Reviews

Remember when movies had originality? Before the massive quality decline in Hollywood from the mid-2000's, the first Blair Witch Project came along and blew the hinges off standard horror/suspense movie convention. It did so with such ridiculous ease, through audacious simplicity and originality.

But now we're in a generation which sees every 'new' movie as a soulless sequel or heartless remake,

Hollywood's insatiable greed gave the world an immediate terrible sequel which completely ignored why the Blair Witch was so brilliant, and in doing so, pretty much killed off any further development (cashing in) on the franchise.

But we're in an era now where EVERY profitable franchise is being resurrected with a new lick of CGI paint, and that's why they've took another stab at Blair Witch... and they've failed miserably yet again.

The only reason it is better than the first sequel is because this is basically a remake of the original, albeit with too much gloss and visual effects, and an ultra-annoying cast. At the end of this movie, you even see the Blair Witch - who they've decided to depict as a giant stick-man (woman). It's the equivalent of Judge Dredd removing his mask - it shouldn't be done.

As others have said, this movie completely misunderstands why the Blair Witch Project was so brilliant. I guess they'll bury it for another five to ten years then spring another nostalgia-soaked 'sequel' trick on us.

We mistakenly started watching this movie thinking it was a comedy horror, perhaps one which takes George Romero's franchise down a new route to breath new "life" into the genre.

After the first 15mins passed, we came to realise that actually, no, this isn't supposed to be a comedy and the horror element was simply not present: the movie actually takes itself really seriously once it gets going. And when it does get going, it goes in a steady descent into an overly-familiar mire of guff.

So what new ideas does "Bloodline" offer to validate its existence? A stalker zombie (here they're called "Rotters" - just for the sake of renaming Zombies again) with an oversized gob, who behaves more like a velociraptor from Jurassic Park than an undead freak.

The typical story-line is that our lead character, typically depicted as a tough fervently independent female doctor wannabe, needs to make a formula to reverse the effects of being bitten by a Rotter. The environment is lifted straight out of the Walking Dead (an environment already heavily overused in that series) with the characters occupying a compound within pine woodland.

Bad acting, bad script, bad setting, bad characterisation, ZERO imagination/originality.

The only saving grace is that it has a short running time.

We've clearly hit an era in Hollywood where critics are totally at odds with the general public -and with good taste- with regards to latest blockbusters.

From the opening scene, I could tell the comedic tone and the addition of swear-words was a result of Deadpool's success, but unlike Deadpool, the "humour" on display here felt more like an insult directed at the viewer.

The horrendous art-style, lifted straight out of 1980's Flash Gordon, was also a slap in the face to the viewer. It's like the director was quite openly laughing at how bad he could make this look and still get away with it because it was super-camp.

Then we had the usual feminist incursions, with the lead female villain literally crushing Thor's hammer in her hand (only a hand-full of characters can actually lift the hammer, never mind pulverising it!). And we have a female side-character apparently so strong and cool that Thor is humiliated and made to look puny on a regular basis by her. She's also infinitely stronger than the Hulk who at one point gets knocked to the floor by her... then symbolically stepped on then walked over!

I could go on, but this movie already robbed me of 2hrs, so I'll simply finish by saying this is right up there with the very worst movies I've ever seen. This is what happens when communism creeps into entertainment.

Maybe it was that a stage-play was advertised before the start of the film which depicted a "lovable" comedic Karl Marx fighting to get his murderous ideology across that set the tone for this tedious movie. Maybe it was that Murder on the Orient Express was itself typically stuffed to the brim with cultural Marxism that unsettled me during it's 2 hour screen time.

So I was already in a bad mood as we entered the world of Agatha Christie's Poirot, following a Jewish boy finding the detective's breakfast in the streets of Israel.

From there the cast of characters start to introduce themselves in a range of absurd (a dancer using his dancing skills to beat up some photographers) or dull (Penélope Cruz moaning on about religious stuff) encounters as we make our way towards embarking the Orient Express.

The train and the scenery is generally excellent in terms of visuals - and to be fair - the visuals are the only saving grace of the movie. This is where my 2 stars are awarded.

From the moment we're on the train, the topic of racism becomes impossible to overlook, and we're "treated" constantly with lectures about miscegenation. Ironically (and is always the case) is that while Willem Dafoe's German alias makes outbursts against black people, it shows that the director, Branagh, is inadvertently racially stereotyping Germans as hating non-whites.

But if we can manage to ignore the constant race-baiting, what's left in this film is tedious dialogue and characters I don't care about. In the end, I don't care about who the murderer is and I don't care if they're caught.

And yet, when the conclusion is drawn that they're all murderers, the result of Poirot letting them go free like he was detective, jury and judge all wrapped up in one was extremely irritating. Who was he to decide whether they should go free?

A very tedious and frustrating movie that I've already averted others from wasting their money on going to see.

So here we go again: a new action movie lacking story development but with heaps of socialist propaganda thrown in there.

I'm actually beginning to tire of pointing this out now, so repetitive is the attempts by Hollywood to brainwash it's paying audience.

There's nothing new on show here, nothing that we haven't seen before except for some good artwork (to be expected). The comedy is good but even this is repetitive by the end, with characters routinely pulling the same comedic stunt over and over again.

So while Wonder Woman teaches us to love feminism, Spider-Man: Homecoming teaches us to love diversity - GotG2 teaches us that a dysfunctional family is better than a solid family. It teaches us that fathers are bad and at least two characters literally want to kill their dad. Seriously, this movie hates the father figure.

It teaches us (as usual) that blonde people are bad and in this movie they're depicted as golden seemingly to push that message even harder. They live on a planet called "Sovereignty" (seriously), they're rude and never leave the planet, instead preferring to play computer games. When their leader eventually does leave the planet, she demands a carpet from their own planet be rolled out in front of her so she doesn't need to touch any foreign surface.

I love being patronised every time I pay hard money to watch a movie - really!!

Wonder Woman alongside the equally dreary Spider-man: Homecoming hit the cinemas this year with suspiciously faultless reviews from every corner of the internet and the press. So fierce was the campaign of positivity, you'd never have realised both movies are actually really pretty garbage.

I can only figure that the dreadful response to the awful feminist Ghost Busters remake taught Hollywood that they must get the hop on the inevitable negative backlash and so flooded the internet with fake reviews before the real reviews start coming out - which appears to be the case now, with a plummet in Wonder Woman's public approval rating lately.

Wonder Woman truly is a mess of a movie. It spends no time developing 'Diana's' character; all she's interested in is "peace", while hacking men to pieces. And of course the villain was going to be the "Nazis" again. And of course there's NO coincidence our protagonist happens to be Israeli.

I was exhausted by the end of this movie, such is the constant drumming of the globalist message and glorification of warfare. My face must have looked like a sweaty puffed-up Chris Pine due to the lack of activity reaching my brain.

If you WANT to love this film, you will love it. If you had no preconceptions, no expectations, like me, you'll come away under whelmed.

DKR is essentially a non-humorous parody of the current economic crisis with class systems very much the focal point. People often speak of Bruce Wayne as the 'rich boy' now, claiming he couldn't understand the difficulties other people go through. As such, this is Bruce Wayne's new fight; to prove he's more than a rich boy.

The plot itself is pretty much a dumbed-down Angels And Demons, with a bomb threatening to blow up Gotham City. The device is even dealt with in exactly the same way. But where's Angels And Demons was a weaving intelligent story, this is a movie full of bewildering stupidity.

Not least of all, Batman's point of 'break'.

I would love to hear a doctor's take on Bruce Wayne's road to recovery from a compound fracture to his spine. His prescription was a guy punching it back into place then hoisting him up on rope until it healed… Then following a miraculous recovery, he spent the next few scenes dropping from a great height with rope wrapped around his waist to stop him hitting the floor. Did it unhinge his damaged back? No! It made him angry of course!

Catwoman's turn of convictions is something of a kick in the proverbial too. In a scene pooped from a greater height than Bruce Wayne's prison cell, you see her go from bitch-from-hell to heroine as she fights off two guys threatening a boy because he'd 'stolen' a perfect big red shiny apple. It didn't fit the tempo of her character and it was a scene painfully forced together just to serve the story.

I could continue plucking these individual problems forever more, but the main complaint I had was that the whole thing was pretty damn boring. It starts off nicely enough then takes a big dip and stays entrenched in this low ebb for too long.

I didn't care that the police were stupid enough to get themselves (each and every one) trapped underground while a masked madman threatened to blow the city up. I didn't care that once released they were stupid enough to walk straight towards gunfire like they were immortal. I wasn't slightly shocked (I was a bit humoured) when the orders were given to 'kill them… all of them' resulting in the disgraced 'heroic' main cop dressed in all his presentation uniform, lying eagle-spread.

I guess I just wanted to see more of Batman doing what Batman does; fight crime. He doesn't do that once in this movie except for an early bike chase. DKR showcases a Batman who is tired and is out of retirement - and you feel it.

My friends have had to watch this movie twice because they weren't convinced by it. I have absolutely no intention to get back in front of the big screen for this.

Straight to the point: Chernobyl Diaries has some of the worst acting/script/motivations I have seen in a movie, along with incredibly predictable 'scares'. YET, it has probably the best untapped location of any horror.

From the offset, you're introduced to some 'cool' kids who'll annoy the hell out of you immediately. Nothing is believable, none of the characters connect with you or each other. I hated the characters so much I was literally waiting for them to be lynched by the monsters. The only characters/actors I appreciated was a tour guy who takes them to Chernobyl and a hippie Australian who tags along with his hollow girlfriend.

Not surprising (and this was the reason I went to see the movie) was the fact the movie improved ten-fold when they arrive in Chernobyl. The location is astonishingly eerie and you can easily believe the myths of mutants living there. Here the film actually becomes scary to some extent and you feel yourself tensing up.

Until of course, the actors interrupt your concentration with some appalling, predictable stuff.

And so the finale winds down with your typical 'running blindly (literally at the very end), being chased by hordes of evil freaks'. And characters don't die so much as get whisked away into the darkness. Whenever the movie builds up to something scary, it's always undone by a disappointing result, leaving you a little bit deflated each time.

So that's what I thought. I would love to recommend this film for the location alone, but I could never, ever, recommend you see this film for anything else.

Prometheus is undoubtedly the most shockingly under-appreciated film of modern times; everyone seems disappointed by it. The only reason I can think this is the case is that people perhaps expected something different, maybe the fact the famous HR Giger alien doesn't make an appearance upset one or two. Or perhaps because the film as a whole doesn't conform to the usual Hollywood action movie template left a few people confused.

From my own point of view, Prometheus was everything I could have hoped for: a beginning story that doesn't obsess over Giger's alien in the same hyperactive way every 'sequel' did after the third outing. Here we're introduced to countless other brilliant creations instead.

The only complaint I had was that the team of explorers were told what their mission was after they'd already arrived. They were employed by Weylan, not mugged in the street, drugged and dumped aboard the ship. Did they not ask what it is they are being flown into deep space for? I forgave this hiccup realising Scott probably had to cut the chase and get the story moving quicker to keep us interested.

The acting is top notch. Prometheus has a cast of vaguely familiar faces, with the exception of Charlize Theron. Noomi Rapace is easily good enough to make loyal Alien fans forget Ripply. It's hard to believe she's Swedish given her faultless accent.

So yeah, I loved it. Absolutely blown away actually and will probably go see it again. What I would advise is to keep an open mind - don't go into this movie expecting it to be Aliens: Part Two. Don't have any expectations and you'll love it too.