Tag: film review

These old films about computers (see also WarGames) are amazing. They never manage to get computers right, do they? They just assume that computers in the future will get bigger, have more flashing lights, still be using floppy disks, and yet will have amazing artificial intellegence. Presumably squeezed into 16K of RAM. Demon Seed is about one of these computers. One with its own brain, and tasked with things such as finding places to drill for oil, predicting the stock …

Paul Kaye introduced it as a film you need to see before you die. I’m not sure that’s entirely necessary, as there are many better films out there. However, there aren’t many better films with Monty Python involvement, and midgets. Sorry, dwarves. What is the politically correct term? Very small people? Persons of unusually short stature? Although it was written by two Pythons, and stars some of them, overt silliness is kept to a minimum. The story is all over …

Everyone loves Ghibli films, right? They’re everything Disney aren’t. You know, like good and stuff. My Neighbour Totoro follows the story of two girls who, with their father, move to the country to be nearer their mother in hospital. There’s not really much of a plot, as very little actually happens. It’s just a very nice fairy story of the forest spirits (Totoro and his friends) and how they help the girls a couple of times after the girls lend …

No, I haven’t seen The Dark Knight yet. But this’ll do, yes? Sort of. Unlike the first two 1990s Batman films, which were a bit dark and "grown-up", Batman Forever doesn’t pretend to be much more than a film based on the 60s series. It’s a comedy. The baddies, The Riddler and Two-Face, are maniacal in the same way the baddies in 60s Batman were. It’s all bright colours and puns and silliness. The plot doesn’t make much sense. There …

Jeff Goldblum only seems to fit a role if he’s playing a slightly strange scientist. In The Fly, he’s a physicist who develops a teleportation device. Having met a journalist who initially wants a story, but eventually falls in love with him, he manages to work out how to successfully transport living matter. Without turning it inside-out like the baboon it didn’t work on… He later gets drunk having jumped to conclusions about his new girlfriend’s relationship with her boss, …

OMG! Matthew Broderick looks about 7 years old! The plot: boy “accidently” kicks off World War 3 by hacking into a military defence computer, thinking it’s part of a video game company, and playing “Global Thermonuclear War”. He’s arrested, escapes, finds a guy who was legally dead (who wrote the “games” on the computer), and obviously, saves the day. I don’t even know where to begin with regards to the nonsensical way computers are portrayed. But then, every film involving …

Visually, this has to be the cleverest, most well done art style I’ve seen in ages. Somehow, it welds live action with steampunk comic-book, adding some 1940s war film overtones, and film noir lighting. Pretty much the entire film was recorded on a blue-screen, yet everything seems real enough – albeit almost sepia-toned in places (and where appropriate). The plot follows Joe (“Sky Captain” himself) and Polly, a reporter and love interest/rival for Joe, as they investigate the giant robots …

Kurt Russell is an awkwardly almost-funny trucker who somehow ends up part of a fight against supernatural Chinese supermen and a very old, almost dead, guy who wants to regain his youth by marrying and then sacrificing a girl with green eyes. The plot has huge holes. Some of it doesn’t even make sense. Lo Pan (the evil old bloke) reminds me of Davros. The acting is rubbish, several of the characters are completely superfluous, the Chinese girl (with green …

I have a few films to get through, so nothing in depth on these, sorry! The Princess Bride is a film of the same genre, as well as style and era, as such things as Willow, The Neverending Story and Time Bandits. Basic plot: man and woman fall in love, man goes off to find his fortune, doesn’t return, girl is taken as bride for local prince, gang kidnaps girl, girl rescued by mysterious stranger, blah blah. The plot doesn’t …

I’ve seen this before. A long, long time ago. But I was somewhat confused while watching it again. First of all, large amounts of the film are pretty irrelevant to the story. There’s an awful lot of setting the scene, but the majority of the main action happens in the last 20 minutes. In fact, the first half of the film isn’t really even about Max himself anyway – it’s all about Goose, Max’s partner. And there’s lots I don’t …

Some people say a lot of bad things about Quentin Tarantino. They say his films are overly violent. They say he borrows too many ideas from other films. But that doesn’t matter – he’s a clever writer and an outstanding cinematographer. Like his previous films, Kill Bill is told in a disjointed, out of sequence manner. The story jumps backwards and forwards in time, but never in a way that confuses. It follows The Bride (Uma Thurman) as she bumps …

I was expecting this to be very similar to 28 Days Later. I wasn’t far wrong. A seemingly empty city, actually filled with “infected” humans. The story differs, however – in 28 Days Later, a few survivors band together to escape to a safe haven. Here, one man and his dog remain in the city, trying to find a cure. The shots of the overgrown city are very well done, but would have been more believeable if the streets were …

I seem to recall that round the time of release, Bulletproof Monk got some good press and pretty decent reviews. So imagine my surprise when not only was the film not really what I was expecting in terms of content (I think I mixed it up with Equilibrium), but also it wasn’t as good as I thought it was supposed to be either. I’ve never been a fan of “mis-matched partners” films. Here, Tibetan monk Chow-Yun Fat and New York …

They don’t make films like this any more. Well, not often. In the 80’s, they made loads of “zany madcap chase” films, but you just don’t see them these days. Rat Race is silly. It’s over the top nonsense. Every situation is contrived, the few special effects are awful, and I have no idea why they cast Rowan Atkinson as an Italian. But… it was funny. Some bits were absolute genius too – the build up of Jon Lovitz’s character …

I’m a relative latecomer to Kevin Smith films. I’ve seen Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back, and know of (and have seen bits of) the others, but for some reason have never got round to watching the rest. So I saw Dogma today. The plot is suitably far-fetched. A down-the-line relative of Jesus is charged with the task of preventing two misguided fallen angels from unintentionally bringing about the end of everything, while God is missing, presumed dead, following a …