The Black Hole

I was re-watching Who’s Afraid of the Big Black Hole on YouTube and I got all nostalgic about the 1979 film The Black Hole. A couple of clicks on Google Play and I bought and watched it. Flippin’ awesome!

Considering this is 35 years old, it’s stood the test of time pretty well. There are certainly a few dodgy effects on show, but most of the film looks fine. This is post-Start Wars after all. There are some scenes where people can seemingly survive in space without spacesuits, but even that could be explained away based on the tech used by the main ship I guess. 🙂

We definitely need more space-based Sci Fi. Can I have Guardians of the Galaxy 2 and a new FireFly series please?

Cheers

Tim…

 

The Hobbit : The Battle of the Five Armies

I’ve just got back from watching The Hobbit : The Battle of the Five Armies.

I didn’t see the previous film at the cinema because I couldn’t be bothered. I watched it on a plane some time later. When my friends texted me to ask if I wanted to see this film I started to reply no, then remembered it’s ages since I got to watch a film at the cinema with friends (I usually go on my own), so I said yes…

Spoilers below. Don’t read anymore if you care.

Basically, this feels like a montage of clips from the previous two films with some bits of L.O.T.R footage thrown in for good measure. I’m so sick of seeing a handful of people defeat an army of bigger, stronger, faster and more well armed people (orcs). I can get my head around elves being much faster and more agile. I can kind-of get my head around dwarves being solid and stronger than they look. I can’t deal with humans being able to brute-force block an attack by a giant troll because … physics!

When I see scenes of walking I think, “Not more friggin’ walking!”. When “the eagles” inevitably came I couldn’t help myself from exclaiming, “Oh for f*cks sake!” The two trilogies could have been condensed into two episodes of, “There’s a nasty thing we don’t like. Let’s send the eagles to solve our problems for us!”

As you’ve probably guessed by now, I was not very impressed with the film. This Hobbit trilogy should have been a single film. Two at the most. Making this into three films embodies everything I hate about the film industry! It was just filler shot after filler shot. Peter Jackson needs to get his head out of his ass and learn to make a film with some decent pacing.

I’ve come close to giving this a “toilet rating”, which has been reserved for Twilight films up until now…

In order to end on a positive note…

  • Benedict Cumberbatch voices were good.
  • Lee Pace looks so beautifully sinister as Thranduil. They could have made more of his part, rather than adding in Legolas in a ham-fisted attempt to appeal to the fans of the L.O.T.R. trilogy.
  • A couple of minutes of Cate Blanchett is always welcome.

Cheers

Tim…

PS. Like the other L.O.T.R. and Hobbit films, I think this is probably quite good to watch when you are sitting with a group from friends chatting and only paying it half your attention. I’m sure I’ll end up buying the DVD for this very purpose…

PPS. My friends liked it.

PPPS. It’s about 13 years since the L.O.T.R. was made, so I guess it’s about time for the Hollywood reboot of the series…

The Expendables 3

It’s a holiday weekend and I just got back from watching The Expendables 3.

OK. You don’t go to a film like this expecting an Oscar winning script, but come on! During the end credits, when it said “Story by Sylvester Stallone”, I thought of a scene from Boogie Nights where they discus the plot of an adult movie about 30 seconds before they start to shoot, which goes something like this…

“Enter Reed to audition for Amber. They go at it.

Dirk enters. Meets with Becky. They go at it.”

In the case of The Expendables 3, the same sort of thing must have happened, but something like this…

“Sylvestor enters the room. He shoots sh*t up..

Terry Crews enters. Sees the bad guys. Shoots sh*t up.”

It’s also worth remembering that physics works completely different in The Expendables 3 world… 🙂

That aside, it’s a good laugh. I’m not really sure how they can sustain the series, because really this is just a rehash of the previous two. Actually, you could probably just rearrange the fight scenes from these three films to create “new” films every year for a while. That way you wouldn’t even had to waste time filming…

Antonio Banderas, who was described by a lady behind me as, “… so damn sexy!”, played the only character that had any sort of back-story, but I always think of that cat from Shrek when I hear his voice… 🙂

Cheers

Tim…

Lucy

I’ve had a day off today, so as well as swimming, starting to clear out my junk room and going to the pub to say “see ya” to a colleague who is going on maternity leave, I went to see Lucy.

Let me start by saying this is pretty much a rip-off of Akira. Not in a word-for-word copy sense, but it’s like Luc Besson watched Akira and said, “How and I take most of the main points, while trying to make it seem like I’ve written something new, but still steal a bunch of the visuals?” He then went to sleep, woke up and wrote Lucy.

Plagiarism (or derivative work) gripe aside, I really enjoyed it. I watch Akira on a regular basis, so the fact this film has a similar message is pretty neat. Scarlett Johansson doesn’t really do it for me, but she is OK in this role. It’s nice to see strong female characters kicking off. There are a few scenes that should have been modified in my opinion. I think Luc Besson disappeared up his own ass a couple of times, but on the whole it was pretty darn cool.

Added to that, they kept the time down to a pleasant 89 mins.

Cheers

Tim…

Dawn of the Planet of the Apes

Today’s film was Dawn of the Planet of the Apes.

I really enjoyed the first film and this is a continuation of that story, set 10 years later.

The pacing on this film was pretty similar to the last one. If you are one of the people that found that too slow, you will have a similar experience this time. If, like me, you would prefer to watch the apes doing ape-stuff, rather than than seeing them going ape-shit, then this will work for you. There are action scenes, but a lot of it is movie time is them just ionteracting with each other and humans. It feels very “real” to me…

Cheers

Tim…

PS. My mom recently saw the previous film on TV and asked how many chimps they used for the main character when they were filming… She figured it was like Lassie, where they used about 12 dogs, each trained for different scenes in the film… I had to explain it was CGI, which goes to show the quality of this stuff…

 

Guardians of the Galaxy

I’ve just got back from seeing Guardians of the Galaxy.

Take note Sci-Fi movie makers! This is your competition! This is what you need to aim to outdo!

It’s very cool. It looks great. You quickly start to give a crap about the characters. It doesn’t take itself too seriously.

Favourite Character: Groot. I challenge anyone to come out of the film and not want to say, “I am Groot”, in response to any situation. 🙂

I didn’t really fancy it when I saw the trailers. A couple of people were talking about how good the reviews were, so I thought I would give it a go. I’m glad I did. It’s excellent!

Cheers

Tim…

Godzilla

OMG (Oh My Godzilla)! What a total pile of steaming, festering dog crap! It is incredible how they managed to spend $160 Million and produce something with less credibility than Sharknado, which only cost $250,000!

I really don’t think it has any redeeming qualities. How, in a world that brought us Cloverfield and Monsters, can so much money be spent on such a worthless pile of guff like Godzilla. In my Cloverfield review I mentioned how bad the previous spin of Godzilla was. This respin is no better.

I really can’t be bothered to explain why it was such a putrid pile of excrement. Who the hell gave this 7.3 on IMDB? I would rather watch Pacific Rim, and that was total toilet as well…

Cheers

Tim…

X-Men : Days of Future Past

This morning I went to see X-Men : Days of Future Past. It was very cool!

Don’t get caught up in the whole time travel thing. It really isn’t a big deal in the whole scheme of things.

My favourite characters were Blink and Quicksilver. Evan Peters plays Quicksilver, who has one of the coolest scenes in the whole movie. Bingbing Fan plays Blink. You don’t see too much of her in the film, but what you do see is awesome.

Hugh Jackman looks like he came from the planet steroids. He’s always in good shape for these films, but this was something else. Either there were some visual effects in operation, or there are performance enhancing drugs involved.

If I had to criticise one thing, it would be James McAvoy. I think he’s a good actor, but he tries too hard in this film. It feels forced to me…

Anyway, well worth the money IMHO!

Cheers

Tim…

Divergent

I’ve just got back from watching Divergent. It is a really good film!

Don’t believe any bullshit comparisons to that crappy Hunger Games. It is so much better than that rubbish! It’s probably a good idea not to read any summaries of the plot either, since it sounds kind-of stupid on paper. In the film it makes a lot more sense and just works.

Very pleased I went to see it. One of the better Sci Fi/action films I’ve seen is quite a while. Much more worthwhile than that spider-thing…

Cheers

Tim…