Archive for Movies

Film Review: The World’s End

In a most unusual twist i have made two cinema trips this week! This time i journeyed with work colleagues to see the latest offering from Edgar Wright; The World’s End.

The World's End teaser poster

Let’s open this by saying this film is brilliant. I thoroughly enjoyed myself and the sounds coming from the theater suggest others were as well. As the third film in the ‘Three Flavours Cornetto trilogy’ (along with Shaun of the Dead and Hot Fuzz) this film had big boots to fill. As a general rule, when Edgar, Simon and Nick they seem to produce good stuff. The World’s End delivers on all these expectations and more.

The basic premise of the film sees 5 friends coming together for a reunion. The aim of this reunion to finish a legendary pub crawl in their home town, but not all is as it seems. I shall leave the details there at risk of divulging spoilers. The setup for this story leaves it wide open for some humorous moments and the script delivers every time. We have some great jokes together with excellent comedic timing in a combination that will raise a smile on even the grumpiest viewers face.

The humble Mint Choc Chip Cornetto, the last flavor in the trilogy to make an appearance.

As part of the trilogy we see some familiar faces join Simon Pegg and Nick frost in their adventure and it all adds to the quality, with the chemistry clearly coming through. The film rolls at along at a good pace, it never seemed to rush a scene giving it the time required before whisking you off to the next with no hint of dawdling. One thing that jarred slightly was that the ending wasn’t quite what I had expected. This isn’t to say the ending is bad, it just didn’t take the path i thought it would.

As i said at the opening of this review i really enjoyed this film. I may even place it as my favourite in the trilogy, although i will need to re-watch Shaun of the Dead and Hot Fuzz to confirm that. It was a great film, full of laughs and fun and would strongly recommend you go and see it if you get the chance!

I give The World’s End 11 pubs out of 12!

Film Review: Pacific Rim

Alt title: Megazord vs Godzilla

That name probably got canned for copy-write reasons.

Anyway back on topic. So I went to see ‘Pacific Rim’ with my good friend John and thought i would write down my thoughts.

Pacific Rim movie trailer

So lets start by saying it was better than I expected, although I did have pretty low expectations. I think my opening line to this review highlights that. I’ll be honest when I saw the trailer I wasn’t impressed. I though it looked like a twelve-year-old had decided to combine Transformers, Godzilla and Iron man. Alas the reviews came in and general people seemed to like it, so I figured screw it Guillermo del Toro hasn’t let me down before so why not.

Praising

Overall, it was OK, I certainly don’t regret going to see it but I’m not going to urge you to drop whatever you are doing and see it immediately (I mean come on, it’s no Avengers).

I would say if you love gratuitous action scenes showing giant robots fighting giant lizard-alien-monster things then this film is a good pick for you. It very competently handles some great giant fight scenes. It’s got nicely paced action and doesn’t suffer from “Transformers syndrome”, so you can see whats going on and you get a great sense of the scale of the fights and such. I also enjoyed watching it, the story just about holds the fights scenes together. The acting is overall not bad (Idris Elber deserves more of my attention in future) and I didn’t check my watch at any point in the film, so it was clearly well paced.  As I said it generally a good outing.

Giant monsters are cool

Whining

On the other hand there were a few issues that I will raise, doing my very best not to spoil anything in the process. As I mentioned the story holds things together, but it’s not going to win any awards. It was standard action film script #3. ‘Person does good, tragic event, person rallies back, insurmountable odds, person wins’. This isn’t necessarily bad, it’s a good formula and it works just don’t expect anything different. It’s also a film that attempts to do some ‘science’. Now as a ‘science’ person I always pay attention to these bits and well aside from the cringe-worthy geek the science isn’t too bad, although there are one or two glaring problems.

Another issue i had is that two of the major characters look very similar i couldn’t help shake the idea that they were going to turn out to be related, they weren’t…or were they! To avoid spoilers it could be either. The last big thing that i will criticise is the script. They covered some interesting topics and they set up some great things…only then to never revisit them. Slightly frustrating, especially when they would include random bits that actually detracted or confused the situation. I will mention ‘digital and analogue’ at this point and when you see it you will get the reference.

Movie science…often bad

Conclusion

Overall it was a solid film, despite my moaning I did enjoy it. It’s faults didn’t detract from the experience. Pacific Rim is a straight up action film that isn’t going to radically shake up the genre. I will tip my hat to Del Toro who manages to present the epic action set pieces in an easy to follow way without detracting from them. If you get a chance to see it, I think it’s worth a watch especially if giant robots are your thing.

I will activate 3 thumb rockets out of 5. (Another tenuous reference, sorry).