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Ghostbusters (2016)
Good effort, but adequate result
I was one of the people who was really looking forward to this film. I knew since the official video game came out that we would never get a Ghostbusters 3 in cinema, and when I saw the first trailer I thought it would be a "passing the torch" kind of film where a new team takes over the business. I was very disappointed when I learned this was going to be a straight-up remake, where none of the previous movies wouldn't even matter.
The movie has a good strong start. It sets the tone of the movie really well, and we get introduced to the three first main characters almost right away. It has a good pacing, which leads to adding the last main character and the supporting character, and immediately the audience know that this is a fun movie that doesn't take itself seriously.
Sadly things starts to fall apart in Act 2. Almost every joke falls flat. The characters has very little chemistry with each other, and the villain is unoriginal and uninteresting. It is a bad sign when Chris Hemsworth is the only one who is consistently funny, and he's not even a professional comedian. The main plot is on rails, and the sub-plot of the mayor trying to shut down the Ghostbusters makes no sense in context. Ghostbusters just follows the path set by the original without adding anything of substance, and whatever new they add just feels hollow. Like a checklist.
Things does not get any better in Act 3. The villain just instantly get super-powers without any explanations, The Ghostbusters has somehow acquired superior agility and marksmanship abilities after just a few test shots in an alley, and the ghosts looks like they were taken straight out of the live-action Scooby-Do films. In the end I just felt tired and bored.
The film does have its strong points. The pacing is very good and it smoothly sets the tone of the film. Even though the CGI looks way too cartoony for my taste, I did really like the designs for each ghost. The set designs are very clever, and I liked the idea of replacing the old ambulance with a hearse. All the actors did a good job in portraying the personality of each character, and I especially liked Leslie Jones as she was definitely the strongest actor of all four.
I wouldn't recommend a watch since it's the kind of movie that won't add or subtract anything from your love of Ghostbusters. Wait for a home video release as it's not really worth rushing to the cinemas to watch.
Sabotage (2014)
So close, and then falls way behind
Sabotage is the kind of movie that could have been terrific, but like many promising movies before, this one got pretty botched by studio executives.
To start off, the trailer was incredibly misleading. It led me to believe that this was just another generic Arnold Schwarzenegger shoot-em up movie, which I quite enjoy myself purely out of Arnold. However, this is actually a slow moving thriller with some action scenes few and far apart.
Act one and two is great. It builds up a tense crime thriller where individual members of Arnold's team gets brutally killed one by one. The movie starts with a DEA team taking out a drug cartel, but they also decides to steal $10 million dollars from the cartel's pile of money before blowing up the rest. This severely annoys both the DEA, who tries to get the team arrested, but lacks evidence, and also the cartel, who decides to kill off the team using Ex Guatemalan Special Forces soldiers. This leads to FBI agent Caroline Brentwood to investigate the case, only to meet walls of silence by the team members.
As said, act one and two is good. You get the sense of a great mystery crime thriller building up to a major plot twist, and there are certain parts of the movie that has a very David Lynch's Seven feel to it. However, by the third act, everything gets thrown away as character and side plots gets dropped without conclusion, and a climatic action scene ends up being very anti-climatic.
Overall, I would say to give this one a miss, as the ending isn't worth the whole watch.
Snow White and the Huntsman (2012)
Surprisingly good
I was very surprised about how much I actually enjoyed this movie. I was one of many that was turned down by the idea how watching a movie starring Kirsten Stewart, and felt she was only cast because of her popularity with the teen demographic, so I avoided to watch this movie at release.
I caught Snow White and the Huntsman on Amazon and decided to give it a watch. What followed was two hours of me actually enjoying this movie. Do not get me wrong, this movie has plenty of problem, but not enough to warrant so many bad reviews.
The story was a nice twist on the version of the fairytale that's been told countless times, and making the universe more 'high fantasy' in feel made things very interesting.
Chris Hemsworth seem to clearly enjoy playing the role of the Huntsman, but I kept wondering what kind of accent he was trying to pull of since it goes back and forth between generic English and Scottish.
Kirsten Stewart was surprisingly good in her role as Snow White. She definitely starts of slow, but gradually starts flexing her acting muscles. Which she desperately needed to do after being stuck in vampire movies for years.
No mistake that Charlize Theron completely stole the show as the evil step-mother Ravenna. Plenty of scenes where she completely hams it up, but she made the character believable in a way that Ravenna wasn't portrayed as a bland villain who laughs manically, but who has an actual back story.
The bad side of the movie is still there though. The dwarfs seems almost like a afterthought, the way they just stumble into the plot and takes little to follow Snow White like a group of disciples. It was also a bit off-putting to see these well- known actors CGI'd as dwarfs, when they could more easily have hired seven actual little people to act these roles.
The factions involved in the plot is also poorly explained, since I had little to no idea who was fighting for who at the start, and where the rest of Raveena's kingdom was situated in all of this. I knew he King Magnus was, but didn't know either how big his kingdom was, and why people we're so loyal to him.
In short, I was pleasantly surprised by this movie, and I recommend people giving it a shot if you come across it.
Ironclad (2011)
Hack'n Slash
Where do I start with this? Brief history lesson maybe? Between 1212 and 1215 there was a civil war between King John and the Barons in England, which was ended thanks to the Knights Templar that sided with the Barons.What followed was the Magna Carta, a document that the Barons forced Johan to sign, that stated that no monarch could judge a noble or common man without a trial.A document which would be the basics for the English justice system and the Parliament, and the American democracy during their War of Independence.
Where this movie takes place is shortly after the signing of the Magna Carta, and King John (Paul Giamatti) decides to take back England under his sovereign rule by the support of the Pope, and the help of a thousand Danish mercenaries.Baron Albany (Brian Cox) and Marshal (James Purefoy) decides to take up the fight against the king and gathers up a ragtag group of men to hold Rochester Castle against him for as long as it takes the French to reinforce them.
Now that's out of the way... Where this movie initially fails is in its spartan storytelling, meaning that once the opening narration is done, that's about it of exposition you will get.Everyone in the group is gathered together in the typical fashion, where they meet up with them one at the time so that the audience can get a brief look at their vice and virtues before we see them heroically fight against all odds.Effective way of getting the tedious character development out of the way, considering this is a 2 hour long feature as it is, but it do make me wonder why they would add so many characters to a movie that is about something more important, the Magna Carta, that would suck away so much screen time.The answer is simply that this movie is a action movie, and background story comes second since the audience approval of the characters are more important then a compelling story about one of the most important document in human history.So make no mistake that this movie is about comradely and fellowship against greater perils, the rest is just filler.
I do feel often that this movie is not telling me enough, despite its two hour running time, because there are often mention of other events, past and present, that makes you wonder why they are never developed or mentioned again.Like with the Danish Mercanaries, which is mentioned that are fighting for King John so that he can convince the Pope to leave them alone and pull back Christan soldiers of their lands.Denmark has been a Christian country a long time before this event, so it does make me wonder where these people really comes from and what their troubles are.What's also never really explained is the relations of the Barons followers, who seems to have previous handle with him, but is never told in what fashion they have been in his aid before. The acting all around is solid, apart from James Purefoy almost sleepy performance.
What is to be noted however, is Paul Giamatti's serious overacting moments.It feels like he's about to burst out of the screen and eat my head.I especially loves the scene where he passionately talks about his lineage and birthright, and waves his fists and body around in such a manner that I feel tempted to put a voice track of Hitler over his dialog just to see how well it fits.Paul Giamatti is in no way a bad actor, as I loved his performances in John Adams(2008) and Cold Souls (2009), but to me he took the depiction of King John a "bit" too far.
The Bluray version is of a very high quality, making the gushing of blood, dismemberment and dirty faces look even more detailed and lovely. Other then that, it's nothing more to tell other then a few measly interviews as extra.
In conclusion, its a fine piece of cinema if you like medieval themed movies with a lot of fighting and blood, but don't think it's more then a action movie, as it is in the same theme as King Arthur(2004) and Kingdom of Heaven(2005), so be prepared to be either entertained or bored.
To the Ends of the Earth (2005)
Well done drama, with a few holes
First off, I randomly found this show on Netflix and decided to watch it when I saw the casting had Benedict Cumberbatch and Sam Neil. I had never heard of this, so I went into this completely blind and unbiased.
Second, I've never read the books that this mini-series is based on, so I can't tell if it's faithful to the source material.
Benedict Cumberbatch does a very good job playing as the snobby aristocrat, Edmund Talbot, who only thinks about himself and his own ambitions, and he does a very good job of portraying a man who is having difficulties keeping his aristocratic posture on board a ship that is full of lies, deceit and danger. There are some performances I find off- putting, like when Edmund meets Marion and for no real good reason goes absolutely insanely in love with her, to the extent that he tries to abandon ship to follow her. Maybe it's better explained in the books, but I just found it cringing.
Sam Neil is among the actors who are prominently placed next to Benedict on the casting list, but it seems it was more to just draw people in with celebrity power since he is only really prominent in the last half of the third episode. Charles Dance does a brief appearance in the second episode as Sir Henry Somerset, but he too is given very little to do. Overall is just feel like wasted actors who could have been casted in more impacting roles.
The story and drama itself is well done. I felt myself glued to the screen to follow what was going to happen. Who was holding big secrets and who was stabbing who in the back. Added to that is the claustrophobia of being on a single ship in the middle of the vast ocean with nowhere to go, forcing characters to confront each other. The story is well told and the actors does a very good of showing the desperation and drama that would happen in the close quarters of this ship.
Lastly, the effects are pretty weak, but I don't blame them entirely since the cameras are mostly aimed at the actors, budget was probably very low, and there aren't that many scenes that requires VFX.
I would recommend this movie to those who generally just like historical dramas, or maybe just like to watch Benedict Cumberbatch's earlier roles.