Cinema review: The Amazing Spiderman

Spidey’s origin story told yet another time.

As the rest of the internet I was annoyed by the announcement, back in 2010, of this Spiderman reboot. I wasn’t at the level of the death treats throwing masses but I must admit that I declared loudly many many times that I didn’t want to see this movie.

The very idea of a reboot always annoys me. Maybe it’s a psychological thing, the subtle message “All that you watched before didn’t count because we are starting again”, the “You gonna pay to see the same story twice”, I think you got the drill.

Of course there is the argument that with enough time technology gets better, that a new era could approach the same story from a different angle, and here is where they rubbed everybody wrong.

It was like 1 week after Sam Raimi Spiderman 4 was canned that they announced the reboot. It was, for us unwashed masses of the internet, too soon.

Well, I’m happy to say that I was proven wrong. The smart heads up there at Sony Headquarter really had another take of the character.

The big trick was to focus on Peter youthness. This Peter never leaves school, neither he gets that job at the Daily Bugle, he remains an awkward teenager during the whole movie.

It works, Sam Raimi version breezed through Peter Parker life losing many nuances in the middle. This Peter Parker is a much more relatable character.

A lot of the merit of course goes to Andrew Garfield, an incredibly youth looking guy, at 29 plays believably a teenager. He and Emma Stone develop a rom com style romance that is in many ways better than the boring offerings from fully fledged rom coms. The director, Marc Webb, whose debut feature was the critically lauded “500 days of Summer” probably was also very important in this regard.

The fight and the various special effects scenes, a point where Sam Raimi’s version was groundbreaking, are also very good. All done in a very professional and engaging way.

The plot is that famous origin story so they can’t escape that feeling of déjà vu, but enough things where changed and remixed that it’s watchable even for us old comic book fans. There are many plot points that don’t hold water if watched too closely but they are all hidden fairly well so it’s not too hard to pretend they are not there.

Conclusion: An excellent superhero story able to hold the interest of the non fans.

DVD review: Red Riding Hood

Little Red Riding Hood, now in a teenager version.

The story you know it roughly. What they changed is, at least on a surface level, not that bad.

There is something of Ten Little Indians now, people keep dying in Red Riding Hood village and the problem is guessing who the bad werewolf is.

A suitable amount of stuff happens, some blood get spilled, Gary Oldman himself makes an apparition as a Van Helsing style character, of course in this case is a Werewolf Hunter and not a Vampire Hunter but factually is the same.

The visuals are actually not too bad. I commend the style of the famous red hood. Although the CGI of the wolves is a terrible miss the rest of the setting is nicely done and shoot with a keen eye on the light.

Also every moment Gary Oldman is on the screen the movie switches gear because he is that awesome.

Amanda Seyfried is the titular protagonist. She doesn’t stretch a lot but this is the kind of role that she was born to play. She looks the part and she played similar characters so many times that she is now effortless in this kind of role.

Sadly we live in the post twilight era; they even got the director of the original Twilight, Catherine Hardwicke. So the usual undertone of “Werewolves are supposed to be very sexy” is overbearing. A very big chunk of the movie is spent with stolen glances, sexual innuendos, attractive guys with their chest bare etc.

Maybe if you are a Twilight fan you’ll love this stuff. Personally I have nothing against Twilight but I can’t bear supernatural teen romance, is so off putting.

Conclusion: The core of the movie is terrible and cliché but there is enough meat on the side to satisfy the most ardent twilight hater. Also there is Gary Oldman himself, what else do you need?

DVD review: Season of the Witch

A couple of knights have to transport a witch.

A stunningly unoriginal story, all the characters are stereotypes and cliché, the setting is so familiar that at first sight you’ll think you have already seen this movie while the effects are so classical that probably some of those where rejected from an old episode of Xena Warrior Princess.

It’s baffling, but certainly good for the writer, that the original script, made in 2000 by Bragi F. Schut according to Wikipedia, was won by MGM after a bidding war and that it was made only now, one year after the very similar, Sean Bean starring, Black Death, only because of the financial woes of that studio.

Yet another of those “Movies that Nic Cage is doing because his accountant stole a lot of money” it stars the aforementioned Nic Cage and Ron Perlman, of Hellboy and a thousand B movies fame. Maybe it’s up to their personal charm but this movie that notionally shouldn’t work somehow clicks and becomes even engaging.

The much maligned Nic Cage is a great actor but as other movie demonstrated he can’t elevate terrible properties all by himself. Here luckily with the help of Ron Perlman he constitutes a terrific couple. Their easy chemistry and their jovial banter keep afloat a movie all by itself.

Don’t expect any surprise or any detounement, just a somewhat old western style medieval fantasy. Exactly like those old John Wayne movies it’s all clear cut, black and white, and old cowboys, templars here, ride along trying to right a very wrong world.

Conclusion: A surprisingly enjoyable fantasy, still not very recommended if you can’t bear some chainmail and sword fighting.

Book review: The Descent of Anansi

The spaceship Anansi vital mission to earth is hindered by the schemes of a rival corporation.

As is often the case with Larry Niven stories this one got some wonderful and amazing scifi concepts but struggle with the rest.

The setting is the near future, the beginning of the colonization of space. Everything is believable and a rational extrapolation of the possible future.

The famous weak point of Larry Niven stories resurface here. The characters are all really weak and it’s very hard to care about them. Their relationships are bluntly spelled out with the same style normally used in a travel guide. At the core of everything there is possibly the most awkward love triangle ever.

In practical terms this means that for the first half of the novel is kinda hard to get into the various events. Too much time is spent on people that we don’t like but then Niven plotting get into gear.

An incident of purely Scifi nature happens and the various characters stop acting like they were living in a remake of “The bold and the beautiful” and start acting to solve stuff.

This is Niven at his best. The problem is interesting, the solution even more interesting and very original. The only problem here is that it’s complicated and fairly hard to visualize stuff.

Conclusion: Hard Scifi people will love it but even they will have an hard time with all the pointless characters.

DVD review: The Ward

In an all female Psychiatric ward something is killing the inmates.

After a ten years hiatus John Carpenter returns to filmmaking. His career got a turn for the worse in the 90s when he seemed unable to make movies that connected to modern audiences; it was like he was stuck into that seminal era during the late 70s and early 80s that made him so famous.

Part of the problems that plagued his late movies are present also in this one, albeit in a reduced form.

As all Carpenter movies this is something of a B movie. Not a bad thing per se but as many experimented making a modern B movie is no mean feat. It’s nice to be rediscovered 20 years later but not really worth it when you are looking for financing.

As a whole the movie works. The plot is that classical crazy asylum tale where so much is hidden behind the surface. To me it was all a little bit obvious but maybe I watched too many examples of a genre that doesn’t have that many possible permutations.

The actual shoot and effect work is a little bit underwhelming. The monster looks and feels very cheap, like one of those b movie monsters from the 70s actually. The various “thrilling scenes” are nicely done but again with a very retro feeling.

It’s a smart move to retread to what you know best but overall this effort feels undercooked and not very inspired.

Conclusion: A Carpenter movie for Carpenter fans, he even put his name on the title.

DVD review: Rango

Rango, a pet chameleon, ends up in a western style town.

This movie, according to the people who made it, is an attempt to do a western style animated feature, just a little bit adult oriented. The end result is an odd affair which earned rave reviews and an Oscar.

First, as it all too often happens with those reviews, they are mainly made by professional, or at least people deeply invested into moviedom. The problem with that is that so called “movie’s movies” tend to aggregate much better reviews than simpler affairs.

Rango certainly is a movie for movie fans. It is littered with movie citations and the whole structure liberally rips off the Dollar trilogy of Eastwood fame mixing it up with non sequitur, animal puns and LSD inspired spiritual trips.

Is this better than classical animated fare or at least more profound? Not really but is at least as good as that.

In the end what they made is a much quirkier than usual product, with a distinct independent cinema atmosphere.

The animations are made by ILM, Industrial Light and Magic, their first fully animated feature, with the direction in the competent hands of Gore Verbinski. It’s all very competent stuff, but honestly they still need a little bit to get to the level of the giants of animation.

Conclusion: An interesting experiment, recommended to adult fans of animation. The kids I fear want get most of the stuff.

DVD review: Drive Angry

To stop a satanic cult a guy literally comes back from the dead.

One of the infamous wave of b movies that Nic Cage had to do to pay his tax problems “Drive Angry”, like most of his brethrens, is not really that bad and can’t really be accused of being dishonest. It does what it says on the tin, a lot of drive angry and a lot of other verbs angry, mainly shooting angry.

Nic Cage role, the aptly named John Milton, is a character as thin as cardboard, not even Cage manages to sell him wholeheartedly. There is the classic all American Blonde Babe, played by Amber Heard, who of course is very handy with guns and fast muscle cars. Then we have the shady and slimy cult leader.

It’s not really an original movie but of course that’s the point. B Movies were never that original, and of course they weren’t that good either. That’s a reason most of that stuff is relegated to the back shelves.

So as a B movie how does it fare? Quite well actually. There are a couple of scenes that are really insane and the rhythm is good, is not a boring experience.

The main problem is that they got the insanity level right only on a few occasions. The rest of the time it can be entertaining but it doesn’t deliver on the level of over the top action that the title promised. It’s like one of those comedies where the jokes aren’t enough, nice but in the end not satisfying.

Conclusion: If the title sparks your interest have a look but don’t expect too much.

Cinema Review: Abraham Lincoln Vampire Hunter

The title is all that you need to know about this movie.

The really daft premise, coming from Seth Graham Smith who sold millions of copies writing “Pride & prejudice & zombies” so maybe he is into something, it’s the real deal breaker here.

Maybe there is a way to develop it sensibly and coherently but it never happened here, instead we got an incredibly dumb plot which not only is completely unrelated to any sensible history of the period, is also completely missing any internal coherence.

Maybe it’s because I know a thing or two about history but normally I don’t care too much about historical accuracy. Plot and fun are much more important. The problems start when the inaccuracies are so blatant that I can’t pretend I’m not seeing them, when very important plot junctions are decided with ploys that are nominally astute but in reality doesn’t make any sense.

If it was at least fun it could be all forgivable but instead we got some of the dumbest stuff ever. I normally don’t spoil anything of the movie but it’s really obvious that Lincoln somehow ends up hunting vampires. He acquires incredible fighting skills with which he can single handedly defeat dozens of vampires. The secret of his supernatural haste and strength? None other than the power of truth! He is super powerful because he is Honest Abe!

Even little kids deserve something better thought out.

The director is Timur Bekmambetov, who made the incredible “Wanted” in 2008, and so the fandom had very high hopes for this one. Sadly the failure is not limited to the plot.

While some of the action scenes bear the trademark blend of insane kinetic fights and crazy concept the rest of the movie is marred by the oh so American reverence for Lincoln.

I understand that he is one of the patron saints of American democracy but you can’t picture Lincoln straight while doing Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter. What you get this way is a movie grinding to a halt every single time Lincoln open his mouth. It gets so so boring.

At least we still got the very underrated Rufus Sewell as the main bad guy.

Conclusion: A so bad it is good movie, good train wreck value.

DVD review: Rare export

The true story behind Santa Claus.

An ingenious dark comedy this movie got one of those wonderful and completely original premises that are so rare nowadays. Sadly it doesn’t develop it properly. The main idea is there and is all kind of amazing but a lone idea doesn’t add to a whole movie. You need more stuff to add to it.

The movie also suffers a bit from its independent nature. The shoots, the actors, the overall feeling is that of a somewhat amateur production. It’s not really that bad I need to add, just unimpressive.

A lot of time is devoted to a subplot about a kid trying to find his place in an undoubtedly very harsh world. It’s even done fairly well but honestly we would have preferred more Santa and less psychological introspection.

One last note about the movie, without spoiling the aforementioned premise this is a dark comedy so expect mature themes, a lot of blood and a very unusual take on Santa Claus.

Conclusion: Recommended to those who love their oddities but for the general public this is really to underdeveloped.

DVD review: Defendor

A mentally ill man decides to become a real life superhero.

After Kick Ass popularized the concept of “What would happen in real life if somebody put on a spandex costume and started fighting crime” we start with the usual wave of copycat movies.

Defendor didn’t learn Kick Ass lessons properly. Maybe they can be excused considering that Kick Ass didn’t perform as expected at the box office, although it still turned a good profit, but where Kick Ass was all kind of wonderful and funny this is a somewhat depressing experience.

Yes we all know that dressing up as a superhero and fighting crime in our society would be a form of madness but that’s not the point. Superheroes stories are escapist fantasies where the wrongs can be righted and evil can actually be punched in the face.

Kick Ass managed to have his cake and eat it too with the creation of Hit Girl. So they had Kick Ass as the sad loser superhero and Hit Girl as the “Kick Ass” one, if you can pardon the bad pun.

Here we only get to loser part of the equation, played by an extremely well cast Woody Harrelson who looks and sounds the part, but he is not really a story that we would like to follow.

Who’s the target audience of this? Superheroes fans will be annoyed, non superheroes fans will be disinterested, maybe former superheroes fans that recovered from their vices and want to laugh at their former interest? It’s a mystery.

Kat Denning is entertaining as usual but terribly miscast as a young prostitute / crack whore.

There are some laughs every now and then but really too few and too little. It clearly aims to be a black comedy but it doesn’t do enough.

Conclusion: Forgettable in every sense.

DVD review: The tourist

An average tourist is drawn into a web of intrigue by a beautiful woman.

While the main plot of the movie roughly works, being a remake of a French original this shouldn’t be a surprise, the rest is all a real big misfire.

The main problem incredibly lies into the main protagonists. Johnny Depp and Angelina Jolie two of the most charming actors in the world somehow when working together create the anti chemistry. It’s amazing how the movie stops when they try something romantic, how Depp, normally so deft, is reduced to a bumbling buffoon and how wooden Angelina is. I really don’t understand it.

Even alone they don’t fare much better. Depp is so wonderful when he plays the abnormal, the strange, and the peculiar but evidently he is not capable to play the normal, the average. Moreover his natural good looks hadn’t been toned down not even a little bit. I understand that the main selling point is he and Mrs. Jolie making out but the story simply doesn’t work if the average guy came straight out of a fashion shoot.

Jolie doesn’t fare better. The makeup and costume department is evidently directed by some madman. Her hair and attire is incredibly over the top and, most importantly, she looks terrible in it. It’s so bad that it’s worth having a look just to appreciate it.

On the acting side also she, like Depp, evidently has a lot of trouble in conveying normal human emotions. All the social interactions are so stiff, her eyes absent.

Maybe part of the fault lies in the director hands. The long named Florian Henckel Von Donnersmarck decided to set the movie in one of the more cinematic places in the world, Venice, and completely fails to use it. The lights are all terrible and the shoots uninspiring.

Conclusion: A real stinker, even if you are a fan of the main duo you really don’t want to see it because it’s the first really bad movie that they made in ages.

Cinema review: Snow White and the Huntsman

Snow White.

The second “unconventional movie adaption of the classic Snow White fable” of the year.  Yes of course it’s simply a coincidence, Hollywood is such a creative place that they don’t really need to copy other people ideas, do they?

Jokes aside this was actually fun. Two wildly different takes, because for once they are really diverse, separated by just a couple of months, they beg for a comparison but before getting to it let’s consider this movie on this own.

Plot wise this is a case of too many cooks. Universal reportedly paid 3.2 million for the screenplay before setting two different screenwriters on remaking it. Official sources say that 40% of the screenplay came up during these rewrites so they paid more than three million for practically half a screenplay. Amazing.

It’s easy to see the scars on the butchered plot. Countless things are incredibly important for the first 30 minutes before getting lost in the shuffle. Romance subplots disappear randomly, the Mcguffin is forgotten just before the end, the dwarves appearance clashes so much tone wise with the rest of the movie that you could smell bad test screening all across the Atlantic.

Then at least is a pretty movie. First timer Rupert Sanders was given the keys to the kingdom, 170 million has been spent on this movie, but he used the money wisely. The locations, the costumes, the CGI, are all very pretty. The overall tone is really darker, with some interesting choices. The mirror in particular, is spot on.

Kristen Stewart looks good in the part. She is still very Bella Swan, but this is more the fault of the director than hers. All the actors didn’t perform very well here. Chris Hemsworth for example is really terrible; it’s hard to believe he is the same guy who did so well with Kenneth Branagh guidance.

The only exception is Charlize Theron. I used to dislike her; she’s always been stunning of course but never impressed me with any of her capabilities. Here she quite literally steals the movie. She finds a way of delivering, a peculiar kind of speech that is amazing.

She succeeds in quite an hard task, trough an amazing performance she manage to elevate an inane and terribly written role and make it her own.

As to the above mentioned comparison movie wise Mirror Mirror is better but this one certainly got the best evil queen.

Conclusion: An average movie brought up by the sheer amount of money that they spent into it and a very good performance from Charlize Theron.

DVD review: Hereafter

Three loosely interconnected stories about the hereafter.

It was bound to happen; the bad Clint Eastwood movie interrupts a streak that lasted at least 10 years, maybe more if you can appreciate “Blood Work”.

Strangely this is something that a lot of critics are apparently waiting for, many hailed the excellent “Invictus” as that paradoxical bad Eastwood movie. I honestly don’t understand why.

But how bad is bad here? Not too much in the end, certainly watchable.

The main problem lies in the plot, the first bad plotted movie chosen by Eastwood in ages. Many stories never get anywhere, Matt Damon is a medium who can feel the “dead people” (It’s hard to be more cliché than this), it climaxes at a book convention and I could go on. It’s very weak material.

Eastwood himself is in journeyman mode. The composition of his shoots, normally pitch perfect, is still functional but nothing more.

At least he retains his gift in obtaining good performances from practically everybody. At this stage in his career I think that if he decided to get me to star in one of his movie I’ll end with an Oscar nomination. He is that good.

In the end he still gets the job done. As many masters before him he honed his craft to a point that a bad Eastwood movie is still a fairly decent movie by any other filmmaker standard. He milks the inane plot for what is worth. He bring atmosphere, at least one sequence in the beginning is amazing, he deliver on the rhythm and in the end he left us strangely satisfied.

Still he doesn’t manage to get over the very difficult subject matter. Maybe out there a movie exist that talks about death and what comes after without being morbid, preachy and depressive but is not this one.

Conclusion: A mediocre effort from one of the true masters. Still worth watching.

Cinema review: The Raid

A raid in a mob occuped building goes terribly wrong.

After “Merantau” Gareth Evans and his choreographer/action star Iko Ulwais tried to develop a big prison themed movie. Things didn’t went through and so they downsized themselves quite a lot and made “The raid” in record time to keep their names on the market. Very good for them because “The Raid” proved extremely successful and established new house names in the martial arts panorama.

Basically they skipped all the troubles with “Merantau” plot by practically abolishing it.

I’m not joking, for all intents and purposes “The raid” is an extremely long and convoluted fight scenes putting Iko Ulwais SWAT hero against an entire building full of machete wielding, machine gun blazing, Silat practicing crazy mobster. Yes every now and then we stop for a little bit of exposition, mainly bad guy gloating about stuff, but we never ever leave the building and more often than not that exposition is interrupted by some crazy action. It’s that relentless.

It’s all very creative. Instead of those strange worlds where people don’t use firearms at all here everybody is a very bad sportsman and so they try to kill each other in many creative ways.

Evans clearly learned many lessons while doing “Merantau”. The action is more slick, the shoots more interesting, and the light placement professional. It’s still not perfect. The action is so relentless that the various fights merge with each other and the rhythm is too much stop and go but in the end it’s very difficult to sustain tension for almost two straight hours, there’s one of the reasons no one tries something like this.

Now that they are famous they are aiming for their aborted bigger project. If they can fix their plot troubles we could have a martial arts masterpiece.

Conclusion: For fans of the genre this is unmissable but if you can’t appreciate a good machete swing you’ll better go elsewhere.

Cinema review: Prometheus

The Alien prequel.

I had expectation for this one, high expectation. I always try to not bet sucked in the hype surrounding something but every now and then it’s inevitable.

Many have talked extensively about the plot. In a few words, it doesn’t make any sense.

Maybe the original idea that Ridley Scot had was working but what we got on the screen was a muddied mess. The most griping aspect of it is how the characters behave. We can survive an over complicated mythology, even accept monsters pointlessly complicated and behaving in an incomprehensible fashion, but the main characters, the humans, we should be able to understand them.

Their whole behavior is more than puzzling, is stupid to the point of self harming. It’s so bad that the salient points did become internet memes. It’s so bad that you want to throw sharp objects on the screen. It’s that kind of bad.

Then you look at the screenwriter and you realize that it was inevitable. Damon Lindelof, also known as the man who ruined Lost completely, wrote it. The continuing career of Lindelof is a mystery to me. He writes so badly, his mythologies are just messes created by randomly adding “cool” stuff, his characters inane and absurd.

But not everything is terrible in Prometheus.

Scott craft spectacular vistas, haunting sceneries and gorgeous places. After all these years we all somehow forgot how good Scott is when he is playing this game. The whole alien setting is perfectly realized and perfect in its “alieness”.

All the actors do a very good job with the terrible lines that they’ve been served. Noomi Rapace in particular got the short sticks with what are clearly the worst lines but somehow she manages to sell them.

Charlize Theron brings tons of attitude with another excellent interpretation while Michael Fassbender is the best android in ages, a shame that these wonderful characters had to do such an amount of stupid things.

Conclusion: The ticket is worth it just for the amazing visuals but the story is really stupid.

DVD review: Merantau

Indonesians martial arts.

Notionally this movie has a plot but it is even more bare bone than the infamous Jackie Chan early stuff, which was patched together just to move from one set piece to the next.

From what I could gather Merantau should be a tradition where the youngsters from this Indonesian ethnic group spend a period wandering around to gather experience, knowledge and eventually money.

So we have this young guy doing his Merantau, he goes from his backward idyllic village to the big corrupt city where he run afoul of the local bad guy. Luckily for him, and for us spectators, he is a master of Silat, the Indonesian martial art. A lot of fighting ensues.

The acting is wooden, the plot bare bone and tedious, the cinematography of the city uninspiring. But the fights are good, very good.

There is no cable work here. They do it all there, for real, Ong Bak style. It’s all very hardcore and fairly brutal.

It’s also refreshing for martial arts movie connoisseurs watching a new martial art. Silat is cinematic and distinct enough from the usual fare.

If you are not a martial arts fan this is not the right movie to start with. The action is good but not that good; it will not blow your mind. There is some interesting stuff in there but all the people involved need that little bit of experience to make the next step and craft the perfect action fest (which they did in “the raid” coming in a couple of days).

Conclusion: Interesting for martial arts fan but, apart from the action, a very boring experience.

Book review: Hyperion

Seven pilgrims travel to the otherworldly Time Tombs. They share stories on the way.

Very late to this party I finally managed to read the book that like a storm was on everybody’s mouth back in 1989. Back then I couldn’t buy it but now, thanks to the ever amazing charity shops, it is mine.

First of all if you heard some description form the critics don’t be scared. So many literary and artistic qualities have been attached to this book that starting it is a bewildering prospect.

This is not the sci-fi equivalent of some of those elitist tomes that critics worldwide seem compelled to like. It is true that it’s been inspired by “The Canterbury Tales” and that it shares the same stories within a story structure but this is not some overambitious literary vehicles. This is six stories for the price of one, all very good stories and all interconnected, to paint a wider picture.

Dan Simmons writes very well, he remembers to make his characters relatable, at least in some ways, and writes about interesting stuff. There are a lot of interesting concepts, this book is very sci-fi in this, it pushes the envelope a lot, certainly more than the majority of his contemporaries. It reminds me of one of those books from the golden age of Sci-Fi, of Van Vogt stuff.

One last note, the book doesn’t end. Lofty artistic types will tell you that it is better this way, that endings and explanations are for wussies, but reality is that simply he couldn’t publish it all in one go so he split it up. This means that if you want to know the real ending you need to check out “The Fall of Hyperion”. I know I will.

Conclusion: The hype is for real here. This book is a masterpiece, even non sci-fi people should check it out.

DVD review: Perfect Sense

A mysterious epidemic gradually makes humanity lose his senses.

This movie is interesting because it moves against the flow.

Epidemics, with their zombies ridden addenda, are seen as a way to show humanity disgregation. It’s one of the appeal of the genre, nothing as heartwarming as random madness on the streets.

This quirky little movie instead decides to go in the opposite direction. What if we tried to continue to exist as a society? What would happen?

Maybe it goes a little too far with the voiceovers but it’s a real interesting and unexplored concept.

Eva Green and Ewan McGregor are a couple trough which misadventures we experience the global epidemic. Their lives are a little bit too contrived, and here maybe there’s the real flaw of the movie, but the two actor sell it all so effortlessly and with such conviction that it’s really hard not to participate.

Maybe there’s space for a romantic version of the usual epidemic horror genre, let’s hope so.

Conclusion: recommended viewing, even if you don’t like it this movie will fuel enough post vision discussions to last for a week.

DVD review: Ironclad

King John Lackland lays siege to a castle.

This should have been so much fun. A siege movie based on a real historical event, but then they took so many liberties with the original that they should have simply set it on Camelot and be done with it.

Historical inaccuracies aside for a moment I can admit that this movie deliver on the rated violence. Heads are chopped and blood is spilled aplenty. It’s just not very interesting.

There is an art in cinematic violence, an art that writer director Jonathan English still has to master.

The plot also has problems. Historical inaccuracies aside, in the movie they are practically fighting for democracy in a period when the word doesn’t really makes sense, it’s all so very Die Hard. The villain is so bad that we are only waiting for him to start twirling is mustache, the heroes so noble, the fair maiden so fair.

Its missing subtlety, it’s missing all the subtle nuances that makes characters come alive without obtaining the epicness and majesty that made 300 and Conan so unforgettable.

And it’s still really a shame because they got some really good actors here.

James Purefoy got charisma in spades, Paul Giamatti idem but even them can’t manage to enliven a lifeless script.

Conclusion: Genre fans will still enjoy it but if you don’t like your sword with your chain mail this is not the movie to start with.

Cinema review: Dark Shadows

A gothic soap opera.

This is the movie adaptation of the soap opera of the same name. While totally unknown in Europe Dark Shadows was quite a big hit in America and this movie is actually a labour of love for Johnny Depp, who was a big fan of the original and so convinced Tim Burton to do it.

Now of course this movie probably got a special significance for the fans of the original but if you want that you’ll have to look somewhere else. I’m European so I never heard of it beforehand.

As a standalone movie his soap operatic origin are a lot of trouble. A lot of characters are terribly underdeveloped and just sit there as reminder of whatever they were in the original.

For example Chloe Grace Moretz is the “troubled child”, she plays her role beautifully, as usual for her, but it’s a tiny part that practically goes nowhere.

The same applies to everybody else, including Michelle Pfeiffer, another fan of the original, as the “matriarch of the family”.

The only good roles are Johnny Deep, who as the Vampire Barnabas Collins is the de facto protagonist, and Eva Green as the Witch Angelique, the main antagonist. The parts are strange and disjointed but they literally sizzle, especially when interacting there is a chemical reaction between them.

The plot is bizarre, but in the end this is to be expected from Tim Burton adapting this kind of material.

The tone is uneven. Horror comedy is hard to pull off properly and here the various bits aren’t properly connected. The same guy can mercilessly murder some innocents and then be the center of various funny gags.

The cinematography could be better. Burton is noted for his impressive visuals but here he modernized the dated look of the original without going the full way.

Conclusion: A bizarre movie, only a few will like it but there is something in there to at least interest a large proportion of the audience.

Book review: The lies of Locke Lamora

The adventures of a group of thieves in a fantasy world.

This book is certainly original. We had books dedicated to the orcs and the dwarves but the thieves, who can easily become the protagonists of something, where strangely absent.

It begins as a fun romp, with our group of thieves, the Gentlemen Bastards, embodying the archetypal good con artists characters (they only go after the incredibly rich) before evolving into a surprisingly bloody and intense adventure against an overwhelming enemy.

The world is rich, detailed and original. Akin to a fantasy version of Venice.

The aforementioned Gentlemen Bastards are an interesting group. Nothing groundbreaking here but they got enough wit and personality that we easily start to care about them.

Midway is easy to see the author realizing that he could make this the start of a serial (six other novels have been promised us) so many prominent elements are just left there unexplained, ready to pick up in future installment.

Conclusion: A solid and original fantasy book. Worth checking out.

DVD review: due date

A rigid settled guy is forced to travel with an inept buffoon.

The model here is obviously “Planes, trains and automobiles”, a 1987 comedy by John Hughes and while the model is certainly significant and relatively unexplored in recent years it is also a difficult sell.

Todd Phillips who wrote and directed should in theory have a relatively easy time. Cringe inducing comedies are difficult to pull off but he made the most successful of them all, “The hangover”, so in shouldn’t be too much of a stretch.

Alas the more times pass to more it looks like “The hangover “was just a random fib in the career of a not very talented writer. This is not the “difficult second album” syndrome. All of Phillips recent output ranged from “not very good” trough “moderately terrible” all the way to “unwatchable”.

Due Date sits halfway between the last two.

First of all is not fun. The laugh free comedy is a recent American invention and this is one of the best examples. Instead of laughs we get the aforementioned cringe inducing moments. Terrible stuff happens to our protagonist, mostly because of the insane action of Ethan Tremblay played by a Zach Galifianakis so out there that they should probably send a mission to space to retrieve him.

Nothing against having actors playing the same guy over and over again. Maybe my problem is that, apart from “the hangover”, I don’t like this guy, at all. If he toned down himself a little bit it would be fine but as it is you can’t help but sympathize with whatever authority figure is obliged to confront him.

Robert Downey Jr. plays against type as the guy who needs to have his eyes opened and enjoy life a little bit more. I love Downey Jr. be this is the rare role when he didn’t convince me. Maybe is the character that is so unsympathetic, so unrelatable, but really I couldn’t travel more than 10 minutes with a guy like that one.

Conclusion: An unfunny comedy where terrible stuff happens to horrible people. Thumb down.

DVD review: K20

1947, in an alternate timeline where World War II never happened a young circus acrobat fights the legendary thief K 20, the man with 20 faces.

A fun romp from Japan this movie, adapted from a novel at least according to Wikipedia, is at first impact somewhat complicated and unfriendly. The tone is the literal opposite of naturalistic, K20 behaves like a Japanese version of “The shadow”, and everything is very theatrical, but if you stick with it you’ll discover a worthwhile movie.

The plot, apparently very disjointed, in the end ties everything nicely trough a lot of unexpected twists and turns. Even if many of the actors are somewhat wooden, at least from our western point of view, the unpretentious tone, with many physical jokes and a lot of action, enliven the atmosphere. As I said above it’s like watching a pantomime at the theatre, when you get used to it all the problems disappears.

The action is top notch. A seamless blend of parkour style jumping with CGI eastern steampunk backdrop, a liberal dose of kung fu and tons of superhero style gadgets.

Conclusion: This is certainly not a movie for everyone but if you are a part of the fandom you should check it out.