day : 28/06/2014 5 results

Monsters University Movie Review

So it is that Monsters University arrives with much anticipation. The sequel has some mighty shoes to fill and sadly it falls some way short as it is surprisingly bereft of new ideas. What is presented here is simply a ‘further adventures of Mike and Sully’ film that could easily have gone straight to DVD. The film channels the frat movies of the eighties. While that seems like such a great idea in theory, the potential remains largely unrealised here. Taking most of its cues from ...

Toy Story 1 & 2 (in 3D) Movie Review

I remember feeling a little like this the first time I saw Toy Story: the amazement that somehow a computer had created these textured colourful creatures that emoted and cavorted through such a beautifully detailed world. It's worth remembering that the first film came out nearly 15 years ago, when the top of the line Power Macintosh boasted a head spinning 120Mhz CPU and 16 Mib of RAM! (Of course Pixar used racks of Sun Sparkstations to actually render the movies, but you get my point.)...

Alice In Wonderland Movie Review

This vivid approach isn’t just limited to the visuals either. The landscapes and creatures are integral to a story that also expands the mind. One thinks that the story’s original author Lewis Carroll might have gotten hold of some of the Blue Caterpillar’s best stash before pen was put to paper. Australian actor Mia Wasikowska as Alice, starts out as a dour young girl sent off to marry a man she doesn’t love and through the magic of the story becomes a luminous woman ready to ...

A Million Ways To Die In The West Movie Review

The biggest obstacle the film fails to overcome is in one of its lead castings as writer/director Seth MacFarlane is a very average actor and his role is not helped at all by the awkwardness of the writing. MacFarlane’s take on a modern day intellectual being able to deal with the brutal ways of the early American west ends up falling very flat. The rest of the actors are well cast but head bad guy Liam Neeson is given very little to do. It’s a sign of our conservative times that ...

Ted Movie Review

The surprises continue with the acting with Mark Wahlberg proving himself particularly adept at this style of raunchy comedy and his rapid-fire white-trash name recital is one of the film’s most laugh out loud moments. Ted, the CGI created teddy bear voiced by MacFarlane himself also defies simple categorization by being both offensive and inviting at the same time. Elsewhere taste is stretched to the absolute limit and this nothing off limits approach is refreshing in its disregard to ...