initial impressions of inception

so i just got back from seeing inception for the first time and thought i'd excrete a quick bloggle post on my initial thoughts. i'll keep it quite vague and spoiler free for anyone who hasn't yet seen it 'cos i went in having only seen the trailer and i really enjoyed the ride.

i'd probably describe inception as a sort of mission:impossible meets the matrix with a little dark city and james bond with alot of chris nolan's intelligence thrown in (like the kind found in memento). usually i'm a bit put off by a long run-time but i found inception was well paced with no lulls and the almost 3 hours flew by.

what i loved:

• the mission:impossible style team on a mission (obviously)
  
• the great effects - which nolan plays down too much in interviews. they looked incredible.
  
• that the matrix just got it's ass kicked
• the whole dream within a dream concept
• the concept of time within a dream
• all the phun with physics
  

i really liked the whole universe the film takes place in and i'd love to see more of it. i'm not sure whether a sequel would live up to inception but i think it could potentially make a cool little tv series. i'd imagine it being similar to dollhouse only with more of a team, but i guess a tv budget would never make anything as cool as anything seen within inception.

so maybe a comic series would be a better cheaper idea - as seen in this cool inception prequel comic. i'd like to read more comics set within inception's universe. the possibilities for cool story-lines set within inception's concept are pretty endless.


i think i enjoyed it nearly as much as the dark knight (posters are pretty similar aren't they?) and at time of writing i'd probably put this as my current best film of 2010 (ironman 2 and kick-ass are probably a 2nd and 3rd) but i've still got toy story 3 and scott pilgrim to come!

there's still alot of theorising that could be done over inception and i'm looking forward to reading into it more, so if you find anything cool throw it my way :)

red letter media movie reviews

a few months back i found this great seven-part video review of star wars episode one. if you haven't seen it yet already try and find time for it because it's brilliant. it's more of a piss take review (not difficult) but it still raises some good points while being entertaining and very funny. seven parts is a long review but if you find the time give it a look. i also can confirm it's the "best, weirdest 70-minute review of then phantom menace" - sci fi wire.

find more on the red letter media youtube channel.

anyway the same guy is back for a shorter review on avatar. so chick it oowt innit...


followed by paaaart 2...



the end.

paranormal activity review

ok so just finished watching paranormal activity. every since i first heard of this movie i really wanted to see it. and it's been a long time (that review was written in jan 2008). i generally don't like buying into the hype but that seems to be the way paramount want to sell it with a trailer like this:



looks pretty good right? yeah i thought so too. paramount seems to be marketing this movie in a weird way. it was filmed in 2007. all the early reviews i read were very good, so what the hell paramount!? what's the hold up? now in 2009 they've decided for some reason it's time to release it. but they can't just release it, that'd be too easy. it's already a movie with nothing but good reviews so let's release this as agonisingly slowly as possible with exclusive tiny screenings in america first, then have all the new good reviews push people into demanding their local cinema show it - which only applies to america. which of course leads to more people raving about it.

well yesturday a good quality version of the movie leaked online. usually i normally make a rule of going to the cinema to see a new film i wanna see whenever possible, obviously. it's just better. but in this case i'm happy to download it early. fuck you paramount. if this had been available to see at any cinema around me between 2007 and now i'd be more than happy to go pay to see it for a better experience. that said i'll probably pay to go see it anyway when it comes out (plus apparently there's some alternate endings in existence...).

sorry. paramount rant over.

i thought blair witch project was ok. cloverfield was great and i loved rec/quarantine (also check out the rec 2 trailer if you haven't already 'cause that looks fucking great!). but hype's a difficult thing. i read alot of hype behind the film (as any of my twitter followers will probably know) but overall i still really liked it. there are parts in the film that are genuinely really creepy. more so than... well probably any film i can think of. but i can see it turning into another blair witch project. the early adopters (see the over reactions of the dumb americans in the trailer) will say how fucking scary the film was and then everyone else will go in with high expectations and say it's more stupid than scary. so you can't win either way.

i really liked it. maybe a little more than drag me to hell because it's going for scary and less comedy. the more i think about the ending i saw the creepier it seems but there are so many different ways it could have gone so i look forward to seeing the dvd extras when it eventually comes out.

i recommend you watch it. if you don't believe the hype then you'll probably really like it... if that makes sense.

4 creepy goings on out of 5.

inglorious basterds review

been a while since blogging, should hopefully pick up the pace again soon! so another film from a few of the ones i wanna see has now been seen.

going in i knew it was a pretty long film at 2hrs 45mins which is fine if the movie's good but i still would have liked a couple of trailers, but ho-hum nevermind. and if i'm gunna spend 2hrs 45mins watching someones film quentin's are generally a safe bet. i'd say i'm a big enough fan to watch whatever he makes. it's pretty unanimous that reservoir dogs and pulp fiction are great films and among the favourites among most of my friends and myself. jackie brown... meh it was ok i guess and got a little better towards the end. death proof i did kinda like mostly from the last 30mins. i quite liked kill bill though but i haven't seen it for a while but probably would have been better edited down to one really good film instead of two alright ones. but watching inglorious basterds it did feel kinda like kill bill in a few ways (probably just quentin's style of the 00s). the titles, chapters and i'm sure some of the music was actually from the kill bill soundtrack.

first of all the film feels like it's being really falsely advertised. watching the trailers and tv ad's it's not just a group of guys killing nazis. infact you really don't see alot of the basterds at work (which is kind of a shame 'cause i'd like to see that movie too). the problem is the people who see the trailer and want to see it will get something they weren't expecting and the people put off by the trailer may actually like the film.

the acting was all pretty great. brad pitt and the rest of the basterds were all pretty awesome. mike myers had a cool cameo. but the stand out was probably the rob bryden lookalike christoph waltz as lt. hans landa - the jew hunter. every scene with him was pretty awesome. he's kinda scary and funny but kinda likeable at the same time (for a jew killing nazi anyway, which can't be easy to pull off).

most of the scenes in the film did seem to follow the same pattern of building tension for as long as possible and build to a true taranino style stand off. obviously it's still pretty violent. its pretty gory in places and there's alot more humor than i thought there would be (which is always welcome). for some reason the film kind of reminded me of 'there will be blood' - although i'm not quite sure why yet. could be just from all the extended dialog scenes.

anyway that'll do. review over.

overall, good film! 4 nazi scalps out of 5.

new sci-fi trailers

thought i'd do a quick post on a couple of cool new trailers i've only seen recently. first up is the district 9 trailer. this was one of the trailers shown before moon and i think it looks pretty darn good, almost like a half life movie. see what you think:

another trailer shown was for new bruce willis movie, surrogates. i first saw this one before terminator salvation and thought it looked alright. looks like a weird mix between the matrix, i robot and total recall :)

moon review

heard about this movie few weeks ago and it seems reasonably unknown by most. the trailer got my interest by looking like a very retro cool space film more about the isolation of space than baysplosions that comes with most movies that have the budget to be set in space. there really should be more films taking this route than being just another summer blockbuster.

i don't really want to talk about the story too much because the trailer should show you enough to watch to learn more and go see the film. sam rockwell was great (which helps 'cause he's pretty much the only guy in the whole film) and who wouldn't want a talking computer with kevin spacey's voice. to me there felt like a few parallels with desmond from lost, you sort of have to wonder how it's possible living in such an isolated environment for such a long time and if it's even possible (even with future technology aka a talking kevin spacey emoticon computer) without eventually going nuts.

i really liked the retro feel of the whole film and the 2001 space odyssey and the original alien movie vibes. but overall i really enjoyed it, good times!

brüno review

i'll try and keep this review short and spoiler free 'cause the shock value is part of what makes films like this good, and there is plenty of it. anybody whose seen any of sasha's previous work should know what to expect. he's basically set to offend, and if that doesn't make you laugh some of the people's reactions in this film definitely will.

it did make me think exactly how long comedy like this can go on. obviously it's funny finding where people draw the line and then crossing it. jimmy carr's an expert at it. ricky gervais, ali g, south park, borat. it's all kinda the same formula. but you have to wonder where this will end, and i guess it won't as long as there are stupid people out there to be offended by anything. but i mean in like 20 years time is everyone just gunna be desensitised to it? obviously most of the humor comes from the stupid "p.c gone mad" times we live in where even brainstorming is found offensive, sorry "thought showering". whatever. this is going off topic...

that said, remembering some of the mental images from this movie, we are all a long way off being unoffendable. and that's just the mental images. those long dangling mental images... oh dear. and if that's not proof enough some of the reactions bruno invokes - this guy really knows how to wind people up.

but i can definitely say this is the gayest movie i've ever seen - so stick that quote on your movie poster (that reminds me i still haven't seen brokeback moutain, but from what i've heard it's pretty much the film shown at that movie festival in south park. the one with gay cowboys eating pudding. and that was years before brokeback came out. lawsuit? ... probably not).

but overall this is a fooking fünny movie, even if you do wonder how much of it is scripted. there's probably a few too many borat storyline parallels but i was still laughing all the way through. so watch it ... and then try to forget the mental images.

go see quarantine

i rewatched/loved this movie the other day and can't seem to find many other people that have seen it, so i figured i'd do a quick recommendation. back in 1999 (wow 10 years now) a big fuss was made about the blair witch project for the whole movie being filmed on a hand held camera in a documentary filmmaking style. cloverfield later did the same but one film that flew under some people's radar was a spanish horror film called rec. it's filmed in the same style and tells the story of a news reporter doing a report on the local fire brigade's night shift. it doesn't take long for them to get called out by a report of a woman being trapped in an apartment building. when they get there they break down the door and the woman goes crazy and bites one of the policemen there, like you do. obviously there's some kind of infection so later they get sealed in the apartment building by a hazmat team to contain the infection, and that's all i'll say.

personally i really liked rec, but obviously subtitles aren't for everyone (the lazy) so america being america remade the movie. and surprisingly i liked it more than the original. the two are practically identically shot but with a bigger budget and a different cast - including the awesome jennifer carpenter (dexter's hot sister from the also brilliant tv series dexter).

it's quite interesting that unlike alot of films that get released the general rule is films start good and get worse/boring through the middle or towards the end but this film completely mirrors that. if anything it starts out pretty slow and builds and builds through the whole film as the shit hits the fan and get real intense by the end.

in summary: i love this movie, so give a look if you haven't seen it already.

transformers poo review

where do i begin... well the bad springs to mind, so let's start with that.
it's kind of depressing that in this day and age (i'm not trying to sound old) something like this can reach the masses. when i think about the whole process that movies have to go through to actually reach cinemas worldwide - all the script writers, editors, the director, the cast, the effects guys, test audiences, everyone listed in the credits - at no point did anyone put their hand up and say 'heeeeeeeeey, wait a minute! this part sucks!'. there's so much here that i would hope anyone would have picked up on any of the crap that went into this movie. don't get me wrong i probably couldn't do better (...actually maybe i could, but another time) but c'mon studios! sort your god damn filtering process out and save yourself alot of money!

i admit i've never been a fan of transformers (bit before my time grandad) but at least the first movie managed to keep my attention. and at least in michael bays other work i remotely gave a shit about the characters (i still love con air and the rock dispite nic's acting talents). throughout this movie i couldn't care less if any or all of them got killed off - in fact through the second half i was kinda preying for some sort of t.w.m.d (yes that's transformers weapon of mass distruction aka 'the matrix key' or whatever it was called in this movie) would just go off and kill them all so i could go walk off my numb ass and forget this movie sooner.


it was also quite funny how sexist the movie seemed. there's pretty much one girl in the whole movie.

a woman? yeah a woman. and yeah megan fox is pretty hot if your into that fake looking slutty type whose hobbies include bending over bikes and jiggling away from explosions in slow motion. oh and just for something to keep the female viewers interested we'll add some lovey dovey, badly written scenes with the exact same greenday song playing and slot them randomly into the film.

the jar jar binks fans out there will enjoy the two useless autobot twins 'cause i bet no one else watching this movie found them annoying right?

"hmm i'll tell you what this script needs... dog fucking!" ... yeah whose weirdo idea was that? and more importantly how was this not vetted out (haha vetted, you see! cos they are dogs! i dun a funny! maybe neutered out would have been better, nevermind whatever).



questions that spring to my mind during the movie:
why leave these t.w.m.d's in existence, let alone on earth?
why would these advanced aliens even stay on earth just to blow our shit up?
how useless and futile anything the humans do is. why even get involed? it's not like you can stop them.
how shia's prision break style disguise (a baseball cap) is gunna fool anyone?
why not roll the credits hours ago and save the world some time?
why am i still sat here watching this?
who would win in a fight: a monkey with a stapler or an invisible pelican?

well that's the bad, now the good...
urrrmm the special effects... umm yep that's it, and i can't fault it there but there's only so much cg your eyes can take until your desensitized to it. it's kinda like when toy story first came out - really impressive at first but about 30mins in the cg is just a given and the script needs to take over (toy story: win, transformers 2 ... epic fail).

oh and doctor claw from inspector gadget doing the voice for the satellite decepticon, that was quite funny.

anyway if your gunna watch something at the cinema this week i'd recommend you invest your stock in drag me to hell, the hangover or star trek (if you still haven't seen it) and save terminator salvation and transformers 2 for a dvd, i'm sure they'd make good coasters.

it's also worth checking out this review. it's probably the best review i've seen for it online :)

the hangover review

i'll try and keep this pretty short and avoid any spoilers. this is the third film i've seen from my new movies post - and it was very good! i'm a pretty big fan of todd phillips' movies anyway (old school, starsky & hutch, road trip, school for scoundrels ... umm not so much) but this didn't disappoint.

alot of these kinds of movies can have a tendency to use up all the funny parts in the trailer but the movie felt pretty funny all the way through. i wouldn't go as far as to say "funniest movie of 2009" (i'm hoping bruno with come through for that) but it's a good film. probably could wait for the dvd but if you need something to see at the cinema this week this and drag me to hell (if they're still showing it) won't disappoint - yes i'm looking at you terminator salvation...

looking on imdb it seems the studios have deemed this sequel worthy already along with old school dos which is cool.

terminate me to hell movie reviews

ok so out of the new movies i wanna see post i've actually seen two of them now. so i figured i'd do a quick round up of the two while they are kinda fresh in my head. i'll try to avoid spoilers for those who haven't seen them yet anyway.

the matrix + fallout 3 + i am legend = terminator salvation. overall the movie was ok and probably actually quite good for a prequel (i'm trying to think of some examples of a good prequel but none are coming to mind... no wait! ... nope that sucked too ... hmm star trek doesn't really count does it? oh well, suggestions on a postcard...). the special effects were pretty awesome but it did start to feel more like a transformers movie after a while with the bikinator things and that transformer sized terminator. just like all the other terminator movies the terminators eventually find a way to strip down to just their endoskeleton (lava ... the terminators natural enemy) which is probably the best part of the film. i was quite impressed with cg arnie's cameo aswell, he looked just like he did in the original dated terminator movie.

it just kinda sucked the film didn't feel john connor centric. christian bale did a good job which was fucking distracting but the movie seemed to follow sam worthington's character way too much. kyle reese was played really well but wtf was the need for the mute kid? i guess they were trying todo the same thing as aliens with newt but that worked (ripley lost her daughter, newt lost her family, they found eachother and then alien 3 happened ... oh dear) but the girl in this is literally THE most pointless character in a movie. i really have no idea why she was in the film. she's basically the movie equivalent of kevin from south park - except at least he helped out here and there.

for the most part it was ok though, but given the choice i'd save your money and wait for it on dvd and go see drag me to hell instead.

gotta say i. loved. this. movie. i'll admit it's not for everyone but if you liked any of the evil dead movies you should love this. it's like the classic sam raimi style none of that spiderman shit (well 2 was ok i guess). looking at the trailer it's easy to assume it's another one of those films (the ring, the grudge, maybe the saw movies, etc) but i think this kinda puts all of those in their place. i wouldn't really call the movie "scary" but more "jumpy". the film is pretty tense all the way through and you can normally feel the next jump is only a few mins away (i think i jumped twice, but one of those i blame on the girl in the cinema who screamed when she jumped, bloody surround sound). but sam certainly knows how to build his tension. most movies like this i find normally come off as kinda stupid and normally funny for the wrong reasons but this movie empraces that in the same way that the evil dead movies did and is genuinely really funny in places.

anyway check out the clip and check out the movie.

new movies

quite a few good looking new movies coming out this year. here's a list of a few i'm looking forward to seeing...

terminator salvation - seems to be getting some flak in reviews at the mo, but all the trailers do make it look good so i'll go see it when it's out.

drag me to hell - latest sam raimi movie. trailer looks quite funny. might check this one out tonight.

inglorious basterds - new tarantino movie. 'nuff said.

land of the lost - mixed feelings on this one. the plot seems a bit stupid but it's ferrel and mcbride so will have to see how it turns out.

transformers 2 - i thought the first one was ok but with these kinds of movie the second in the series is normally the best (spiderman, hellboy, dark knight, short circuit 2, speed 2, oceans twelve, blair witch 2, dumb and dumberer ... hmm wait a minite). anyway, hopefully this'll be good.

bruno - 'cause everyone needs to know how to defend themselves from a man with two dildos.

the hangover - reasonably unknown one. same director as road trip and old school and the trailer looks alright. plus it's got andy from the american version of the office.

transforminators trailer

just found this trailer online and thought it was pretty good :)

recommended movies ... recomovies?

'cause it's still early days on the blog i'm trying to cover something on all the topics i want to cover - mainly so that when someone stumbles here it's morely likely they'll be able to find something to relate to and hopefully come back. everyone likes movies right? well if you don't - your weird so get the fuck outta here! what da hell is broccoli anywayz!? shut up with da broccoli!

anyway i'll start with a few recommendations that i recon you should check out if you havn't already. these days it seems pretty difficult to not be disappointed with movies. i recently rewatched aliens and couldn't help but wonder why they can't make films this good anymore. might save that for another post. anyway, so yeah back to what i liked. i'll put a link to the trailer in the films title incase it's something you havn't heard of. so here goes...

first a few comedies:

pineapple express - what a great film. wasn't expecting much going in but this delivered the goods. big fan of seth rogan and danny mcbride. probably the best comedy i've seen since hot fuzz (yeah i liked it that much). if you liked this be sure to check out eastbound and down.

hot rod - this one seems pretty unknown and i admit i hadn't heard of it till someone recommended it to me. wasn't so sure of it on first viewing but found it way funnier the second time round. plus it has isla fisher. me likey. definitely give it a go if you get the chance.

role models - this turned out better than i thought it would. most of sean's movies are normally pretty funny i guess and the kid and mclovin kinda sealed the deal.

burn after reading - i'm a pretty big coen brothers fan anyway but i think this is probably my favorite of their movies now. it's got the same sort of vibe as the big lebowski (stupid people mixed up in something bigger than they know) but overall this just felt like a better movie so STFU DONNIE!

and here's a couple of other movies i liked:

let the right one in - there seems to be alot of reviewing buzz around this. i first heard about it here and that kinda got my interest. i like good vampire movies. i hated twilight (made it 20mins in and that was enough for me) and this is the polar opposite. my one sentence review: it's the pan's labarinth of vampire movies - so check it out.

splinter - this one could be the most unknown movie in this list. it's a small british horror film. i found the trailer online a while ago and thought it looked cool - and waddayaknow it turned out to actually be cool. how rare. so give it a look.

that'll do for now. recomendations end! stop reading and start watching ... or go do something else - like watch this guy: