the m0vie blog

Non-Review Review: Cowboys & Aliens

Posted on August 15, 2011 by Darren

This movie was seen as part of Movie Fest, the rather wonderful film festival organised by Vincent and everybody else over at movies.ie. It was well worth attending, and I’m already looking forward to next year. Good job all.

It’s a testament to Jon Favreau’s skills as a filmmaker that Cowboys & Aliens ends up as a watchable, if entirely forgettable, addition to an ever-growing summer schedule. The movie is plagued by fairly fundamental problems, from a miscast lead to a failure to follow through on an interesting premise, right down to being one of the more blandly predictable blockbusters in quite some time. Favreau plays the best hand he can with the cards he has been dealt, offering a passable imitation of Steven Spielberg, but the problem is that none of it adds up to a win.

Not quite a blast...

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Filed under: Non-Review Reviews | Tagged: American Old West, Bourne Identity, Cowboys & Aliens, daniel craig, film, Girl With the Dragon Tattoo, harrison ford, jon favreau, Movie, non-review review, Paul Dano, review, steven spielberg, Western (genre) | 6 Comments »

Non-Review Review: Takers

Posted on August 12, 2011 by Darren

The obvious point of comparison for Takers is The Town, Ben Affleck’s bank-robbing thriller that opened around the same time. However, I think it’s a misleading comparison, if only because Affleck’s film feels far more specific and nuanced in scope than this heist thriller. Instead, I think the best point of reference for this particular feature film is to consider is as “Heat for the MTV generation.” Of course, any film’s going to come out quite badly from that synopsis, but I do think it’s fair, as it speaks to both the strengths and (perhaps more importantly) the weaknesses of this particular film.

Are the crew being taken for a ride?

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Filed under: Non-Review Reviews | Tagged: arts, bank robbery, ben affleck, fiction, film, Idris Elba, los angeles, Matt Dillon, Montage (filmmaking), Movie, Movies, non-review review, Online Writing, review, Rosemarie DeWitt, SAT, Takers, the wire, United States, Wire | 2 Comments »

Non-Review Review: Ninja Assassin

Posted on August 12, 2011 by Darren

I want to like Ninja Assassin. I want a nice, pulpy, old-school hyper-violent throw-back like the title suggested. The two words thrown together don’t necessarily evoke the imagery of classic cinema, but they at least promise a reasonably diverting action thriller. However, it seems that nobody told the writer and director this. Despite it’s surprisingly direct title, the movie is just one big bloated mess, which seems to aspire to a complexity that nobody expects of it, and fails miserably. There seem to be occasional moments where the film grabs the potential of the concept, acknowledging a sort of Tarantino-light nostalgic approach to pop culture trash, but most of the film takes itself far too seriously, but without the skill necessary to succeed as the film it seems to want to be.

All fired up...

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Filed under: Non-Review Reviews | Tagged: arts, Europol, film, films, kung-fu, martial arts, Movie, Movies, Ninja, Ninja Assassin, non-review review, review, sin city, thriller | 2 Comments »

Five More Creative Ways to Make Green Lantern 2 A Better Film (Rather Than Just “Darker and Edgier”)…

Posted on August 11, 2011 by Darren

Green Lantern was a disappointment. Along with Marvel’s Daredevil, the Green Lantern series has been perhaps the strongest mainstream superhero title published in the past decade, and Warner Brothers couldn’t manage to produce a decent film. This was supposed to be the company’s first superhero franchise outside of the tried-and-tested Batman and Superman properties, and it fell flat. Nevertheless, Warners have vowed to press on with the sequel, daring to produce a “darker and edgier” follow-up to the film. Ignoring the fact that not all superheroes need to be “darker and edgier”, it still ignores the fact that the problems with Martin Campbell’s would-be franchise launcher had very little to do with being too light or soft. Here are five pieces of advice that the executive would do well to take on board, before deciding to simply “go darker.”

The sequel... Dark Green Lantern...

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Filed under: Movies | Tagged: Abin Sur, Batman in film, Christopher Nolan, Doctor Polaris, films, green lantern, green lantern 2, hal jordan, Han Solo, liam neeson, Movies, parallax, sequels, star wars, Warner Bros | 2 Comments »

Non-Review Review: Green Lantern – Emerald Knights

Posted on August 11, 2011 by Darren

In many ways, Green Lantern: Emerald Knights can be seen as a counterpart to the earlier Batman: Gotham Knight. Beyond the fact that both contain “knight” in the title, both animated films were released as promotional tie-ins to major motion pictures featuring the characters in question, and both are structured as vignettes rather than one continuous storyline. Don’t let that fool you. Unlike the incredibly uneven Gotham Knight, Emerald Knights is actually quite a worthy little movie.

Good to the Corps...

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Filed under: Non-Review Reviews | Tagged: Abin Sur, alan moore, batman: gotham knight, Christopher Nolan, Comics, dc animated universe, DC Universe Animated Original Movie, DC Universe Animated Original Movies, dcau, dcu, Emerald Knights, geoff johns, green lantern, Green Lantern: First Flight, Movies, non-review review, peter tomasi, review | 2 Comments »

Non-Review Review: Bolt

Posted on August 10, 2011 by Darren

I really enjoyed Bolt. Being entirely honest, Disney’s track record with its own CGI was hardly encouraging, with Chicken Little and Meet the Robinsons hardly measuring up to the work of the company’s other animation division. Bolt might not be quite as good as Tangled, but – at its very best – it manages to hit on those big, shared emotions and themes that have helped Pixar set the standard for modern animation. For most of its run, it’s a solidly entertaining and diverting family film, but it also has moments of powerful emotional connection.

His bark's worse than his bite...

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Filed under: Non-Review Reviews | Tagged: animation, arts, Bolt, cgi, Chicken Little, Ellen DeGeneres, films, finding nemo, john travolta, Meet the Robinsons, Movies, non-review review, review, Susie Essman | 3 Comments »

Justice League International: Volume 2 (Hardcover) (Review/Retrospective)

Posted on August 10, 2011 by Darren

In light of the massive DC reboot taking place next month, launching with a Geoff Johns and Jim Lee run on a new Justice League title, I thought I’d take a look back at another attempt to relaunch the Justice League, emerging from the then-recent Crisis on Infinite Earths.

I loved the first collection of Justice League International (even though I don’t think the book was called Justice League International yet). It was the perfect example of fun self-aware superhero comics that didn’t need to wallow in grime and darkness to feel confident in themselves. It was wry and cheeky, but still sincere enough that it never seemed too cynical. And, in fairness to Giffen and deMatteis, they actually told some good stories with nice grasps on the characters involved. This second collection can’t help but feel a little bit lighter, somehow, less significant – too tied up in other things to have enough fun on its own terms. Which is a shame.

Built on a solid foundation...

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Filed under: Comics | Tagged: batman, Black Canary, Captain Atom, comic books, crossovers, dc comics, ed brubaker, J. M. DeMatteis, J.L.I., JLI, jm dematteis, john ostrander, justice league, Justice League International, keith giffen, Martian Manhunter, maxwell lord, millennium, millennium (comics), millennium (dc comics), new gods, richard donner, suicide squad | Leave a comment »

Non-Review Review: Snatch

Posted on August 9, 2011 by Darren

The wonderful folks over at the Jameson Cult Film Club were polite enough to sneak me into their screening of Snatch. It was my first time attending a screening organised by the team, and I was genuinely impressed. seriously, if you live in Ireland and are a film buff, do yourself a favour and pop over to sign on up. They transformed the Tivoli Theatre into a series of sets from the film, with an open trailer park out the back, a boxing ring inside and lovely bit of flavour throughout. It really was a fantastic evening, and the crew deserve a huge amount of kudos for pulling it off in such style. Hell, they even got actors impersonating the characters to introduce the film, with a Brad Pitt impersonator telling us to turn off our phones with the help of subtitles. I honestly think it might be the closest I’ve ever been to living inside a film, and I’ve been to Disneyland.

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Filed under: Non-Review Reviews | Tagged: angelina jolie, brad pitt, christopher walken, cockney, Disneyland, film, films, guy ritchie, Ireland, jameson, jameson cult film club, Jason Statham, Lock Stock and Two Smoking Barrels, Movies, non-review review, Rade Šerbedžija, review, Snatch, Vinnie Jones | Leave a comment »

What Measure is a Monster? or Sympathy for the Devil…

Posted on August 9, 2011 by Darren

I loved Super 8. It was just a wonderfully made coming-of-age tale that paid excellent homage to those old Spielberg films (even those he produced, like The Goonies, not just the ones he directed). However, as I got thinking about the film, and the plot that focuses on a rather ugly-looking alien escaped from government custody, I did find myself somewhat conflicted in what to make of the menace. Was it a poor victim of torture and inhumane treatment at the hands of the United States military, or was it a genuinely evil creature that deserved to be put down? It’s interesting how Abrams manipulates us into feeling sympathy for the creature, despite the fact it tends to feast on innocent human flesh.

Well, it's certainly alien...

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Filed under: Movies | Tagged: Boris Karloff, bruce greenwood, Cloverfield, Cooper, Extraterrestrial life, film, frankenstein, Human, J. J. Abrams, Laurence Olivier, monster movie, morality, planet of the apes, steven spielberg, super 8, Super 8 mm film, Super 8 monster, United States | 2 Comments »

Non-Review Review: Rise of the Planet of the Apes

Posted on August 8, 2011 by Darren

Why would have thought that a monkey rebellion could be the stuff of great tragedy? That, in a Simian revolt, we may yet see the best and the worst of ourselves reflected back? The leading monkey of the piece is named for Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar, but its to the credit of Rise of the Planet of the Apes that it evokes a wonderfully powerful observation repeated many times throughout both history and fiction, perhaps best articulated by Ghandi, “We are the architects of our future, not its victims.” I think we’ve come a long way in how we use computer-generated imagery in cinema, and I would suggest that Rise of the Planet of the Apes stands as something of a signpost. For the CGI Caesar stands as one of the most tragic and compelling protagonists of the year, in a film that manages to cut to the heart of a franchise in the way that decades of sequels and prequels and a remake could only dream of. It’s undoubtedly the best film to include the words “Planet” and “Apes”in the title since Charleton Heston had a mental breakdown on a beach.