Having always been a fan of the supernatural, when I heard that the next James Wan horror film would be set in the London town of Enfield focusing around the much publicized Enfield Project, I was a little excited. Having recently spent an evening locked in a spooky establishment with poltergeist activity prevalent throughout the evening, anything that is due to send chills up my spine is always welcome.
I was happy with the first installment of the franchise, albeit the scarier moments were with the Annabelle side plot, but then the spin off film of the demonic doll was nowhere near as entertaining. Knowing more of the Enfield Project mainly down to my own personal interest, I was keen to know how the film would approach the undetermined amount of hoaxing and subsequent admissions to pranks from the young children to satisfy the active minds of the reporting teams.
I was not let down. Reports of furniture moving were supported by police witnesses which is portrayed at the start, everything else was down to subjecture and the camera helps with this by always being just off centre to events. There are a few overly fabricated and special effects heavy sections that took me out of the moment, but then I was dragged back in moments later with some creepy off screen movements. It has a feel of The Exorcist, dealing with similar context, being of a similar era, but even down to the atmosphere created by the Friedkin film.
The film should have ended where the investigation ended, but that would not have been a Hollywood ending, we needed something bigger, louder and more flashy which was a real down point, but I am used to the fact that the horror genre is terrible at closing a film. This is something that we now just have to accept, a horror film with a good ending is a real rarity.
To top my experience off perfectly, a few days later I was on a work field trip. Meeting a couple of clients at our head office on a couple of days out of our Manchester Office. The location of our meetings was no other than Enfield itself, Green Street only a matter of minutes away from the boardroom. It felt completely fitting that I should don the running trainers and pay a visit to Mr Bill Wilkins and say "hello". I was amazed and the mundane looking building, no one seemed ot be knowledgeable of the goings-on of this house, it was just another house on another street. School children ran by without a care, I think I was looking for more of an ominous feel, but what I got was a sense of the mundane.
If you put The Rock into any film it seems to bring it up a few notches, well most films, Hercules was pretty far down the notch ladder to start with! But Kevin Hart is a little of a fad for me, his recent escapades with Ice Cube in the Ride Along films were far from entertaining. It feels like he is the same person in all his character portrayals, and they all feel a little 90's.
That being said, throw Mr Johnson into the mix and he suddenly become mildly more entertaining.
Central Intelligence is a 90's style buddy cop movie, nothing new, nothing adventurous, nothing out of the ordinary. You will have seen this film 100 times before, the back and forth comedy has been done before, the plot has been done many many times before and the twist and turns are highly expected, but you know what, I enjoyed this outing thoroughly. Now it is not one I would recommend parting with hard earned cash for, especially with the price of a cinema ticket now, but one that when it comes to Netflix or other streaming services that it is added to the queue of things to watch with beer in hand.
The banter between our two main protagonists is superb, a lot of it feels improvised between the two but that makes it more natural rather than scripted. The adoption of the 90's style outtakes at the end emphasise this thought as well.
The is a nice little threat of ambiguity of The Rock's allegiance that has you questioning character choices and some nice little stunts thrown in for good measure. A few laughs along the way and a good back story to each character.
Nothing new, nothing original but highly entertaining. Can we please have the Rock in more films please?
In 1996, Mr Roland Emmerich came into the lime light with the blockbuster smash, "Independence Day". Aliens from far of reaches of space enter our atmosphere and decide to eviscerate monumental building and cities before trying to reduce the population of our planet to a count of 0. This was followed with similar films such as 2012, The Day After Tomorrow, and Godzilla, each having the same set pieces of destruction and planetary threat (although Godzilla was basically New York but still big on the destruction of famous landmarks).
I was never really a fan of Independence Day, I felt it was lacking in something, long and convoluted, and more of a special effects promotion rather than a decent film. The only saving grace was Captain Hiller, the charisma of Will Smith made the difference. So 20 years later, when the sequel was announced I was hoping for his return. Instead we get his son, who, as he was only young when his father passed, one can only assume the wit, humour and finesse was not something that had be prevalent in the relationship. This kid has the charisma of a wet turnip, and a sultry one at that.
So removing the one saving grace and replacing it with a soul sucking counterpart is not a good start for me. Throw in massive amounts of faceless destruction and big bashing CG/Green screen action and I am getting distracted by the thoughts of the day ahead and jobs that I need to do at home pretty quickly.
Thor's younger brother is entertaining in parts, and the reprising roles of Jeff Goldblum, Brett Spiner and Bill Pullman and nostalgically entertaining, but I could have really done without the return of Julius Levinson (Goldblum's Father)
The story is pretty much the same (non-evident) and the effects are as big and brash as ever. The finale felt more like a video game boss battle with flashing weak spots and using the hive mind plot is always a cheap cop out.
I have since heard that a third installment is already planned for this franchise, which when you think that the second film took 20 years to finally get a script the team thought was worthwhile, at least a third script is being rushed through to capitalise on the current market.
The year of the versus starts with our two favourite heroes of the Marvel franchises. The guys that started the whole thing off (if you ignore the Hulk attempts). The wit and banter of the brains in the suit against the charm and strength of the man behind the shield.
There is no other way of me saying this other than Civil War is the best of the Marvel films to date, in fact, it is the best Super Hero genre film in my opinion as well. With more Avengers than The Avengers and introductions of new characters such as Black Panther and of course everyone's favourite neighbourhood spider, I was entertained from start to glorious finish.
Engaging story line with reasons to flip-flop to either side of the argument, I struggled to choose an over all winning side as both parties had feasible pro's and con's. Throw in the collection of awesome side characters whose choices are questionable as well and the inevitable showdown is just delightful
When I saw the original trailer, I was impressed with the airport clips, what I was not expecting was the scale of this showdown. A good 20 minutes of a visual spectacular, colourful, engaging, hilarious and threatening, just excellent in execution.
It didn't seem to slow down for the full duration and I wanted to know so much more about the new characters, thankfully I will not have to wait much longer for these films, and I am really excited about them. The Marvel Franchise is really strong at the moment (with exceptions of a few hiccups), and the future of the product is really promising with the introduction of the new crowd. With trepidation towards another webslinging outing and another origin story, it looks like Spidy is in the right hands now, but only time will tell.
Very entertaining, exciting and enjoyable, this is a must for comic book film fans and pretty much anyone else. Go and enjoy
Having just returned from my London trip to Star Wars
Celebration, I thought it would only be fitting to step into enemy
territory. Being a film fan (as I am
sure you can no fully appreciate), my love of everything film regardless of
genre, franchise or finance, I am not a die-hard Star Wars fan who thinks that
everything Federation is sub-par. Take
the prequels, they are terrible films in my opinion (Revenge of the Sith being
as close to reasonable as the whole prequel trilogy can muster) and films like
Wrath of Khan, Nemesis and First Contact definitely put the Star Wars films to
shame.
The recent “alternate dimension” versions from Bad Robot
have been a little uninspired for me though, yes they look amazing and they are
well acted, but they always leave me feeling a little under-satisfied.
Choosing to watch just the newest part of a special trilogy screening at
Cineworld Leigh, primarily because there is a 5 hour parking restriction on
their car park which has stung me in the past for double cinema trips and also
because I was happy to miss the first part of the new triumvirate. I had watched Into Darkness at home on Netflix a few hours earlier and just after midnight the title card
appeared for the next installment of Kirk's journey, this time directed by the Fast and Furious Justin Lin
One thing I did notice was the lack of audience
members. Not comparing apples and
oranges, but both Wars and Trek are common rivals for each other. The midnight screening of The Force Awakens
was buzzing, when the Logo hit the screen there was a raucous cheer, with
Beyond there were 30 people sporadically gathered and the atmosphere was far
from electric. Possibly because they had
sat for 5 hours already in the company of Kirk and his colleagues.
ST:Beyond was slow and cold again for me, the high amount of
exposition and bad guy monologues felt very 70’s in style, it felt like nothing
had moved forward with the films in the last 30 years. I agree that The Force Awakens is the exact
same story as the original New Hope, but it had moved on in years. Another distracting factor was Scotty, he is
Simon Pegg doing a hybrid Scottish accent, it was distracting and hard to view
him as anyone else. Bones, Ahura, Spock,
Kirk and the rest of the crew all seemed to put the effort in, but nothing
really felt epic or grand just mediocre.
The finale was a left over set piece from Guardians of the
Galaxy, a b-roll if you may. It seemed
very obvious to me that the production team had watched Guardians and thought
“how cool would that be with the Enterprise?”, lackluster is my opinion.
Not as bad as “The Voyage Home”, but far from the top tier
When Bryan Singer retook the helm and blessed us with Days
of Future Past, especially with wonderful scene with Quicksilver and the guards
I was a happy man again. Then came the
announcement that Apocalypse would be the big bad for the next installment of the
reboot franchise and I was even happier.
The universe had been reset so well and the new cast were nailing it.
Xmen Apocalypse didn’t live up to those expectations, not
that it is a bad film, far from it, but when the bar is set so high from the last
encounter this just felt far too bitty, scatty and almost like, dare I say it,
it felt like I was watching Mortal Kombat Annihilation (but done well). Far too many characters with far too much
story to tell left me feeling unfulfilled.
When an age old god, the original mutant, is awoken from his
slumber he gathers his four horsemen and looks to wipe out humanity and start
again. There are only a few who can
stand in his way, those with xtra powers, the XMen. Led by Mystique (the wonderful Jennifer Lawrence),
the band of young and rising familiars must use all their efforts to stop the
Apocalypse.
With far too many plot points working in conjunction with
each other, I felt that the film was really scatty and lacking. The Quicksilver
scene was pretty much the
same with nothing new, he just turned up in the nick of time, did his thing,
had a bit of fun on the way, but it was nothing new. The four horsemen were really lacking in
oomph and just reminded me of the side characters from the aforementioned
Annihilation. (Phsylock didn’t help my
analogy by doing a Kitana Cosplay). It
looks wonderful, but again, there were some scenes that really looked like a
high end computer game not a big budget blockbuster.
I personally think that there is too much crammed in to the
mix and not enough time spent with the right people. Apocalypse is an interesting bad guy, but his
henchmen pointless (three of them there to distract), the good guys are only
given moments to shine. I am wondering
if an extended cut of the film will be released soon which will be about 4
hours long but not be as scatty and bitty.
Don’t get me wrong though – this is a fun and enjoyable,
even the it knowingly acknowledges this after an in film cinema trip to watch
“Return of the Jedi”. Jean Grey
comments, “the third film in a franchise is always the worst”. With the characters offering a meta-reference
to the quality of the film, it does not fill me full of confidence.
My friend, Roshtakular, said this was his most favourite
Comic Book film to date, I am yet to get his opinion…maybe I could convince him
to share his thoughts.
