Jun. 20th, 2014

jacey: (blue eyes)
Seen A Million Ways to Die in the West? My advice. Don't! Puerile, self-indulgent cobblers. And not funny. Watch the trailer and you'll have seen all the best bits. Not only that, but trailer scenes were actually edited together in such a way that it looked as though it was going to be funny. (And some of the scenes were different in the actual movie.) Talk about bait and switch...

I hope Charlize Theron and Liam Neeson got well paid for this because it would take a lot to suffer having this stinker on your IMDB resumee. In fairness they played it straight, and it was hardly their fault. Liam Neeson was suitably menacing as the bad guy and Charlize Theron as the capable gun-toting Westerner and love interest, but Seth McFarlane wrote it, directed it and starred in it. If it hasn't killed his Hollywoord career stone dead, it should do.

I'm not surprised that Patrick Stewart remained uncredited for his two lines as 'dream voice' but he was easily recognisable and (sorry Sir Pat, but...) IMDB gave the game away.

Imagine a dud Carry On movie with added bad taste, a lot of people saying fuck all the time and subtracted humour. Of course if you like shit and fart humour, go for it...
jacey: (blue eyes)
Gorundhog Day meets Starship Troopers, but don't let that put you off. This is really good. It's time-loop story in which Cage (Tom Cruise) a public relations specialist with a nominal army rank of Major gets on the wrong side of someone with influence and ends up busted to the ranks without ever having gone through basic training. That's a bit of a problem because there's a war on - a war against implacable aliens.

It's a problem for our hero because he's... well... not excatly hero material and certainly not gung-ho. He bumbles his way through the first few moments of a beach landing without knowing how to take the safety off his weapon, but the aliens are overwhelming. Predictably he ends up dead... and suddenly his day resets itself. In fact every time he ends up dead he goes back to the same point in the worst day of his life, learning as he goes.

It's extremely well done, so you see enough of the repeats to get the differences and the forward steps, but not enough to get frustrated with it. Emily Blunt plays the female lead, tough super-soldier, Rita, who understands what's going on when no one else does.

This is an inventive take on the Hiroshi Sakurazaka novel "All You Need Is Kill" with a certain amount of humour injected into a bleak situatiuon. The aliens are convincing, the battle scenes are delivered with sufficient verisimilitude to make them viscerally realistic. The special effects are good but they don't dominate the characterisation. (A bonus for me.)

Go and see it. One of the better movies of the year so far.

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