**********************

Oh man. I hired this bad boy as a weekly down at the video store for two bucks. I wish it was worth my time to drive down there and ask for a refund. Jonah Hex, as a film, is not what you’d describe as a film. It’s more a series of images which move without any sense of purpose or narrative structure at all. There’s moments, fleeting moments, where Hex succeeds in setting the tone and character quite well, but those moments are the three seconds after the opening credits, and the ten seconds before the closing. Not even the admittedly hot body of Megan Fox, who appears here to make this film at least half appealing to a male audience, can salvage any kind of positive words about Jonah Hex.  There’s a few reasons why I think Jonah Hex fails as a film, and I’ll cover those shortly.

Click here for gun-totin’ action!

**********************

Just Quickly

Hollywood’s track record of remakes, reboots and re-imaginings has a checkered history at best, with results of most remakes ranging from average to pretty poor. The Crazies is a remake, and the filmmakers have gone out on a limb and remake one from The Master – George A Romero (Dawn Of The Dead etc). Well, if you’re gonna go down swinging, swing at the best, I say. The Crazies isn’t a unique story, nor is it an original genre concept overall, but as a film it is entertaining. When a mysterious illness strikes the townsfolk of Ogden Marsh, Iowa, and people begin to transform into violent, unhinged crazy-people, the sheriff, David (Olyphant) and his wife Judy (Radha Mitchell), together with David’s deputy Russell (Joe Anderson) and a group of other survivors, must navigate their way through military checkpoints, crazed farm folk and vicious, violent thugs in order to survive. Cue plenty of near-death, edge-of-your-seat action sequences and scares, as car crashes, bombs and various other violent methods of destruction ensue. The Crazies isn’t as ultra-violent as a lot of the go-for-gore remakes coming down the pike these days, although there is some good blood and guts when it counts. It’s not what you’d call gratuitous, however.

Click here to get a little crayzeeee!!

**********************

After his debut with Dawn Of The Dead, his sophomore effort of 300, and the dark-yet-awesome Watchmen, Zack Snyder cuts loose with Sucker Punch, a film he’s directed from his own material instead of something drawn from another medium (comics, usually). The expectation from fans when the first trailer came online was enormous, and it was always doubtful to me whether or not Snyder would succeed in gratifying that expectation. His visual style, honed to sizzling perfection with sharp focus, elegant slow-motion, seemed a perfect match for the story of a young girl locked away in an insane asylum who fantasizes about her escape – the widescreen scope of the battles and action sequences lent themselves to a man renowned for his artistic prowess at delivering large-scale cinema. Snyder has delivered fantasy in ways we’ve never before seen in cinema before, and I think I speak for many folks out there who expected yet another rousing, pulse-pounding action flick to get us through to his take on Superman. It’s a shame, then, to find that the critical drubbing Sucker Punch received upon release, and on many a blog afterwards, is actually pretty deserved.

Click here to get sucker punched into reading the rest of this review!

**********************

One of the darker, more personal Harry Potter films, The Half-Blood Prince represents the penultimate cinematic adventure for the boy wizard before the grand finale of The Deathly Hallows. Prince is an exceptionally dark film, both literally and metaphysically, and I’d be careful about the younger viewers seeing this – death and darkness spread across the film’s frames like a blanket, enveloping the audience in an oppressive, suffocating layer of tension. The ending, a shocker of a cliffhanger for those who haven’t read the books, delivers the required emotional punch as the catalyst for what will follow in the 2-part Deathly Hallows, and while I’d like to spend a bit of time yakking about it, I’m not going to for fear of spoiling the treat that awaits the virgin viewer. The central question to the film, outside of whether or not Voldemort is going to appear, is exactly who is the “half-blood prince”, and what does he have to do with Harry Potter? While the answer to that question isn’t as exciting as the question itself, the journey to find the answer is. Emotionally wrought, alternately sad and uplifting, the Potter kids go through the wringer in this one, and it’s easy to see why this is up there for one of the most popular of the franchises’ entries.

Click here for more info on The Half-Blood Prince!

**********************

Alien invasion films don’t come much weirder than this one. Attack The Block, co-funded by the British Lottery, produced by the guys behind classic Brit-coms like Shaun of The Dead, Hot Fuzz and Scott Pilgrim, is one of those films you watch and then wonder why you’d never heard of it before. A bolt from the blue, this dazzling debut feature from Joe Cornish (this is his first film, really?) is both hilarious, scary and action packed, all within the confines of a dilapidated South London apartment block. There’s nobody in this film you’ll have heard of save an appearance from Hot Fuzz star Nick Frost, and the acting is about as on-par with adequate from the essentially amateur cast, but what this film lacks in big name stars it more than makes up for in sheer balls-out thrills. Dammit, if there was a way to make you stop reading this and go watch the film for yourself, instead of reading about it here, I’d be doing it! Attack The Block is one of the best surprise package films of the last 12 months, without doubt. Like Scott Pilgrim, Boondock Saints or Equilibrium (f*ck off, I loved that film!), Attack The Block comes from nowhere as a film and tears bigger, bolder, more expensive headline films a new ass in the process.

Click here for more ATTAAAAAACKKKK!!!!

**********************

As a fan of traditional animation, I will admit to a twinge of disappointment upon learning that Disney’s 50th animated feature would be done using CGI, instead of the lovely hand drawn methods the company was founded on. Just a twinge, mind you, because after seeing the trailer for the film, I thought that perhaps they’d stepped outside the box with this one, and that it could actually be a good film anyway. Disney’s track record with animated films borne of the computer had been relatively hit-or-miss (I am, of course, referring to their non-Pixar output), with films such as Chicken Little and Meet The Robinsons feeling like Pixar-lite entries into the genre of CGI animated films – a fact which only added to my hesitation with Tangled’s production woes. Amazingly expensive to make (according to online sources, Tangled’s budget reached somewhere in the vicinity of $260m, which puts it in the Most Expensive Animated Film category) and having a duo of directors cast aside midway through, as well as a change of title, Tangled had a lot to live up to. Does it deliver the trademark Disney class, or is it a major misfire?

Click here to have your hair done.

**********************

Dontcha hate it when some super-hot alien dude shows up at your school and starts hitting on the girl you love? Pity poor Mark James (played here by Jake Abel), a typical school bully with delusions of lust for local hottie Sarah (Dianna Agron) – he wants her, she hates him even though there’s history there, and he treats everyone with the bitter anger and resentment she’s given him by not letting him be her boyfriend. He sacks up and tries to assert his miniscule authority on the super-hot alien dude, only to find he’s not all that and a bit, and the super-hot alien dude actually does deserve to end up with the girl. Poor bastard. Yes, I Am Number Four serves up the traditional high-school angst with a blanket of science fiction coolness, the kind of kinky narrative imbalance that feels weird yet familiar at the same time. The “newcomer gets the girl” fantasy is writ large here, and it plays out exactly like the join-the-dots version Hollywood’s been doling out since the mid nineties, when High School Films had their resurgence. Moments of levity, which are actually quite amusing for the most part, undermine the tensions inherent in the “thriller” aspect of the story, which makes Number Four feel like two (or three) different films mashed together. Part origin, part teen romance, part revenge thriller, part sci-fi actioner, this film can’t handle the balance between all its own aspects, and ultimately comes across as a little bit naff.

Click here to see if there’s a number 5, 6 or 7!

**********************

I’m not entirely sure exactly why zombies make for good comedy fodder, but they do. After Shaun of The Dead reinvigorated the splatter-comedy genre almost single-handedly, director Ruben Fleischer has given us Zombieland, a more Hollywood-ised version of the same kind of film: the Earth is decimated by zombies (damn you Mad Cow Disease!) and a few lone survivors must band together to reach some sort of safe haven. Along the way, a social commentary takes place highlighting the fact that even at our most frightened, we seek solace in our fellow man, shooting the walking undead and generally behaving like unrepentant anarchists. Zombieland isn’t trying to be politically correct, nor is it trying to generate laughs from any kind of visual slapstick aesthetic, rather, it’s a mix of both intellectual and physical comedy which delivers the entertainment here. I’d heard good reports about this film, not only from zombie purists but from casual viewers as well, those without a vested interest in the splatter fest unleashed upon us.

(more…)

**********************

What makes a hero, really? Powers? A utility belt filled with gadgets more similar to a date-rape kit than a detective? A sense of injustice to be righted? A mandate from a higher authority to deal with evil wherever it may lie? The comic book medium has told and retold these kinds of heroic tales ever since ink first splashed onto paper waaay back in the early 1900′s. Superman, epitomized the superhuman. Batman, the humanistic crime fighter using only his wits and wealth. Spider-Man, arriving in the early 60′s, brought us closer to the fantasy of being given an opportunity to rise above one’s lowly station and make a difference. The Fantastic Four epitomized the family unit, working as a team to battle evil. Captain America, one of comicdoms most iconic heroes, was designed to stir patriotism in the USA during World War II, created by legendary comic book scribes Jack Kirby and Joe Simon – and published by the precursor to Marvel Comics, Timely Comics. Once the war ended, the need for Captain America as a symbol of US pride was diminished, although a role was found for him throughout the Marvel Universe thanks to a twists to have him resurrected from suspended animation many years after the war actually ended. Thus, Captain America was thrust into a new, somewhat different era of publication than he was intended originally. Recently, with Marvel Studios building themselves a decent mythology on film – thanks mainly to their production partners Paramount, Captain America was given the green light to prepare audiences for the highly anticipated Avengers movie, due out in 2012; and I believe the term “highly” in this instance to be vastly understated. Bringing the classic American hero to the big screen was a fairly large order – non-comic audiences had the potential to be put off by the sheer American-ness of the character, especially in light of a relatively large anti-American sentiment in the days of the Iraq War. I’m sure the boffins at Marvel were trying to figure out how much they should alter the character to fit an audience’s expectation, or how much they stood to lose on this venture should it fall short of expectation – Captain America is well known within the comic book community, he’s just not as well known to mainstream audiences. Sure, audiences lapped up Iron Man, Spider-Man, The Incredible Hulk and Thor: all (bar Spidey) films which were building the audiences knowledge of the characters they’d come to see in Joss Whedon’s Avengers team-up, so had you been a betting man, you’d have taken those odds that Captain America would do pretty decent business.

Click here to salute Captain America a little more….