see something in it that I didn’t? Please leave a comment if you have one or answer todays question. I want your feedback on this one as it will effect how I do future reviews!!

“Do people take value in me seeking out 3D versions of films for my reviews”?

I simply wish to know because at the minute I am actively seeking out 3D versions of films so I can comment on it’s 3D. However, I am recommending 2D more and more that I am wondering if I should scrap that idea and only watch 3D if it fits in with my schedule.

Remember if you want to add your own content to this sight including, poems, animation, book reviews, film reviews, anything you like go to our ‘how to submit’ section. Remember you can follow me on Twitter and Facebook for future updates on the film society and what I am doing and what my thought on film’s that I haven’t reviewed are.

Well Terminator may have been a bit of a bust this week but I am very confident about next weeks review. Come back on 17 July when I will be reviewing Irish Director, Tom Moore’s latest film “Song of The Sea” which earned him an Oscar nomination and yes this is the 3rd film in my 3 most anticipated films of 2015.

Thanks for reading and I hope you have enjoyed my review.

Calvin – Nerd Consultant

“NORTHMEN: A VIKING SAGA”

Well this my first attempt at doing a very European film. Northmen: A Viking Saga is the latest film from the Swiss Director Claudio Fah who has previously directed the Billy Zane disaster Sniper Reloaded. I still had high hopes for this film though because the previews for it looked good. My first exposure to this film was last year at the Wacken Open Air Festival in Germany where the film was being heavily promoted. The film received a large amount of screenings across Europe last Autumn around October/November time and I was expecting that it would receive a Cinema Release in the States in March and the UK would get screenings in the Spring. However, that didn’t materialise for one reason or another so the film went straight to DVD. Nevertheless, Viking movies have been rather lacking in recent memory so I was hoping to be impressed because I really do like Vikings along with their Mythology and Culture.

The plot of “Northmen: A Viking Saga” is that a group of banished Vikings, led by warrior Asbjorn (played by Tom Hooper) have washed ashore on the coast of Scotland. They really get into trouble with the local Clan Kings guards, who see them as invaders and upon killing the group the soldiers take his Daughter as hostage, Lady Inghean (played by Charlie Murphy). This obviously doesn’t go down well with King Dunchaid, (played by Danny Keogh) and he sends his top elite mercenaries, the Wolf Brigade, led by brothers Hjorr, (played by Ed Skrein) and Bovarr, (played by Antole Taubman). The Vikings must now make their way across country to ransom off the King’s daughter, however the mercenaries have other ideas, planning to kill them all and use it as a way to convince other Clans to overthrow the King.

There is a very good reason this movie has gone straight to DVD in both the USA and the UK, it’s very by the numbers and has a feeling of, ‘been there, done that’ and that is not necessarily a bad thing. A lot of people said that Zach Sneider’s film Sucker Punch was the worlds longest My Chemical Romance video, well, this film is the worlds longest Amon Amarth music video, which is to be expected, considering that Johan Hegg, the lead singer of Amon Amarth is actually in the film. The film does a good job of taking characters that you wouldn’t normally like, but then by the end of the film makes you root for them and there’s an excellent slow progression to this which completely pays off by the end of the film. The characters don’t just range from bad ass Vikings, the mercenaries feel relatively threatening villains, but they don’t learn from the Vikings tactics that well so as a result they can come across as slightly incompetent. There is also the bitter monk, Conall, played by Ryan Kwanten of True Blood fame and he is an amazing bad ass character who eventually joins the side of the Vikings, initially in order to stay alive, but he slowly builds up a connection with the Vikings that is very believable. These characters though are fairly generic, there’s the love interest, the eponymous hero and the villains who are villains for the sake of being villains, because evil. You are not getting anything deep, though that is not always necessary and Northmen gives a real feel of a lot of 80’s and 90’s action movies. Most of the characters come off pretty well, with the exception of Jorund, (played by Leo Gregory) who is really annoying and keeps repeating the same lines of dialogue throughout most of the early part of the film, he is eventually redeemed as a character by the end, but it’s all a case of ‘too little, too late’!! You rarely hear these characters names so you actually just learn them from their type. There’s The Leader, The Archer, The Madman with the Axe, The Guy from Amon Amarth, The Idiot who uses Knives, The Bad Ass Monk, The Princess and the two guys leading The Wolf Brigade. I barely knew what these characters names were, I got their personalities down pretty well, but their names really escaped me and as a result I actually had to look up their names on the actual film’s website, I didn’t even go to the IMDB page that much because the actors are so un-recognisable from their IMDB pictures which is a great achievement for their make-up department. As I said, these characters are characters that you will root for. For one thing, they don’t constantly go on that they are absolutely bad asses who can take down anyone at anytime, they actually back up those brief statements and most of the time it is shown in their actions. You also feel some of the camaraderie that is brought upon these guys by the difficult situation. As an action film, this is usually enough and I would say that for a lot of people this will fly, especially if they enjoy Vikings. You feel that people who have a lot of love and respect for Viking Mythology have made this film, but it’s not entirely perfect. There is a lot of plot conveniences and a couple of the characters don’t get much development or the development feels very forced. As I said before It almost feels like a film which would have felt a lot better in the 80’s. I got a lot of flashbacks to Conan the Barbarian and even a couple of flashbacks to Frank Miller’s 300 and I would definitely recommend it to people who enjoyed both of those films. Where Northmen gets it right, where its contemporaries Viking films have failed is that it doesn’t take itself overly seriously like other Viking films have, such as the confusing mess that was ‘Vallhaller Rising’. The only major problem with this plot is that the environment is not fleshed out enough and these characters are not fleshed out enough. We don’t find out that much about the characters banishment apart from a few throw away lines of dialogue and the biggest amount of back story goes to the Monk, granted, it’s a very good back story, if a bit stock, but it’s not too much to the films detriment and it’s another case where reviewing the film makes my opinions a lot harsher than they are, I’m not saying this plot was bad, far from it, I found myself fairly entertained, but I’m glad the film was only 1 and half hours as oppose to 2 hours because I think the film would have had to padd out it’s running time significantly in order to keep it going. So overall it was a decent plot with pretty good characters, even if it felt like I had already seen it before!!

Northmen: A Viking Saga has a very good cast, but if you went into this film, like me, hoping to see a lot of Johan Hegg from Amon Amarth ‘kicking arse’, then sadly you are going to be disappointed. He is only in the film for about 5 minutes and is basically a glorified cameo! Tom Hopper takes up his first major leading role in this film and while I think his role was pretty good, I don’t think this role showcases him brilliantly and if you are wondering who he is, he is basically the actor who plays Sir Percival in the BBC Merlin series, Billy Bones in Black Sails and played the character Jeff in the first episode of Matt Smith’s era of Dr Who. He does pretty well in this role, and takes to the action very well. I don’t think he sell the ‘bad ass’ quality that a lot of his counter parts do. The rest of the Vikings are respectively played by Ken Duken, Darrel D’Silva, James Norton and Mark Strepan, and despite the fact that their roles are relatively small, they do pretty good with the material they have to work with, even if a couple of them are relatively under-used, in fact I think there may have been a couple of them I may have actually missed off that list that had even smaller roles. Charlie Murphy does an ok job, but I think she needed better direction, she doesn’t really have chemistry with Tom Hopper and I get a sense that the Director really should have worked a lot better with her. Ryan Kwanten stole the show for me as the Monk Conall, he really takes the action scenes pretty well and does a fine job, but I get the sense that at times he felt he was in a more serious film that he actually is in. In fact that’s a claim that can be said for a lot of the cast. I’ve already outlined my thoughts on Leo Gregory’s character issues, but I think they are more writing issues because I think the actor does a pretty decent job with the material he has to work with. The only actor who seems to ham up his role at times is Darrel D’Silva, and you can really tell he is having a blast with this role, this is a guy that really sells it, that when he knocks a mercenary off a cliff, instead of just falling with him, he stabs him on the way down, now that is bad ass!! The main villains played by Ed Skrein and Anatole Taubman, are pretty decent at playing basic villains and again I think their performances may not be great but I do think this is some issue with the direction that was given to them and Danny Keogh despite doing some good facial acting isn’t really in the film enough to get a hold on his acting ability. The cast as a whole is actually pretty good and work very well with each other. I just think they could have used a better direction.

Now the visuals. This is where Northmen really excels itself. I would have loved to have been the location manager on this film because the locations are gorgeous and the cinematography really excels. I’m pretty sure none of the environment involved green screen effects and if they do, they were blended in seamlessly. The environments gives a barren feel, they were never near that many fortresses or castles, we’re stuck most of the time on the moors and the dales and the environment feels very organic, it really sells the film and the camera men and the lighting men do an excellent job in bringing this environment to life. The film’s major fault is when it tries to use CGI, this is obviously a low budget film so the CGI is not great and it’s where the films at its weakest point, but if they couldn’t really afford to use CGI, they hardly could have afforded to do great practical effects either and most of those are saved for the fight scenes. While we are on it, the fight scenes are actually pretty good, they are not great by any means and they vary in quality usually in mid scene but when they are good, they are very good. There is not lot of blood and guts, however, and I think that was to get a PG13 rating for its release in the States. The actors seem to be doing most of the stunt work themselves and the stunt work is also good, it’s another really strong point of the film. The film has a low budget, but it knows how to work with tht budget in order to deliver a film worthy of it’s audience. I watched the DVD version for this film, it is available on Blu Ray, but only as an import, though most of the imports are from Germany so it will work on your Blu Ray player and I would advise you to do so if you have the opportunity.

Is Northmen: A Viking Saga a perfect film? Far from it. It’s rather generic, it has a feel of ‘been there, done that’ and probably would have fit better in the 80’s and there’s a couple of day for night shots that really weren’t brilliant executed. As it stands it’s an ok film, I actually kind of enjoyed it and my review probably makes my views on this film sound harsher than it really is . The film has excellent visuals, cool fight scenes and while the characters may be a bit one dimensional, they are at least enjoyable to be around, with a couple of exceptions. It doesn’t have a lot of depth to it but it’s a decent film to have on a Friday night as a rental with a group of friends and a few beers. Other than that, you can’t really go that much further with this film, but I would hardly say I disliked it by any means and if you are a fan of Vikings you should take some interest in this film.

Have you seen Northmen? Did you enjoy it? Do you think I have been too lean with it? I personally feel that a few of the reviews of this film that I have seen on line have been a bit too harsh on the film. I would love to get your comments, and if you want, answer my question for this week, which is:

Is there a really good viking film that I have missed?

If you want to write your own reviews, or submit your own content then visit our how to submit section and remember you can follow both Axia and myself on Twitter and Facebook.

Time to move on to my next movie. It’s another sequel. Join me on 10 July where I will be reviewing “Terminator Genisys”, which has the return of Arnold Schwarzenegger to the franchise.

Thanks for reading my first review back, I hope you have enjoyed reading it as much as I have enjoyed writing it.

Calvin – Nerd Consultant

“JURASSIC WORLD”

Did you ever end up with one franchise they you kept going back to and stayed with you from a young age, well for me that was Jurassic Park, I love the original movie, in fact I would say it is probably in one of my top ten movies of all time. I have been to the cinema to see all of the movies and yes that does mean that I was three when I first saw the first film and as my Auntie and Grandmother like to embarrassingly point out, I did fall asleep in the cinema half way through, luckily I woke up just in time to see the famous T Rex scene. Jurassic World is the latest and fourth installment of the franchise and feels rather belated, considering the last film was 14 years ago!! With this new film being directed by Colin Trevorrow and being executive produced by Steven Spielberg, so the only question is, was the incubation period (no pun intended) there to make a good decent movie?

The plot of Jurassic World takes place 22 years after the events of the original film. The tag line sums it up pretty well, the park is now open but has been re-branded Jurassic World. However, owner Simon (played by Irrfan Khan) fears that attendance is down too low and needs a big wow factor, because you know, being the only place in the world to have living breathing dinosaurs is not enough, so he instructs Dr Heny Wu (played by BD Wong) to create a new hybrid using a Tyrannosaurus as a base model, because of course Ingen never learns from it’s mistakes!! However, many of the investors are concerned along with Simon as to whether the attraction is safe, so they send in Velocoraptor trainer (yes, really) Owen (played by Chris Pratt) to check on the enclosure, however, during the check the new dinosaur Indominus Rex escapes and it’s up to Owen and his boss Claire (played by Bryce Dallas Howard, daughter of Ron Howard) to get the dinosaur back and under control.

Now I am going to go through a few more of the negatives to start off with, because believe me this film has a few more positives than my initial summation of the plot would suggest. For starters, there is nothing to tell us what has happened to bridge the gap between films. This seems especially baffling considering there has been 14 years between the films!! Both of the other sequels did have at least some throw away lines of dialogue to explain what has been going on. There isn’t really much to bridge the gap between films and in fact a couple of the lines which they use to try and explain actually contradict character motivations from previous films. Also this film has way too many homages to the first film and I don’t mean 5 or 6 times, no, I mean almost every other scene has some sort of homage to the first film in a way a scene is shot or in some line of dialogue. It’s actually baffling! It’s a film that has obviously been written and directed by people that really like the first Jurassic Park film, however this is to their detriment because they obviously liked it a bit too much! I can see the first film anytime I want. I want to see something new here! I don’t care if you change the scene where the dinosaur appears in the mirror, so it’s a Velociraptor rather than a T Rex, I’m still pretty aware that you are copying the first film and it almost feels kind of lazy at times. I would also say that this film is really under-done by it’s first half. The first half is rather dull and you are just waiting for things to kick off and also in this first half makes the characters feel really, really stupid, especially considering they don’t see the danger in creating a brand new animal where they would have absolutely no knowledge of beforehand of its behavioural patterns or its physical abilities and be able to contain it. When scientists actually do this sort of genetic experimentation in reality, they at least do it in a way that has to have tons of risk assessments done as well and is usually done on animals that are not likely to kill you! Luckily the characters at least develop pretty well throughout the film and are at least somewhat enjoyable, with the exception of the character Hoskins (played by Vincent D’Onofrio) who is a dumb ass if he thinks he can train the Raptors into being a military weapon! Yes, because you always see the military going to Afghanistan with trained Lions to smoke out the enemy, brilliant!! While we are on it, let’s get on down to the training of the Velociraptors. Now, Chris Pratt’s character uses a method called clicker training to train the Raptors into recognising him being the alpha male of the group and also there is a throw away line that he used imprinting training on them when they were young. Now I have a degree in animal behaviour and welfare and I don’t find this as far fetched as I first thought it was going to be, though I am pretty sure clicker training would not work on reptiles, it’s mainly used on mammals. I’m not saying that this doesn’t work within the context of the film, in fact it kind of does because they establish the animals pack mentality and these films have constantly gone out of their way to say the Raptors are super intelligent, though I don’t fully buy into it and I couldn’t turn off my brain entirely with it. Also the Indominus Rex is the big selling point for this film, it’s the next dinosaur they hope people will love more than the T Rex from the first film, and they have failed once again, although I will say this one was a much better attempt that the Spinosaurus from Jurassic Park 3 and despite the fact that T Rex is barely on the screen at the beginning of the film it does eventually show up again and it is glorious, they definitely did a much better job with the T Rex in this film than they did in the previous film, but can we please have more of it if you do another one! It’s the reason everyone goes to see these movies, by the way I was hearing the Nostalgia critics T Rex song for half the time I was watching the film when T Rex was on screen! Right, back to Indominus Rex. The dinosaur has an interesting design and if you can easily guess what dinosaur it has been mixed with in the lab during the first twenty minutes of the dinosaur being on screen showing its intelligence levels, because it is very, very obvious. I noticed that a lot of the people around me found the twist kind of shocking and yes this was a packed cinema when I went to see it. The unfortunate side to this though, is that the Indominus Rex comes off as being monster and not an animal but luckily the film acknowledges this. It fully agrees that this animal is basically Frankenstein Rex and treats it as a genetic monster and not an animal and the film wisely treats all the other creatures as being more like animals and it is particularly evident in Chris Pratt’s dialogue, which he really sells and convinces you that he has a real understanding of these animals and has worked with them extensively. He reminded me a lot of the zoologist Nigel Marvin who did a few ‘Walking With Dinosaurs’ specials. That’s the major problem with the film, the plot has quite a few implausibilities and you just have to accept it and is really doesn’t answer the question of what happened when they turned up on the original island and found all the dinosaurs from the previous film roaming about, did they capture them? Did they kill them? There is also never a point where the scientist thinks he is the lyceum contingency within the first film to kill the Indominus Rex, in case you don’t remember, there is a throw away line from Samuel L Jackson’s character gave that they could turn off something in the dinosaurs genetics where they would not receive the enzyme therefore they would go into anaphylactic shock and die. It was never addressed in this film and you would have thought they would use the same technology to create these dinosaurs.

This film was like an uphill task in getting us accustomed to these characters, especially considering there is only one returning character from the first film, being Dr Henry Wu, you remember the Asian scientist who had about one or two lines in the first film in the scene where the Velociraptor’s hatched out of the eggs. Yes, it turns out that they have decided to expand his role for this film, which is definitely good considering he had a much more expanded role in the original book and this character has a much more menacing quality to him, especially when the big reveals happen in the second half of the film. The characters don’t start out very well but the develop pretty well throughout the film and you generally kind of enjoy them, especially the younger characters of Zach and Gray who are Claire’s nephews and while you think initially that Claire is going to be another dumb ass character that won’t learn their lesson and get killed at the end of the film, she actually develops pretty well and sees the error in a lot of her actions. The best character by far is Christopher Pratt’s Owen, he practically owns this film, no pun intended. He’s built up as being a real bad ass character but the film makers know to actually show him as being a bad ass rather than having people talk about him being a bad ass, but it’s not done to such an extent that he comes off as being invincible and he is a really great character. I have already mentioned my problem with Hoskins and most of the other characters range from middling in annoyance to slightly enjoyable, although I must say that for once I really enjoyed Jake Johnson as Lowery.

If this film is really under-done by its first half, it’s really sold by its second half. It’s when the film kicks off and it’s really enjoyable and it is a perfect ‘sit back in your chair with a bucket of popcorn and just enjoy yourself film’. It’s exactly what a good summer blockbuster should be. Once the film kicks off and most of the dinosaurs are out of their enclosures, then we are really enjoying ourselves, however, I can’t go into too much detail about the final few scenes of the film to avoid spoilers, but lets just say the final few scenes of the movie are excellent and most of the people around me were also, like me really watching with bated breath. I would also say that the dinosaurs feel a lot more real in their actions in this film than they did in Jurassic Park 2 & 3 and the film really meets the challenge of getting you to like these characters and see most of them getting out alive and the ones you don’t want to see come out alive, believe me, they don’t make it!! The only major plot hole I have noticed with this film is there is no one objecting to this park. Really!! After everything that happened in the first film and the incident where T Rex went round San Diego in the 2nd, no one is questioning that this might be a really bad idea!! Where is Dr Grant and Ian Malcolm in all of this, or John Hammond’s Grandkids from the first movie, surely they would be protesting this park being opened. With all that aside, this is one case where reviewing this film actually makes me sound a lot more harsh on the plot than I really am because I actually really enjoyed a lot of aspects of the plot, particularly in the second half and especially in this films kick ass climax which is one of the best I’ve seen all year and had me on the edge of my seat.

On the acting front this film has actually got some fairly decent performances. Trust me, there is not William H Macey or Tea Leoni from the third film in this one, this one has a decent cast who give genuinely memorable performances. I have already mentioned that I really love Chris Pratt in this film, even if he is kind of getting a bit typecast at this point. I also thought Vincent D’Onofrio, despite the fact that he is playing a dumb ass character, did do a decent performance in that role and really sold it. Bryce Dallas Howard does a really good job and I would like to see her get a lot of work off the back of this film and despite the fact that she is meant to be romantically involved with Chris Pratt’s character, I don’t think they share enough chemistry on screen, so it is not entirely believable. The real surprise for me is Nick Robinson and Ty Simpkins the younger actors playing the young brothers visiting the park for the week, who are actually genuinely good, I thought they would be the worst performance of the film, but they are very believable and have genuine chemistry, you can genuinely believe these two are brothers. Irrfan Khan does a decent job as Simon, the film is full of very good performances particularly from B D Wong who once again delivers a pretty brilliant performance. There were only a few actors that don’t really leave much of an impression and that’s mainly because they are usually eaten, this is particularly the case for Katie McGrath who plays Zara whose death is so brutal and prolonged and I actually think that it might be a bit psychologically scaring for kids, even more so than the lawyer getting eaten in the toilet in the first film! Omar Sy as fellow raptor trainer Barry is also doing a decent job throughout his role but I feel he is under utilised and believe me, after suffering through watching the first few episodes of New Girl, it’s great to finally see Jake Johnson in a role where you can actually enjoy him and the actors doing these performances show signs of good direction, most of the time when the actors fault, it’s usually in the first half and I think that is a writing issue where the writing is weaker than the second half. Overall much better cast than the 2nd and 3rd film which at this point is a real benefit.

Now I am sad to say that this film’s effect department is not where I am going to be giving the biggest praise. The effects are not bad by any means but when you compare them with the first film, they don’t work as well. The dinosaurs just don’t look as, for the lack of a better term, organic as the first film. They just feel like CGI creations rather than actual living, breathing animals, which was what the first film gave off very well. I think a lot of this is down to the fact that there is little to no practical effects in the film. All the others at least got some practical effects down that were in a lot of ways half decent. This film on the other hand doesn’t quite fully achieve that, as I said the effects aren’t terrible, they are actually quite passable, but I don’t think they work as well when compared with the other films. There is on the other hand, excellent cinematography and the effects department, when they work well, do work pretty well, the dinosaurs are all animated pretty well and at least work somewhat in the environment. The design of the rides in the Park are very inventive and take advantage of the environment of where the locations were shot, however I do think a couple of these attractions wouldn’t pass a lot of Health and Safety inspections, I’m not sure being that close to dinosaurs even when they are herbivorous (which once again have been reduced to prop status for the sake of the carnivores) would really get past a safety inspection. I know we have Safari Parks but even then, those aren’t animals that could crush you with one foot being put down!! Also I don’t care who your are, you are never going to get away with having people kayaking down a river with stegosaurus’s by the side of it!! That’s an accident solicitor’s dream!! In fact this whole park is an accident solicitors dream!! On the plus side, however, the actors do work very well with the CGI for the most part and you can tell that they have memorised where the effects are meant to be and how to interact with them very well. This plays definitely to the films advantage. The action scenes are shot very well, though I did think a couple of them were shot by someone who really should have taken their hand off the zoom button. I haven’t seen a camera zoom in and out of action this much since Man of Steel and it was annoying there too, this is particularly evident in the scene where all the flying dinosaurs of varying species get out of the aviary and attack people. I don’t think that is a spoiler because I am pretty sure that was in a couple of the trailers. The Indominus Rex is an interesting design and really comes over as threatening enough and the other dinosaurs haven’t really changed that much except the Velociraptors have lost that weird mohawk thing that they had in the third film. Seriously, what was that all about!! The only other new dinosaur to talk about is the giant underwater dinosaur that feeds on sharks, the Mosasaurus, and this dinosaur is done to brilliant effect even though the science is slightly questionable and it’s been overplayed in all the trailers, who would have imagined it, a questionable scientist in a Jurassic Park Movie! Plus I loved the design of the enclosure, especially the whole sea show similar to what modern attractions do with Orca’s, but then descends into the underwater observatory rather similar to a lot of shark tank exhibits.

I saw the film in 3D and I would actually argue that it is not really worth seeing it in that format, which is rather surprising for two reasons. One, this was one of the few films where the trailer was being shown in 3D indicating that the film was really shot for that format and two, the original film was post-converted into 3D for it’s 20th anniversary and was done very well, by the way I did see that original film in 3D in preparation for this one, and if you have the ability to see it that way I would recommend it, this one on the other hand I would say stick to the 2D. Some of the shots where height plays a factor, the 3D effect works very well especially in the feeding of the Mosasaurus which has been overplayed in all the trailers and adverts for this film, however, for the most part I don’t think you are missing out on much, despite the fact that the 3D works very well in the film’s awesome climax! Seriously this film has an amazing end scene, and it is a shame that I can’t talk about it to avoid spoilers, because it is one of most awesome things I have seen on a cinema screen all year, even if it is slightly convoluted!

Does Jurassic World have any negatives? Yes. I have listed a lot of my negatives of the film, but while it’s a bit convoluted and I am sure people will find reasons to pick it apart, I still think this is better than both Jurassic Park 2 & 3. Jurassic World is very surprising, I was expecting this film to be an absolute train wreck, but it’s actually turned out to be a rather enjoyable film and I think I will be re-visiting this one more than The Lost World or Jurassic Park 3. The effects may be a slight down grade, but the plot is actually half way decent, there are actually some good performances, especially Chris Pratt and while it can get a bit convoluted at times, it’s not actually that bad. This has been an excellent kick off to the summer season and gives hope for future films. It’s not perfect by any means, but I would say if you enjoyed the first film, you will enjoy this one as well. The film is slightly open ended, suggesting there may be a 5th one on the horizon, to which I say NO, quit while you are ahead!

So what were your thoughts on Jurassic World? Was it a decent follow up after the abysmal jurassic park sequels or is it just so so? Leave something in the comments section please. Now, a simple question for you this week:

What is your favourite Dinosaur and why?

My one is T Rex and it’s because of that scene in the rain in the first film, come on, that was awesome!!

Remember if you want to leave your own content, visit our how to submit section and don’t forget you can also follow me on Twitter.

Well unfortunately while you are reading this, I am probably away on my business trip and I was hoping to review the Minions Movie when I got back, however time schedules have prevented that so I was forced to pick from one of the films that came out this year, but has been sitting on my DVD shelf waiting to be viewed, and there were quite a few to pick from, so I decided that on 3 July you will be seeing my review of the European Action Film that went direct to DVD “Northman, A Viking Saga”. Yes I am reviewing another DVD that half of you haven’t heard of, but I do half of these reviews to try and convince people to see a film that you wouldn’t normally go and see.

I hope you enjoyed reading this review and I am sorry that we are taking a bit of time off over the next couple of weeks, I really do enjoy making these reviews and I don’t like to keep you guys in suspense. I am so appreciative of you all taking the time to read them. I also have brilliant IT and scribe people who help me get my thoughts out there.

Calvin – Nerd Consultant

“SPY”

Paul Feig returns after a small absence with his next comedy, having previously directed Bridesmaids and The Heat. The thing about Bridesmaids and The Heat were that they are pretty good comedies, but they were hardly ground breaking, they weren’t exactly laugh out loud comedies and almost certainly you could forget them almost as soon as you had watched them. However that didn’t change the fact that I was willing to give this comedy a chance especially considering its cast list was pretty good, or at least decent and it’s nothing to do with the fact that the only other thing coming out this week-end was another Insidious movie and I haven’t even seen the first one and couldn’t be bothered to watch the other two back. Yes, absolutely nothing to do with that!! However, if you read my Twitter posts last week you will know that one of my favourite film reviewers, Filmbrain gave this film some good marks so I was slightly optimistic about seeing the film. So, let’s see how it turned out in the end.

Spy’s plot is that a desk jockey for the CIA Susan Cooper (played by Melissa McCarthy) is feeling underwhelmed with her life especially when the agent she works for, Bradley Fine, (played by Jude Law) is practically James Bond 2.0. She, however gets an opportunity to prove herself when Bradley takes part in a botched mission, that results in his death at the hands of Rayna Boyanov (played by Rose Byrne) daughter of crimelord Tihomir Boyanov who now has access to a small portable nuclear device which can go off at any time and she is planning to sell it to the highest bidder, what’s more, there is a leak in the CIA and they now know every agent on the inside, so in order to go under-cover they need someone who is un-known to the CIA and Susan volunteers despite her lack of field experience. The CIA goes with it, but this mission is not going to be as easy as she thought or as glamorous as she was hoping. Spy’s plot is very basic, but it would need to be because it doesn’t need to be too complicated. This is a Spy comedy after all, not an actual Spy film, even if it does kind of want to pretend to be one at times, not helped by the fact that about ten minutes into the film we are treated to a Bond style opening which is competent and wouldn’t look completely out of place in a Bond film, but it definitely suggests that the tone they are going for, which, again like Kingsman feels like rather interesting timing considering that we are getting another James Bond film later this year and it’s for that reason alone that I think this film will probably be forgotten. It’s coming out between Kingsman and Spectre and it doesn’t really have the ability to compete with the previously released Kingsman which I reviewed back in February for the site and I am doubtful it will be able to compete with Spectre when that comes out later this year.

On it’s own merit Spy is actually not half bad. The plot itself owes a lot to Skyfall, particularly with the whole agents identities being made public aspect of it, and as a result several people have been compromised. It never goes fully all out with it however, like Skyfall did and that’s an issue that I think really plays it. The whole plot feels really far fetched to begin with. There is seriously no rookie agents that are un-known to the majority of the CIA that can be pushed into this mission? Someone straight out of school!! Hell I would have expected someone like Eggsy from Kingsman, surely they have some sort of programme like that going!! No, we have to get out this woman who has only done a small amount of field training! I’d say it’s slightly far fetched, but not to the instance that you will not be able to watch it, especially considering that the plot gets pretty good and engaging especially after we drop the whole Melissa McCarthy disguising herself as a pretty cat lady joke pretty early on. If you have watched the trailers and were going into this film expecting that to be the long running gag in this film, I am sorry to say you are going to be disappointed, it doesn’t go on for that long, but it’s actually to the film’s benefit, the gag really doesn’t work all that well and it’s especially evident in the fact that the writers knew that this was bad considering how fast they drop it. Look Melissa McCarthy is actually a really good looking actress and it’s really hard to believe that they went with this joke considering it doesn’t even really work on a lot of levels. With all that being said though, the gags often do hit, they are not laugh out loud funny but they will get a chuckle out of you and I would say there are definitely worse comedies out there and on a lot of levels I was thoroughly entertained by the film, which I think is down to the characters. Paul Feig is excellent at writing good characters and that’s where a lot of the charm of his previous comedies Bridesmaid and The Heat came from. Once again he manages to keep that charm with the characters, particularly Mellisa McCarthy’s character, Susan who is really interesting and a great main character who you really want to root for the entire film. She is not a bumbling idiot which would have been the easiest route to go down with this sort of film, she is actually somewhat competent and has a need to prove herself which I think will really hit a chord with a lot of people. The writers give her some decent jokes that don’t make us laugh at her expense, which again would have been easy to do. The gags for the other characters also work very well and they are enjoyable. Jude Law isn’t really given enough funny things to do in his role, which is a shame as I think he could have pulled off the comedy, but he is essentially playing a straight man in this role. Miranda Hart, does a good job playing Susan’s best friend and fellow desk jockey Nancy, is actually funnier than I was expecting her to be, but I don’t think this will be her break out part into Hollywood, she’s not bad or anything, in fact a lot of the time I think she is funnier in this than she is in her BBC sitcom, but I don’t think the writers really knew how to utilise her to her best, though she does get one of the funniest lines towards the end of the movie. I also would say that Rose Byne makes an excellent early villain, it’s just a shame that the film never continues with it and by the end she is cast aside for another villain who just isn’t as good. The funniest lines definitely go to Jason Statham, playing fellow CIA agent Rick Ford, and the writers have obviously seen a lot of Jason Statham movies and know exactly how to make him a parody of himself and his character is worth the price of admission alone, but Paul Feig is smart enough to know how not to over expose Jason in this role as he would have potentially tipped into very annoying and the gags may not have worked as well as they would have liked. Not all the gags hit however. Melissa McCarthy definitely gets much better material in the second half of the movie than she does in the first and some of them really don’t hit particularly well, especially the odd cameo of 50 cent whose casting feels really bizarre, guess he was getting tired of producing his own rubbish movies so he decided to have a chance at being in something that might have been good!!! Also there is an Italian agent played by Peter Serafinowicz whose gags all result in the fact that he is overly sexed up and tries to get off with anything that has boobs and they are the worst gags of the movie, they may not be at the level of epic movie or scary movie bad, but it definitely feels like Paul was trying to make an Italian Keith Lemon, which is a shame because Peter Serafinowicz is a really good comedic actor, though I don’t think Paul Feig realises that Serafinoicz is better at playing a straight man rather than a funny man. I think the film also missed an opportunity to make a joke of the fact that half the actors in the CIA are British actors, in fact Melissa McCarthy is one of the few Americans actually in the film and as a result they never really give an explanation to why Miranda Hart and Jason Statham, who don’t lose their accents, unlike Jude Law are working for the CIA. It’s just as baffling as when Tom Hardy did the same thing in This Means War, though I am not comparing those two movies, this movie is a lot better than This Means War. Also, unlike the two ditzy girls who were sitting behind me in the cinema who would not shut up, I definitely could see the plot twist coming from the start of the film, and I am doubtful that that many people will miss it. There are some surprises after the reveal, however, it didn’t fully work, it feels like twists that have been taken from several of The Mission Impossible Movies and more damningly from the second Johnny English Movie, once again though, this film is a lot better than Johnny English Re-born.

I feel like I have been a bit too harsh on this movie, this film’s plot is actually a decent parody of Spy films and Melissa McCarthy and the rest of the cast get particularly good jokes and I also think there is some excellent chemistry between Melissa McCarthy and Rose Byrne and I think they would make an excellent double act in future films. The plot was actually somewhat enjoyable and it is better than I thought it was going to be and a lot more of the gags hit than they did miss which is a lot better than can be said for most comedies that seem to be coming out at this point in time.

In relation to the cast the only weak performance I didn’t really enjoy was Peter Serafinowicz, but I think that is more down to a writing issue, he is trying hard with the material he has got, but it’s just not brilliant material and his Italian accent is terrible. Even Mario from the Super Mario Brothers would be telling him that this is getting slightly offensive. Not to mention the fact it is terrible and you can clearly hear his actual accent coming through!! The rest of the cast do a pretty good job. Jude Law is a pretty good straight man and works well as a secret agent and Rose Byrne makes an excellent villain even though the writers weren’t fully in to making her a full time villain for the risk that she would lose a lot of the chemistry she has with McCarthy, which as I mentioned was pretty good, and while we are on it Melissa McCarthy is once again proving she is a very good comedy actress and manages to work this material to the full degree that it needs and she really delivers an excellent performance. Jessica Chaffin does an excellent job as their boss Sharon and despite the fact that she wasn’t in it long I did enjoy Morena Baccarin as Karen Walker, but by far, the best performance in the entire film is Jason Statham. He is absolutely having a ball with this role and completely takes the ‘michael’ out of himself. Honestly he has not been this good in years and his performance is, as I said before, well worth the price of admission alone, but for the love of god ‘do not make a spin-off of this character’ the whole reason it works is that he is not over exposed in the film. I think the reason we get so many good performances out of these people is that Paul Feig is really good at working with his actors and knows how to get great comedic performances out of actors who normally play very straight roles, but when you have got someone who normally takes themselves very seriously like Jason Statham it’s very difficult to get them to come out of their shells and I honestly thought that Statham wouldn’t do so well with this comedic role, but he can really do it, if you were disappointed by his performance in Fast and Furious 7 this is one to check out. Overall very good cast and they were given great performance through some excellent direction. While I am at it, I would also say that Miranda Hart does a pretty good performance in this film, even though I don’t believe this is going to be her break into Hollywood, though I would give her another chance in another film rather like this in the future, she definitely works as a comedic actress and Paul Feig knew how to get the best out of her.

Now let’s move on to the film’s cinematography and action scenes. Now the cinematography is pretty good, especially considering that most of the film was shot on location in Rome, Budapest and Paris, not in that order. The film risks being a massive tourist board advert for these locations, but they don’t get overly exposed and the film knows when to pan back and get back to the characters. The cinematography treats the film very seriously, as if they are actually making a James Bond style film. The shots were not terribly bad, especially the action sequences, which actually were really good. They weren’t as good as Kingsman, but they were well done, and would not look incredibly out of place in a regular Bond film. Melissa McCarthy really suits the martial arts scenes pretty well, Statham doesn’t get that much action, but when he does, he does pretty well, even though one of those scenes is shot half in the dark which is a bit of an issue considering that in the trailer it was completely bright and than annoyed me on a few levels. Though it was all made up for with the shoot out in the plane, even though we defied several laws of physics, when bullets started flying having them all being sucked out of the plane instantly, the scene worked very well. I must say they are some of the better sequences I have seen this year. I certainly got a lot more out of these action sequences that I did out of Taken 3!

Are there that many negatives to Spy? There are quite a few technical negatives particularly on the pacing front, but not as many as I would have thought. It actually was a film that was better than I expected. I outlined most of my negatives within the early part of the review. The biggest fault was the first half wasn’t as good as it’s second, which really improves on it, but I think Paul Feig gets the best out of these actors and this type of plot. The biggest downside, however, is that Paul never hits a film that is going to be that well remembered, he always kind of hits a middle ground and this film is no exception.

Is Spy a laugh out loud comedy? No. Is it an enjoyable film? Yes. You will definitely get some chuckle out of this film. I would recommend at least renting the film when it comes on on DVD if you are at all curious. The film had some excellent performances particularly from Melissa McCarthy and Jason Statham. Paul Feig gives some excellent direction and writes the film pretty well despite the fact that there are parts that don’t fully hit the mark, but I would say it’s a lot better than other comedy films that have come out in recent memory. It does, however, have the unfortunate timing of coming out between Kingsman and Spectre and I think it will get lost in the shuffle between them, and I would say I definitely preferred Kingsman as a film on almost every level and I would go back to that film again before this one. With all that said though, this is a very enjoyable film and I had a great experience in going to see it at the cinema. I would probably recommend it, particularly for it’s action scenes which were better than I was expecting. If you like action comedies, this is probably one to add to your list.

So what were your thoughts on Spy? Did you like or dislike it? I would love to get your opinions if you would like to leave something in the comments section. If you want, you can post in the comments section your answer to my question for this week, which is:

“What is your favourite Jason Statham Movie?”

Also if you want to submit your own review or content visit our how to submit section which will take you through the process and remember that you can now follow me on twitter

Next week the review is coming out slightly earlier as I am going on a business trip for the company and want to make sure my review goes out before I leave.

So join me slightly earlier on Thursday 18 June when I will be reviewing the first of the big Summer Blockbusters “Jurrassic World” Please, Please, Please be good!!

Calvin – Nerd Consultant

“TOMORROWLAND”

Director Brad Bird is back with Disney’s next attempt to turn one of their Theme Park Attractions into a movie franchise. The previous attempts being the successful Pirates of the Caribbean franchise and The Haunted Mansion that got one film and no one cared! Now I really enjoy Brad Bird as a director so I was actually willing to consider this film to be a potential success even before I had seen it as the man is known to take concepts that sound a bit shaky but could potentially work well and use his skill to make them a success, see The Incredibles as an example. Also Disney really needs this to be good considering that their last live action film was the disastrous attempt to re-boot The Lone Ranger and if you haven’t seen that film, consider this, I have rarely found a critics top ten worst films of 2013 list that didn’t have that film on it!

How does Tomorrowland hold up? The plot of Tomorrowland really kicks off when Casey Newton, (played by Britt Robertson) is released from custody after trying to sabotage the destruction of a NASSA Landing Port to keep her father in work. She discovers a pin in her belongings that she doesn’t recognise and when she touches it she can see a futuristic city that she desperately wants to go to. She encounters a girl named Athena (played by Raffey Cassidy) who takes her to meet her friend Frank Walker (played by George Clooney). Frank initially refuses to help her get to the eponymous Tomorrowland, however things change after they are pursued by Androids led by Governor Nix, (played by Hugh Laurie) and now it’s a race against time for the three of them to get to Tomorrowland and fix what’s going wrong. That’s the basic gist of Tomorrowland, but most of what I have actually stated doesn’t actually happen until around the 30 minute mark. This film’s first act is loaded with padding! The film has pacing issues throughout, but it’s really noticeable in the first hour or so. Taking us through it’s a small world after all is not good idea to entice me to your film. I will say the film’s characters are rather likeable, but they are not that interesting. Frank Walker’s character should be really interesting, especially since he has been in Tomorrowland since he was a young boy and is essentially a child prodigy, but we don’t get as much of an insight into him as we would have liked. I think if they had just done his younger self going to Tomorrowland and made a whole film out of that, it could have actually worked and may have been a better film. I could definitely see Brad Bird directing that! The character though who unfortunately gets the biggest shaft is ironically the main character Casey. No disrespect to Britt Robertson, she plays the role fine but her character really doesn’t have that much to her, except the fact she is an optimist and likes the idea of future technology. The characters keep banging on that she is special but we are given very little until the third act to actually suggest why, it would have been nice to see something along the way that would have actually suggested why she is so important apart from the fact that she’s optimistic! Lets get a few of the positives of the plot out of the way because there are definitely some positives to the film. The film has an excellent theme of bouncing the optimistic view of the future with the pessimistic view of the future and it keeps us going throughout the film and at a consistent pace. Sci-fi typically likes to see our future as either being like Gene Roddenberry’s Star Trek (the optimistic future) or Ridley Scott’s Alien (the pessimistic future). Tomorrowland seems to play right down the middle suggesting that either future is possible and it’s our actions that will determine what will occur. The film’s protagonists are also likeable at least. I never found any of them annoying and they do occasionally get a funny line in every so often, particularly Raffey Cassidy’s Athena who is probably the most interesting character throughout the entire film. The weakest character is definitely by far, Governor Nix, again Hugh Laurie is not a bad actor and I will get more into that when I get to the acting stage of this review but his character’s motivations are really weak and he just doesn’t come across as an interesting enough villain for the film. This film really needed a Panto boo hiss villain and it doesn’t really provide one, which most family films really succeed at. He is not dark enough to fit that criteria and he is not sympathetic enough to make him a sympathetic villain. They try to hit the middle ground and it ends up coming across as doing neither very well. This film’s world also could have done with being fleshed out a little more, we learn very little about Tomorrowland since we never actually get to it until the third act of the film and even then we still learn very little about it, I think this was Disney’s way of gaining some interest in the hopes of trying to get a sequel going, but I don’t think anyone is going to be interested enough to want to see another film. The film goes on for just over 2 hours and a good chunk of that could have been used to actually be in Tomorrowland, but as it stands I think we are only there for 40 minutes at most, not counting the early sequences that were seen in the trailers. So basically this plot had every attempt to be very good, it just never quite hits its mark. At times it’s really enjoyable and I would hardly say this is a bad movie, in fact there is nothing really inherently wrong with it, it’s just kind of dull and I think it’s also slightly too long. I think especially younger viewers may have trouble following the plot and may eventually get bored of the film towards the end.

Acting wise there are only really 4 performances to take into account, which are the main characters. George Clooney is pretty good as Frank Walker, though he does feel slightly like he is slumming it in this role in which he’s slightly miscast despite the fact Brad Bird wrote it for him, though I would be hesitant to say he is giving a bad performance. He still does a decent job. Britt Robertson is also pretty good as Casey, she definitely has her moments and she is at least an enjoyable presence on the screen. Hugh Laurie is trying his hardest but he really isn’t good at playing this particular villain. I still think he could do some villain roles, but he just plays his performance like even he doesn’t quite understand what his characters motivation is!! He also can’t seem to decide whether he wants to have a British or American accent and he seems to keep shifting back and forth. Again I like Hugh Laurie as an actor, I just don’t think this is one of his best performances. The best performance by far is Raffey Cassidy who is an excellent young actress who really sells this performance. She should really be one to watch out for. The rest of the cast are just a bit so so, they aren’t on screen long enough to really leave much of an impression and I will say, like most of this film they are a bit of a mess.

Now one area where this film really could have been excellent would be in its special effects and action sequences and for the most part they are pretty good. I was actually surprised while watching this film that it wasn’t shot in 3D because a lot of the sequences looked like they were aiming for a 3D release and some of the shots even would have potentially suited that conversion. I suspect that this may have been on the cards at one point, but then Disney chickened out at the last minute! Never the less the effects are very good, if not a bit too heavily reliant on CGI and there is an amazing action sequence set in George Clooney’s character’s house that almost looks like it was done in one take and was used to great effect. So when the effects hit, they hit really well. The downside is there are a couple of them that are so CGI heavy and they really can take you out of the film and you are more wondering how they actually got the effect to work than actually concentrate what is going on with the story, and that is not that great. Some of the action sequences are actually quite gruesome and it actually does warrant it’s BBFC rating of 12A, however they are also getting around this by having most of the more gruesome stuff happen to Robots, albeit Robots that look like humans, in a similar way to Genndy Tartakovsky’s Samurai Jack. I’m not saying that this is necessarily that bad for kids but I do think some of them may come out a bit more disturbed than when they entered. Though I do believe you should treat kids with a lot more respect and suggest by actually checking what does or does not disturb them, rather than telling them. So take that comment with a pinch of salt. I saw the film in IMAX and I would actually recommend seeing it in that format if you have the opportunity because the wider screen and enhanced sound really does allow the effect to pop out at you.

If I sound like I am being a bit too harsh on this film it’s only because I think this film could have been a lot better that it was. it’s not a bad film by any means, it just doesn’t really hit the mark for me and I think it will be actually quite forgettable in time. It has good themes and likeable characters and some fairly decent performances, but I would hardly rush to get this on DVD and more recommend it as a rental. The plot isn’t quite fleshed out enough despite its 2 hour running time and it really needed a better villain. Those are the biggest problems I had with the film, other than that it’s actually kind of enjoyable and I suspect it will be a success with schools breaking up for half term and may even warrant a sequel that I wouldn’t object to seeing. Most of the performances are pretty good and I would say there are worse films coming out in the next few weeks, so you could do a lot worse, though granted by the time you see this review I suspect that there will be less screenings of it and it will make most of its budget back during the half term week which has already passed. Brad Bird, I really like you, but you have made better films!!

So what were your thoughts on Tomorrowland? Did I get it on the mark or have I missed a couple of points. Please leave a comment below on the film or if you want to answer my question, please feel free to leave a comment on that too. My question for this week is?

“What’s the most annoying experience you have ever had in the Cinema?”

I bring this up because there was a family two rows below me who just wouldn’t “shut the hell up”!!!
I know this film is essentially a theme park ride on a screen but that is no reason to talk throughout half the film!!!

Thanks for reading the first of my reviews to come out in June.

If you want to know what’s coming up next, go to my review of Poltergeist, which is online now.

Calvin – Nerd Consultant

“POLTERGEIST (2015)”

The review Axia’s P.A Carly has been waiting for is finally here. Poltergeist is the latest of a series of classic horror movies that have gained re-makes, and let’s face it they haven’t really been successful. Probably there have been some decent ones out there, but I haven’t really found them yet. The most disastrous so far is Rob Zombie’s remakes of Halloween and all the attempts to bring back The Texas Chainsaw Massacre. This ones advertising points out that it’s from the producers of Evil Dead, however that’s slightly misleading considering the fact that this film is actually from the people who produced the re-make and not the original and trust me that film was not exactly perfect if I’m honest. Now for the record I did actually see the original Steven Spielberg movie a day prior to seeing this movie and I will say it holds up fairly well in its own way. It had some amazing practical effects, some brilliant performances, some actually half way decent scares and the only issue really is it’s dated quite badly in a couple of places, mainly surrounding the technology. At no point did it suggest it needs a re-make, by the way I haven’t actually seen any of the sequels before you ask. Now let’s check out how the re-make stands up.

Now normally I would give a brief plot synopsis of the film at this point but this version of Poltergeist is so similar in following the plot of the 1982 movie, which most people have seen, so I’m not even going to bother. It’s the same basic, family moves into the house, there are ghosts in the house, they kidnap the little girl, family hire paranormal investigators to bring her back!! One of the big fundamental differences between this version and its predecessor is the fact that this film is 20 minutes shorter than the previous film and if you’re wondering what has been lost in this version, it’s the plot twist. The plot twist that was really good in the original film has been completely lost on this one. It’s in the film, but it’s brought up so quickly and it’s so painfully obvious that newcomers will guess it really quickly. It’s not really there and it will only frustrate fans of the original! I also find the family a lot less likeable in this version than the previous film. They are not incredibly annoying and you don’t want to see them die, like in a lot of horror films, but I would hardly say I enjoyed them as much as the family from the previous film and they do seem a lot more like a cardboard cut out of an American family that you would see advertised in a clothing magazine more than how I would imagine the average American family is really like, which was given off in the original film and I think that’s largely down to the casting of Sam Rockwell and Rosemarie DeWitt in the roles that were previously occupied by Craig T Nelson and JoBeth Williams. The other major difference this time around is that the Psychic has changed gender. In the original film Zelda Rubinstein played the Psychic in what was her star making role and she was absolutely fantastic in it. Jared Harris takes up the role of the Psychic this time and he’s not as much of a match for her. His character is a lot more hands on in this version than the previous film, but he is also kind of a missed opportunity considering his character is a TV Psychic that works on a Ghost Busting Show, you know, similar to those ones you see on Living TV at 10.00pm and I was kind of hoping he was going to turn out to be a fake Psychic who had gotten out of his depth, but by the end of the film they have pretty much established that he is the real deal, with a slight throw away line to suggest it might be the other way! It makes me wish there were a few more films that took red lights attitude and try to produce a film from the sceptics point of view and really bring into light the sort of manipulative nature that Psychics use in faking paranormal powers in order to deceive the grieving and if you are reading this and genuinely believe in Psychics abilities, I don’t mean to insult you, but I have never seen a single Psychic who has convinced me that they are not faking it in some way or using Psychology and Magician based techniques. If you want further information on what I am talking about, see Penn and Teller’s episode of Bullshit entitled ‘Talking To The Dead’ and Derron Brown investigates ‘The Man Who Can Talk To The Dead’, they establish my points quite well!

Now that I have had my Room 101 moment, back to the review!!

The plot is so blatant in following the original, you just think, why am I not watching the original! It’s almost note for note, the only difference really is that this time we actually get to see the world of the dead people a lot more and see the girl in the television and in the closet. Some of the effects are half way decent, however it doesn’t change the fact that the original film had and excellent attitude of not showing too much to allow our imagination to fill in the blanks. This one doesn’t give you that option, you will see everything. This movie really does not have enough down time. It is full on from the start and it is a lot less subtle than the original was, relying a bit too much on jump scares! It’s not as bad as this year’s ‘Woman in Black 2’, on that factor, but I would definitely say it relied a lot more on jump scares than the original film. Fortunately everything from the original has made it back into this film, with the exception of the face melting scene, which is completely absent. However they are all a lot less good than the original sequences and adds further credence to ‘You should be watching the original film’!!! I will say the clown is still sufficiently scary, but again compared to the original, it’s not as good and that’s what I can really say about all of this film. There’s nothing that much inherently wrong about it, it just borrows so much from the original and in a way that is not as good. It’s almost the Diet Coke equivalent to the original film. Yes it’s all there, but you are getting less than what you had the first time.

Acting wise, there is nothing really i inherently wrong with it. Most of the Actors do a pretty decent job. I would especially say that Kyle Catlett and Kennedi Clements do pretty good jobs for child actors, at least in the first half of the film. Their performances seem to dip towards the latter half of the film. They also deliver their lines very well and I think most of the issues are with the writing and I can say that’s the problem with a lot of the cast. Sam Rockwell and Rosemarie DeWitt, as I mentioned, are not as good as Craig T Nelson and JoBeth Williams, but again I think it’s largely down to writing and direction, which is definitely not one of this film’s strength. The other thought goes to most of the Psychic Investigators, who just aren’t as interesting in this film. Again, it’s not down to the Actors, they do half decent performances. Jared Harris is pretty good in his role, but he doesn’t seem to fully get into his role and I almost thought he had a slight contempt towards the writing. I will say I enjoyed the performances of Jane Adams, Susan Heyward and Nicholas Braun, but I wouldn’t have minded them getting more screen time, however they do deliver pretty decent performances and I think Saxon Sharbino as the teenager daughter in this version, is actually one of the things that is actually slightly better than the previous films casting and I am glad the writers actually gave her more to do in this version. Overall, this cast was actually pretty good, but they needed a better Director to get good performances out of them but there’s nothing on the level of Zelda Rubenstien or Heather O Rourke’s performance.

The Effects. Now the original was a champion for practical effects. This one is an example of how CGI does not improve a film when you are re-making it, or at least, it’s not automatically better. The film is way too reliant on its CGI and it can actually take you out of the experience. There are some decent effects here, even though there were a few technology gaffes and a couple of continuity errors, but for the most part they are alright. They just pale in comparison to the original when they are just trying to almost copy the scene shot for shot. Yes the tree in this version looks a lot more like an actual tree, but I still think the original sequence was better and a lot more terrifying in terms of us caring about the character making it out alive. I was looking forward to seeing the face melting sequence updated, but it’s completely absent from this movie and it’s been replaced by a drill sequence, which was actually quite a good sequence, but I would hardly say it matches up! Again there is nothing inherently wrong with the special effects, but they don’t leave as much to the imagination and they are a bit too hard nosed, which takes us out of the experience, which a horror film really shouldn’t do and I would say a large amount of that is down to the films well thought out cinematography.

I saw the film in 3D and if by the time this review gets out, your area is still offering 3D screenings I would say, you can either take it or leave it. There are some decent 3D in this movie and it feels like the film was actually shot for that format and was shot pretty well and when it’s good, it’s very good. The downside is that it can also really not work and there were times I forgot I was seeing it a 3D movie. It also ignores the one rule of 3D which is to avoid dark areas and dark environments as much as possible, especially for Cinema viewings, in which case the 3D glasses have a darkening effect, and the film is harder to see. I know this is a horror film, but they really should have considered that a bit more and to be fair, there are quite a few well lit sequences which show off the 3D pretty well. In other words, I have seen better 3D, but I have also seen worse, and I would say you can take it or leave it, though I would recommend you save your money and see it in 2D. Though I suspect by the time this review goes out most Cinemas will only be offering 2D screenings.

Is Poltergeist bad? Not incredibly, which means it’s not as bad as I thought it was going to be, but I would hardly call it good and it’s fairly obvious when you are watching it that you could save your money and just stay at home and watch the original. I would refrain from calling it a disastrous re-make, but I would hardly call it a good one! Everything just feels a lot like you are watching the first film, but with a lot less! What this film really needed was a better screenplay writer and a better director, because I think there was every possibility that this film could have been better. As it stands, just see the original, there is really no need to see this one. The effects are less good, the actors are less good, the plot’s less good, everything is just less good!! That just shows the futility of this film and fans of the original need not apply.

So what are your thoughts guys? Did I get this right or wrong, was there more to this version of Poltergeist than I thought or did I get it completely right? Is it basically a Diet Coke version of the original?

Leave your comments below if you have any and also the answer to my question this week which is:

“What is the worst horror re-make to date??”

Remember if you want to submit your own content to our site, go the ‘how to submit’ section and you can now follow me on twitter.

Well after my absence I am going back to reviewing. Join me again on 12 June where I will be reviewing Paul Feig’s latest comedy “Spy”.

Thanks for reading my review, I hope you have a good weekend.

Calvin – Nerd Consultant

“MAD MAX: FURY ROAD”

Mad Max finally returns along with it’s director George Miller after 30 staggering years. Believe me I really have to wonder why it’s taken 30 years for another entry in the franchise, especially considering I would have thought another director would have wanted to take up the mantle. I guess Miller is protective of his property! Now to make sure I had a firm basis for this review I did make sure to see all three of the previous Mad Max movies, in fact my local cinema was offering a double bill of the first two movies which I took them up on and I will say, my thoughts on them haven’t changed, they do hold up surprisingly well and are well worth a re-watch to the time when we were able to like Mel Gibson, before he kind of went a bit off the rails. Now the third one may have been slightly disappointing and was almost un-recognisable as a Mad Max movie up until the last 15 minutes, but I think it’s been blown up a bit out of proportion on how it’s been declared as being really awful and if you want a good deal I would recommend picking up the original trilogy which has just been re-released on box set. I was really excited on going in to see this one because George Miller returning to this franchise, with all the modern technology at his disposal it was going to be interesting to see what he could do with it, with major Hollywood backing behind him.

The plot of Mad Max Fury Road is that Max, (now played by Tom Hardy) has been captured by a War Lord named Immortan Joe (played by Hugh Keays-Byrne) in his facility The Citadel controlling its citizens by restricting the water and milk supply. He is brought out, however, when Joe discovers that one of his top generals Imperator Furiosa (played by Charlize Theron) breaks out his five top wives with the intention of taking them to the Land of Green. They are pursued by Joe and most of his entire army including Nux (played by Nicholas Holt) who desperately wants to earn the respect of the War Lord. Max eventually hitches a ride with Furiosa and for one reason or another aides the group in completing their goal. Now I have to get one thing straight. I did get a fact in my review last week wrong when I stated that this was a re-boot. I assumed from looking at the trailers and the fact that Max had been re-cast, this was definitely a re-boot, but in actually watching it does appear that the other three films are in continuity on some level, though I do believe that some retrospective continuity changes have been made, but then again this did happen between Mad Max 2 and 3.

The plot does have relatively similar themes to Mad Max 2 and 3, mainly being that the 3rd film’s whole wanting to get to a better place in the middle of the apocalypse is brought up again and the 2nd film’s sort of characters group of survivors trying to break free from the villains and on a lot of levels the things that were wrong with entry 3 have been improved and I would say that these characters do have enough of a personality to stand alongside the brilliant cast of characters that we got in the 1st and 2nd films. The only problem that I really have with the plot is that Max at times feels a bit inconsequential to the plot. Max is often known to be sort of thrown in with a group of people that he usually wants nothing to do with, and he is normally just bought along for the ride but I couldn’t help feel that it’s more blatant here than previous entries. Now this was a problem with the 3rd film because the other characters weren’t interesting enough to get over that fact. In this film, however, the characters are interesting and enjoyable enough and we do want to see them come out okay, despite the fact that the survival rate in a Mad Max Movie is pretty low and we know a few of these are probably going to die. One of the big strong points for the good Mad Max Movie’s was their completely insane and over the top villains and there is no difference here! It’s great seeing Hugh Keays-Byrne return to the franchise having played Toe Cutter in the 1st film, however, his character is not a complete re-hash of Toe Cutter he is actually kind of an amalgam of Tina Turner’s villain from “Beyond The Thunderdome” and the guy with the Jason mask in the 2nd film, seriously I don’t think they ever mentioned what his name is! This is the kind of villain that the 3rd film should have had. This is a villain that commands respect and feels a big enough threat and he has cool badass design. His subordinates are just as absolutely insane as you would have liked them to be. These are guys who jump between moving cars and blow stuff up for no apparent reason other than “they can do it, it’s the apocalypse, screw it”!! The villains looked initially like they were going to have some sort of sub-human formity to them, since they all seemed to have shaved heads and various make up and tattoos. Seriously, what is it about people that after the apocalypse they all want to get tons of tattoos and have make up rather than water!! Nux starts out as an early villain and by the end of the film I actually decided he was my favourite character because he goes through the most development, possibly more than any other character in the Mad Max franchise and he is probably the most interesting one to be around with the possible exception of Chalize Theron’s Furiosa, who also gets a lot of development and is genuinely a character worth following and almost steals the show from Max, it takes a bit for her character to get off the ground, but by the end of the film she makes a worthy addition to the franchise and really aids the films subtle feminist message. Max is as enjoyable as ever, if you were at all worried that the change in the actor would be a change in the character, think again. This Max is very similar to the one in Mad Max 2 which is good, considering that was my favourite of the franchise. Despite the fact, he can feel a bit inconsequential to the plot at times, he is at least not completely inconsequential and it still, on a lot of levels feels like it’s his Movie especially towards the end. He will occasionally blend into being just one character out of a number of other really great ones. The great thing about this plot though is, it remembers the one thing that the 3rd movie forgot, Max is the road warrior, there are tons of car chases and this ultimately feels like one massively long get away movie. I will go into that more when I get to the aesthetics of the film later on down the line. The problem with this though is that almost the first 30 minutes of the film are so action packed it’s exhausting and the plot really doesn’t get going until the 40 minute mark when things finally have to stop and slow down though that’s not to say that the first 30 minutes are bad. This can be a bit exhausting at times trying to keep track of everything that is going on in the sequence especially when we are bombarded with it for almost the first third of the film though when you get the hang of it you will admire the ingenious choreography. This is also the longest Mad Max movie, if you were hoping for this to feature the same brisk pace that the first 2 films had, which both came in at about 97 minutes then I’m afraid you are going to be disappointed, this one came in at 120 minutes, which actually plays to the film’s strength as it allows enough time for the story to play out. None of the car chases or action sequences are compromised in any way. The film brilliantly has several over the top moments, so basically if you liked the plot of the first two films you are going to really like this one. I also think this will tempt in a few newcomers considering that characters get a bit more development and character arcs and also have slightly more depth than ones featured in previous incarnations of the franchises. The only downside to the plot as I mentioned, it can be a bit exhausting and it goes from periods where there is nothing but action sequences to moments where it goes very quiet and very subdued and this can give a bit of a mood whiplash effect , I personally didn’t have any issue with this though this may not be for everyone. There is also a bit of a continuity gaffe if these films are wanting to be in continuity with the other 3 films because there is a reference to satellite television which if we are going by the other films and the apocalypse happened in the early to mid 80’s, I don’t think satellite television was that prevalent back then, which suggests to me there has been a retrospective continuity change and that has been affected.

Now for the acting. The first thing to really talk about is Tom Hardy being re-cast in Mel Gibson’s role. When I first heard it I thought, yes, that’s perfect casting and I think I am right!! Tom Hardy has just stepped off being in the sadly disappointing ‘Child 44’ in which he had to do a Russian accent for the entire film and I am happy to say that his Australian accent, while not as good as Gibson’s, is not too bad, though it does hiccup at times, but that being said he still makes an excellent Max. I had no trouble believing that this was the same character featured in the previous films and Hardy plays this to an expert tee. I also think he works very well with the Director George Miller, judging by the fact that he has very few lines in the film especially in the first half and manages to do pretty good physical and facial acting, he really fits into Max’s leather jacket very well. Credit to Charlize Theron as well, especially for shaving her head for this role, that’s commitment and frankly you hit it right out the park, she gives an excellent performance in this film, especially considering I wasn’t expecting her to stick out, I wasn’t sure that she was well cast, but she is proving that she has a knack for re-inventing herself. I have already said that is was good to see Hugh Keays-Byrne back again and he is fantastic in this role as the villain. When he played Toe Cutter in the original, he was completely over the top but he has actually managed to reign it in for this performance, showing he is a really good versatile actor. Fans of professional wrestling may also recognise Nathan Jones in a small supplementary role which I didn’t actually fully realise until I went home and looked in the imdb page for the film and noticed it was him, though I did have my suspicions watching the film. The stand out performance for me is Nicholas Hoult of ‘Skins’ fame, I don’t know what it is about Skins that produces really great actors like Dev Patel and Jack O’Connell, but Nicholas Hoult has really hit one out of the park and is the standout performer of the film for me. He actually steels the Mad Max film and I would almost like to see his character have a spin off movie just so we could see more of Nux!! He starts out playing an incredibly over the top, insane subordinate villain that we have seen in most of the Mad Max films, but then can play the role to be a lot more sympathetic later on, again showing excellent versatility. The rest of the cast do an excellent job in their various roles, especially the five women playing the Brides and I would be lying if I said I could nit pick and find a bad performer in the line up, but I can’t. Many people may be a bit thrown off by the over the top performances, but that is what a Mad Max film is all about. So really nothing to complain about here, Very Good.

Now aesthetically this film has a lot to do, considering it has a lot larger budget than the previous film had and major Hollywood backing behind it. Whoever did the art style on this film deserves an Oscar because it is absolutely fantastic, especially the person who designed that car that has the for people playing drums and wooden harnesses on the back of it and a guy on the roof playing a twin steel guitar with a flame thrower attached to it, that is the most awesome thing I have ever seen!! Whoever designed that ‘you must work in Hollywood for ever’!! While we are on the subject of the cars, they are all excellently designed. One of the problems with the 3rd film was there wasn’t enough of the stuff to do with the cars and the designs weren’t as good as the 2nd film. This one gives several vehicles and they are all brilliantly designed and incredibly inventive. George Miller took a lot of the designs he had from the 70’s and 80’s and really updated them. The original film had a ton of stuff to do with leather and the reliance on fuel because it was meant to be an exaggerated commentary on Harley Davidson culture and while many elements of that still remain here I think there is also a bit of a commentary of the modifying car culture especially considering that early on it is revealed that the people of the Citadel worship the V8 engine. Almost the entire film is shot in the desert so it does kind of at times feels like an extended live action version of the video game ‘Motorstorm’, but to be fair I think that Motor Storm stole a lot of its ideas from these films, so I am not going to really complain on that front!! While we are on the subject the car chases are fantastic, which is aided by excellent cinematography, there is some excellent stunt work here with several people jumping between vehicles, stuff explodes in the background, there are guns, crossbows going in all sorts of directions. It can be a bit difficult to follow but if you can get a grip on it the sequences are absolutely fantastic and really are reminiscent of the 2nd film, in fact there is actually a subtle reference to the car from the 2nd film early on and later on down the line. Occasionally the camera is a little too close which can hinder your ability to tell what is going on and it can look a bit too reminiscent of the 2nd and 3rd film at times. The only problem I have with the sequences is that the first half of the film is littered a bit too much with them and I think it may be a bit too much for newcomers who aren’t used to the Mad Max franchise. The cinematography though is absolutely fantastic and some of the computer effects are really good, especially the stuff to do with the early sand storm sequence, oh and the film’s music score is absolutely fantastic and is one of the best I have heard this year so far, I would seriously like to see it be nominated for an Oscar. George Miller spent a lot of money on practical effects that really shine and give the film extra weight and realism missing from many CGI filled blockbusters and it’s all the better for it. I saw the film in 3D and my advise is, whether you are buying this on Blu Ray or DVD when it comes out, or if you are going to the cinema, seek out the 2D version. There is very little reason to check out the 3D version as a lot of the set pieces don’t really suit it. They are good when they suit it but it’s not entirely brilliant with the exception of one explosion followed by car destruction at the end, this has clearly, purely been put in place for the 3D and won’t play out well when viewed in 2D. Half the time I was watching it I was actually very unaware I was watching a 3D film and it’s clear this was a rushed post convergence. If your area is only offering 3D tickets, don’t pass it up, however, because I did enjoy seeing this film.

Mad Max Fury Road is a lot of insane, over the top car chases, mad characters and with brilliant action and over the top stunt work. So basically another Mad Max film!! But I’m gonna go out on a limb and say this one’s my new favourite. If you liked the previous entries, this is definitely one you should check out. George Miller is on fantastic form with this film and it’s amazing to think it took him this long to re-capture it. Tom Hardy is well cast in his role, though I do believe Nicholas Hoult is the best actor in the whole film and both of them complement Charlize Theron’s performance very well. There is never a dull moment, the characters are really good and I actually think this would be a pretty good jumping on point for newcomers. I would recommend seeing the first two movies prior to seeing this and some long time fans may be a bit confused by some elements that have been added to the film, mainly Max’s flashbacks. This is absolutely brilliant, though be warned there is a bit of a gore factor at points, though it’s not to the extent that it will be absolutely wince inducing. Many people are calling this the best action movie of the last 5 years and while I personally still think that honour belongs to the Avengers this is still a contender for that title. It’s a shame Top Gear isn’t on tv any more because I really think this film could have used the extra boost of publicity and I don’t believe this will out compete the previously released Avengers Age Of Ultron or the upcoming Jurassic World.

All that’s left to say is what a movie, WHAT A LOVELY MOVIE!!!

So what are your thoughts on Mad Max Fury Road. Was I completely correct or was I absolutely wrong or was I half there and half not. Please leave a comment if you have an opinion on this film or any of the Mad Max films, which feeds into my question for this review

“Which is your favourite Mad Max movie and why?”

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Now I’m afraid there won’t be a film society review next week as I have got to go away for a period, however my reviews will be back online on 6 June when I will be giving a very belated double review of Disney’s latest live action film “Tomorrowland” as well as the remake of “Poltergeist” in 3D. Also please be aware that I am trying to get two reviews done for a certain dead line and I may be late with one of them. I don’t believe I will be, but I am getting this disclaimer out beforehand and apologising in case!

Thanks for reading my review and I hope you have a good weekend.

Calvin – Nerd Consultant

“HARLOCK SPACE PIRATE”

Or “Space Pirate Captain Harlock” as it is known in its native Japan and in the United States. Now I’ve heard of this character, despite the fact he hasn’t been been as well distributed in a lot of the western world as a lot of people would have liked, however if you are from Japan you will know this character, he has been around since the 70’s and has had multiple incarnations. I don’t claim to have seen all the adaptations of Captain Harlock, in fact I am fairly new to the character, but I have seen his cameo appearances in Galaxy Express 999 and a few episodes of the Captain Harlock Endless Odyssey Anime, although I will confess that I haven’t seen the full series at the time of writing this review. I will get round to it in the end! Toei Animation would claim that you don’t need to know about the character to enjoy this film. This film is designed to be a re-boot that will bring the character back to relevancy and was released in Japan in 2013 before being distributed to several animation festivals with its English Dub. The film did receive some cinematic releases over here, in fact on 22 April there were some screenings of the films in Picture House Cinemas, though the only ones I could find were in London and I wasn’t about to travel all the way to London to see a film that was being released on DVD a week later. There was also one name that really drew me to this and I was really excited about this film because the Director was Shinji Aramaki, director of Full Metal Alchemist Brotherhood on of my all time favourite Anime Series.

The plot starts in full swing with the intergalactic government known as the Gaia Sanction declaring Earth a sacred planet and forbidding humanity to return and has declared Captain Harlock of the Space Pirate Ship Arcadia its number one enemy. Several years later Harlock is joined by a new recruit, Logan who is part of a Gaia Sanction Undercover Operation to take down Harlock from the inside and remove the explosive charges that Harlock has placed on several planets to break an entity known as the Universe clock that will cause time to go backwards and end the war that caused the humanity separation from Earth. However, Logan soon discovers through his travels that not everyone is completely honest on what they know and there is more to the Earth and the situation than meets the eye. The plot itself is a very typical Space Opera and definitely suits Captain Harlock and his cast of characters, but if you are worried that this is a re-boot for fans only, don’t be mistaken, I definitely believe that this is one that a lot of people can get into and this is coming from someone that hasn’t seen a lot of Captain Harlock’s material, so I was purely judging the entire film on its own merits. The plot is very good and delivers an excellent story, the downside is, it’s kind of slow, which is a problem in a series which I am currently watching and is not much better here. This could be a problem for some people, but if you are someone who is patient enough it’s worth working your way through.

Shinji Aramaki is kind of known for doing these sort of stories that have a slow and steady pace to them which is fairly evident in the fact a good example of this is that that Full Metal Alchemist Brotherhood is about 15 episodes longer than its previous incarnation Full Metal Alchemist, but despite the fact the plot does move at a brisk pace he hasn’t slowed it down to the extent that it’s un-watchable and you are just waiting for things to happen. The writers also cleverly knew not to throw their eggs in one basket . The film doesn’t start on too much of an action note, and instead builds atmosphere and character, so that when the action does start we are led to care about it. The film also doesn’t overdo Harlock, in fact he doesn’t really do much for the first 20 minutes of the film, but the film also expertly builds him up for the bad-ass character that he is. We all know this is the Anime equivalent of what happens when you mix Han Solo with Jack Sparrow and give him Wolverines personality and by restraining him early on, it builds up our expectation for what we are going to see and the pay off really works. What’s great about these characters is they don’t appear too complex, at least at first, only select characters get more development. This isn’t too much to their detriment, and if they went any further with it, the film would have a case of having too many characters with too much development, which is a problem with a lot of ensemble piece films. However, this one knows which characters we care the most about and focuses on them. Now despite Harlock’s name being in the title of the film, this isn’t really his film, it’s Logan’s story and he gets the most development. He can be annoying at times and his constantly switching sides may get on a few people’s nerves, but I feel at the end of the film he came out having changed the most, for the better. His brother Ezra is also an excellent villain, he is sympathetic enough that we can relate to why he does what he does and he doesn’t appear to be a completely one note villain, and despite the fact that he does have a few moments that could resemble him being a complete and total douche, you do get a sense that he is basically a human being and acting out of what he believes is the best. The other members of the crew that gain a role are also very likeable people and a joy to be around, in fact I’m actually quite glad there was a large amount of these people. It’s a common Anime Trope to have only 4 or 5 members on your Spaceship, I was glad to see that this was a large crew. You’re not going to take down half the Galaxy with a few people in this Universe!! Harlock himself, is as bad ass as ever and anytime he is on screen the testosterone levels instantly go up. The only major problem with the plot is that the dialogue is occasionally quite hammy and falls into a lot of Anime Tropes, but I like Anime so I’m not going to be bothered by those tropes, that being said a lot of this might be a bit too simplistic for some people.

Now Harlock’s story lines are known to blindside people with some extra deeper meaning and there is definitely an element to that here, however I’m not sure it completely reaches the same degree it has in the past. This is still an excellent Sci-Fi plot and people will really get a kick out of it, and it has this extra deeper meaning especially around the characters of Logan, Ezra and Nami, who gets one of the biggest reveals of the entire film, but not the biggest, and while the twists and turns of the film may come in a bit too thick and fast, they all shake up the plot brilliantly and this is one story I would definitely return to at some point. The film also delivers some well-told themes of freedom, seeking freedom and what it means to be free even if it is kind of vaguely defined

Now acting wise there are no major celebrities in this one. This is purely veteran Anime Voice actors and they all do their job very well. I watched the English Dub for this review, and if I’m honest you might want to view this one in its original Japanese, mainly because the lip syncing doesn’t fully match up as well with this one. But it’s not too distracting, especially in the latter portion of the film and its English dub cast is still pretty damn good. In the title role of Captain Harlock we have David Matranga who hasn’t played this role before but is definitely well suited to it and I wouldn’t mind seeing him return to the role in a future production, he definitely delivers the gruff nature of Captain Harlock’s character. He does, at times, kind of sound like his character from Wolf Children. I really liked Adam Gibbs as Logan, he suits the role pretty well and definitely can take some of the material to reach the level necessary to make his character enjoyable to watch. I definitely liked Emily Neves as Mimay and her voice really suits the human yet in-human design of the character. Jessica Boone gives and excellent performance as Kei, even if she is a bit under-used, which is a shame because she could honestly deliver some of the best power house moments of the film She especially can really sell the film’s themes of freedom and what it means to be free. Fans of Full Alchemist Brotherhood will be happy to see Rob Mungle back as Yulian in this film and while he can be a bit annoying at times you’re definitely going to remember this guys performance, he really will sell it when necessary, even if his character probably has the biggest amount of lip syncing issues!! Mike Yager really delivers Ezra’s character brilliantly and I would like to see him play a villain again in future Anime productions. Rebekah Stevens does an excellent job as Nami. Fans of Kids on the Slope will recognise her instantly because she played Ritsuko in that production and her voice is almost exactly the same. Overall a brilliant cast once again, although if you are asking me about any of the other characters I couldn’t find any other information on the English Dub Cast other that those cast members, so, really it’s probably just a few people they have hired in to do additional voices.

Moving on the film’s aesthetics and for the purpose of this review I saw this film in Blu Ray having purchased the special edition Steelbook of this film and also for this review I saw the film in its 3D version and if you have the ability to see this film in 3D PLEASE DO SO. This film is excellent in that format and it takes full advantage of it all the time. The film itself is a CG3D Anime production, similar to Final Fantasy the Spirits Within and Advent Children to name a few examples and un-like those two examples these characters movements and flow is excellent, even outside of the action sequences. The 3D effect really adds a sense of height and depth, which, when you are dealing with space and a lot of areas that are high up or appearing from the sky is really going to benefit, but apart from that there are other aspects of the 3D that work very well. Characters appear in the foreground and background brilliantly, the space battles have an extra dimension to them. This film never lets you forget that you are watching a 3D production, however, I will say it’s not entirely essential, to see this film! If you don’t have the ability to see it in 3D, don’t pass it up on that basis because the film still looks gorgeous and this animation is excellent and for those who do have the ability, this is the sort of animation style that makes 3D worth it. The animation itself, bought these characters into 3D computer generation expertly and they really do feel like full on fleshed out versions of their 2D hand drawn counterparts. Despite the radical change in style, there was never a time when I didn’t feel like I was watching something to do with Captain Harlock. This animation won’t be to everyone’s liking, but it really struck a chord with me and I think a lot of the space shots will really strike a chord with Sci-Fi fans.

As for the action scenes, they once again are expertly done. The space battles are tense and action packed and don’t feel too sluggish like some space battles have in some Sci-Fi films that have really annoyed me. The actual fight scenes and gun battles are expertly choreographed and once again work with the animation brilliantly especially if you are viewing the film in 3D. It’s also amazing that they had so many of these high speed sequences without any compromise to the animation. It’s aesthetically one of the best looking films I have reviewed for the site. It’s absolutely brilliantly done and I think at occasion you will be admiring the effects of it too much and may miss important lines of dialogue.

Does Harlock Space Pirate have any issues? Yes of course it does. The motives of the villains towards the end of the film feel really stupid and feel like they would incriminate them even further than they already have been and the film’s early pacing feels a bit off and I’m not sure these characters will appeal completely to everyone, but for me personally these are definitely negatives that aren’t gonna bother me too much. Harlock Space Pirate is absolutely fantastic. I had an absolute ball with it and it was just the film I needed on the back of seeing ‘Unfriended.’ It”s an excellent Space Opera that deals with freedom and duty and does them expertly. It’s a story that will captivate a lot of people and an excellent re-boot to the franchise. The animation is gorgeous, the 3D effect is excellent and makes me wish I had seen it in a Cinema, and the Actors do their job brilliantly. While the ending doesn’t leave the film completely open to a sequel I would definitely not object to going further with this re-booted franchise because this was an excellent Sci-Fi film and Space Opera that I would gladly like to see further expanded. If you like Anime this is one to add to your collection.

So what are your thoughts on Harlock Space Pirate if you have seen it? Also what are your thoughts on Captain Harlock as a character in a franchise? Please leave your comments if you have any. Remember you do not need an account, nor be from a specific area. Just put down your opinion below. Also you can answer my question for this week in the comments.

“What is your favourite Anime movie based on an Anime Series?”

I would love to hear your thoughts on this one, because when I tried to think of my choice, I had a lot to pick from and I would love to hear some of your ideas on this subject.

We we are moving on from one re-boot to another. On 22 May I review the highly anticipated Mad Max Fury Road.

Thanks for reading my review, I really enjoy writing these and I hope you enjoy reading them.

Calvin – Nerd Consultant

“UNFRIENDED”

Yes, I have a certain disdain for found footage, I definitely don’t like sub-genre, in fact I’m growing to really despise it, but the studios love them because you don’t need to hire any major actors to play any of the roles in most cases and they are very cheap to make and often will make back most of their money. From the look of it, this year is not going to see much of a decline in the sub-genre between this and the previously released Project Almanac which you will be surprised to find out “I didn’t like’!! Unfriended is probably a film you are probably aware of because if you have been on You Tube regularly the film is being advertised massively on that site, mainly because they actually do get a product placement in the film. When I heard the concept for this film I literally thought this was one of the stupidest ideas for a film I have ever heard and it couldn’t possibly work! But I was prepared to give it a shot especially on the basis of the fact it is getting very mixed reviews from the States so I expected a sense of indifference. That being said I went to the film with low expectations and I can tell you immediately, this review is probably going to be shorter and less detailed than most of my usual reviews, not because I’m getting lazy, just because there isn’t much content in this film.

In the summer of 2013 (forgive me if I have got that fact wrong, I really wasn’t paying attention to the timings on the videos in the film) Laura Barnes commits suicide after an embarrassing video is leaked on the internet and she is the subject of a cyber bullying campaign. Now a year later a group of her friends are having an online chat on SKYPE, but someone has hacked into their conversation with Laura’s account and is demanding revenge by picking them off one by one. If you saw the trailer for this film, well I’m sorry to say ‘you have seen a lot of this film’!! There is seriously very little outside of what’s in the trailer, in fact a lot of the kill shots are exactly as they appear in the trailer (they are actually editied that badly), the final product makes these scenes look like they were specifically cut in that fashion. This is even more surprising considering that this film only lasts 80 minutes, which is staggeringly short, in fact it barely qualifies as a theatrical release and I was amazed I was paying full price for my ticket!! Now found footage is a relatively cheap production, but I’ve got to believe that this was even cheaper considering the entire film was short virtually on web cams and using computer screen to drive the plot (in fact the film’s total budget was $1,000,000) and I thought this would actually be an interesting way of monitoring communication between the characters, however it doesn’t pull this off, in fact if anything, it actually makes things worse. Because some of the communication is done through text rather than dialogue, there is no emotion to it and as a result it doesn’t help build any tension which is what you need in a ‘horror movie’. For example the film I saw earlier this year “It Follows” was brilliant at building tension and giving us likeable characters who we would want to see come out alive at the end. Not in this film!! I wanted these guys to die five minutes after being introduced to them they were that irritating and unlikeable and they get worse!! In fact that was one of the major problems, the film is so slowly paced I don’t think that anything happens until a quarter of the way through the movie, which again considering that this film is barely a theatrical release is baffling! Why pace it this badly!! These characters are incredibly un-likeable and the performances of the actors don’t help it out at all. In fact I’m not even going to bother with an acting section in this review because I have nothing to say on the subject. They are all just awful, they are not named actors so you don’t care who they are and after this you won’t care to see them in anything else!! I was just saying to myself “for the love of god, get to the scene where these characters die already, I’m bored out of my skull listening to their inane chatter”. You could have gotten away with characters like these in the 80’s which is definitely the period of horror movies that I enjoy, but we are in 2015 now and films like The Babadook and “It Follows” are proof you need more likeable characters and clever plots now in order to make your horror film worth watching. This one doesn’t have either, it’s purely riding on the concept, which I will clearly admit is unique, but it means nothing as I just didn’t care and if you are not familiar with text speak you might struggle to figure out some of the words typed in this film, don’t worry though as there is actual dialogue. The dialogue during the SKYPE conversation was also laughably bad, this isn’t how young people talk! This is how a screen writer believes young people talk and is again further added to the “please let these people die soon so I can get out of the theatre” effect.

The film plays on an idea of possession, mainly through the hacked accounts and the method of the deaths, but we never are really given much of an explanation in to it and if you can’t see ‘quote on quote plot twist coming’ then I’m guessing, like me, you were bored as well and weren’t paying attention because it is ‘really ‘obvious, especially considering the order in which everyone is being picked off. The film tries to throw a few red herrings in there, but none of them work and I’m just saying, “it’s obviously this person so can we please get on with it, this game is boring you’re not scary”. The film tries to give a few jump scares every now and again and only the one at the very end of the film half works though is still bafflingly out of place in the film considering everything we had seen leading up to it. You would find it much more scary playing a marathon of “Five Nights At Freddie’s”, at least in that one, the jump scares actually scare you. This film didn’t have to be a dumb horror film it could have been an interesting take on our modern internet culture and at times it even seems like it is going for that route but the variety is so poor in everything else it almost seems like this has been an accidental and the cyber bullying angle is completely lost by the end. I will give one positive to the writing, it does actually give an excuse of why the camera is still rolling!!

The major problems with found footage movies, particularly found footage horror movies, is that there is not real reason for the characters to still be filming this on their own camera. You are almost screaming at the screen “stop filming this and help your friends out that are being killed”!!! It does fall into a few of the traps that found footage films fall into including the shaky cam, although that is only when the characters get up and walk with the web cams which rarely happens and is only really used for a few of the deaths. Like the fact that I had a problem commenting on this films acting, I can’t really comment on it’s cinematography or aesthetics that much because the whole thing takes place on computer screens so there is no camera shot or anything like that. Let’s just say this film seems laughably cheap and I think a lot of the internet references could potentially date the film horribly, especially considering that sites and programmes are updating themselves quicker than ever before. We could be using a completely different communication system from SKYPE in the future which will date the film horribly and You Tube and Facebook could look completely different in their page designs. The kill shots are also laughably bad! The film does a constant thing of making the cameras go out of flux as if the web cam itself is failing, almost like when you are trying to stream a video online that is not fully loading properly. It actually ends up annoying you and and is clearly trailer fodder. The kill shots are all laughably bad, they are terribly edited and it’s very apparent that half the text conversations between two of the characters via emails and messaging services are purely there so the actors can get into place so they don’t have to shoot the film in one take.

The film makers also don’t fully understand how a lot of the technology works, which was also a problem with ‘Project Almanac” in the fact that there were several camera shots taken at a distance on a home recording camera yet you would hear the characters dialogue perfectly, which doesn’t work unless the characters have a microphone attached to them! This one had a similar problem where characters would be working on another webpage whilst the SKYPE conversation was still going on, you weren’t able to hear the SKYPE conversation in the background. That’s not how that works!! Not only that, the film comes up with really cheap ways for the plot to keep going, for example the ability to forward an email is taken away by the thing that’s going after them and the artificial ways for the characters to have conflicts between each other to pad the film out longer at the end. This doesn’t make me want to see any of them come out alive even more, in fact I want to see them die even quicker, these are horrible people. Please for goodness sake let me out of this film, I don’t want to see anymore!

I’m sorry this review is short but there is nothing more for me to say. This movie sucked and I hated it!! The characters were terrible. The plot is contrived and boring. So poorly shot, so poorly directed and so poorly written and it didn’t have to be any of those. This film has been billed as the next ‘Blair Witch’ or ‘Paranormal Activity’ but those films didn’t aim to be phenomenon’s they were more accidental and based on word of mouth. This film is clearly trying too hard and I think it will be forgotten when the new ‘Paranormal Activity’ movie comes out later this year.

It’s another example of why found footage really doesn’t work as a sub-genre of horror and I would really like it to go away for a while and come back with some better ideas. The film leaves no room open for a sequel so hopefully that means we won’t be seeing another one this time next year! One of the few positives points I can say about this film is that is didn’t go with it’s dumber original title of ‘Cyber Natural’, Man that sounds stupid!!

There wasn’t a moment I was enjoying this film. I was bored from start to finish and judging by the people who were in the cinema with me, I don’t think I was alone in that. The only moment I enjoyed was when they played ‘How you Lie, Lie, Lie’ by Connie Conway after one of the characters secrets is revealed on the internet by the thing that is going after them. I was in hysterics! Much to the annoyance of the people around me! Seriously, skip this one, and if you must see it, see it as a rental and get as many of your friends around so they don’t spend money on this rubbish film either. It’s not only one of the worst films I have seen this year so far, this is one of the worst films I have reviewed for the site, if not, THE WORST!

This is the kind of film that’s meant to come out in dumping ground January not May when films start getting good again save your money and see one of the upcoming blockbusters that’s on the horizon

So what were your thoughts on Unfriended. Did you find some more positives than me? Or, am I completely on the money? Please leave something in the comments section if you have any thoughts on it, or on my upcoming question.

Is there a good found footage horror movie? (I want to stress, horror movie, I’m not going to count found footage film’s in other genres, because that would mean the obvious answer,’ Chronicle’ would apply which is the only one I have enjoyed so far).

If you want to submit your own content to our site we have now set up our guest contributor section or you would like to get your own movie review sorted visit our “how to submit section, or our guest contribution section”, we are loving some of the brilliant content we are getting so far and if you get time this weekend, don’t see this lazy piece of rubbish!! See our good friend Dream’s new guest content as he has done a review of the film “The Story of Luke” and he has given us some excellent “musical creations” to listen to, you will have a much better time.

Right. Next time I am going back to Anime. I need something to calm me down from this rubbish! May 15th I’m uploading my review of “Harlock Space Pirate” in 3D and if you want to see it prior to my review it’s available on Blu Ray and DVD right now.

Calvin – Nerd Consultant