Men In Black 3 + Bel Ami REVIEWED (Cinema Screenings)

Men In Black 3 (3D)(Rated M) - Cinema Review

Tuesday 29th May 2012 - 2:20pm-4:21pm Hoyts Erina Cinema 2

Story: When super-villain Boris the Animal escapes from a super-max prison on the moon, his only quest is to kill Agent K. He succeeds, eliminating K from the timeline and causing a lot of confusion for his partner, Agent J. In order to stop an alien invasion, J must travel back to 1969 where K was killed - J has to stop Boris from altering time.

Positive: Fun and enjoyable sci-fi comedy with steady plot momentum and lots of references to alien culture. Good jokes in a wacky universe similar to 'Harry Potter'. Impressive reproduction of 1969 America, plus impressive visual effects, especially the fight scene at the Apollo 11 rocket launch.

Negative: Maybe could have used a few mega-laugh-out-loud or smarter jokes. Everything seemed to be begging for your laughs, every line of dialogue.

Conclusion: Never a dull moment. An unnecessarily long wait between sequels doesn't matter - things are still fresh.

Overall: An amusing ride

8/10



Bel Ami (MA15+)- Cinema Review

Tuesday 29th May 2012 - 4:40pm-6:33pm Hoyts Erina Cinema 8

Story: In Paris 1890, a soldier named Georges Duroy comes home from the frontlines looking for an easy life. He begins in a tavern, scoring some charity from a friend, before lifting his game and seducing three woman - Clotilde, Madeline, Virginie - in order to stake a claim in their families.

Positive: Some good, powerful acting.

Negative: Baffling story which I couldn't really understand. No real explanation about who Georges is. Such poorly developed characters, regardless if you know the history of the story or not. So difficult to explain it all without being overly vague.

Conclusion: Nothing made sense and I was prepared to walk out knowing I wouldn't mind what I missed.

Overall: Terrible period piece

2/10

The Woman In Black + The Dictator REVIEWED (Cinema Screenings)

The Woman In Black (Rated M) - Cinema Review

Tuesday 22nd May 2012 - 12:10pm-2:00pm Hoyts Erina Cinema 8

Story: Arthur Kipps is a young solicitor assigned the task of clearing out the estate of the Drablow family after their demise. He travels to Eel Marsh House to sort out and take care of their personal belongings. When Arthur starts to see an apparition of a woman in black around the property, and when kids in the area start committing suicide, he wonders if something bigger has happened at Eel Marsh in the past. He soon discovers who this angry ghost is and what she wants.

Positive: Immensely creepy and atmospheric mystery. Some effective shocks and startling imagery that unnerves. Short and simple story. Dramatic music helps terrify you.

Negative: Extraordinarily slow and uneventful to begin with. Slightly boring until things start happening at the haunted house. Arthur does some weird things, going from brave to scared easily.

Conclusion: The old school scares might annoy some, and they were beginning to wear on my patience, but you'll soon appreciate it's all for fun.

Overall: Good clean horror

7/10



The Dictator (MA15+) - Cinema Review

Tuesday 22nd May 2012 - 3:00pm-4:38pm Hoyts Erina Cinema 2

Story: Admiral General Aladeen rules the North African country of Wadiya using oppression and force. He's been developing a nuclear program despite outcries all over the world. When he refuses to allow weapons inspectors into his country, he's invited to the UN headquarters in New York to explain himself. Unfortunately his second-in-command Tamir wants to get rid of him to open the country up so oil can be found. This can only happen if Wadiya becomes a democracy. Aladeen can't let that happen.

Positive: Sexist, rude and racist, Aladeen conveys what everything already thinks about dictatorships in Africa and the Middle East, as well as Arabs in general.

Negative: It seems like this should have been made ages ago when it was relevant. Unsatisfying, terribly inconsistent and incomprehensible humour is too confused and confusing to understand.

Conclusion: Some good jokes to begin with before going completely downhill due to the terrible plot.

Overall: Mildly comedic

5/10

Iron Sky REVIEWED (Cinema Screening - Rated M)

Tuesday 15th May 2012 - 2:40pm-4:27pm Hoyts Erina Cinema 8

Story: In 2018, American astronauts travel back to the moon. They discover that Nazis, having escaped defeat in 1945, have built a base on the dark side of the moon. For decades, the Nazis have been planning to invade Earth with a battleship called the Gotterdammerung. When one American astronaut named James Washington is taken hostage, his mobile phone is confiscated due to being an advanced computer. Deputy Nazi commander Klaus Adler, school teacher Renate Richter and James travel to Earth to steal more mobile phones.

Positive: Enjoyable satire in the same vein as 'Dr. Strangelove' and 'Mars Attacks'. The humour is smart, sometimes goofy, but also sneaky (none of it is shoved in your face). Even though movies of this sort are silly, they also have credible stories about war and politics. The special effects in this movie are amazing.

Negative: Dark comedies/satires are sometimes hard to digest - the humour is too adult, unsuspected and swift.

Conclusion: Quality productions like this make you wonder why the story wasn't just played out as a serious fantasy rather than a satire. Doesn't really matter, though.

Overall: Smarter than predicted

8/10

Dark Shadows REVIEWED (Cinema Screening - Rated M)

Sunday 13th May 2012 - 1:40pm-3:48pm Hoyts Erina Cinema 6

Story: In 1760, Barnabas Collins is transformed into a vampire by a witch named Angelique who only wanted him to love her. Barnabas is then buried alive in a coffin until he's dug up by accident in 1972. The Collins family is still rich and living in Maine, in the town of Collinsport. When Barnabas turns up, he wants to get down to business again, resurrecting his canning company. Unfortunately, Angelique is still alive also, and after two centuries, she is still punishing Barnabas for not falling in love with her. (The title of the film refers to Barnabas being restricted to the shadows, both due to his love for a girl named Josette, and his allergy to sunlight).

Positive: Despite being a trainwreck, the film is interesting, with some humour arising from the timeframe shift that Barnabas experiences. Occasionally silly and fun.

Negative: This is the most uneven and confused movie ever. So poorly written. You wonder sometimes why the characters, which supposedly have significant stories, disappear for long periods. Without equal screen-time and too many characters who end up doing bizarre stuff for no reason, it left me wondering who green-lit this crap.

Conclusion: It needed to focus exclusively on the love triangle between Barnabas, Angelique and Josette. There's just too many plotlines.

Overall: A senseless mess

4/10

Act Of Valor REVIEWED (Cinema Screening - MA15+)

Tuesday 8th May 2012 - 2:20pm-4:26pm Hoyts Erina Cinema 8

Story: Lt. Rorke is a father-to-be and a Navy Seal. He's joined by best friend Dave as they take part in the War on Terror. They are involved in three missions - an extraction, an intel search, and a border-crossing intervention. These missions relate to a terrorist named Shebal and a smuggler named Christo who are attempting to get jihadist suicide bombers into America. The bombers are wearing a new type of explosive vest embedded with 500 ceramic balls each for maximum damage.

Positive: Moderately exciting action film with quality camerawork and mindless, bloody violence. It's a switch-off type of movie, so it's entertaining despite its flaws. It's almost identical to a Tom Clancy video game. Good explosions and effects; exciting kills including headshots.

Negative: Hardly any brains behind the barely-there story. Zero characterisation and character development. Characters portrayed by no-name actors, so no star power besides Tom Clancy acting as advisor on the film. Might as well play 'Call Of Duty' or 'Rainbow Six' instead.

Conclusion: Really poor storytelling which could have been more complex with deeper characters, even if the inspiration for the film comes from no-questions-asked straightforward combat.

Overall: Shallow yet gratifying action

6/10

The Five-Year Engagement + The Way REVIEWED (Cinema Screenings)

The Five-Year Engagement - Cinema Review

Thursday 3rd May 2012 - 1:10pm-3:29pm Hoyts Erina Cinema 4

Tom Solomon and Violet Barnes first see each other at a superhero costume party, and it's love at first sight. After a year of going together, Tom proposes to Violet in a romantic way almost sabotaged by his friends. Tom is a chef - it's a great job, paying a lot of money. But when Violet gets accepted into the University of Michigan, she and Tom decide to put the wedding off, leave Tom's great job in San Francisco and move to the other side of the country. Violet needs two years to become a qualified social researcher. In the meantime, Tom applies for a dead end job in a sandwich bar. As time progresses, Violet needs to extend her studies, much to the dismay of Tom who isn't enjoying the fact Violet is living her dream and he's unable to. When Violet kisses her teacher Winton Childs during a drink at the pub, Tom attacks her for screwing up his life. They decide to break up and Tom moves back to San Francisco. Violet stays with Winton (who turns out to be a manipulator and control freak) and Tom finds a girl named Audrey (who's so full of energy, she ends up exhausting him). By this time, it's obvious Tom and Violet miss each other.

With a sceptical approach, I went into the cinema thinking the worst for this movie. The jokes in the trailer indicated something substandard, like slapstick and forced comedy. In the first ten minutes, this movie won me over - I couldn't help laughing, even though Jason Segel is in it. Segel never impressed me before, he stars on the worst TV show in history, and he wrote this movie so I was guessing I'd find his type of comedy intolerable. Prematurely, I considered him as bad as Jimmy Fallon and Adam Sandler. Didn't I get a shock by the restrained humour, the efficient romance and mild profanity in this movie. I liked it all. It was smart that the jokes were spread out among all the characters evenly and Jason Segel thankfully doesn't try hard to keep just himself in the spotlight. Emily Blunt is great - I do like her, her accent and smile, her sweetness contrasting with her spunk. Everything was truly enjoyable and funny, and it had a far more centred drama than something like '21 Jump Street'. I wasn't even bothered about the long run-time because I was drawn into the characters and never bored.

Overall: Noteworthy romantic comedy

8/10



The Way - Cinema Review

Thursday 3rd May 2012 - 4:30pm-6:46pm Hoyts Erina Cinema 6

When an elderly eye doctor named Tom Avery learns of his son Daniel's death while backpacking across Europe, he travels to France to claim the body. Once there, Tom understands that Daniel intended to walk the Camino De Santiago, a pilgrimage from France to Spain and the tomb of Saint James, brother of Jesus. Tom never really understood Daniel's need for adventure, but after cremating Daniel, he takes Daniel's backpack and decides to walk the Camino, dropping a handful of Daniel's ashes at places of interest along the way. During the early stages of the journey, Tom is join by three other travellers making the same 800 kilometre pilgrimage: there's Joosi from Amsterdam who wants to lose weight; there's Sarah from Canada who wants to quit smoking; and there's Jack from Ireland who's looking for inspiration to write a novel. They find inns to sleep at along the way, meeting weird characters, having arguments and debates and Tom even has his backpack stolen at one point which contained Daniel's ashes.

The journey is nicknamed The Way, and this movie is all very nice and decent. It's also very long and tiresome. It's not ruled by anything worthwhile because nothing spectacular or dramatic happens, there's minimal character development with no payoff, and very little focus in terms of plot. I expected better based on the reviews I glanced at beforehand. This movie ends up feeling clichéd, like the filmmakers struggled to come up with anything original. Granted, the target audience is grandparents and old people who may not have strived for more in their lives or didn't have the ambition to be more adventurous - Tom Avery is therefore their role model. The challenge of the 800km walk is the villain, quiet and faceless, shown seldom through the exertion of the four leads. I kinda felt indifferent to the countryside scenery - it wasn't really an attraction. What was really draining was the run-time and the overly simple humour. It reminded me of 'The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel' in essence.

Overall: A tiresome cliché

4/10

The Lucky One REVIEWED (Cinema Screening)

Tuesday 1st May 2012 - 2:40pm-4:36pm Hoyts Erina Cinema 4

Logan Thibault is a marine participating in Operation Iraqi Freedom. He spots a photography in the rubble, and by approaching it and picking it up, he's saved from a mortar explosion which kills three other soldiers where Logan had been standing previously. The photography becomes his lucky charm: it depicts a girl, but Logan has no clue who she is or where the photograph came from. Back in America, Logan discovers the location of the girl through the Internet by identifying landmarks in the background of the photo. He walks from Colorado to Louisiana, ending up in the town of Hamden. The girl is identified there as Beth Green who lives on a ranch with her grandma Ellie and her son Ben. Beth is separated from husband Keith Clayton, but she retained custody of Ben. Logan turns up and manages to get employed at their dog training business on the ranch. Beth thinks Logan is a creep, but is obviously attracted to him. Problem is, her ex, Keith, is bullying her and threatening Logan.

So Logan helps around the place until Beth falls for him. Keith says if he sees Logan and her together, he'll go back to court, gain custody of Ben since Beth is shagging an enigmatic drifter from nowhere. Logan still hasn't explained to Beth why he came to find her, but eventually she's told his secret about the photo that saved his life. This whole lucky charm and destiny theme is quite lovely, but this is a cheesy romantic drama. It's about reacting to the mystical vibe you feel when something brings you good luck - Logan, maybe, takes things a bit too far. He's not condemned for it though - after all, it's romantic (luckily the girl in the photo is attractive). This is not spectacular storytelling. The film is really for teenage girls, but it's generally likeable and enjoyable. None of it is ever stellar, it's just a pleasant, good-looking movie. The problem is it's way too squeaky clean and predictable, with a happy ending all round. It's quite simplistic, with typical sexual tension, lots of long, lingering looks, but not a lot of depth.

Overall: Predictable yet likeable romance

5/10

The Avengers REVIEWED (Cinema Screening in 3D)

Friday 27th April 2012 - 3:40pm-6:16pm Hoyts Erina Cinema 2

When Loki makes a deal with a mysterious enemy, he gets transported to Earth where he wipes out the entire SHIELD facility. He flees after brainwashing a number of army personnel, including Hawkeye. He also takes the Tessaract cube. Nick Fury requires Black Widow to track down Bruce Banner aka the Hulk so he can help find where Loki has taken the cube. Tony Stack aka Iron Man plus Steve Rogers aka Captain America end up pinpointing Loki and capturing him for Nick Fury, before Thor intervenes and tries to talk some sense into Loki. Loki intends to start a war for some reason, bringing minions from another world using a portal helpfully created by the Tessaract. Loki ends up being transferred to the SHIELD flying platform. It turns out he's purposefully had himself captured so he can aggravate the Hulk who is bound to tear the good guys apart. After the flying platform almost crashes and Hawkeye is saved, the superheroes decide to join forces to defend the Earth against alien intruders about to be unleashed. The six superheroes call themselves the Avengers: Captain American, Iron Man, Thor, the Hulk, Black Widow, Hawkeye.

Not a real big Marvel Comics fan, but I do like Spiderman and Iron Man. This movie was surprisingly disappointing, probably because I'd seen the individual takes on the characters over the years and I expected something superior. This film is just okay, it's not special nor is there a lot of magic seeing all these superheroes together. There's something amiss. I'm guessing it's the crap, boring plot. It made sense, but it was a really poor excuse for a movie - searching for the Tessaract cube, with just talk and limited action for the first 80 minutes. Introductions really didn't need to be made, and what this flaw does is stall the action. All I wanted was cool imagery, one-liners, startling action and explosions and memorable poses. Unfortunately, that doesn't really happen until the finale. What I expected was each characters being showcased poorly with not a lot to do - that's generally what happens. The characters fight insignificant tussles with each other and basically talk forever about the cube. And would you believe there's zero character depth, making most of the jokes lame and cringe-worthy. Only the special effects make anything worthwhile. This film will only really satisfy diehard fans.

Overall: crap story, good SFX.

7/10

Streetdance 2 REVIEWED (Cinema Screening)

Sunday 22nd April 2012 - 2:10pm-3:50pm Hoyts Erina Cinema 6

So the story starts with a popcorn vendor named Ash deciding to put his ego on the line during a dance meet, going onto stage and going up against a dance crew named Invincible. But unluckily, Ash stumbles at one point and lands on his ass. He's mocked and goes away defeated. But another dancer named Eddie sees promise in Ash and suggests they join forces and get the best dancers around Europe to join their newly conceived dance crew. Briefly, we are introduced to a number of unique be-bop dancers with wacky names like Skorpian, Bam-Bam, Killa, Yoyo, Tino, Ali, Terrabyte, Junior and Steph. The final dancer needed is a Latin dance specialist in Paris named Ava who dances in a bar run by her uncle, Manu. She's a saucy number and Ash tries to convince her that mixing street with Latin dance will help them win the upcoming championship in Paris. Ava agrees, but requests that Ash leaves behind his ego and solitary nature because Latin dance is for couples, not individuals. Eventually, after a lot of disputes and fighting, Ash and his crew go up against Invincible in the championship.

The problem I have with dance flicks is their non-existent plot serving as a basis for lots of dancing. That's repeated in this movie too - everything revolves around an upcoming nameless championship and that's the whole plot from the start. It's otherwise just a tit-for-tat drama between two characters Ash and Ava trying to come to terms with the differences in their dance styles. (This is exactly what happened with the original movie, with street meets ballet). All the other characters are meaningless and not even one-note because they don't contribute anything which is really strange. Talk about poor writing. Another problem I have with dance flicks is the pointlessness of dance battles. The quality is all subjective because each crew is unique and it's hard to appreciate who's better. They're just eye candy with no tension. I consider stuff like the martial arts in 'The Matrix', 'The Phantom Menace' and 'Kung Fu Panda' having better uses of the term 'dance battle'. I think the only great dance flick was 'Strictly Ballroom'. Nevertheless, this movie was fairly entertaining. I enjoyed it despite it being mindless and having a sucky plot. The music, the moves, the camerawork, the choreography, the energy, the beat, the rhythm, and good-looking bodies - it's all fun and addictive.

5/10

Battleship REVIEWED (Cinema Screening)

Tuesday 17th April 2012 - 12:30pm-2:56pm Hoyts Erina Cinema 3

The navel war games called RIMPAC are being held just off the coast of Hawaii. When an anomaly is sighted in the water, three officers investigate. Suddenly, the anomaly grows upset. At this point, we already know that alien spacecrafts have just landed, with the alien communications craft exploding in Hong Kong, killing 25,000 people. The surviving alien ships create a forcefield around Hawaii and the immediate ocean, securing only three human battleships inside. I can't remember who attacks who first, but the war games turn real as human versus alien gets underway. Quickly, two of the battleships are destroyed, leaving the 'John Paul Jones'. Commanding this ship is reluctant Lt. Alex Hopper who is motivated to seek revenge after his brother is killed onboard one of the destroyed ships. Soon, the sailors on the 'John Paul Jones' realise they're dealing with aliens from an Earth-like planets light years away called Planet-G (for Goldilocks). The aliens are trying to reach a radio telescope array in Hawaii to call home, maybe bringing their whole civilisation with them. It's up to the remaining battleship within the forcefield to save the Earth.

This is a very exciting movie with spectacular special effects and satisfying destruction. It's in the same league as 'Battle: Los Angeles', but not nearly as good as my fav alien invasion flick, 'Independence Day'. However, the movie has the right idea. I like the action, the minimal humour and the special effects. The setting doesn't attempt to be a global fight against the invaders. Instead, the participants in the war are American and Japanese ships. There are some cool references to the board game Battleship, including a grid which is set up by the sailors to detect water displacement through tsunami buoys. Despite this, this Hasbro property still feels like a 'Transformers' movie, that same kind of scale, the same kind of eye candy, but it's all just as fun. There's also a level of cheesiness which I enjoyed - the kind that means jettisoning some realism, like when the HSS Missouri is brought into combat once more. None of this detracts from having a good time. There's even tension during each battle.

The negative: the movie's only purpose is to entertain and perhaps prepare the public for a possible alien invasion for real in December 2012. But the script doesn't try too hard, especially because it avoids going into any detail about the aliens: their origin, their motives, whether they're in fact the infamous Reptilian race of aliens, how they evolved, what chemical they need to breathe, what element are they composed of, what their society is like, why their spacecrafts have heavy artillery. All these things, I'm disappointed to say, are not explained. There's just a few passing references that the aliens are related to lizards and they use an unknown metal to build their spaceships. Nothing as effectively explained as what 'Independence Day' did for its evil aliens. On the human front, just about all of the characters are one-dimensional. There's also a minor side story with Alex Hopper's girlfriend which was stupid.

8/10