Reviews

So I was able to see "Dracula Untold" in theatres today thanks to a contest from Universal Canada, and I'm here to tell you that the movie was honestly much better then I expected.

The plot concerns Luke Evans as Vlad Tepes, who was taken from his home in Wallachia as a young lad along with 999 boys to be brutally trained as a Turkish Janissary. He emerges as a brutal warrior, "Vlad the Impaler" but when his tenure with the Turks is done he returns to Transylvania to rule, throwing away or sealing up his nightmarish past and attempting to live a somewhat normal life with wife Mirena played by Sarah Gadot and son Ingeras played by Art Parkinson.

Ten years later he is visited by Turkish emissaries that demand another 1000 boys, plus his son, Vlad appeals to the Sultan Medmed II played by Dominic Cooper, but he refuses to say no and Vlad retaliates by killing the officials sent to collect his son. Vlad knows his bastion cannot defeat the Turks head on, so he heads to a cave that apparently contains a Vampire, to see if he can utilize their dark arts to save his family and homeland.

It's overall nicely done with a strong central performance by Evans, but don't be fooled by the name or trailers, this isn't a horror or horror-action films, it's a fantasy epic about the lengths one goes to in order to save what he loves, trying not to lose himself in the process. The choreography is overall good but it likes to bust out a bit of shaky cam for some early action, but for the final act you get great view-shots of Vampiric warfare and one jaw-dropping scene of what I could only describe as "Bat-Bending" By the way if you were ever waiting for it, this is the movie that decides to give Vampires some real meaning. All of their historic abilities and weaknesses are truthfully represented, super-human feats, rapid-healing, light-intolerance and vulnerability to silver, holy objects and the stake through the heart (but then again, what wouldn't that kill?). And the action scenes with Vampire Vlad are AWESOME, and the final act is the stuff of monster movie dreams, there are rumours the this is actually the start of an Avengers style monster mash-up by Universal, and if that's the case hell I'm exited to see where they go given the ending.

If I have to give one glaring critique, it's the PG-13 rating, which means basically no blood splatter, which feels so wrong for a Vampire movie. But you can obviously tell the movie was fighting against it, and I'm going to assume the filmmakers were really intent on an R but were forced by the executives to go for appeal.

Final Rating: 7/10, it doesn't re-write the monster movie, but Untold is a cracking good epic with surprisingly heartfelt drama, great stage design, effects and action, if a little "dry" for starring a monster that literally consumes blood.

Canadian Bacon is a film that parodies and satirizes both Canada-U.S.A. relations and post-Cold War feelings and actions, so right off the bat this film may be (and take this with a grain of salt) a bit too smart for most people to "get".

I don't want myself or this movie to sound pretentious, but Bacon is a movie that at least requires you to realize American feelings to Canada and vice-versa or it will sail right over your head. That also means that many people who do get it may just find it a bunch of shallow jokes without meaning, and they're kind of right too.

So what saves this movie? The writing, and the acting. The very Canadian John Candy delivers a terrific postmortem performance as US Gun-happy Sheriff Bud Boomer, which is about 1/3 the joke already, but he's matched with a great cast of supporting actors all of which really deliver the hilarious jokes and punches of this movie. It's also worth noting that movie has a great deal of ironic humour that's only surfaced recently, I won't spoil it but just remember that this movie came out '95 and you may be feeling a few gut blows across the trip.

Bacon in my honest opinion is an underrated comedy classic that you should absolutely see if you fit into the category established at the start.... anyone else might want a bit of a history lesson first.

It must've been a big gamble for the latest "please forgive us for Godzilla 1998" project to be handed to a director whose previous film was a hilariously low budget indie monster flick, then give him the budget of a mainstream Hollywood blockbuster and tell him "yo dawg, go make Godzilla." It didn't work.

I admire what Gareth Edwards is trying to do, provide a suspense thriller that give you the big payoff at the end instead of doing what Pacific Rim did last summer, but this. movie. doesn't. work. It's just boring, the only two interesting characters get basically no screen time, and the main character played by Taylor Johnson is so bland, dull and blank you could've recast him halfway through the movie or killed him and no one would've noticed. The big Godzilaa fight at the end is awesome, but it is not worth sitting through so much boring story, bad characters and stupid, insulting set-pieces to get to, skip it.

Redline supposedly took 7 years and ~100,000 individual drawings to create, all hand-drawn, limited computer work, and it shows. It is without a doubt, the absolute no holds barred best visual achievement in 2-D animation ever, you could make a poster out of pretty much every individual frame of this movie. Aside from all that, it's a pretty standard plot about an underdog racer getting to compete in a big race, if you seen any movie like this you can probably guess every single thing that goes on in Redline. But it's the journey rather then the story that really gets you, Redline had memorable and likable characters, a gorgeous and original design, am amazing soundtrack and jaw-dropping racing, go see this if you haven't already.

First off, you should not plan to see Noah because it is a biblical epic, nor should you plan to skip Noah precisely because it is a biblical epic. You should however, see Noah because it is an amazing film, using the basic story of Noah's ark to deliver a fantasy action/adventure and a psychological horror story and deliver a very relevant ecological message that's subtle. The visuals are out of this world, particularly one scene depicting the creation of the universe from the big bang to a scientifically accurate representation of what Darwinian evolution would look like sped up about a million times, the whole scene would feel right at home in an episode of Cosmos. (Yes, you read that right.) Special mention must be made to Russel Crowe, who delivers the complicated picture of a man that both saves the world but is also supposed to let it die, and all of the weight one must feel about it. I can't praise this movie enough, it's basically perfect, if you are even the least bit curious about going, do so! You won't regret it.

American Hustle is not a good film, it's not a bad film, it's just meh. It's got two or three really good scenes spread out in a two hour film while the rest is so dull and uninteresting that it feels like a three and a half hour film. For a supposed Crime-Drama, it tries at many points to be comedic, while still trying to be dramatic, ambitious, but the result is that it fails at being both. The acting is at least good, but the god-awful fake accents the cast has makes this feel like some sort of attempted satire that has no punchline. If you are looking for a seedy Crime films to sink into ala Goodfellas, try out Scorsese's own Wolf of Wall Street or even Pain & Gain before you bother with this, would earn a 5/10 for being so average, but with all of the talent on hand it loses a point for wasted potential.