Chris Farraday is an ex-smuggler who has retired to a legitimate business installing security alarms. All that changes when his wife's brother Andy indulges in a little smuggling himself - and is forced to ditch a shipment of drugs into the ocean to avoid capture by the Coast Guard. Now Andy must make good the loss or face death at the hands of his employer. Chris is forced to run another smuggling operation to raise the money but with pressure on all sides, he faces a very dangerous game indeed.
A decent film, with plenty of twists and turns along the way to keep the viewer engaged. Worth watching.
Sharktopus
What could be more dangerous than a killer shark? Why, a killer shark that has been genetically engineered to be half octopus, of course! The military have developed this mighty beast for use as a weapon. It's fitted with a restraining system that keeps it nicely under control... but wouldn't you know it, the control system breaks down and the sharktopus is on the rampage! It quickly sets about devouring everything in the water, and of course thanks to the tentacles it can walk up onto the beach for extra snacks!
With disaster threatening, the hunt is on to stop the terror of the seas!
The Darkest Hour
Sean (Emile Hirsch) and Ben (Max Minghella) are in a Russian nightclub drowning their sorrows after their business partner Skyler cheated them out of their idea for a new social networking program. As if that wasn't bad enough, suddenly aliens arrive and begin to kill everybody! The aliens are hidden behind invisible shields, but give their presence away by lighting up anything electrical around them.
Sean, Ben, Skyler and two girls, Natalie and Anne, try to escape the now deserted city in the aftermath. They meet some other survivors, and gradually begin to learn how to fight back.
This is a decent premise and works very well for about the first 45 minutes, although it does rather drag a bit. The biggest problem is that, having set up the aliens to be as powerful as they are, it then becomes pretty silly that the heroes are able to start to fight back at all. Within the space of less than a day these things have wiped out most of the human race... and yet a single guy in his apartment has managed to construct a way to hide, and a weapon to fight back with. It all becomes steadily more preposterous in the last 25 minutes or so.
Sherlock Holmes : A Game of Shadows
Holmes is back, and this second installment gives us more or less what we got last time. For Holmes purists these films are perhaps a little too heavy on action - Holmes did not shy away from throwing a fist or pulling a gun when he needed to, but he was not really an action hero in the way these films depict him. There are also one or two silly touches - Holmes' "urban camouflage" is a stupid idea that exists only to sell a reveal at the end of the film.
If you can accept all of that then the film moves along energetically enough, and the story is twisty and engaging whilst not being absurdly complicated. A worthy sequel.
The Divide
The film opens with a nuclear attack on New York. A small group of residents take shelter in a basement room which one of them, as the building's super, has converted into a survival shelter. What follows is an exercise in the breakdown of civilization as the small band must deal with the horrors of their situation, the intrusion of mysterious outside forces, and the inevitable rise of anarchy amongst themselves.
This is an utterly miserable film. I can understand and appreciate that not every film should have the "happy Hollywood" story where the good guys win out over the bad guys in the end, but seriously, this film takes the idea of a dystopian story and ramps it up to about ten times what you expect. I nearly turned it off more than once, and came out of it feeling utterly wretched.
Robotropolis
A group of reporters are doing a story about life in the world's biggest oil refinery and the nearby corporate town that houses the thousands of workers - a town in which, notably, the corporation has introduced large numbers of humanoid robots to carry out the day to day functions of running things. There are robot police, robot gardeners, robot drivers... even robots playing sports with humans. But when a robot player in one of those games responds to a shove from a human by shooting him in the chest live on camera, the reporters find themselves covering an altogether more sinister story...
There was real potential here, but alas the film never really rises to it. Part of the problem is budget; the film just doesn't have enough money to throw on the screen, and as a result there just isn't enough robo carnage to keep the viewer happy. But more, the performances are just horrible. Most especially Zoe Naylor, who delivers most of her lines in a sort of drab monotone that is horribly unconvincing.
Mission Impossible : Ghost Protocol
Ethan Hawke is back, this time trying to track a mysterious terrorist who is determined to cause World War III. Unfortunately, the terrorist manages not only to blow up a large part of the Kremlin but steals their nuclear launch codes in the process and frames the Mission Impossible Force for the whole thing. Hawke is left on the run from Russian forces with minimal resources and only hours to prevent the end of the world. Can he do it? Of course he can!
This is a good solid action movie, one of the better of the Mission Impossible series.
Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close
Oskar Schell is a troubled young boy struggling to cope with the loss of his father, Thomas, who died in the World trade Centre on 9/11. Oskar's father was fond of creating elaborate scavenger hunts for the introverted boy to follow, as a way of forcing him to face his fears of the world and interact with others. When Oskar accidentally breaks a vase in his father's closet, he finds an envelope inside labelled "Black", containing a single key. Oskar realizes that this could be one of his father's scavenger hunts, and possibly a way to keep some connection with the memory of the man. He determines to meet every person named Black in the whole of New York, to track down the meaning of the key.
Not exactly a cheerful film, this, but it's well made, very well acted, and an engaging little tale.
The Station Agent
Finbar McBride is a dwarf who lives a quiet, introverted life hidden away from the world. He spends almost all of his time in the model railway shop he works at and lives above, rarely venturing out to face the jeers and jibes that accompany him wherever he goes. When his employer dies his will sells the shop and leaves Finbar in possession of an old disused train depot.
He moves to live in the depot, which is in a quite isolated rural area - ideal for a man who wants only to be left alone. Unfortunately for Finn his few neighbours appear very determined to make friends with him, and he slowly finds himself opening up.
This is a curious, interesting little film. Peter Dinklage's performance as Finbar McBride is wonderfully understated and restrained - we're never told what his issues with other people are, nor told that he is overcoming them. We never get that scene where he breaks down and gives the Academy Award Speech about how hard it is to be a dwarf when nobody sees the real you inside. Rather, we just see him quietly suffering these things, and desperately trying to find an empty space he can live in alone. The friendships are just as subtle. There is no great scene of "you're a person, dammit, and I want to be your friend!" by anybody... just a group of people who, although normal sized, are each just as lonely and desperate for companionship in their own way as Finbar is in his.
All in all this is not a movie that ever really burns up the screen. But it's an intriguing little portrait of the importance of friendship and human contact.
10,000 BC
In 10,000 BC, a tribe of hunter-gatherers survive by hunting the huge woolly mammoths. D'Leh becomes a hero in the tribe when he takes down a mammoth, winning the woman he loves, Evolet, as a wife. However foreign raiders attack the tribe and capture many of them, including Evolet, dragging them off into slavery.
D'Leh and several others pursue them to save her. They travel vast distances, encountering many of the strange beasts that live in this time, eventually following the raiders across the sea to ancient Egypt. Here D'Leh manages to lead the slaves who are building the pyramids in revolt, overthrowing the Egyptians and freeing everybody.
This is a very silly film. As a possible historical story it's nonsense - on a par with the notoriously corny "1 Million Years BC". To name but a few errors - in 10,000 BC there are metal tools aplenty, yet metalworking was still over four thousand years away. There are people riding horses, yet that was still six thousand years away. There are pyramids, yet those where 7,500 years away from being built. Evolet has blue eyes, yet blue eyes did not exist until four thousand years later. Corn and chilli peppers did exist, but only in the eastern hemisphere - they didn't make it across the Atlantic until a few centuries ago. The giant birds that attack D'Leh have been extinct for a million years. And so on.
None of this would matter much if the story was good. But it really isn't.
We Bought a Zoo
Widower Benjamin Mee is a journalist and father of two kids, Dylan and Rosie. Hoping to help his family heal after the death of their mother he decides on a fresh start in a new house - and instantly falls in love with one place he sees. One slight complication, though... it comes complete with a small zoo! Undeterred, Ben buys the zoo and spends his entire savings getting the zoo into good condition ready for the oncoming summer season. Money gets tight and Dylan is deeply unhappy at moving away from his friends, but Ben is determined to make a success of the zoo. Will everything come good in the end? Come on, this is Hollywood - of course it will!
A nice little family film, this. It doesn't exactly twist and turn, it doesn't throw special effects in your face, and it even resists the temptation to become massively saccharine at the end. It's just a pleasant, inoffensive and fairly enjoyable way to spend a couple of hours.
Underworld : Awakening
Yet another installment of the Underworld series. Seline wakes up from cryonic sleep in a future world, only to discover that the Humans have discovered both Vampires and Lycans and waged war to exterminate both species. Now she must survive in a world where there are precious few of her kind left - and face a massive conspiracy.
Not a bad effort for the series, really. It's all a bit silly, but it's well enough done and Ms Beckinsale runs around in her absurdly impractical clothing as well as ever.
Sand Sharks
With a big spring break party planned, the economy on White Sands island is looking up! But wait! The arrival of massive sharks that can actually swim through the sand could ruin everything!
What a preposterously silly film this is. It's cheaply made, poorly acted, and makes no sense whatsoever. Bad, bad film but it raises a laugh or two at just how bad it is.
The Iron Lady
A wonderful performance by Meryl Streep, who deservedly won the Oscar for best actress. Unfortunately the film itself is rather flawed. Lady Thatcher is a fascinating figure who took Britain through some seismic economic, class and cultural upheavals - throughout her time in office she was widely and very vocally (and on occasion violently) despised and resisted, and yet she kept winning election after election. Even now, many almost revere her whilst others openly talk about how they look forward to the prospect of dancing on her grave after she dies. And no, I am not exaggerating; people have literally used those words.
Unfortunately the film adopts a flashback structure, giving us flashbacks of her life whilst devoting a good quarter or more of the running time to speculation as to how she lives her days now, with her mind slipping away due to age. Whilst these scenes are superbly well performed, they don't really tell us anything about her and the time they suck up means the movie can do little more than show snapshots of the things that matter.
Overall, this just doesn't give you a lot of insight into the woman or the times she lived in and moulded.
The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo
A journalist is asked to investigate a missing person case, and enlists the help of the titular girl - a ward of the state who is brilliant but somewhat disturbed, and has a history of being abused by men.
A grimy, dark, brooding sort of a film, this. Well worth watching, though.
