Movie Reviews in Five Dotpoints of Less - Part II

Gone Baby Gone (2007)

7.7/10 on IMDb
94% on Rotten Tomatoes

Ben Affleck's directorial debut starring his very own brother Casey Affleck (yes, apparently Casey is a male name now?)

Based off the novel by Dennis Lehane, it tells the story of two private investigators looking into the case of a missing girl

Really well written and a great job for Ben Affleck's first directing job

Very intense and highly recommended

Some crazy plot twists in there


Rescue Dawn (2006)

7.4/10 on IMDb
91% on Rotten Tomatoes

Christian Bale portrays an American pilot who gets gunned down during the Vietnam War, taken as prisoner, and becomes the only American to have successfully escaped from a POW camp in the war

Christian Bale is so amazingly method! Throughout the course of the film you can see him visibly getting thinner and thinner until his face is just skin on bone, and he even eats worms and a snake for this!

The other actors are method too, losing a whole ton of weight to portray malnutritioned and deprived prisoners of war

An interesting film but, be warned, it looks like it's filmed on a video camera or something; the quality is not the best and the DVD I rented didn't have a subtitles option so it was really hard to hear what they were saying half the time

"Empty what is full. Fill what is empty. Scratch what itches."


Karate Kid (1984)

7.2/10 on IMDb
90% on Rotten Tomatoes

Another classic film - do I even need to describe it?

Wax on, wax off

There's really not much to say - it's a classic film that combines karate, child-labour (under the guise of training), humour, and puberty (but you already knew all that)


Troy (2004)

7.2/10 on IMDb
54% on Rotten Tomatoes

Brad Pitt stars as Achilles, the legendary soldier that fights in the Trojan War

After studying Greek Mythology in Uni, I think this does a pretty good job of adapting a Greek myth (because, let's face it, they're all extremely bizarre) into a sellable Hollywood action film (and, of course, they did do some changes to the original myth)

While the actors were great (and it's always great looking at Orlando Bloom's face), the film was really really long (a bit over 2.5 hours), so enjoyment kind of wanes over time

So, it is enjoyable, but not a must-see or anything


Mr. Holmes (2015)

7.5/10 on IMDb
86% on Rotten Tomatoes

Sir Ian McKellen: the man, the legend; first, Magneto; then, Gandalf; now, Mr. Holmes

Although, it's an aged, retired, Sherlock Holmes, but still Sherlock Holmes nonetheless

Unfortunately, Ian McKellen's amazing acting can't save this film

An extremely slow-paced movie that does not do any justice to the amazing skills of Sherlock Holmes means this movie is definitely not worth the watch

I Spy with my Little Eye

So 2015 is spoiling us with the spy films! We've already had Kingsman: The Secret Service, one of the best films of the year, as well as Spy, and we're going to have Bridge of Spies and Spectre coming out later this year.

But, let's have a look at the two spy films that have been hitting the box office in the past few weeks: the fifth installment in the Mission: Impossible franchise, as well as The Man from U.N.C.L.E.


Mission: Impossible - Rogue Nation (2015)

7.8/10 on IMDb
93% on Rotten Tomatoes
This film dives straight into it as we follow Tom Cruise's Ethan Hunt trying to bring down the Syndicate. Straight up, the very first scene starts off with an intense sequence and you know that if THIS is the opening scene, the rest of the film is going to be pretty amazing.

Sure enough, the rest of the film was non-stop action scene after action scene, interesting plot development after interesting plot development.

I really don't like Tom Cruise (there's something off-putting about his voice, don't you think? - and let's just forget about how weird he was), but he has been on a winning streak in the last few years with Mission: Impossible - Ghost Protocol, Edge of Tomorrow, and now, this.

Tom Cruise is actually insane, like he was ACTUALLY hanging off the side of that plane and he actually learned how to hold his breath for OVER SIX MINUTES to film that underwater scene (see his interview on The Tonight Show). Like... that's CRAZY! No matter how much you dislike this guy, you have to give him MASSIVE PROPS for doing all that.

But, he's definitely not the only amaizng actor in this film. Simon Pegg is once again hilarious and great, and Jeremy Renner, Alec Baldwin and Ving Rhames all bring their A-games as well.

BUT.

The chick in this film is amazing. I've never seen her in anything before but she's incredibly pretty, incredibly sexy, and such a bad ass. She is going to go on to do some pretty amazing things.

As I said before, the film is pretty much non-stop action, and my favourite scene was actually a really really amazing motorbike/car chase. It's such a notable scene, even though it's just another chase scene and it's not like we haven't seen one of those before (looking at you, all 120 minutes of Mad Max: Fury Road).

So in the end, this is a really great film that deserves to be watched, hopefully in the cinemas.


The Man from U.N.C.L.E. (2015)

7.8/10 on IMDb
67% on Rotten Tomatoes
The Man from U.N.C.L.E. is a comedic spy film based on the TV show of the same name from the 60's. Henry Cavill stars as Solo, an American spy that grudgingly gets paired up with Russian spy Illya (Armie Hammer) to prevent the weaponisation of a few nuclear warheads.

I was expecting another Kingsman, but unfortunately, this did not deliver. Even worse is the fact that this had to follow Mission: Impossible. Yikes.

Only a few jokes landed well, some of the jokes I didn't even realise were meant to be jokes (because I probably just subconsciously disregarded them), and the rest landed, but like really really softly... like a feather slowly floating down onto the ground and not making any sort of impact on you.

The music was also super weird. I felt like most of the music didn't match the scenes at all, and the music was also way too loud. Sometimes when they had an intense scene going on, the music was so upbeat and happy that it wasn't even intense, it just looked comical (but in the bad sense).

The directing was also really weird for a substantial amount of time. For example (and this is just one example), they had a number of scenes where something would happen, but it's been edited so you don't get the full picture and then LITERALLY A MINUTE LATER one of the characters explains what they just did and they cut back to the footage they JUST showed us and show the full story - but even when they show the full story it's edited so it's really choppy and fast paced like a montage and I didn't really like that. It was just so common in the film you could tell that they thought it was a really cool plot device but it wasn't that great.

Another thing is that they didn't really explain the plot. I know it's a spy film, so there will be some things that leave you wondering what just happened, but I didn't really understand what they were doing throughout the entire film. Like I can't really explain what the plot was to you; I just know there's an American spy, a Russian spy, a German (?) woman, some other woman, and nuclear weapons. And the main characters need to save the world obviously. But that's about it.

The last act wasn't that great... as I said before, the directing is weird and there was meant to be the climactic fight between good and evil and yet it was all chopped up and edited so that you just kept seeing disrupted scenes that kept disrupting each other, it was all a mess and completely not climactic for a fight against the baddies. The very ending was also a bit of a cop-out.

The movie also felt really long. There were so many add-on missions or side-missions or detours or whatever that it seemed like it kept going on and on and on (and it doesn't help the fact that you don't know what the MAIN plot even is), and at the end you're just unsatisfied.

So, in the end, I wouldn't suggest seeing this in cinema or buying the DVD. If you want to watch it, maybe just go watch Kingsman again.

A few side notes:

Henry Cavill's constantly-narrating voice was at first funny, but then it became weird and unrealistic

On the other hand, Alicia Vikander's voice is as mesmerising as usual

The costuming is fantastic (especially for Elizabeth Debicki's character - the things you can do with black and white!)

Is it just me, or was that opening-of-the-safe really not that impressive? Like it didn't even look that hard and yet he kept talking about how good he was that he could open it?

Once again, just watch Kingsman again.

Movie Reviews in Five Dotpoints of Less - Part I

I've been watching a heap load of movies lately, and there's a huge backlog of reviews I need to get done, and the thought of that backlog turns me off from even trying to start those reviews, which just enlarges the backlog and so I decided to just do really quick reviews on all the movies I've been watching.

So I've mainly been watching a mix of favourite classics as well as some random not-so-famous blockbuster films, but I've ordered them so that the ones at the top are the goodies.


Snowpiercer (2013)

7.0/10 on IMDb
95% on Rotten Tomatoes

A climate change experiment has backfired, sending the world into a lifeless ice age, where the only survivors are those who boarded the perpetually-moving train, the Snowpiercer

A social class system emerges, and our very own Captain America Chris Evans leads the tail-end passengers (essentially the homeless) into a revolt to make their way to the front of the train

This film is so criminally unknown it is not funny; it is amazing and a definite must-see

Tilda Swinton is amazing

Chris Evans I love you


Fury (2014)

7.6/10 on IMDb
77% on Rotten Tomatoes

Don't you just love when Brad Pitt portrays an anti-Nazi?

Don't you just love Shia Labeouf proving that he should be taken seriously?

Are you sick of Logan Lerman always being "the new guy" or "the guy that doesn't fit in"?

Nevertheless, he and the entire cast are still great in this (and it's super weird seeing Michael Peña like that after witnessing his stupidity overflow in Ant Man)

Revolving around the brotherhood of soldiers who operated one tank during World War II, this is a great war story with a lot of intense scenes (and I thought it was super cool to learn how a tank was operated), but be warned, the directing can get a bit weird with very long takes and slow pacing when there is no battle occurring


The Addams Family (1991)

6.8/10 on IMDb
60% on Rotten Tomatoes

Our favourite spooky, weird and kooky family, The Addams Family! (dadada DA! *click* *click*)

Hilarious dark humour

Acting was great all round

Odd to see Christopher Lloyd here (Doc from Back to the Future)

Christina Ricci's performance as Wednesday Addams is the definition of perfection


The Breakfast Club (1985)

7.9/10 on IMDb
89% on Rotten Tomatoes

Five very different kids from very different social circles have to come in to school on one Saturday for detention

The film is starting to get a bit dated, so if you're going to watch it, watch it soon

I like the premise of it, as it allows for quite a bit of philosophical dialogue that makes you think about what makes us different and why sometimes that nerdy kid will always be the nerdy kid even if you think he'd make a good friend

That entire scene where they sit in the circle... that was entirely ad-lib! And that scene was genius!

Not a film for everyone, so if you read the plot summary and think it sounds interesting, then it's worth the watch; if not, then it might not be for you


Sister Act (1992)

6.2/10 on IMDb
71% on Rotten Tomatoes

As weird as she is now, Whoopi Goldberg was actually pretty cool back in the 90s

I loved the idea of Sister Act when I was a kid; the idea that anyone could sing well if they just had the right teacher, and the fact that Whoopi's character was messing with a parish of all things was hilarious. Now that I'm older, this movie still holds up but doesn't seem as amazing as it used to be

Whoopi Goldberg is an amazing singer though, and Maggie Smith is also hilarious in this, so it's still an enjoyable watch that will leave you with a few solid laughs


Suckerpunch (2011)

6.1/10 on IMDb
23% on Rotten Tomatoes

A girl forced into a mental institution tries to escape with her four fellow inmates by dreaming up an alternate reality where she can control her destiny

The premise is really good, but unfortunately they didn't do much with it and couldn't really tie any of the metaphors together, which resulted in a really really weak plot

The action scenes are great, so you would watch it only for the action, but that also gets tiring quickly

I will always love Jena Malone's sass though