Hansel And Gretel : Witch Hunters

You know this story : abandoned by their parents, young children Hansel and Gretel are lost in the woods when they stumble across a house made of sugar and candy. The downside is, there is a witch living there who wants to eat them. They manage to defeat the witch and escape.

What you don't know is that the kids grew up and decided to make witch killing their profession! This is the story of Hansel and Gretel as adults, who travel from town to town offing the local witches and generally being heroic. Unfortunately their latest town may offer a bigger challenge than they can handle...

All in all it's pretty good. Silly premise, but everyone involved gives it their all, and it all works pretty well. A good ride, fun to watch.

Star Trek Into Darkness

We left Kirk as he took command of the Enterprise at the end of the last film. Now we rejoin him a year or so later. He's still a maverick officer, disregarding regulations whenever he pleases and getting away with it. But when his latest stunt goes too far, he is relieved of command and demoted. Just hours later, his friend and mentor Admiral Pike is killed in a brutal terrorists attack - and Kirk sets out for revenge against the man responsible, one John Harrison.

Into Darkness is perhaps a shade behind 2009's Star Trek. The plot is a little jumbled, and it dances along the border of being a rip-off of Star Trek II rather than a reinterpretation of it - whole chunks of dialogue and whole scenes are appropriated more or less wholesale. Still, it's an enjoyable ride and it once again managed to give everyone in the cast their moment to shine. Still recommended, but half a step down.

G.I. Joe : Retaliation

The Joes are riding high, doing their thing to keep the world safe for democracy and freedom and all that good stuff. But when their latest mission goes horribly wrong, virtually the entire organisation is wiped out - and Cobra Commander escapes to resume his evil ways, with a little help from the impostor standing in for the real US President. Can the few remaining Joes save the day?! Of course they can!

Preposterously silly and nonsensical, it's nevertheless nice to look at and there is fun to be had along the way. I especially like when Cobra Commander reveals his big nasty weapon. Take that, London!

Warm Bodies

It's not easy being a zombie after the apocalypse. R spends his day shuffling around, exchanging the occasional grunt with other zombies and eating the brain of the odd human here and there. But when he encounters Julie all that changes - because R starts to rediscover his humanity. But can these star crossed lovers survive a world in which zombies eat humans and humans kill zombies?

Okay, so it's Romeo and Juliet with zombies. And it is a rip-off of Twilight. But for all that, this one is kind of quirky and fun to watch. You actually end up wanting R and Julie to be together, and you want the zombies to find a way to lead a more fulfilling life. It's definitely worth a watch.

I Give It a Year

Newly-wed couple Nat and Josh are deliriously happy despite their differences, though friends and family aren't convinced that they can last. With their first anniversary approaching, both of them find themselves tempted to stray. Can their relationship stand the strain? And should it?

Not too many romantic comedies are about breakups rather than joinings, but this one goes firmly there and stays there! Whether you like it will depend on whether you like this kind of humour - the kind where people will say wildly inappropriate things without realising it, or where parents will accidentally find pictures of their daughter having sex displayed on her holiday snaps. It's very British humour, and if you like it, then you'll love this. If not, then not so much.

Man Of Steel

A young boy learns that he has extraordinary powers and is not of this Earth. As a young man, he journeys to discover where he came from and what he was sent here to do. But the hero in him must emerge if he is to save the world from annihilation and become the symbol of hope for all mankind.

One of the big complaints of Superman Returns was that it was too slow, not enough action. As one critic said, "Superman doesn't throw a single punch in that whole film!"

Is that what Superman is supposed to be about? Having fights? I ask honestly, because I only know Superman from the movies and TV series and to me, he's always been about saving people rather than fighting people. But if it's fights you want, you'll love this film. There's oodles of them. There's so many that it's beyond ridiculous.

If you want characters, then not so much. They dearly want to give us a Superman in the Batman mould - angsty, ridden with doubt, dark, brooding. Is that what Superman is meant to be? Not to my eyes.

Then there's the Lois Lane, who basically exists purely so that others can spout exposition at her. There's a Jimmy Olsen who has turned into a girl for no discernible reason, and a Perry White who does little but deliver lectures to Lois now and again. And of course there is lots and lots and LOTS of punching. So much that both Smallville and Metropolis are pretty much levelled by the end of it. Seriously, this thing is like 9/11 multiplied by about 200. There must be a hundred thousand people dead by the end of it, though the film isn't really bothered by that and none of the characters seems especially upset by it.

It's a lot of sound and noise, but it doesn't really add up to much.

300 : Rise of an Empire

After its victory over Leonidas' 300, the Persian Army under the command of Xerxes marches towards the major Greek city-states. The Democratic city of Athens, first on the path of Xerxes' army, bases its strength on its fleet, led by admiral Themistocles. Themistocles is forced to an unwilling alliance with the traditional rival of Athens, oligarchic Sparta whose might lies with its superior infantry troops. But Xerxes still reigns supreme in numbers over sea and land.

As a sequel to 300, Rise of an Empire takes the standard Hollywood approach of "let's give them the things we think they liked about the first film, but twice as much." So we get lots and lots and LOTS of fighting with lots and lots and LOTS of CGI blood all over the screen. We get an Eva Green sex scene, lots of homoerotic muscly men around the place, and lots of speeches about the importance of freedom and all that stuff.

Unfortunately, it really doesn't work nearly as well as 300 did. 300 was already ramped up to 11 as it was, so they've really just overblown it all to a preposterous extent and ended up with a film that's just silly.

The Legend of Hercules

The origin story of the the mythical Greek hero. Betrayed by his stepfather, the King, and exiled and sold into slavery because of a forbidden love, Hercules must use his formidable powers to fight his way back to his rightful kingdom.

One of the worst films I've ever seen. It's utterly formulaic, slapping together lumps of Gladiator and 300 to produce a film that's really very little to do with the actual legend of Hercules. It's badly acted, badly written, plumbs every cliché in the book, and has terribly special effects. Give it a miss and find something more entertaining to do with your time. Stabbing forks into your eyes, perhaps.

3 Days to Kill

A dying CIA agent trying to reconnect with his estranged daughter is offered an experimental drug that could save his life in exchange for one last assignment.

A very strange film. It's a mixture of action, family drama and black comedy. Unfortunately those elements never quite sit well together and the final film comes out as a bit of a mishmash. Maybe worth a watch because at least it's a bit more inventive than a run of the mill action movie, but don't expect to like it too much.

Lone Survivor

Marcus Luttrell and his team set out on a mission to capture or kill notorious Taliban leader Ahmad Shah, in late June 2005. Marcus and his team are left to fight for their lives in one of the most valiant efforts of modern warfare.

Based on the true story, this is a pretty interesting and engaging tale. You're given enough time to get to know the characters, and when things start to go wrong for them you really feel for the situation they're in. The battle scenes are suitably bloody, and don't have too much of that annoying "shake the camera so much you can't see what's going on" nonsense. All in all, well worth seeing.

Pompeii

A slave-turned-gladiator finds himself in a race against time to save his true love, who has been betrothed to a corrupt Roman Senator. As Mount Vesuvius erupts, he must fight to save his beloved as Pompeii crumbles around him.

Awful, awful movie. Essentially the first half of the film is a remake of Gladiator - the similarity is not even vague, they literally just have the same scenes over again. Then the volcano erupts, and after that it's just an hour of people running around in ash and lava bombs. The real Vesuvius eruption didn't have lava bombs, but this one has oodles and oodles of them. There's a romance sub-plot in there which is about as believable as the Annakin/Padme one in Attack of the Clones, too.

Winter's Tale

Set in a mythic New York City and spanning more than a century, "Winter's Tale" is a story of miracles, crossed destinies, and the age-old battle between good and evil. Unfortunately, it's just not very good. It's essentially a modern fairytale, but it never really manages a convincing fairytale tone. So it just comes off as an ordinary story that has fairytale things in it for no apparent reason. And on that basis, it leaves you scratching your head in puzzlement most of the time.

Afflicted

Two best friends see their trip of a lifetime take a dark turn when one of them is struck by a mysterious affliction. Now, in a foreign land, they race to uncover the source before it consumes him completely.

A nice spin on the vampire genre, combining it with the found footage genre. This one treats vampirism like a disease which slowly overtakes the person, and a good portion of the film is spent focusing on the gradual changes in Derek as he becomes a vampire. It's well handled, with the initial illness followed by his delight in finding that he's developing super strength and speed. All this, however, is his gradually increasing hunger for blood - and realisation that only fresh human blood will do.

All in all, not bad at all.

Animal

When plans for a weekend vacation hit a dead end, a group of close-knit friends find themselves stranded in unfamiliar territory, pursued by a menacing, blood thirsty predator. Holed up in an isolated cabin, tensions mount as long-buried secrets are revealed. As the body count rises, the group must put their differences aside and fight for survival.

Standard B movie "monster in the woods". The characters are pretty stock, young pretty people there to be killed one by one. The monster is okay, though it's a bit obviously "guy in rubber suit". Still, that's better than cheap-looking CGI. It's a shame that we really learn nothing about the animals - are they some horrible mutation, something supernatural, alien, the product of a demented scientist? We don't get any kind of clue, they're just there.

The ending does leave it open for a possible sequel, so perhaps the animal could be explored more in that.

Everywhen

A boy must fight his way from an alternate reality, back to his own, to save his suicidal 5-year old brother; when 3 billion people are reported missing.

This film is both terrible and amazingly good.

Terrible - the acting is awful throughout, with literally nobody giving anything approaching a good performance. The plot is rather confusing and hard to follow. The action is poorly staged. It's just generally not very good.

But... this isn't a movie. This is a film made as a school project by two 17 year old Norwegian kids. And as a school film, it's absolutely amazing. The fact that they got the locations they did, with the quality of props, effects, etc, is just impressive as all hell. A lot of directors do this kind of thing in their early years - Spielberg was making films with an 8mm camera and his friends when he was a kid, and nothing he made comes close to the scope and quality of this film. Keep an eye on these guys, they'll go far.

Kick-Ass 2

The costumed high-school hero Kick-Ass joins with a group of normal citizens who have been inspired to fight crime in costume. Meanwhile, the Red Mist plots an act of revenge that will affect everyone Kick-Ass knows.

If you liked the first Kick-Ass movie, you'll probably like this one because it's really just more of the same. As usual, they've ramped things up to 11 - now we have whole teams of super heroes, along with dozens of super villains. In that respect the film has really lost touch with the basic idea of "what if people tried to do this for real", but it's entertaining enough without ever really being great. Special mention goes to Mother Russia, who is awesome!

Vampire Academy

Rose Hathaway is a Dhampir, half human-half vampire, a guardian of the Moroi, peaceful, mortal vampires living discreetly within our world. Her calling is to protect the Moroi from bloodthirsty, immortal Vampires, the Strigoi.

Part Hogwarts, part Twilight, and all terrible. This is just an awful, awful film. We didn't last more than 30 minutes or so before giving up. Flaming plugs for this!