Review: Ratatouille (Brad Bird, Jan Pinkava, 2007)

I'll be honest, I wasn't looking forward to this movie much as from the surface it looked like yet another predictable Disney/Pixar movie (to which i get tired of all too quickly). However it's actually slightly more than that- but only slightly. As well as boasting excellent animation and visuals as standard for a Pixar film, the film also has a strong story with a simple and assertive moral at it's core. Characters here (well, the human ones anyway) are predictable and, for me anyway, highly unlikeable. The film is set in France and so the characters are all stereotypically French- stuck up, arrogant and full of ego (coincidentally one character's name, a highly detestable food critic, is actually called Ego). Even the careless and clumsy main character Languini who we are supposed to sympathise didn't do much for me, he came across as another predictable idiot in the "hapless moron"role that i didn't care for in the slightest. The animals, in this case the rats, are lovable mostly due to their excellent animations and expressions. The main rat, Remy, was brilliantly animated and his movements were excellent, specially when we see him scurry around as the camera shifts to a low perspective so we can see things from his point of view. The simple story is told well, surprisingly in a slightly more mature fashion than usual (younger children may even find it boring as the pace and tone of the film is actually more suited to a drama aimed at an older audience). Characters aside it's the story that shines and the moral which delivers- both are which entertaining suitably straightforward yet not predictable in their executions. The message it conveys is touching and to the point without being too over-dramatic, contrived and overly sentimental.

Not a classic film in any way but an enjoyable one with fantastic imagery and a nice charm as expected by Pixar, but in my honest opinion nothing really special as to warrant it spectacular.

6/10

Review: Superbad (Greg Mottola, 2007)

Very funny- destined to be a classic!

Seriously, I thought comedy films were failing as every comedy film I have seen lately has been far from it- then I saw this little gem. I expected (from the trailers) that it would an average high-school movie similar to something from a Nickelodeon/Disney Channel show- i was so wrong! A minute in and these kids are talking about stuff you'd expect from an adult comedy, cursing and swearing all the way- it just threw me off.

It is an adult comedy but the fact that it all happens at high-school with young kids is what gives it it's charm, and unlike American Pie it doesn't have to do severe silly/OTT/gross-out jokes to get it's laughs- it relies on expert performances, comic timing of the superb dialogue and brilliantly ironic situations- which ae all acted out with excellence. Rarely have i see everything work so great in tandem and laughed my ass off watching it.

The humour here is hilarious (some of the skits literally had me in stitches), it's just normal everyday dialogue but with added wit which makes it that much better. The performances were also fantastic- Jonah Hill really stole the show and has the skills of an accomplished comedian- at that age he should be proud because he makes professionals look bad. Christopher Mintz-Plasse is great too and Fogel is destined to become an iconic character. Also special kudos to Seth Rogen who is always a pleasure to watch, and to Micheal Cera who was brilliant in Juno and excellent in this.

All in all a really fun film, glad i saw it as i haven't laughed so much in ages- it gives me faith that amongst trash like Meet the Spartans and Chuck and Larry you have films like this that really know how to do things properly. The people behind 40Year Old Virgin, Knocked Up and now Superbad really have got it on and I look forward to all their future projects! Good, honest entertainment. I loved it.

8/10

Review: Nick and Norah's Infinite Playlist (Peter Sollett, 2008)

I was really looking forward to this, but what a complete letdown! Atrocious acting, terrible humour, completely predictable and characters I just wanted to punch for being so damn annoying.

I liked the music though and there was a certain charm to it, but everything else spoilt it. The characters were annoying and completely braindead (Ari Graynor who plays Corina for example is a drunken embarrassment throughout the entire film; ridiculous, slutty and embarrassingly pathetic), Kat Dennings is just irritating as Norah and though I like Micheal Cera, here he's just his usual self again (typecasted), it's like he plays the same role over and over and here he plays Nick which again is pretty much the exact same role all over again- a pathetic and unconfident loser. Alexis Dziena who play's Nick's ex was also just playing to all that character's cliché conventions of a stereotypical jealous bitch. I liked the fact that Nick's band members were gay and not cliché but they were still dumbasses. The comedy was terrible- I'm not a fan of immature gross-out humour but this tried too hard to try and be funny with it, it just came off as unnecessary and predictable and cheapened the movie more. What we should have got was a sweet and charming film, what we got was a misplaced charm in a very tacky and unfunny and frustratingly bad film.

I had to literally force myself to sit and watch it the whole way through and give it a chance but it was just went from good to bad to worse. I guess I wanted another Juno (which I loved) but what I got was another braindead teen comedy masquerading as it. I wish I didn't waste my time over it.

A terrible teen movie and the worst film I have seen so far of 2009.

3/10

Shadow of the Colossus is to be made into a movie...

So once again, Hollywood comes along, takes one of my favourite games/series and attempts to turn it into a movie...at the expense of the fans which will suffer once more. This time around it's Shadow of the Colossus- a game so mind blowing in it's premise that honestly there's no proper way of bringing it onto the screen, but of course the corporate fatcats will deem to try anyway. There's no hope for it whatsoever, as usual, and especially since it is written by Justin Marks, who just recently did the diabolical Street Fighter: The Legend of Chun-Li. It's also being produced by Kevin Kisher, who has been credited to The Scorpion King, another terrible film. Hollywood just don't know dick about adapting video games into movies, and they certainly won't know sh!t about this one either, especially considering how radical the game is. They should just leave it the hell alone.

SotC won't work unless it's a CGI movie. But I swear they'll try and make it like 300. Every fantasy movie wants to be like that nowadays, or like The Lord of the Rings- they never turn out like it, and it definitely won't for this. Cases in point: Eragon and In The Name of the King. Epic Fails. They will probably make it IMAX 3D now too, like everything else. It's the new gimmick, and they won't dismiss the fact that some of the scenes would look awesome on a massive screen with the new 3D technology. They'll probably wait for James Cameron's Avatar to come out to see how it effectively works there and then go in that direction. After all, they don't know sh!t about adding depth to the movie via writing, they'll just be spending money to wow audiences with special effects.

I wonder what Team Ico have to say about this- why did they sell the rights in the first place, anyway? They are supposed to be non-mainstream.

All my favourite games have had crappy movies made out of them bar a few, so there's not much hope.

Resident Evil has been messed up completly already- 3 crappy flicks and another 2 on the way.
Street Fighter- one unintentionally hilarious movie, another that is actually even worse. The animated movie however is king.
Mortal Kombat- Okay I loved the first one as a kid, twas was epic. And it was the first movie I can remember which had techno music with the fighting/action scenes...waaaay before The Matrix ever made it cool. And the soundtrack is killer. Underrated!
Mortal Kombat Annihilation- Pathetic. A new reboot dubbed "Devastation" is on the way (one can only hope it's good but again I doubt it).
Double Dragon- just plain silly.
Super Mario Bros. was terrible, but has somewhat grown on me after all these years.
Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within A decent sci-fi movie, nothing to do with the games though.
Final Fantasy: Advent Children- ridiculously crap film, 2 hours of Tekken style FMVs counting as "fan service"; no plot, no direction, no nothing.
Doom was bad.
D.O.A: Dead or Alive- dumb fun, but still shyte.
Bloodrayne- Awful.
Bloodrayne 2: Deliverance- Even worse.
The House of the Dead- Worse still.
House of the Dead 2- Worser than worse.
Alone in the Dark- Am I dead yet?
Max Payne- weak.
Silent Hill FINALLY! IMO, perfect. I loved it- but that's what you get from a director who is also a big fan in real life.

Next up, more of my favourite franchises being laid to waste:

Tekken Could go either way at this point but will most likely fail.
Castlevania Another epic fail, specially since it's Paul Anderson.
Return to Castle Wolfenstein- promising especially with the decent director pushing for the hard R rating.
and now Shadow of the Colossus

And even worse, rumours abound that Uwe Boll wants to make a Legacy of Kain movie next. Someone kill him, now.

Saying that, my favourite survival horror game Haunting Ground would work as a fantastic film only if Guillermo Del Toro directed it. He's got the visual style and ideas to bring it to life, and when I was watching Pan's Labyrinth it's amazing how some of the colours and tone match the game. Either him or Dario Argento (who's films the game was heavily inspired by) would be perfect. But i'm rooting for Del Toro. But that's wishful thinking of course and would never turn out like that, I really wouldn't want anyone to touch the game, it's a perfect little masterpiece which again should be left alone.

Either way, time to say goodbye once again to one of my most beloved games.

Review: Underworld (Len Wiseman, 2003)

Solid story, generic execution

Not a bad film by any means, but with a lot of flaws. Whilst it's foundations are superb with it's vision of Gothic grandeur and historical mythology, the film unfortunately falls short because of it's ultimately generic execution. The story is fantastic- Romeo and Juliet with vampires as suitably described by the filmmakers. A centuries old war between vampires and werewolves which spills forth into our present day world (the city in which the film takes place is never revealed but it is European, probably Budapest or Hungary). The writers have done a great job fleshing out a history for the plot and weaving in a lot of historical myth and legend which gives the story a lot of strong background, and I was very impressed as it works a treat.

The acting is also superb all round, most standout being Micheal Sheen as Lucian and Bill Nighy as Viktor who have fantastic characters and really play their parts well. Kate Beckinsale was also very good in the lead despite her unoriginal role as Selene- an expendable "death dealer". Of course all the characters themselves are unoriginal but the actors really give them high class quality which is very appreciated, all their talents make up for it.

Now on to whats wrong with the picture- which is everything else. The visuals and design is what makes it lose marks- there is just nothing original or unique here whatsoever. The style is clearly lifted from The Matrix, and whilst it worked in those films well here it's just tiresome. The vampires are high-class aristocratic wearing Gothic gowns and other cliché attire that is now associated with them, sipping wine, wearing black leather, big boots, long flowing leather jackets; Selene wears skin-tight leather and wields dual guns and jumps and back-flips all over the place in slow-motion, guns fire all around and people fall and fly high with hidden wires. Wev'e just seen it all before, and done better. This has all been done to death ever since the first Matrix film came out and here it's just yet another poor imitation. Given the solid and original background story for this film I was hoping for an equally rich and diverse style for the look as well, and sadly all we get is a tiresome Matrix rip off. It really does lower the quality of the film, really. As a designer myself I was really hoping for something cool, they could have had a lot of fun in the design phase sculpting a world which houses the great story but unfortunately is just exactly the same as the dark, gloomy and rainy world of Matrix and The Crow, with a hint of Blade. I know it's hard these days to come up with something new but still, there was a good opportunity here to put in a fresh spin, a comic-book style coolness here but they opted for the safe Matrix style slo-mo and leather costumes rip-off which so often plague our screens. People seem to love it, I really am tired of it.

Directing again is so-so. Whilst Len Wiseman does a decent job on his first directorial debut there's still a lot of improvement that can be made, though kudos to him anyway for doing well on his first try. The choreography is decent though the action scenes as I mentioned earlier are dire- everything looks cliché and at times awful, they really should have thought about it better. The effects look dumb and the werewolves in particular look terrible. The transformations are really cringe-worthy and the actual creature suits are equally cheap looking (some scenes are an absolute joke). Worse still are the performances of them- the creature performers half the time just waddle around and the animatronics hardly move at all making it look even more dumb, and the fights involving them are really painful to watch, especially when there have been a ton of good similar werewolf films like Dog Soldiers which did a better job. The vampires again just act typically cliché, snarling and jumping- we've just seen it all before so many times. Some of the CGI effects are on the bad side but thankfully the computer effects are kept to a minimum- director Wiseman opted to shoot everything practical, and whilst this is great as everything looks raw and gritty I just wish the werewolf suits and acting was better so it would all work together. Again better directing would have masked the low grade suits, but unfortunately everything is on show.

All in all an entertaining movie with a solid story that is really not bad at all for a first entry in a propose trilogy by a first time director. Whilst I enjoyed delving into the world I just wish it was realised better, there was ample room for scope but they went with a cliché Matrix design both in look and vibe which I really didn't like at all. If only they did something more original, as the story is so well done they really needed the universe to be equally good too. Still, I look forward to the ongoing saga as the plot is interesting and is now just getting started.

4/10