Movie Steak

If you’re a fan of the Final Fantasy series you may well already be famailiar with the storyline behind the franchise. Humans are living in cities after an invasion of an alien race known as phantoms. As with several other franchises, the transition from game to movie allows them to expand the back story quite considerably.

The film has ace animations and is well worth a watch for fans of the game. As a stand alone movie it doesn’t have quite such a strong appeal so it comes down to what kind of films you like - if you’re a sci-fi fan that enjoys films like Firefly then you will probably enjoy it. Otherwise, give it a miss.

Kevin Smith’s cult classic Clerks was a fantastic movie and goes as far as to get a sequel in the form of Clerks II. The movie sees the return of Dante and Randal working at a fictional fast food restaurant named Mooby’s. Jay and Silent Bob are also back as well as some fantastic jokes. If you loved the first one, you’ll love this one too.

(Randal walks up and find the Quick Stop burnt down)
Randal: Terrorists?
Dante: (shakes his head)
Randal: I left the coffee pot on again didn’t I?
Dante: (nods his head)

Aeon Flux is your classic small underground movement fighting against the futuristic totalitarian state which appears to provide a place of harmony. So basically think Logan’s Run. The storyline is that a virus killed most of the world. A man named Goodchild managed to develop a cure and created the last remaining human city which his dynasty ruled over, walled off from the outside world which nature had re-claimed.

It’s quite a good movie. The story is very generic but still not too obvious and stars Charlize Theron so you can’t really go wrong there. I enjoyed the movie and if you’re a fan of this whole sub-genre then it’s worth a watch. It’s also worth a watch for any guy who is a fan of Charlize Theron :p.

Hmmm. I want to slate this movie. I want to really lay into it. But I don’t think I can. Because it’s a lot of the things Bond should be.

Let’s start with Daniel Craig. He was a good Bond. A very good Bond. Looking back I am becoming more and more impressed with his performance.

The bad guy? To be honest I didn’t feel there was a traditional bad guy. He wasn’t that bad, he was just a cog in the machine of evil, not the top of it like they are usually are. And he didn’t have some grand plan for world domination either, he was just some guy that helps terrorists.

The gadgets? They said they were missing from the film. They weren’t, though there were only a few of them.

What really annoyed me was that this was supposed to be the first Bond, back to the start. If so, why did they have k800i phones, TFT monitors and Sony Vaio laptops everywhere? It was stupid.

Plus sponsorship was a bit over the top. Lingering shots of the Ford badges on cars and Vaio engravings on laptops didn’t make the product placement the most subtle attempt ever.

So the bottom line is this. It’s an average Bond movies. Some of it’s better than normal, some of it is just bad film making. It averages out to be a fairly average Bond movie.

A lot of people have been slating this movie. I don’t know why. It’s funny and the music is fantastic. While some of the jokes are medicore, the songs in it are so good it makes the overall movie well worth it. It’s strange in that you will probably come out of the cinema thinking you have seen an okish movie but as time goes on you will start thinking it’s better and better. And be singing the songs for weeks.

After a night of hard partying I pulled myself out of bed just before 2 last Friday. I managed to stumble over to my computer and sit down just as my phone started ringing. “Chris, do you want to come and see X-Men 3?” “Yes.” “Ok, we’re meeting at 2:30.” 2:30! Bare in mind that I was a half hour bus ride away even if I was dressed, ready and there was a bus waiting for me.

Never the less I managed to here there. 2:45 which I thought was very impressive given I was barely awake when I got the phone call. I’m glad I did though. X-Men: The Last Stand is a movie that is certainly worth a watch! Cliched and Hollywood-ised like all Hollywood movies? Yes, of course. But that doesn’t do enough damage to it to make it not worth watching.

It was bound to be a good movie. As I pointed out to the girl sitting next to me, “any movie with Captain Picard and Gandalf in the first minute is going to be good.” It was. The plot was interesting. A little over-garnished with sub-plots to add extra appeal to the movie but I really don’t want to dwell as this is a review not a what’s wrong with Hollywood movie making feature.

It could have perhaps down with a little more humorous quips but there were some. The action was fairly impressive if a little predictable (framing the Golden Gate bridge behind the shot of the juganaught saying “I don’t swim” was a dead giveaway) and on the whole, the general effects and sparkly things happening were quite impressive. There are some shocks too.

Don’t get me wrong it’s not an awe-inspiring ground-breaking film. It’s a comic book adaptation and as such you have to set your standards accordingly. But within that confines it’s a good movie and come on, it has Patrick Stewart in!

Game to move adapations rock. Most people hate them, critics especially but I thought Tomb Raider and Resident Evil were decent movies. The latest attempt at such an adaptation is Silent Hill, one of the few games, along with Resident Evil that could actually claim the status of being a “scary” game.

Unlike Resident Evil, Silent Hill follows very closely to the game. I’m told. I haven’t played the game much and am not too familar with it but I am reliably informed that the movie sticks to the plot quite closely. It would appear so in the movie too, certain factors make it very game-esc.

It’s a bit of a cloudy movie anyway though, the first thing two of the three people I went with said after it finished was “huh? I thought I was following it until I saw the end. What’s going on?” It does kind of click at the end but it’s not really putting the final piece in the puzzle, it’s more that it kind of wipes the puzzle and then completes a slightly different one.

The plot revolves around Rose taking her daughter Sharon to a creepy ghost down named Silent Hill because Sharon has been sleep walking in dangerous places and saying Silent Hill randomly. It was either take her to a doctor, or pay a visit to the town despite massive amounts of warnings on the internet so Rose choose the latter.

The town itself is abandoned and has been for 30 years. Underground coal fires give off toxic fumes. People do live there though. Or rather people, who used to be alive live there. But I can’t really say much about that without giving away too much of the plot.

Of course the real asset of the game was that it was so creepy that it actually was scary. Does the film achieve the same thing? Well, to an extent. It doesn’t have the unseen horror that really gave the game it’s effect but it still manages to very creepy and while it didn’t massively scare me, looking at it from a critical point of view, it was quite a scary film.

Overall I quite liked it but I could see why most of the critics don’t. If it’s your type of thing then go see it but don’t be suprised if you walk out feeling confused, not only about the plot but also whether you actually liked it or not.

I can’t resist a good spooky woods horror movie even if it is gone midnight when it starts and I have to be up at eight. I choose the sleep deprivation and I’m quite glad I did as I was quite impressed by this intriguing horror movie directed by John Fawcett (whose previous work includes Taken and Mutant X).

The film centres around the classic werewolf mythology while at the same time using this as a metaphor for puberty. Two sisters Brigitte (aka “B”) and Ginger of which Ginger gets bitten and infected by “some kind of dog thing” would probably be the most appropriate term. Think werewolf meats the re-animated dogs from Resident Evil.

It’s all down hill from here. More blood, more hair, feelings of sexual desire. It’s the usual stuff we all went through with the added horror of the fact you’re turning into a werewolf. As Ginger decends, B tries to keep a straight head on the situation and enlists the help of Sam to try and cure her sister and stop her decline into a monster.

Emily Perkins (Brigitte) and Katharine Isabelle (Ginger) put on a solid performance as the outcast school goths and you really get a feeling for the whole attitude while still there is a beautiful relationship between them underneath it. There is something out them coming together to tape up Ginger’s tail for gym that creates an intimate heart warming moment.

For horror fans there is plenty of gore in it. Killing, bleeding, slashing it’s all in there. And while you shouldn’t judge a movie on how much violence it has in (except for maybe Battle Royale because that was just classic :p) it’s always good to throw some in on top a good horror movie.

Ginger Snaps has managed what the best films in manage to do in making two different movies in one movie. One a traditional werewolf infection story, the other a tale of two sisters as they go through puberty. Whichever appeals to you it’s worth checking out.

I watched this movie with two faces. It’s the best way to watch most movies. One the eagle eyed film critic (or as much as I can be of one) and the other face, a mindless Hollywood fan. It’s the only way to appreciate a Hollywood movie.

I was sitting in the cinema watching this movie and thinking, it’s just going to get torn apart by the critics. It did, 15% on Rotten Tomatoes, 7% from the major critics. Let me put that in perspective. Britney Spears’s Crossroads got 14%, 13% from the major critics.

That’s apauling. Why is it getting these ratings? Because from a true movie lover’s perspective, this movie really is awful. It reeks of gratuitous violence and the plot line is basically kill people, gratuitous sex scene, kill more people.

Let me stress this enough before I overuse the word - pretty much everything in this movie is unnecessary over-the-top gratuitous violence, sex and general Hollywood crap.

Now that I have got that out of the way let’s look at the good features from the mindless Hollywood fan. The violence is really graphic, lots and lots of people get killed and Kate Beckinsale is really hot!

Seriously, she wears a full body PVC suit with a corset and leather boots over the top. What more could a guy ask for?

If you didn’t see the first movie then you won’t really understand what is going on. Well I didn’t but I managed to figure through.

Bottom line is, if you like pretty mindless action movies then it’s a solid choice. But if you’re a girl, a movie lover, generally anyone who doesn’t have fanatical devotion to the first movie, you probably shouldn’t go see it.

More pictures after the jump (and those are hot :p)
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The obvious reason to see this movie is that it was directed by Sam Mendes who also directed American Beauty and there is a fantastic film if there ever was one. I didn’t actually realise is was when I headed off to see it though. Interesting trivia fact huh? Here’s another, we couldn’t get seats together so we just sat in the aisle ;). But enough about my sad life at the movies, I have a review to do here.

If for some reason you don’t think the fact that Sam Mendes directing the film is enough to warrent a viewing then how about Donnie Darko himself, Jake Gyllenhaal starring in the film. And he’s good. Really good. The whole Jarhead thing breaks with his Donnie Darko look but by the end of the film you can see the Donnie look re-emerging.

The film manages what very few Hollywood films can achieve, American Beauty being one of the major acceptions, in avoiding any real kind of categorisation. It’s a war film but the lead character never actually kills anyone. Indeed, once they get shipped out to the middle east he never even fires his rifle until the very end. And to boot there are plenty of commedy momments thrown in but while these are funny they don’t detract from the seriousness of the movie.

It’s clearly a war film in theory - after all, it’s about the Gulf war. But when you get past that shell it is more of a drama. Yet not a drama about becoming a marine and going off to fight (well it’s sort of about that). So genre categorisation is hard to apply in this situation. Which is always a sign of a job well done by the filmmakers.

A lot of the critics reviewing this movie did some lengthy talking about the messages behind this film. To be honest, I think they are over-analysising it a bit. I don’t think it has some kind of big political message behind it, rather it’s about the characters than the plotline. The plotline itself is a little generic, a marine who turns out to be a hot-shot shipped out to the frontline. But it’s not about that, that’s just a backdrop.

It’s not going to go down in history as a great war film but any film narrated by Jake Gyllenhaal and directed by Sam Mendes gets my vote. It’s way more of a guy movie than for girls I think but most adults should enjoy it.