The Railway Man is based on a true story and stars Colin Firth as Eric Lomax, a railway enthusiast who meets Patti (Nicole Kidman) on a train, the two marry but Eric is haunted by his memories of the war, memories that lead him to an unlikely conclusion.
The Railway Man is actually a pretty good film and is well acted by Firth who whilst watching him in this I thought "He'd be a good Professor Calculus" and Kidman is surprisingly very effective here and I enjoyed watching her here but my favorite performance is by Stellan Skarsgard as one of the other veterans, ever since first seeing him as Captain Tupalov from the Hunt for Red October I always try to check out what films he's in and here he steals the show.
Apart from that, I don't have an awful lot more to say about this film other than it was fine and well acted but not one to rush out and pay a full admission to see, 2 and a half out of 5.
Tuesday, February 25, 2014
Film Review - Last Vegas (2014)
Last Vegas stars Michael Douglas as Billy, a man in his old age who is about to marry a young woman in Las Vegas and asks his three best friends (Robert De Niro, Morgan Freeman and Kevin Kline) to join him there, two of them readily come whilst the third is reluctant but tags along anyway and you know what they say about Vegas.
Last Vegas is actually good fun, thanks primarily to the chemistry between the 4 lead actors, they all play off each other very well and they always hold your attention here, I also enjoyed Mary Steenburgen in her role and I also thought the film had some good jokes and even some slightly poignant moments towards the end.
But if I have one minor complaint about the film it does feel a little bit predictable at times as the moment one event happens I did think to myself "That will play out in that way" and it did marr the ending a little bit but this was only a minor complaint as I did enjoy myself for the most part.
So all in all, Last Vegas is good fun if a little predictable on the side, 3 out of 5.
Last Vegas is actually good fun, thanks primarily to the chemistry between the 4 lead actors, they all play off each other very well and they always hold your attention here, I also enjoyed Mary Steenburgen in her role and I also thought the film had some good jokes and even some slightly poignant moments towards the end.
But if I have one minor complaint about the film it does feel a little bit predictable at times as the moment one event happens I did think to myself "That will play out in that way" and it did marr the ending a little bit but this was only a minor complaint as I did enjoy myself for the most part.
So all in all, Last Vegas is good fun if a little predictable on the side, 3 out of 5.
Film Review - Lone Survivor (2014)
Lone Survivor is directed by Peter Berg and stars Mark Wahlberg as Marcus, a US soldier during Operation Red Wings in 2005 but during the Operation judgments start to fray and the mission soon becomes at risk of failure.
Lone Survivor is actually a very good film and Berg is a big reason for this, having made that dreadful turkey Battleship in 2012 where all that was done was him being dictated terms in regards to how to do the movie here he has near complete creative freedom and it really shows in the style and structure of the film, the action here is also superb especially a Mountain gunfight that shows action scenes with teeth at long last, here you do feel the violence, you do feel the pain and you do get the intensity and may I say it's about fucking time as I am sick to death of 99.9% of action films these days wimping out on their violence so they can get a piddling PG-13 rating, time for that to stop.
Not only that the film is also very well acted, Wahlberg is superb in his role and he really holds your attention here, Taylor Kitsch, Emile Hirsch, Ben Foster and Eric Bana are also very good in their scenes and the location work here is great, never failing to give you a sense of the place these men are in.
All in all, Lone Survivor is a very good Soldier film with some terrific action and good acting, do catch it when you get the chance, 3 and a half out of 5.
Lone Survivor is actually a very good film and Berg is a big reason for this, having made that dreadful turkey Battleship in 2012 where all that was done was him being dictated terms in regards to how to do the movie here he has near complete creative freedom and it really shows in the style and structure of the film, the action here is also superb especially a Mountain gunfight that shows action scenes with teeth at long last, here you do feel the violence, you do feel the pain and you do get the intensity and may I say it's about fucking time as I am sick to death of 99.9% of action films these days wimping out on their violence so they can get a piddling PG-13 rating, time for that to stop.
Not only that the film is also very well acted, Wahlberg is superb in his role and he really holds your attention here, Taylor Kitsch, Emile Hirsch, Ben Foster and Eric Bana are also very good in their scenes and the location work here is great, never failing to give you a sense of the place these men are in.
All in all, Lone Survivor is a very good Soldier film with some terrific action and good acting, do catch it when you get the chance, 3 and a half out of 5.
Friday, February 7, 2014
Film Review - Robocop (2014)
A remake of the 1987 cult classic, this version of Robocop again sees Alex Murphy (Joel Kinnaman) turned into the Robocop program following a fatal accident but there is a big difference between man and machine.
I can't say in any honesty that I have been looking forward to this film mainly because I am a huge fan of the original film and would rank it as a favorite of mine but alas I said to myself "I'll go and see it and try to keep an open mind about it."
Needless to say, this did not meet my very low expectations as the 2014 model is nothing short of bland, boring and heartless, allow me now to explain those points in more detail:
- It is bland in the sense that there is no edge or no wit to this version, Paul Verhoeven's original film had a sense of wit in terms of the satire regarding the theme of corporate privatization and insight into American culture which Verhoeven was able to capture very well being a Dutch filmmaker and no edge because the violence presented here may as well have come from the Call of Duty video game series as it all happens so quickly there is no sense of impact and there is a near complete lack of blood in the film save for the climax but hey that PG-13 rating won't be earned by having those things in this won't it.
No it won't because heaven forfend a film and a big studio film at that dare try to break out of the new Hayes Code which is the PG-13 rating, what a fucking joke.
- This new film also has no heart to it because you do not care at all about Kinnaman in the title role as he just does the same robotic monotone the entire time whereas Peter Weller made you care about the character as he began to rediscover his humanity whereas here there isn't the sense of that and the villain here is a complete nobody which was NEVER the case in the original film.
- This now leads me into my final point which is that I just began to get bored watching it, Abbie Cornish, Gary Oldman and Michael Keaton are good actors but they do nothing but spout meaningless dialogue and you start to think "What are these people doing in this film?", the ED-209 which was a fearsome sight in the original is just reduced to another digital toy for the filmmakers to throw in for a big action sequence and the music score is just the usual Hans Zimmer knock off we've been getting now since the mid 90s and boy does it feel like toilet paper when compared to the late Basil Poledouris's wonderful score that is also great to listen to in its own right.
And so to wrap this up, the 2014 model of Robocop is defective and you should avoid it at all costs, rent the 1987 original film instead and boy do I wish the new restored print of that film had been playing in cinemas instead of this remake, 1 out of 5.
I can't say in any honesty that I have been looking forward to this film mainly because I am a huge fan of the original film and would rank it as a favorite of mine but alas I said to myself "I'll go and see it and try to keep an open mind about it."
Needless to say, this did not meet my very low expectations as the 2014 model is nothing short of bland, boring and heartless, allow me now to explain those points in more detail:
- It is bland in the sense that there is no edge or no wit to this version, Paul Verhoeven's original film had a sense of wit in terms of the satire regarding the theme of corporate privatization and insight into American culture which Verhoeven was able to capture very well being a Dutch filmmaker and no edge because the violence presented here may as well have come from the Call of Duty video game series as it all happens so quickly there is no sense of impact and there is a near complete lack of blood in the film save for the climax but hey that PG-13 rating won't be earned by having those things in this won't it.
No it won't because heaven forfend a film and a big studio film at that dare try to break out of the new Hayes Code which is the PG-13 rating, what a fucking joke.
- This new film also has no heart to it because you do not care at all about Kinnaman in the title role as he just does the same robotic monotone the entire time whereas Peter Weller made you care about the character as he began to rediscover his humanity whereas here there isn't the sense of that and the villain here is a complete nobody which was NEVER the case in the original film.
- This now leads me into my final point which is that I just began to get bored watching it, Abbie Cornish, Gary Oldman and Michael Keaton are good actors but they do nothing but spout meaningless dialogue and you start to think "What are these people doing in this film?", the ED-209 which was a fearsome sight in the original is just reduced to another digital toy for the filmmakers to throw in for a big action sequence and the music score is just the usual Hans Zimmer knock off we've been getting now since the mid 90s and boy does it feel like toilet paper when compared to the late Basil Poledouris's wonderful score that is also great to listen to in its own right.
And so to wrap this up, the 2014 model of Robocop is defective and you should avoid it at all costs, rent the 1987 original film instead and boy do I wish the new restored print of that film had been playing in cinemas instead of this remake, 1 out of 5.
Tuesday, February 4, 2014
Film Review - Philomena (2013)
Philomena is the true story of Philomena Lee (Judi Dench) an Irish woman who has a child out of wedlock in 1950's Ireland and is forced to see her son Antony adopted to American foster parents but on his 50th Birthday she tells her daughter about him and she in turn tells a BBC journalist Martin Sixsmith who decides to tell her story, a story that could shock the world.
I really loved watching Philomena, Dench is just marvellous in the role and her Irish accent almost never wavers not to mention the fact that she holds your attention the entire time she is on screen and as a result you lose track of the world of the theatre around you that you are seeing the film in, Coogan is also on good form and he looks the part of a BBC journalist very well which whilst watching him reminded me of his cameo in Hot Fuzz and I thought "Has he come off the set of the Bill?" though his snarky tone did bother me a little from time to time.
But the main thing that really got me was the story and whilst watching it I did think to myself "This all actually happened" which gave the story an added resonance for me and when I came out of the film I thought to myself "This has all that I require from a film."
And that is simply to just tell a good story that I find intriguing and with that, excites my imagination and that can range from something like:
- The Russians developing a silent propulsion system for their Submarine fleet
- The tale of a heroic Rebel Alliance fighting a tyrannical Galactic Empire
- A tale of 5 guys, 12 pubs and a whole lotta strange fun
Those of course are just 3 examples but I hope it gives you an idea of my point for quite frankly, I'm not as impressed as others are in regards to technical accomplishments in modern films as it's so easy to pull that sort of thing off nowadays with digital computer graphics and for me I just get fairly tired of it after a while.
But enough about that and more of me wrapping this up by saying that Philomena is well worth seeing, 4 out of 5.
I really loved watching Philomena, Dench is just marvellous in the role and her Irish accent almost never wavers not to mention the fact that she holds your attention the entire time she is on screen and as a result you lose track of the world of the theatre around you that you are seeing the film in, Coogan is also on good form and he looks the part of a BBC journalist very well which whilst watching him reminded me of his cameo in Hot Fuzz and I thought "Has he come off the set of the Bill?" though his snarky tone did bother me a little from time to time.
But the main thing that really got me was the story and whilst watching it I did think to myself "This all actually happened" which gave the story an added resonance for me and when I came out of the film I thought to myself "This has all that I require from a film."
And that is simply to just tell a good story that I find intriguing and with that, excites my imagination and that can range from something like:
- The Russians developing a silent propulsion system for their Submarine fleet
- The tale of a heroic Rebel Alliance fighting a tyrannical Galactic Empire
- A tale of 5 guys, 12 pubs and a whole lotta strange fun
Those of course are just 3 examples but I hope it gives you an idea of my point for quite frankly, I'm not as impressed as others are in regards to technical accomplishments in modern films as it's so easy to pull that sort of thing off nowadays with digital computer graphics and for me I just get fairly tired of it after a while.
But enough about that and more of me wrapping this up by saying that Philomena is well worth seeing, 4 out of 5.
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