Movies 2014

Movies 2014

Red 2
Pacific rim
Moaning of life
Elysium
Last stand
Red dawn
Cheerleader massacre. 2
Cheerleader massacre
Fellowship of the ring
The hobbit unexpected journey
Desolation of smaug
Gravity
Iron man 3
Starship troopers invasion
Texas chainsaw
American horror story coven
Ghoul
Oblivion
Wreck it Ralph
You're next
Percy Jackson sea of monsters
Percy Jackson lightning thief
Hammer of the gods
Star Trek into darkness
Stalled
The girl from the naked eye
Bates motel s1
First blood
First blood part 2
Rambo 3
Hell boy
The conjuring
Pacific rim
Thor the dark world
Snow dogs
Cockneys vs zombies
After earth
Prisoners
Bad milo
Silence of the lambs
Unbreakable
Event horizon
Pandorum
Rise of the guardians
The amazing Spider-Man
Riddick
Captain America the winter soldier
Escape plan
Running man
We are what we are
Black sails s1
Insidious chapter 2
Vikings s1
Big ass spider
A haunted house
Deep blue sea
The following s2
Vikings s2
American horror story s2
Godzilla king of monsters
Terror of mecha-Godzilla
Godzilla raids again
Sharknado
Gallow walkers
Godzilla 2014
Intruders
In their skin
From dusk til dawn the series
The crazies
Ninja 2: shadow of a tear
Paranormal activity marked ones
Paranormal whacktivity
Son of Godzilla
Sinister
Game of thrones s1
Game of thrones s2
Game of thrones s3
Bad grandpa
Demolition man
Speed
Old boy remake
We're the millers
Worlds end
Lake placid
Game of thrones s4
X-men dofp
Amazing Spider-Man 2

Wolf Creek 2

Hatchet 3

Jaws
Now you See Me
Death Note
Fright Night 2
Odd Thomas
Dredd
Machete Kills
Penny Dreadful s1

300 Rise of an Empire 

Hell on Wheels S2
Die hard

47 ronin

Die hard 2 

Die hard with a vengeance 

Die hard 4.0

Guardians of the Galaxy 

Expendables 3

Non-stop
Evolution
Under the Skin
Wer

Burning Bright

Spy kids

Spy kids 2

Spy kids 3

Ninja Turtles
A million ways to die in the west
A Good Day to Die Hard
A Walk Among the Tombstones

Mrs browns boys d movie
Gremlins

gremlins 2
Superman 3
Hancock
Willow Creek

Dracula Untold
The Strain s1
A Christmas Carol
Hercules
Dawn of the Planet of the Apes
Lucy
Edge of Tomorrow
Nurse
Exists
Compliance

From Dusk Til Dawn the Series

 Well I betcha didn't see this one coming.

So one of my favourite movies from the 90's get's the tv treatment and in a shocking twist it isn't actually all that bad. I have to admit when I first heard that this was happening my initial reaction was, like most people I expect... Why?

Let's be honest as awesome as the movie was the last thing I thought after watching it was 'man this would make an awesome tv show', let alone a series of needless sequels. Anyhow let's compare shall we...

Plot. The basic premise remains the same although fleshing out a 90 minute movie into 10 hour long episodes does give it a kind of 'episode of the week' feel. By elaboration I imagine the initial plot drafts going something like this. "Ok so episode 1 can be set in the store from the beginning of the movie, heck maybe stretch 2 episodes out of it if we can. Then we can go to the motel for the next one, then we can hijack the RV, spend an episode in the RV, cross the border and then when we get to the Titty Twister spend an episode there then we can unleash the vamps"

 Cast. The casting is actually pretty spot on, with everyone bringing something to the table. The Gecko brothers (played here by D.J Cotrona and Zane Holtz) are both likable and dangerous and while Cotrona is no Clooney, Holtz makes a far more convincing psychopath than Tarantino. The Fullers are led by Robert Patrick who replaces Harvey Keitel as the family's religious patriarch and Don Johnson is epic in his small but important role. Eiza Gonzales brings the sexy as Santanica Pandemonium whose role in the series is greatly expanded from Salma Hayek's brief but memorable take.

SFX. The vamps look good, with 18 years of effects technology compensating for the smaller budget (counting for inflation at least). Oh wait, only they aren't vampires now they're snake demons but they die just like vampires so it's all good. The practical effects are great and although there is of course the obligatory crap C.G.I. it doesn't detract too much from the guts and gore.

In all fairness this could have sucked big time but what we are given is a thoroughly entertaining ride that captures the Grindhouse feel of the original and instead of crapping over its much-loved source material instead treats it with a well-deserved reverence. To put it bluntly, if you enjoyed the movie then odds are you will enjoy this and if you didn't then well you have no taste and I don't care what you think.

Godzilla 2014

Spoilers abound, beware and be warned.....

So Godzilla is back and let's get one thing straight right off the bat, he is awesome and by that I mean awe-inspiring in that he inspires awe. This isn't the pathetic t-rex lite wannabe who got bitch slapped by Ferris Bueller this is a titanic force of nature that is unleashed upon us lucky cinema-goers like a natural disaster. He is not good or evil he just is. 

The movie itself is good although not without issues, the Big G himself has surprisingly little screen time and director Gareth Edwards teases us throughout the film with brief shots of the legendary Kaiju and the destruction in his wake before abruptly cutting away to show the aftermath of the unseen carnage and it's only in the movies final quarter that the King of Monsters finally gets to fully unleash his fury. 

Obviously, with so little of the titular character it falls to the human element to carry the film for us and it is through these characters that we experience the full repercussions of the titanic behemoth's actions. Things start out strong with Cranston and Binoche suffering through the initial M.U.T.O assault but suprisingly both are quickly taken out of the equation and it's left to Scarlet Witch and Quicksilver to save the day, it's here that things start to slack. For starters Elisabeth Olsen spends the entire movie wandering about in doe eyed horror and panic leading up to the final scenes when, rather than flee to safety she decides to wait behind for her man to come and save her. That man in question being former Kick-Ass Aaron Taylor Johnston who is seamlessly poured into the 'generic action hero mould' and spends most of the films 2 hours trying to get home to his family, although truth be told he never really seems that bothered about it, it's like he just can't think of anything else he should be doing. Thankfully it's established early on that he is a bomb disposal expert and this skill keeps him relevant to the main story throughout the film...

So we spend most of the movie with Kick-Ass as he travels from America to Japan and back again because of course the monsters decide for some reason (in a classic case of hero bad luck syndrome) the best place for a smackdown is in his hometown. So after some basic exposition and exploration of a gorgeously realised ruined Japanese city that looks like it was lifted straight from The Last of Us, some concept art of the Cloverfield Monster comes to life and starts rampaging in a beeline to the nearest food source which happens to be radiation. Cue some visually stunning scenes of our funky looking foe chowing down on submarines and nuclear warheads before calling up one of his prehistoric exe's for an impromptu booty call.

Where does Godzilla fit into all this? Well thanks to Ken Watanabe's tireless exposition we learn that Godzilla is in fact nature's way of balancing itself and when he hears that a couple of no good lame ass monsters are preparing to shack up and spawn enough offspring to turn San Francisco into a new Monster Island he rises up fro the depths to put things straight! So yeah Godzilla is basically a scarier version of Captain Planet, just without the Speedos.

So Godzilla is here to save us and it's a good job too as the Military is ridiculously inept at fighting these things, to the point where I was almost expecting the Carry On crew to pop up manning one of the tanks. For starters they seem incapable of accurately tracking these 50 story monsters. Fair enough the M.U.T.O's emit an EMP deadzone which stops technology working within a mile radius (although quite why these remnants from a prehistoric age have anti-electronic weapons I don't know) but surely today's satellite imagery could follow a mile-wide electronic black spot? Also if you know it stops electronics from working why the fuck do you keep flying your planes at them? Seriously after the first couple of dozen, you think they would learn their lesson but noooo, the air force hurls jets at these things like a toddler throwing toys from its pram.

Another amusing thing, when the strike team are preparing for there halo drop the grim-faced soldiers meticulously check their pistols and rifles in the obligatory badass pre-battle scene... But for what? Missiles, tanks and nukes have no effect on these things what is the point of taking a pistol? What are you going to do with it? Throw it at them? Leave it behind and lose some excess weight.

The whole 'raid the nest' scene did bring back disheartening memories of Hollywood's last attempt to bring Godzilla to the big screen but thankfully it plays only a small part of the main story and is quickly dealt with without echoing too much of its dire predecessor.

All in all, I know I've moaned a lot but don't be disheartened, despite these minor irritations I really enjoyed Godzilla's rebirth and if you're a fan of the Big G or if you enjoyed similar flicks like Cloverfield or Pacific Rim then you probably will too. Godzilla is without a doubt the biggest badass ever to grace our screens and I for one hope that he returns soon, just with better foes and more screen time and Hollywood, please, whatever you do, leave Godzooki at home...

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…