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Showing posts from September, 2015

Self/Less

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Sadly, more like Point/Less This review is also up at Channel 24 What it's about A dying real estate mogul turns to a covert corporation for his last chance of survival: a new procedure that would transfer his consciousness into a younger body. It's not long, however, before he starts to find out that this miraculous procedure may not be all that it seems. What we thought Self/less comes with a fairly tried and true science fiction premise but it's disappointing to see just how little it does with it. Science fiction has long been interested in questioning the nature of the soul and of consciousness while the quest for immortality has been a constant theme in both science and fiction for as long as anyone can imagine. Self/less is only the latest in this long tradition and its central premise of achieving some kind of immortality by transferring one's consciousness into new bodies is far from a new one. That it's unoriginal is neither unex

We Are Your Friends

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Because not all flops deserve their fate... This review is also up at Channel 24 What it's about Aspiring DJ, Cole Carter, believes that all it takes is “one track” to make his mark as a professional music spinner but as he has to navigate his way through deadbeat friends, a self-destructive mentor and a potentially disastrous romantic relationship, he finds that the road to the top might be a whole lot less straightforward than he could ever have imagined. What we thought Between its general drubbing from overseas critics and its status as one of the biggest box office bombs of the year. We Are Your Friends comes to these shores with a whole lot of baggage. Add to that my own personal bias of having little to absolutely no interest in electronic dance music and significantly less in the whole clubbing scene, and the film had something of an uphill battle in winning me over. Here's the thing, though: it kind of did. Now, no one in their right mind wou

Everest (IMAX 3D)

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Leaving you (or me, at the very least) cold in more ways than one... To adequately review Everest, you kind of have to look at the film from two almost disconnected levels. The first - and this is something that really can be best appreciated in 3D IMAX - on a purely technical level, the second as a piece of storytelling. As you may well have guessed by now, Everest passes with flying colours on the first point, but things look a whole lot more dubious on the second. Put simply, from a purely aesthetic and technical point of view, Everest is nothing less than spectacular. Between its fully immersive soundscapes and the appropriate crispness of even the smallest sounds, the film obviously calls for the best sound system imaginable to appreciate the magnitude of the experience on offer here. Even more than its auditory delights (and terrors!) though, the film is just breathtaking to look at. I was disappointed by the lack of IMAX aspect ratio, as the added height would have defini

The Transporter Refueled

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Not so much refueled as rewarmed... Check out this review also at Channel 24 What it's about This reboot of the Transporter franchise finds Frank Martin and his father, Frank Sr., in France and involved in an elaborate revenge scheme by a group of former prostitutes against their former boss, a Russian crime lord. What we thought After the Transporter TV series crashed and burned – seriously, did anyone actually watch that show – we are once again confronted with that crucial question: can there be a Transporter movie without Jason Statham? The answer, as you may well have expected even before seeing Transporter Refueled, is, of course, you can't. It's not quite that The Transporter Refueled is an utterly terrible movie, so much as it's one that has no reason whatsoever to exist. While Ed Skrein spends the entire film doing a not very good Statham impression and Loan Chabanol spends her time looking for all the world like a pretty terrific mix