Because Everybody Else Has One

So, this was kind of a surprise... This review is also up at Channel 24 . What it's about During a tour of the White House with his young daughter, John Cale, an ex-marine who having just recently been rejected for his dream job of joining the Secret Service, suddenly finds himself as the only man who can save the president from a group of terrorists who have violently overtaken the building. What we thought So... I can't help but feel that we've just done this. White House infiltration. Nuclear launch codes. Betrayal from within. A disgraced/ wannabe Secret Service man who finds himself the only thing that stands between the president of the United States of America and bloodthirsty baddies who want to, basically, blow up the world. This is Olympus Has Fallen, isn't it? You would think so, but no, (quite a bit) less than half a year since Butler and co, tore into cinemas with their Die-Hard-in-the-White-House actioner, audiences get to go through m...

As I hadn't yet seen Gambit, I decided to hold off last week's roundup until I had so, once again, here's what's been happening over the past two weeks in South African cinemas. Last week did seem to be the week to release extraordinarily ordinary films and Epic was only the start of it. I, like all but one of Johannesburg's film critics somehow managed to miss I'm So Excited but, from what I hear, it seems to be one of Pedro Almadovar's worst ever films - though what I did see hardly fares much better. First, we have Broken City , an overly generic crime/ noir thriller that may be perfectly watchable but is as predictable as it is forgettable - which is a bit of a problem since I saw it last November when it was originally supposed to be released. Since then, it's been pushed back by distributors in this country for a solid seven months, finally finding its place among this period's huge blockbuster films. I don't know why they bothered....

Or not so Epic... But hey, at least it ain't Epic Movie! (Also up at Channel 24 ) What it's about During a visit with her eccentric father, teenager Mary Katherine (MK) suddenly finds herself entangled in a war between the fairy-like forest people and the evil forces of the Rot as the forest people's dying queen shrinks MK down to their size and charges her with protecting and delivering the birth pod of a new queen to her people and stopping the Rot from taking over the forest. What we thought Much like The Croods before it, Epic was done no favours by a tremendously generic and unpromising trailer but with the added disadvantage of a title that is both grandiose and entirely non-descriptive. Unlike The Croods though, which turned out to be one of the year's most pleasant surprises, Epic never quite manages to transcend its trailer or live up to its title. That's not to say that latest animated kids feature by the team behind the Ice...

It's catch up time once again, this time with a number of films of interest and only one or two that are, shall we say, not. Lets start off with the biggest and worst film from the last couple of weeks about which I haven't given a full review. No, not a Haunted House- I missed its press screening and there's no way in hell I'm actually going to pay money to see another presumably terrible Wayans brothers film. No, I am, of course, talking about The Hangover Part III . I was considering writing a full review for Todd Phillip's latest cash-in but when you consider just how little effort was put into the film itself, I really couldn't be bothered. I suppose I should be grateful that the third film doesn't follow its predecessor by being isn't just another rehash of the first film but somehow Hangover 3 is even lazier than the second film. At least part two put some effort into being offensive; its sequel couldn't even be arsed to do that much. ...

Check out the user comments of my review of the film at Channel 24 if you want to find out a) how awful a critic I am and b) how very, very wrong I am about Shyamalan's latest cinematic catastrophe. Read on here, though, for my own unabashedly negative review of one of the worst science fiction films I've seen in years. What it's about A millennium after humanity were forced to leave an inhospitable earth, a young military cadet, Kitai, and his estranged father, Cypher, find themselves stranded on the planet after their spaceship is brought down by an asteroid storm. With Cypher badly imaged, it's up to Kitai to traverse one hundred kilometres of poisonous air, rapidly shifting temperatures and a host of deadly animals to send out a beacon and secure their rescue. What we thought There's something kind of hilarious about After Earth being released in this country the same week as Star Trek Into Darkness. Not just because it's going to be fun...

Finally showing up on these shores, Star Trek Into Darkness has been received with everything from gushing praise to no less gushing hatred with many, many people falling somewhere in the middle. Well, I ain't sitting on a fence this time around... My own personal history with Star Trek has always been a bit complicated, a bit contradictory and utterly inconsistent. My first steps into the franchise were watching the animated series when I was a kid but I only really got hooked when I started watching Star Trek: The Next Generation when I was in my very early teens. For those few years before The X-Files stole my interest and Buffy the Vampire Slayer stole my heart, I was quite the Trekkie and, obviously, caught up on the movies and started watching the later - and increasingly worsening - series. And, oh yes, I read loads of Star Trek novels as well. As time went on though, I lost almost all interest in Star Trek as I came to the stunning realizations that the Next Gener...