In the Heart of the Sea Movie Review
Based on the novel of the same name (author Nathaniel Philbrick’s 2000 non-fiction book), this template in a lesser director’s hands could have lead to a very processional outing. Howard’s film suffers from none of that limitation. The movie is a rousing edge of your seat ride that has a look and feel that takes you right into the heart of the tale of that great white monster, Moby Dick.
Chris Hemsworth leaves the fantasy world behind this time and delivers a very powerful perfor...
The Hunger Games: Mockingjay – Part 2 Movie Review
In days past, films like this starred rugged, blood, sweat and guts types like Arnold Schwarzenegger (The Running Man), Sylvester Stallone (Rambo), Rutger Hauer (Wedlock) and, most notably in this case, Takeshi Kitano (Battle Royale). Indeed, the whole teenage cast of Battle Royale were more convincingly unhinged and dangerous than the pretty nubile stars of The Hunger Games who looked like they could never harm anyone.
The sequel, The Hunger Games: Catching Fire, predictably followed ...
Spectre Movie Review
The feeling lingers that they started with an overall direction for the Craig films but ended up taking too many diversions along the way. Some of the reveals are far from the surprise the filmmakers intended. Also extending the realism and casting Bond as more human and less the gadget guy has worked with only half of the four films. This sombre realism worked well with Casino Royale and Skyfall, less so with Quantum of Solace and Spectre.
Even though Craig is contracted for one more ...
The Last Witch Hunter Movie Review
If you can get past Diesel's quietly hilarious Norse beard, The Last Witch Hunter is a reasonably fun fantasy action thriller. It’s Middle Ages sections hark to the sword 'n' sorcery cheapies of the early eighties (The Sword and the Sorcerer, Beastmaster, Krull et al) while it's present day sections are solid Ghostbusters/Men In Black type fare with a dash of Underworld thrown in for good measure.
It's all harmless fun, though the final showdown between the good guy and the bad girl is ...
The Walk Movie Review
Enter Robert Zemeckis; director of numerous landmark films such as Who Framed Roger Rabbit, Back To The Future, Forest Gump and Contact but has failed to match the quality and innovation of those films for nigh on twenty years. His last film, Flight, was a reasonable attempt at recapturing prior successes but it was no Contact. The time is right - nay overdue - for a return to form.
The Walk isn't quite that film. But it is a very good film. It is imbued with the same emotional fibre of ...
The Martian Movie Review
It is equal parts thriller and scientific exploration and focuses on the human resolve to rise to the occasion and survive despite all the odds. Matt Damon is fantastic as the hyper intelligent astronaut that due to circumstance gets left behind on an aborted manned mission on Mars.
His approach to survival is based around his scientific knowledge and raw will to live but it is tempered by irreverence towards his circumstance and to the authority figures that he has to interface with. ...
Everest Movie Review
The film is incredible tense and from the first frame you feel the rising level of impending doom. Even for those that have little knowledge of the actual events of the disaster, the film fills you with that dark sense of foreboding. It frames the climbers (accurately or not) as a group of driven people with little regard for their own safety or the tons of rubbish that modern day mountain climbing leaves behind.
The film is big in almost every way, a big cast, a big adventure and a big ...
A Walk In The Woods Comeptition
Reluctant to settle into retirement, Bryson (Redford) challenges himself to hike the legendary Appalachian Trail – over 2,100 miles through some of the most spectacular and rugged wilderness in America. But the peace and tranquillity he hopes to find on the grand trail proves elusive when he agrees to make the journey with his old high school buddy Katz; a wisecracking, larger-than-life personality who is out of shape and arguably out of his mind. As the two men set off into the wildern...
The Man From U.N.C.L.E. Movie Review
Thankfully such scepticism is unfounded as Ritchie's rebirth of The Man From U.N.C.L.E. is a solid cracker! It shows Ritchie back on key and looking like the kind of director who would be capable of pulling off something as cool and snappy as Lock Stock.
The Man From U.N.C.L.E. was conceived in the mid sixties as a kind of 007 for TV, indeed Ian Fleming himself was involved in the programme's conception. Its likeness to Connery-era Bond is clear and Ritchie does a superlative job in ...
Fantastic Four Movie Review
Despite its incredibly successful Marvel brethren, this Fantastic Four is yet another dud, albeit a dud with a $200 million dollar budget.
The story is fantastically linear: we follow genius, Reed Richards, from childhood as he meets each of the characters who we know will become part of the Four as well as the guy we know is destined to be the villain, Victor von Doom (with a name like that, how could he not turn bad?).
Usually in an instance like this the structure of the film would ...
