Movies I watched in 2013

Here we have, pretty much in order a list of every movie I watched in 2013, I did not count repeat viewings and TV series were only added once the last episode of that season had been watched.

After porn ends
From Russia with Love
Goldfinger
The dungeon masters
You only live twice
Tinker bell & the lost treasure
Adventures if tintin
Dr No
Thunderball
Naked ambition
On her majesty's secret service
The man with the golden gun
The spy who loved me
Moonraker
Octopussy
For your eyes only
View to a kill
Hugo
Puss in boots
Living day lights
Licence to kill
Never say never again
Goldeneye
Tomorrow Never Dies
Dexter season 5
World is not enough
The devil inside
V/h/s
Dredd
Tinkerbell and the secret of the wings
Resident evil retribution
Missing in Action 3
First blood
First blood part 2
Rambo 3
Rambo
Bloodsport
Missing in action
Lone wolf mcquade
All star superman
Commando
Conan the destroyer
Werewolf the beast among us
American Mary
Batman year one
Superman/shazam
Deadliest warrior s1
Deadspace downfall
Dantes inferno
Dead space aftermath
Dexter s6
Underworld
Underworld evolution
The crow
Jumanji
Tanked s1
Deadliest warrior s2 & 3
Gi joe rise of cobra
Tower block
Dog soldiers
The matrix
The smurfs
Feast
Season of the witch
Expendables 2
Skyfall
Taken
Taken 2
Grabbers
F
Amber alert
Choose
Grave encounters
Grave encounters 2
Total recall 2012
Secondhand lions
Brave
Men in black
Men in black 2
Men in black 3
Iron man
Hulk
Killer klowns from outer space
Pervert
Looper
The hobbit
Red hill
Despicable me
Independence Day
Django unchained
The Sweeney
Paranormal activity 4
Dark house
Jurassic park 3
Uncle buck
The bay
Bait
Alvin and the chipmunks chipwrecked
Warlords of Atlantis
House at the end of the street
The shrine
Dexter s7
Battle royale
Storage 24
Wake wood
Hemlock grove s1
Starship troopers 3
Superman vs the elite
Justice league. Doom
Man of steel
Madagascar 3
Silent hill revelations
Friday 13th pt 6
Silence of the lambs
Se7en
Rise of the foot soldier
Avengers
American horror story s1
101 Dalmatians
Thor
Rec 3
Blade
Evil dead 2013
Evil dead 2
Gi joe retaliation
Despicable Me 2
The pact
John dies at the End
Bride of chucky
The caller
Absentia
Re-Animator
Jack the giant killer
Whores glory
The ward
Xena s1-6
Iron man 3
World war z
Star Trek into darkness
Fast and furious 7
Dark skies
Aftershock
Hell on wheels s2
The collection
Hannibal s1
Gone
ATM
Shrooms
Truth or dare
Comic book men s2
Breaking bad final season
The devils rock
The Hamiltons
Hansel and gretell
Maniac
The Barrens
Jack Reacher
Dawn on the dead (remake)
Gladiator
The Purge
The Collector
Curse of chucky
Hummingbird
V/H/S 2
Leviathan
This is the End
Kick ass 2
Carry on cabbie
Hombre
Salvage
Fellowship of the ring
The Two Towers
Return of the King
Lucky Bastard
Blackfish
Lovelace

The Thing (Remake Prequel Thing)

I was really expecting to hate this film, after all John Carpenters The Thing holds a well deserved spot in my all time top movies and a prequel seemed an unnecessary addition to a perfect stand alone movie. The fact that it shares an identical title to it's source material indicates that it should be viewed as another piece of a larger whole and despite my initial concerns that it would be nothing more than a lazy knock off the Thing (prequel) holds up well because it treats the source material with the respect and reverence it deserves and never tries to step out of the shadow if the original. The special effects while obviously relying heavily on cgi still bear similarity to the original films animatronic masterpieces and if anything the freedom of cgi enables the body snatching alien to seem more mobile and in some ways more threatening than ever.

The cast perform well, even if many of the performances seem to be copy and pasted from the original and fans of the Carpenter masterpiece like me will delight in spotting references and locations that are familiar and the film does link perfectly to its chronological predecessor.

Of course we are also treated to the always enjoyable Mary Elizabeth Winstead, who does well enough as the understated heroine and one of the few characters with any gleam of intelligence. Although ultimately none of the cast are given much chance for characterization

All in all if you enjoyed the original then you should find alot to like here, it's not perfect by any means but when viewed solely as a companion piece to the original it does a much better job as a prequel than some others movies (*cough* Phantom Menace).

Overall whether viewed as a standalone movie or a companion to the original you could do alot worse than this and I for one think it's well worth a watch!

Daredevil & How to Make the New Series Not Suck

I love Daredevil.

Forget Spider-Man, Wolverine, Captain America because not one of them is as compelling a character as The Man Without Fear. Don't get me wrong all have had their moments but nothing that compares to Daredevil's greatest stories, The Man Without Fear, Born Again and Bendis and Brubakers stellar runs have propelled Matt Murdock to legendary heights.

Then of course Andy Diggle boned the character almost fatally with the dire Shadowland arc but I wont open that can of worms right now.

Daredevil is great because he is so hugely flawed, besides his obvious physical handicap his own self-loathing and inability to form any kind of long-term relationship outside of a few close friends makes him painfully isolated from the world around him. This loneliness has almost torn him apart on many occasions and makes for a potentially brilliant movie formula.

Of course instead of a brilliant movie we got this shite.......

Oh god where to start with this one...

Affleck does give it a fair old shot but just doesn't deliver where it counts.

Bullseye was portrayed as an OTT loon with Colin Farrell completely misfiring on all cylinders. Taking a cold, calculating psychopath who takes a perverse joy in killing and his uncanny talent for it and turning him into a gobby oirish knob-end who is ultimately more clown-like then chilling.

Elektra was replaced in the movie by a cardboard cut out of Jennifer Garner who, whilst looking undeniably pretty in a sweet but square jawed kind of way, completely failed to capture the spirit and innate menace and sexuality of the character.

Kingpin fared slightly better than the rest even though bearing the least physical resemblance to the character , the late great MCD at least pulled of a reasonably charismatic and charming Wilson Fisk although again much of the characters menace was lost.

There were a few flashes of inspiration however, Daredevils 'sonar sense' was very well realised and there were several moments where sound was brilliantly depicted from the hero's viewpoint. The fact that Matt pops painkillers like vitamins and is covered in bruises and scars shows us that through it all Daredevil is very much human and no Superman.

To be fair these complaints are as much to do with script and direction than the characters themselves, hopefully the new Netflix series will get it right and give us Marvels version of The Dark Knight rather than Batman and Robin.

Which brings me to the core of this post, how I think the new Daredevil series should be.

First off casting

Matt Murdock/Daredevil
Cillian Murphy

We need someone with serious acting chops to pull this one off, heck any stunt double can kick ass in a Daredevil costume but to really capture the tormented soul of Matt Murdock I reckon Cillian is our man!

Bullseye
Javier Bardrem

Scary, believable and someone you seriously do not want to fuck with, just draw a bullseye on his forehead and you'll see he's perfect for the role.

Elektra
Mary Elizabeth Winstead

Maybe a little young for the role but MEW can easily balance sexy, vulnerable and dangerous.

Kingpin
Jeffery Dean Morgan

Kingpin is always going to be a tough one to cast simply because of the unrealistic physical proportaions of the character himself so the choices are either kit someone out in a realistic fat suit, or just forget the whole fat man thing and just cast someone of normal proportions. Either way I say JDM is our man, easily capable of pulling of Wilson Fisks charismatic menace and would still be able to make us sympathetic to the character. The recent Punisher arc entitled simply 'Kingpin' would be an ideal starting point from which to develop Wilson Fisk for a Daredevil reboot.

The Combat

Daredevil is a ninja, one of the best in the world and as such should be quite comfortable kicking ass. In the comics Daredevil is a swift, brutal combatant and whilst he draws the line at killing he doesn't pull punches either. Watch the fight scene below, an excerpt for the movie Warrior King and just imagine Tony Jaa in a red outfit...

Now that is how Daredevil should fight, fast, brutal and yet with grace and poise. Watching him fight should be like watching a dancer do his stuff only with alot more limb breakage! Most importantly no sliding down stair rails and blatant wire work (Along with poor CGI, obvious wirework is a passionate hatred of mine).

Next up is how Daredevil should move. This is a character who prowls the rooftops Batman style, using his superkeen senses to zero in on crime, he needs to be fast, agile, graceful and silent. What we don't want to see is more unbelievable CGI stuntmen or ludicrous wirework, what we need is to get some guys like this into a Daredevil costume, watch this clip and try to picture DD moving like this...

So there we go, even if you don't agree with all of what I've suggested hopefully there will be a couple of things in there that will make you realise just how great this movie has the potential to be. Let's just keep our fingers crossed that this time Daredevil fans will finally get the movie they deserve.

Resident Evil Afterlife

So Resi/Afterlife picks up pretty much exactly where the last film left off, wasting no time in cutting off several of the series more idiotic plot points like they were freshly zombified limbs. Alice’s army of super clones are wiped out in the first 15 minutes, proving that cloning is obviously not the way forward and that brain cells are seemingly not a part of the package. Alice herself is then nerfed ‘God of War’ style by the wonderfully wooden Wesker (try saying that ten times) and loses all of her super powers although this doesn’t really seem to affect her in any significant way other than losing her psychic shockwave powers.

She then meets up with the increasingly attractive Claire Redfield (Ali Larter) and they find their way to an abandoned prison in which a handful of horror movie stereotypes have holed up waiting for rescue.

We've read the script!



The Zombies themselves now do the split mouthy thing from Resi 5 for no apparent reason other than it looks cool and also borrowing from Resi 5’s bestiary is the Executioner who shows up with no explanation and for no reason other than to look scary in the trailer. He does however have the best scene in the movie where he battles Claire Redfield in a slo-mo shower fest which is as awesome as it sounds.

Speaking of Claire, we are finally introduced to her badass brother and Resident Evil legend Chris Redfield, who is played by that bloke from Prison Break and the entire sibling history is summed up in a conversation a little like this:-

CHRIS: Claire it’s me Chris, I’m your brother!

CLAIRE: Wait a second, I don’t remember you!

CHRIS: Oh sorry. I won’t bring it up again.

And that’s it, like many important plot points the movie just kind of gives up on the whole thing before it’s even started, it feels kind of like a theatrical cut where all of the character development was left on the cutting room floor to make room for all of the slow-motion.

Having said all this however I did enjoy Resident Evil: Afterlife, the effects were pretty good, the leading ladies are easy on the eye and the 3D was quite well done and not too ‘in your face’. If you enjoyed the other three movies you’ll enjoy this and if you didn’t then avoid like the plague.

At the end of the day watching a Resident Evil movie is kind of like turning up for an S&M session, you know it’s going to hurt but some of us will enjoy it all the same…

Ninja Assassin

It's like 300 but with Ninjas!

Rather than go on with a full review I'm going to share with you what I have learned from this movie...

1.) Don't fuck around with a Ninja!

2). Ninja can hurl shurikens faster then bullets and at an extreme rate of fire

3). If there's a Ninja about turn on all the friggin lights and he will be unable to sneak up on you.

4). It sucks to be a Ninjas girlfriend.

5). Some people are born with their hearts on the opposite side of their body and thus cannot be killed by Ninjas.

6). The best Ninja have been taught first aid by Wolverine.

7). When a Ninja is cut, the effect will be similar to slicing open a ketchup filled balloon.

8). Ninja's are great at crossing the road.

9). Ninja's love sharp shiny objects

10). If you learn the truth of Ninjas, you will die in 7 days (more or less)

Every now and then a movie comes along that will unexpectedly grab you by the heart strings and pull you in, with a plot that is both original and gutwrenching and performances that rise far above expectation...

This is not that movie.

Ninja Assassin has very little plot, all of which has been seen before. The acting is pretty weak save for Sho Kosugi as the head of the evil ninja orphanage (now theres a movie waiting to be made) and pop star prodigy Rain does well as the movies lead, especially seeing as he had no previous martial arts training.

The plot however is irrelevant, what the movie does well is throw bucket loads of highly stylized bloodshed in your face faster than you can wipe it off! The CG assisted fight scenes are spectacularly brutal and the movie uses shadows to great affect as the Ninja literally melt in and out of the darkness.

Skyline

Ok so I watched Skyline the other day, expecting a blend of 4400 and Close Encounters and instead ending up with Independence Day meets Cloverfield.

The paper thin plot involves a bunch of increasingly irritating knob-jockeys who spend 90% of the movie cowering in a swanky penthouse which looks like it's been pulled straight out of a Cribs re-run, whilst the world is destroyed by alien invaders.

The aliens look ok and the special effects are adequate although there is far too much ropey CGI to sustain any sense of realism or immersion in the film. There is very little plot to speak of, aliens invade, hoover up everyone they can get there bio-mechanical clutches on and that's about it really.

Whilst being extremely ruthless the alien invaders aren't all that bright, for example despite their amazingly advanced technology they wont spot you if you're hiding behind a sofa and most ridiculous of all is their super potent mind control beam which if it doesn't work first time gives you superhuman strength. One other thing that drags the movie down is the ending, if Skyline had ended just 10 minutes earlier it would have made for a far more memorable experience but instead it drags itself onward to a confused mishmash conclusion that just doesn't make alot of sense, but then again neither did the rest of the film so maybe it fits better than I'm giving it credit for.......