Movie Reviews

Based on the fact that I couldn't catch a 3D showing of Avatar, I went to see Solomon Kane at the weekend. This decision was buoyed on by the TV trailer, which was stuffed full of fantasy goodness - grim battles and even grimmer weather.

The plot is a simple one - Solomon Kane is the leader of a ruthless band of thugs, who love nothing more than the killing of villagers and the looting of kingdoms. Even when his henchmen are being picked off left, right and center by a bunch of grotesque mirror demons, he snarls at them that he's the biggest devil they're ever likely to meet.

However, after too-short introduction to Kane's dark side, he's confronted by a minion of the devil who tells him that Satan claims his soul. Kane escapes, and takes refuge in a monastry, where we catch up with him a year later - he has renounced his evil ways and pledged himself to the church. Unluckily for Kane, the church don't want him around, in case the devil catches up with him...so they kick him out.

If anyone's read the excellent Graham Hancock book Fingerprints Of The Gods, then they'll understand where Roland Emmerich's latest movie is coming from. 2012 paints a picture of ancient Mayan predictions coming true and a rare planetary alignment causing the crust of the Earth to soften and displace.

As per previous Emmerich disaster movies, this one features a disparate cast, all facing calamity as the Earth starts to swallow up whole cities and civilisation is all but destroyed.

The story begins with the discovery that solar activity is causing a new kind of nuclear reaction within the core of the Earth. As the core heats up, it destabilises the tectonic plates in new and catastrophic ways - as you can see from the movie poster, the San Andreas Fault finally gives way and pitches California into the sea. Suddenly, beachfront property doesn't seem like such a wise investment...

It's a rare occasion when a movie reduces me to tears, but Big Fish has the ability to reduce me to a blubbering heap every time.

Big Fish tells the life story of Edward Bloom through a series of flashbacks and retrospectives. As Edward nears the end of his life, his estranged son comes home and their tensions resume as it becomes clear Edward has invented many of the childhood stories he told his son William.

The flashbacks show the fantastical stories Edward told during his life, of road trips with giants, the freaky town of Spectre and its shoeless inhabitants, of how he worked in a circus for three years to find out the identity of the woman he was going to marry.

William remains skeptical right to the very end, even surmising that his father was having an affair with a woman from Spectre. It's not until Edward is finally on his deathbed that he realizes the value of his father's stories.

Ouch. One review on Rotten Tomatoes says that "Despite a promising turn by newcomer Yara Shahidi, Imagine That is another pedestrian family comedy that squanders Eddie Murphy's comedic talents."

A glance down the list of other reviews chides Imagine That for "an ironic lack of imagination".

The problem is that Eddie Murphy seems to be stuck in a rut of making films for kids. He's churning them out at such a rate, there doesn't seem to be any distinction between them. I'd like to suggest, however, that Imagine That isn't quite as bad as the critics suggest.

What's it about though? Well, Murphy plays high-flying divorcee Evan Danielson. He's engrossed in his work and staring at a major promotion. He ends up looking after his daughter for a week (the estranged father reconnecting with child cliche) just as he faces a challenge from Native American colleague, Johnny Whitefeather, whose Indian schtick has captivated the suits in the office.

Sometimes you just know you're going to hate a movie. Take Twlight, for example. It might have been the media hype, or the fact that the marketing gun was pointed directly at the worldwide legions of emo kids. It might even have been that fact that every pretty young girl wants to deflower a vampire - there's a litany of cross-species literature from Bram Stoker to Anne Rice, not forgetting Buffy and Angel's high-school love affair and randy undead private dick, Mick St John in the sorely lamented Moonlight.

You get the point - vampire/human romances have been done to death...

On with the review. And yes, there will be spoilers. But if you haven't seen Twilight by now, then you're sadder than me.

Full disclosure before I begin - I enjoyed the Potter saga much better at the beginning, when he was a clearly abused boy adopted by his mean Aunt and Uncle and the wizarding world was completely unknown to him.

As the story and the characters mature, and the film posters get darker and have any shred of colour drained out of them, the Harry Potter franchise gets duller. We're moving now into classic good versus evil storylines with a bit of horny teenage frivolity thrown in to create a romantic sub-plot.

The other problem that the movies now suffer from is that - for all us fans who can read - we all know how the story ends. There's no ambiguity as to whether Harry will end up with Ginny or Hermione, or indeed how Ron and Hermione's story will end. And let's face it, we know who will emerge victorious in the final battle between Harry and Voldemort. We simply have to go through the motions to see how the on-screen adaptations will compare to JK Rowling's books.

After hearing mixed reviews about Terminator Salvation, and harbouring a healthy dose of scepticism for the idea of a new Terminator trilogy, I went to see the movie last night.

'Salvation' jumps right into the middle of the war between humans and SkyNet, giving us Christian Bale as a grown-up John Connor. Connor is more than aware of his own legend. He still listens to those old tapes his mother made for him. He still carries around that old photo of Sarah taken by a kid in a Mexican gas station in 1984. In a nice piece of continuity with T-3, he's married to Kate, presumably Catherine Brewster as the Terminator in the last movie predicted.

Plot

The plot revolves around a Death Row inmate called Marcus Wright, who signed his body over to Cyberdyne Systems. The body was later used to create a prototype Terminator infiltration unit that was a hybrid of human and robot. Unlike other Terminator units, Marcus retained his name and his memories, and until captured by Connor's unit, believes that he's human.

HAI THAR STAR TREK, I'VE BEEN EXPECTING YOU...

I'm not a Star Trek fan, I've never seen any of the movies or TV series but I do like sci-fi (again, I'd like to push I'm not a sci-fi fan - I emphasise this because if I was then I'd probably have watched at least one episode of Star Trek by now - and know the difference between a Klingon and Vulcan...) but even I knew enough of the mythology and fandom to 'get' parts of it (i.e. I was the only person in the cinema laughing at bits) and I also had the experience of being a new viewer. It was like some dual advantage.

My first thoughts revolved around the idea that Spock was going to eat people's brains and then, even after I thought I got over it, each time he got annoyed I was thinking 'EAT HIS BRAINS. BRAINZZZZZZZZ PLZ'.

I went to see the Coraline 3D this weekend with my younger brother. Having read and enjoyed the book I was looking forward to the film. I remember seeing an early trailer for the film and being slightly disappointed by the style of animation they'd opted for - it seems a little soft and colourful.

Neil Gaiman can be so evocative in his writing that you do form your own mental picture of what's going on - my image was reminiscent of the animation in The Nightmare Before Christmas. That said, I was coming around to this style and once I saw it there's no denying that it's absolutely lovely.

The film was directed by Henry Selick (who also did The Nightmare Before Christmas and James and the Giant Peach) and Coraline had the same creepy vibes.

I went to see the much-anticipated Watchmen film yesterday. I popped out in my lunch break anticipating longer queues than usual for the first night showing and it's lucky I did because when I went back in the evening - the queue might have dwindled but the showing was sold out.

I went as a film fan having never read the graphic novel. I remember reading that it was a graphic novel that would probably never be translated onto screen - but that was after the wheels had been set into motion into making the film (and boy was that process been long with so many different actors and directors attached up til now). I went not expecting much from it - for it to be good in a comic book action type way but nothing more than that.

There are differences between comic books and graphic novels though, such as a deeper level of characterization and more complex storylines, and I'm aware of that but I did expect it to be more in the vein of Spider-man than 300 (also directed by Zack Snyder) mostly because of that superhero connection.