Because Everybody Else Has One

Before I start rolling out reviews for this fairly packed week, I just realised that I forgot to post my thoughts on The Woman in Black, which came out a couple of weeks ago. This is especially shameful since I've read the book on which it is based and everything! Ah well, better late than never, I suppose. With Joss Whedon and Drew Goddard reinventing the horror genre on one side and endless English-language remakes of European and Asian horror cinema on the other, there is something to be said for so traditional - and decidedly British - a ghost story as The Woman In Black. Very loosely based on the 1982 Susan Hill novel of the same name, The Woman in Black finds Daniel Radcliffe as a young widower, a single father and a lawyer not very good at his job who travels to an eerie rural town to consolidate the estate of an old woman who lived alone in a secluded old house, cut off from society by rising tides and wet marshland. It's not long however, before he finds that thi...

It was really, really unfair to release this little gem against The Dark Knight Rises this week in South Africa - especially because the two will undoubtedly have similar audiences - so make sure to keep this film in mind for the next time you go to the cinema after seeing TDKR. Or see it before even - I sadly doubt it will be on for very long.   I'm going to try and step very lightly when talking about The Cabin in the Woods because one of its great pleasures is just how surprising it is. I won't even summarize the plot beyond saying that this is the kind of horror film that starts with Bradley Whitford and Richard Jenkins - ya know, "proper" actors - having a funny West-Wing-like walk and talk as two regular working Joes, before moving on to the kind of horror-by-numbers that the film's title might imply. For fifteen minutes. It then goes completely and utterly bonkers, delving further and further into unfettered insanity before climaxing in one of the year...

Back to last week's films, a quick look at the directorial and screenwriting debut of Angelina Jolie. I feel a bit odd that I have to defend a celebrity/ star/ personality as big as Angelina Jolie and yet, for all of her fame, money and status, she is rather overlooked as an actual talent. I don't know if it's the whole "Brangelina" thing, her weird behaviour when she was younger, her, shall we say, interest in the "third world" or that business about Brad Pitt leaving Jennifer Aniston for her, but she is seldom given her due. When she tries, she can be a truly excellent actress, as masterful turns in Changeling and A Mighty Heart clearly show. When she doesn't try, she can occasionally be a bit trying, but mostly her definite screen presence still shines through. Still, for all that I mostly really like her in front of the cameras, there was a definite feeling that even my patience would be tried as I walked into In The Land of Blood and Honey...

We interrupt this week's typically untimely reviews for something that is actually coming out AFTER I've posted the review. And yes, to all of you worried about such things, this is a spoiler-free review. Check it out also at Channel 24 What it's about Eight years after the the death of Harvey Dent and the outlawing of Batman, Gotham seems to be a brighter, safer place but, no longer needed or wanted by the city he swore to protect, a physically and spiritually broken Bruce Wayne spends his days locked up in his mansion, away from both his life as Batman and as billionaire playboy, Bruce Wayne. It's not long, however, before he needs to come out of hiding in both his guises as he is confronted with a crumbling business empire and a new threat to Gotham in the form of Bane, a villain with a link to Wayne's past who is intent on showing just how fragile an illusion Gotham's new gleaning sheen really is. What we though The Dark Knight Rises...

Oh. Boy. Believe me, when I say that the best thing by far about Act of Valor (pardon the spelling) is that it's entirely forgettable, I don't mean that lightly. The plot, the characters, the action - everything about the film is the very definition of generic mediocrity. Everything, that is, except for a couple of very notable points. And by "notable" I do, of course, mean blood curdingly awful. See, someone had the brilliant idea that in order to grant some sort of "authenticity" to what is otherwise a decidedly ordinary action film, they should cast real life Navy SEALs as the Navy SEAL heroes of this fictional story. Surprise, surprise, this "brilliant idea" turned out to be anything but. The reason why us silly critics like to make such a big deal out of the caliber of acting in films is simply because without convincing acting, nothing else in the film has a chance in hell of working. It's all about buying into the world of the fi...

Loads of new movies came out this past weekend so lets get started with a male stripping movie by Steven Soderbergh because, really, where else is there to start? As neither a straight woman nor a gay man, I am decidedly not the target audience of Magic Mike. This isn't a male stripper movie like The Full Monty where the stripping is just a backdrop for a very male-oriented buddy movie. Magic Mike spends about a third of its running time focusing purely on a bunch of insanely buff blokes getting their kit off and the rest of the film is really just a backdrop for the stripping. Nothing wrong with that, of course, but I feel a bit out of my depth here.  As such, I highly recommend checking out this all-girl roundtable review of the film over at Channel 24  for a lively, funny take on the film by people to whom it is actually aimed. What's weird though, is that however little the many many pounds of manly flesh may do it for you, so to speak, I don't think there...

It's a fairly packed Friday for new cinema releases so before getting to the likes of Magic Mike, The Woman in Black, In the Land of Blood and Honey an, oh yes, Act of Valor, I just need to finish off last week's lineup with a quicky review of this little German road-trip movie. The road-trip film is a proud tradition of US cinema and you don't have to look to hard to find similar, but decidedly shorter, examples of the same from the UK , but how many German road-trip movies have you seen? Well, if Vincent Wants to Sea is any indication, we haven't seen enough of them. Horribly punny English title aside, what we have here is a very unassuming, character-driven film about the titular Vincent, a young man suffering from Tourettes Syndrome, who, along with two other patients, flees from a rehabilitation centre to fulfill his mother's dying wish: to have her ashes scattered over her favourite Italian beach. Needless to say, there is much soul-searching and increas...

Oh yeah, a couple of things also came out this past weekend. This is the first. You know, it's funny that in the same weekend I gave the new Spider-man a bit of grief for retelling its hero's origin story, I am confronted with a film that truly puts Spidey's "unoriginality" in perspective. Lockout is   far from a terrible film but never before has the phrase "based on an original idea by Luc Besson" been so hilariously ironic. Besson has already given us Die Hard in the future with the admittedly terrific The Fifth Element and now he's giving us what is essentially Con Air in space, with a bit of Demolition Man and Attack on Pelham 1 2 3 thrown in for good measure. This is especially brilliant because Con Air was always basically just Die Hard on a jet plane in the first place. "Derivative" doesn't even begin to describe Lockout . See if you can guess where this plot goes: In the not too distant future, the most ruthless c...

It's kind of odd that a new Spider-man movie seems like a small deal when held up against The Avengers and The Dark Knight Rises and yet The Amazing Spider-man does feel like it came out of nowhere. Relatively speaking anyway. And yet here we are. Still, don't be put off by that or the fact that it isn't as good as The Avengers and presumably won't be as good as The Dark Knight Rises, it's still a very neat little film.  Also since this is a Channel24 review, I had to keep it within a certain word-count so at the end of the review I've added 5 extra bullet points that I think are worth noting about the film. The essentials are in the review but they're just an added bonus for readers of my blog. What it's about After being bitten by a genetically enhanced spider, Peter Parker soon learns that with great power comes great responsibility as he becomes New York City's masked defender, Spider-man, all the while dealing with death, love, a mut...

And to finish off last week's films... For an under-the-radar, indie (or at least seemingly indie) romantic comedy, it's amazing how much Friends With Kids has divided critics and "normal" moviegoers alike. Some consider it a wonderful alternative to your average Hollywood romcom that is funny and warm in equal parts, while others find it to be entirely unfunny, obnoxious and featuring the most unlikable characters since Sex and The City. Not to be my usual self or anything but both sides definitely have their points, even if I personally found it to be overall far closer to the less enthusiastic point of view. There are bits that feel more authentic than your usual Hollywood fodder, it does have a great cast and its preposterously stupid premise works far better than it has any right to be. That said, the characters weren't likable - and I mean at all - and, however much their relationships convince at some points, at other times everything feels tremendo...

Sorry, got sidetracked writing an Amazing Spider-man review but here's my slightly belated take on Sacha Baron Cohen's latest film. The Dictator is supposed to be a great change of pace for Sacha Baron Cohen's comedy career in that it's fully scripted, rather than being strung around some uncomfortable real-life meet ups between ordinary people and one of Baron Cohen's absurd creations. So why then does it feel so very, very stale? Not to say that the film doesn't have a few decent chuckles and, even when aiming for the lowest common denominator, it never plumbs the same depths of your average Adam Sandler film, but it fails to build up any real interest whatsoever. It's so underwhelming, in fact, that it's hard to even build up enough enthusiasm to review the wretched thing. The plot starts off promising enough. General Aladeen, the dictatorial ruler of a small North African country travels to the USA to tell the UN where to stick their objectio...

The moment you've all  been waiting for... The Amazing Spi- Sorry, no, never mind. You're going to have to wait for next week for that. For now though, how's about a big stupid musical built around 80s hair metal! Hello? Hello? Where'd everyone go? Also posted at Channel24 What it's about Sherrie and Drew are two young musicians trying to hit the big time on the Sunset Strip and it's not long before they become involved with each other and a struggling night club whose owners are just waiting for the one big gig to save them from bankruptcy. What we thought If 1980s hair-metal/ poodle-rock has one saving grace is that it is daft, cheesy fun. In the history of rock and roll, it is largely and rightly considered to be one of the genre's low points and with its banal melodies, inane lyrics, plodding rhythms and all the edginess of, well, a poodle, it's not hard to see why. And yet, for all of that, unlike say, Grunge, it does at least ha...

Sorry for the severe lack of updates but the past couple of weeks have been awful for new cinema releases in this country. Last week was all about the new Leon Schuster movie, which I was fortunate enough to miss because, if the trailer is anything to go by, I honestly don't know if I would have been able to survive two hours of such unmitigated crap. This week, we have a grand total of one new release and, considering what it is, it effectively means that this is two weeks in a row where there is nothing at all for anyone who is either a) over ten years old (Ice Age) and b) not clinically brain dead (Mad Buddies). Not that I want to jump the gun with my Ice Age 4 (4!!) review... If the Ice Age franchise has one saving grace, it's that it is aimed squarely at kids. Seemingly every other major animated franchise or, for that matter, animation studio always has their eyes on the adults at least as much as their nominal target audience, pre-teen kids. Some succeed brilliantly ...