Movie Review: Battle for the Planet of the Apes (1973)

Battle for the Planet of the Apes (1973): The final installment of the original series sees Caesar, now in charge of the apes, maintaining the peace following a nuclear war that's destroyed cities and basically fucked everything right up. Despite going a bit mental at the end of the last one, he's generally an alright leader. Humans seem to work alongside the apes, although they probably don't have complete equality as is pointed out quite quickly. Eventually the apes come into conflict with surviving humans and contrasting methods between the various ape subcultures come to the forefront, which really form the central theme of this film. A lot of it is based around the key ape law, which states that while humans kill humans, an ape may never kill another ape. Introduced in this film is the militaristic brute gorilla Aldo (referenced in the previous film, "the ape that said no") who is particularly trigger-happy and human-hating. This contrasts greatly with Caesar's pacifistic way of life.

I'll get the good points out first: This is done fairly well, and one of the final scenes where Aldo and Caesar DO BATTLE is actually fairly gripping. However, that's one of the only good things I can say. To say this sequel was limp doesn't cover it. It's just boring, boring, boring. And by boring, I mean really boring. Bereft of excitement. Have a sleep in the middle, you'll have a blast. It was clearly made for no money whatsoever, seemingly based in one campsite for the majority of the film, and by this point in the series the novelty of human beings having a skirmish with apes involving guns and nets is incredibly hackneyed. The dialogue is pretty lame and Caesar's son Cornelius (these names are just cyclical, just get reused every few generations) is the Scrappy Doo of the series, i.e. the annoying little cunt. At least this Cornelius had the courtesy to die, Scrappy never even gave us that pleasure. Two thumbs down.

This does put me in a quandary, because this film is no good. However, is it worse than the second in the series, Beneath the Planet of the Apes? Beneath had Charlton Heston but it also had incomprehensible science-fiction mumbo jumbo I believe the cast improvised on the spot. This one had apes doing battle atop a giant tree but it had absolutely nothing else of any worth. I'm edging towards Beneath being the worst of the series because it really annoyed me.

Final series rankings (best to worst): Planet of the Apes, Escape from the Planet of the Apes, Conquest of the Planet of the Apes, Battle for the Planet of the Apes, Beneath the Planet of the Apes.

Movie Review: Conquest of the Planet of the Apes (1972)

Conquest of the Planet of the Apes (1972): The fourth film in the Apes series continues to build from the timeline established in the third film, set presumably a decade or two after baby Milo was born and raised as a circus ape. We pick things up with the prophecy coming true: All of the world's cats and dogs have died (as a result of a plague brought to the Earth by, guess who, the space chimps) (no no, not the stars of the ultra-successful film Space Chimps) (nooo, not the stars of the sequel either, Space Chimps 2: Zartog Strikes Back). Apes have been introduced as the pets of choice, except they're not just pets. They seem to do all sorts of jobs, including cleaning, waiting on tables and the like. They're not happy about it either. I'm just guessing that bit.

More amusingly, there appears to be only two attires for the apes in these films. Half of them wear green tracksuits like hairy Eastern-European gangsters from Grand Theft Auto IV. The other half wear bright orange jumpsuits, as if they've all received ASBOs and as a result all have to simultaneously pick litter. The one to buck the trend here is Milo, who later adopts the name of Caesar. Raised by Ricardo Montalban (obviously, he's not gonna miss out on that trend), he's been hiding his extra intelligence for his entire life. When he realises he can't keep the secret forever in the face of humans abusing his mates, things go tits up and there's CONFLICT.

This film did very little for me. It wasn't overly bad but it just didn't represent much of a step forward. The main villain isn't that much different to the main villain from the first film, the ape sympathisers aren't much different either, and this time instead of two strong leads we've just got Roddy McDowell on his own. It just felt like we were treading over the same ground, making this film largely unnecessary. The eventual ape uprising comes about after Caesar turns into a sort of primate Terminator, complete with a sweet leather jacket at the start of the film, and that's amusing, but it's all pretty soulless. McDowell has a good go at it, as he has in all of the films he's featured in over the course of the series, but that isn't good enough to make this anything worth watch. One thumb down.

Movie Review: Escape from the Planet of the Apes (1971)

Escape from the Planet of the Apes (1971): Let's face it. The second Planet of the Apes film was pretty bad. It really wasn't required. As if to illustrate this point, they ended the film by blowing the fucking Earth to smithereens, putting the kibosh on any future attempts to squeeze money out of the franchise. Except that didn't work, and we got a third one. And you know what? It's not that bad. This installment reveals that Zira, Cornelius (back to Roddy McDowell) and some other dude called Dr. Milo survived the explosion by finding the old spaceship and somehow time-traveling back to Taylor/Brent's original time, i.e. the present day. I know there's an element of "Don't ask" to time travel but there's too much left unanswered here. All attempts to link the second and third movies are mostly convoluted and ridiculous and just reek of a massive deus ex machina, so I just ignored all that shit and moved on. The poor links between these films really does show how little planning went into the franchise. Instead of leaving loose ends to link to potential new films it's as if they made a film, released it, then realised they'd quite like to make another and had to invent some convoluted connections between them.

The film starts off as basically Apes in the Big City. Gasp, as an ape drinks champagne! Marvel, as an ape goes to watch a boxing fight! Observe, as an ape takes a warm bath! That takes up a good chunk of time, but then the film gets serious, as it's revealed that Zira is pregnant and there's debate over the consequences of the child for the future uprising of the apes, all while creating a delightful paradox for people to sweat over. After all, this child of Zira and Cornelius could lead to the ape uprising, leading to the birth of Zira and Cornelius in the future. This is where the plot is at its best. The two main leads, Zira and Cornelius, are likable, familiar characters and really carry things. Roddy McDowell's particularly entertaining. The man was born to play an ape. More specifically, a nervy, eccentric, wide-eyed ape. He's like a simian C3-PO. The humans who aid and go against the two are also worthy additions, with the main villain Dr. Hasslein being suitably menacing throughout, aided by his Jogi Low-esque appearance. Bloody Germans. Ricardo Montalban has a minor role as the owner of a circus who helps the two apes which is good fun.

This is the second best Apes film I've seen so far. It's not a patch on the first, lacking in its deep social commentary and underlying messages, but there's nothing much wrong with this. I did find it amusing to find out that Sal Mineo hoped that this film would do for him what the first did for Roddy McDowell. In the end, Mineo hated the makeup and his character was killed off rapidly. On the other hand, McDowell's in four and a bit Apes films. He may as well have just kept the makeup on and lived as a chimp, to be honest. One thumb up.

Movie Review: Beneath the Planet of the Apes (1970)

Beneath the Planet of the Apes (1970): You know how I really liked Planet of the Apes, the original one? Yeah. I'll start off with the basics: this isn't as good. It's not nearly as good. In fact, they're not in the same league. Remember how I thought the special effects were alright in the first one but anticipated them getting worse as we progressed through the original series? Yeah. That happened. This film picks up right after the end of the first one, except Charlton Heston didn't fancy doing much in this one so instead we get Brent, who is Heston's Taylor character in all but name. Okay, Taylor's a bit more of a sex pest, but apart from that, generally the same. They look pretty much the same (distinguished in this film by Taylor remaining beardless), both tag along with Nova, both run away from apes, both astronauts. In fact, if I were to make assumptions I'd guess they spent very, very little time conceiving the character of Brent. I get the impression Heston would have done pretty much the same stuff as he did, but then he turned down the lead role and they thought "We need a new lead character. "But who could it be?" "Astronaut, crash landed on the planet, doesn't know exactly where he is, discovers monkeys rule the place." "Worked before, why not again?"

That aside, about halfway through the movie it takes a ludicrous turn as Beneath the Planet of the Apes becomes a strange, extra cheap episode of the original Doctor Who as Brent stumbles upon humans living underground. Except these humans have psychic powers, for some reason. You know that Doctor Who episode, where Tom Baker was held hostage underground by psychic mentalists. He was wearing a loincloth and a scarf. Maybe they never got around to that. This leads to a lot of scenes where the weird dudes close their eyes (to concentrate on psychic powers, obviously) and the special effect of choice is to play a high pitched sound effect. Brent goes ARGH and falls over, or attempts to rape Nova or whatever the violent act of choice is at that time. These humans (who have peelable skin, surely the next step in our evolution) have a big bastard of a bomb that they're prepared to use on the monkey fellas. Due to their mind control they can create all sorts of weird illusions, like walls of fire and tears of blood coming from a large ape statue (done with the same paint you'd paint airfix models with). Anyway, all of this made very little sense to me and by the end of it I really didn't care. Roddy McDowell wasn't even in it so we got some other guy chimping about as Cornelius. Tragic. Two thumbs down.

Movie Review: 127 Hours (2010)

127 Hours (2010): Amazing story, isn't it? Man goes messin' about on some rocks, gets his arm stuck behind this big old boulder, has to cut his arm off, survives the whole ordeal. However, if you'd have asked me whether this would have made for a good film, I don't think I'd have said yes. It's not overly action-packed, for a start. Apart from the amputation and the genesis of the experience - i.e the boulder falling down - there's not much to it. In order to get this to work you'd need a couple of things. One, a good director. Two, a good lead to actually play the guy, and in Danny Boyle and James Franco (as mountaineer Aron Ralston) you get those things in 127 Hours. The film uses a number of interesting, quirky techniques to get its point across, using flashbacks to illustrate the events that have lead Ralston up to this point, the friends and family he's left behind, but also using flash-forwards to hypothetical situations. For example, at one point it torrentially rains, flooding the canyon which Ralston is stuck in and he has a hallucination that the water has freed his arm. In another situation he envisages a pulley system around the rock actually succeeding. This, and other interesting visual effects - shots from the inside of Ralston's rapidly-emptying water bottle, a curious sequence in which Franco interviews himself on a video camera as if he's the guest on his own talk show, Scooby Doo being a recurring character in hallucinations - really get you inside Ralston's mind as he loses it in this seemingly hopeless situation.

One thing the film really got across was the utter horror of the situation beyond the hideous nature of the amputation. I'll be honest, I found the bits where Franco was simply standing there, fruitlessly attempting to pull his arm from behind a rock, more disturbing than the actual bloody violence. It really conveys a harrowing sense of despair and creates the claustrophobic environment in which Ralston was stuck so when he finally does hack his own arm off it's less of an act of self-mutilation and more an attempt at survival, so you kind of have to encourage him as he does it. The amputation is recreated in amazingly disgusting detail, aided by tremendous additional effects, such as the sound of a bullet being fired from a gun as he cuts through tendons in his arm. You feel Ralston's pain, you go on that journey with him, so when he succeeds in getting free at last after five days of pure hell you can't help but be filled with emotion. It's a definite tear-jerker at that moment. James Franco's performance is absolutely stunning, a definite Oscar contender if not winner. Not every actor could carry this type of film (and seriously, it's pretty much all him, the co-stars aren't in any danger of stealing the limelight) but Franco's performance is flawless.

Overall, this is one of the best films I have ever seen. It wrenches at your gut, it tugs at your heart-strings (whatever they are), it does all sorts of stuff to all sorts of body parts. This is a triumph in every single way. I know this is technically a 2010 film but what the fuck, it came out over here in 2011. So I think I might have my best film of 2011 already. Two thumbs up.

I got MUTV yesterday - in the process, actually having to converse with another human being over the phone, an ordeal in and of itself as I tried to get an extra channel while fending off attempts to upgrade to Sky+ HD/3D/6DXL/WD40. I did this because I really want to see more of the United youth team and reserve players, I don't think the MUTV online service lets you watch the games online and you don't really appreciate players holistically when you watch the meagre scraps that are YouTube clips and compilations.

So anyway, the first game I saw yesterday was the Youth Cup game between United's academy and the Portsmouth youngsters. I won't give a full report, just a wee baby one, but this was a very commanding victory that ended 3-2, a much more even score than the performance warranted. United dominated most of the game outside of some early energetic Pompey attacks and the late comeback, but the comeback shouldn't have been a shock since Pompey had apparently come back from 5-0 down to draw 5-5 if the commentators are to be believed.

As for individual players, a few stood out. Will Keane is absolutely excellent and if he continues to progress at his current rate I can see him becoming a first team player at some point. He had a couple of goals ruled off for offside in addition to the one he got, one of which was miles onside anyway. Paul Pogba's long range strike was tremendous and his passing throughout impressed. Ryan Tunnicliffe is a proper box-to-box midfielder, obviously trying to mould himself on someone like Darren Fletcher or Roy Keane (as he's often compared to), he had a good game. It was a generally strong performance from the team, helped by Tom Fry having a bit of a nightmare in the Pompey goal. Overall, I'd say the star performer was Paul Pogba. Also, John Cofie for failing to win a penalty at about 25 minutes and not dropping the issue for the rest of the game. He was absolutely furious.

Movie Review: Planet of the Apes (1968)

Yeah. We're not stuck in 2010 anymore. Going back to something even you might have seen, grandad.

Planet of the Apes (1968): I knew this was going to be tremendous from the very first scene. Charlton Heston cutting a monologue (well, a message to Earth, but nobody's listening Charlton! You may as well not bother!) and chewing the scenery. His performance in this film is so completely and utterly over the top that that particular idiom doesn't cover it. He didn't just chew on the scenery. He extensively prepared it, cooked it through, garnished it, poured a bit of gravy over the top and dove right in, consuming the entire thing. The production team were absolutely furious. That, I should note, doesn't have a negative effect on the film. It really helps it. Here you have this strange caricature of a man struggling to get to grips with this absurd world where the monkeys are running the show and it just seems appropriate. The other performances are alright but have no doubt. Charlton's yer main man.

I was particular impressed with the production of the film. It really didn't seem particularly dated. The ape makeup looked very good, not ropey in the slightest, even when they began talking. I wouldn't have much of an issue with it from a production standpoint if it came out today. It's most definitely not just a film with people wearing monkey suits, some on horseback with shotguns. Apparently the last shot (SPOILER ALERT) (BTW, WON'T SPOIL WORLD WAR 2 EITHER) of the Statue of Liberty was done by blending in a painting of the scenery with the actual filmed shot, which is incredible. It doesn't stand out at all. Apparently the later movies in the series have less funding and, while they'll inevitably be worse, I'm hoping for something that resembles a 1980s British television show. Yes. People wearing monkey suits. Two thumbs up.

Movie Review: Shutter Island (2010)

Forgot I'd watched this.

Shutter Island (2010): This is a film I really wanted to see originally but was put off by the mixed reception it received when it first came out in the cinema. It's true, it's not up there with Scorsese's best works, but it's an interesting and well-made piece of work. The gist of it is that Leonardo DiCaprio teams up with Mark Ruffalo and they go and investigate this mental hospital on a weird island, run by Ben Kingsley (well, duh). As the film progresses we realise that things aren't quite as they seem and we discover the backstory of DiCaprio's character in chunks. I should start by saying that I was unfortunate enough to stumble across the plot twist soon after the film came out so I was very much spoiled there. With that in mind, the eventual revelations became obvious. Hints were dropped frequently and consistently to an almost amusing degree, so I think it will be a more rewarding film for those who go in with no prior knowledge, perhaps even requiring multiple viewings. That aside, all of the performances are very good and the soundtrack is suitably haunting. My main criticism is that it just didn't hook me for the entire tenure and at times lost my attention. It's fairly slowly paced by design, attempting to build the tension, but I thought it was a bit too slow. The film lacks the deep impact that the likes of The Departed and Goodfellas have had but as an attempt at a simple film noir-ish type of thing, this is a good effort with a standout performance from DiCaprio as a man losing his mind and a great showing from Michelle Williams as his wife. One thumb up.

Watching Planet of the Apes now. Not the new one with ol' Marky Wahlberg in it, the old one. Gee, I hope there's not a twist at the end of it. Monkey Abraham Lincoln will most likely not make an appearance, which is good.

Today's TUNE: "Do It Like A Dude" - Jessie J

Video for this is well suspect.

FA Cup: Manchester United 1-0 Liverpool

Another narrow scoreline but I felt United were deserved winners yesterday against Liverpool. The penalty was debatable; I thought there was contact and Agger kinda dug his own grave by sticking a foot in, but Berbatov definitely made the most of it. I can use the first bit of that sentence to justify it but if I'm to be objective for a moment, if Fernando Torres had done that against Jonny Evans I'd be absolutely furious.

As it happens, Torres did play against Evans, and instead of taking advantage of him like a predator in the night he allowed Evans to discover his form from two seasons ago and keep him well and truly quiet. Ferguson has said that Jonny has been back to his best in training lately, perhaps discovering a bit of confidence again, and while it'd be easy to say "Well, it's just the off-form Torres", that same off-form Torres gave Evans the runaround in the league fixture and won a penalty off him. It didn't hurt that Evans was playing alongside Ferdinand, who is definitely the cooler head of the Vidic/Ferdinand pairing. Jonny's issues have usually stemmed from losing his concentration and not reading a situation correctly, perhaps letting the ball bounce when he should have attacked it or standing off when he should have tried a tackle. Ferdinand kept things together, Evans followed his lead and it all worked out beautifully.

One of the most bizarre things for me was the choice of man of the match for this one. I've gone for Ferdinand who's kind of an obvious choice, him and Vidic are always up there, but aside from that I have to say that a lot of the more derided players decided to show up. Evans as mentioned had his best game in a long time and Michael Carrick, who's quietly come into some form since he gave Pablo Hernandez the ball in the Valencia game held the midfield together nicely without giving away stupid balls as he occasionally has done in the past. Ryan Giggs hasn't been criticised but he also had a tremendous game and still has incredible pace, and Tomasz Kuszczak, while I don't think he will replace Edwin Van Der Sar, did a commendable job and has in the last few games when he's been called into action. It's nice that Ferguson is giving him the opportunity to prove himself instead of overlooking him in favour of Anders Lindegaard. ITV gave the award to Berbatov which is slightly absurd, but I don't think they put much thought into that so let's not complain too much. He had a good game, the usual quality he's provided this season, but there were much better candidates.

The Gerrard red card was completely justified as far as I'm concerned. The only people who I've heard defend it are the minority of Liverpool fans (read: TalkSport listeners) who like to invent rules to explain why it wasn't a red (ranging from "he's not that sort of player" to "it's a 50/50 tackle") or ex-professionals who still behave like it's the 1970s where you could shoot a man with an AK-47 and get away with at most a stern talking-to. I don't care if it's a 50/50 tackle. It can be 60/40, 70/30, 99/1. Jumping in like that is dangerous play and the people leaping to Gerrard's defense only have a leg to stand on because Carrick didn't suffer a serious injury. The same absurd logic applied for the Tiote tackle in the Newcastle/Stevenage match. It was a wild tackle. The rules of football do not state that winning the ball constitutes a good tackle. If you win the ball but do it in a dangerous manner that's not on. People were making that absurd argument about some of Nigel De Jong's wild tackles, saying "Well he won the ball", ignoring that in the process of winning the ball he snapped Hatem Ben Arfa's leg. But that's alright, he touched the ball.

People keep knocking United, saying they're playing poorly in all of these matches, but I can't agree with that for the home games. Away, absolutely. United have underperformed and some of the teams have played out of their skins, knowing they can have a good go. Fulham, Everton, West Brom, Birmingham for a bit, Aston Villa. At home I don't agree with that assessment at all. Most of the performances have been professional. Would I prefer United to kill the game and score a million goals? Of course. I think a lot of the criticism stems from the lack of the one talisman this season. A couple of seasons ago it was Ronaldo. He scores all of the goals, he's awesome, he's the main man. Last season it was Rooney. He scores all of the goals, he's awesome, he's the main man. This season, who is there? Instead of one man doing the work it's been shared around. Berbatov has scored more this season than he had in either of his previous two seasons at United. Ji-Sung Park's been scoring and contributing a lot. Nani provides goals and assists. Rafael da Silva, who I think is one of the best right backs in the league, is always running up the touchline and has got a lot of assists in addition to learning how to defend. Anderson is benefitting from his more advanced midfield position. Chicharito is scoring whenever required, showing a proper poacher's instinct and scoring a lot of crucial goals. The workload has been spread around the squad. I'm sure a loss will eventually come and people will begin declaring that it's gone tits up for United but getting this far undefeated without kicking into overdrive with such an allegedly poor squad says something. Maybe they've just rode their luck for the entire season so far. Or perhaps they're not as bad as the critics are saying.

Player Ratings: Kuszczak 6, Rafael 7, Ferdinand* 8, Evans 8 (Smalling 7), Evra 7, Nani 7, Carrick 8, Fletcher 7 (Anderson 6), Giggs 8, Berbatov 7, Chicharito 7 (Owen 7)

Movie Review: The Expendables (2010)

The Expendables (2010): I thought this was pretty gash, to be honest. On paper, sure, sounds good. Sly Stallone, that fella from Rocky and Rambo. Jason Statham, been in those wacky Crank and Transporter action films. Steve Austin, he once pinned THE ROCK, and he's got some acting chops. And I know what they were going for with this, to hark back to the stomping action films of yesteryear, but once you get past the nostalgia of all these old names together in one film, it's pretty poor. The nostalgia ends very quickly, probably once Bruce Willis and Arnie have been on. The only good action sequence that comes to mind right now was when Jason Statham sat at the very front of a plane (in front of the cockpit) and started shooting at some soldiers. Nothing after that or before that was particularly awesome or memorable, quite the opposite to Machete. The double act stuff between Stallone and Statham is often quite good and Jet Li's ongoing demands for more money were amusing enough but I ended up being fairly bored after the first half an hour. The plot wasn't gripping enough to keep me interesting and the action wasn't absurd enough to compensate for that. Two thumbs down.

Today's TUNE: "Starstrukk" - Marina & The Diamonds

Didn't do a blog post after United/Stoke so I'll just do a quicky now.

This was probably one of those games where people are gonna say United weren't any good but they won just because we didn't win 4-0 or 5-0 but I can safely say that the win was more than deserved. Stoke offered nothing apart from an aerial threat and fouls. Their one threatening moment produced their one goal. Aside from that, it was pretty comfortable and should have been done and dusted by half time. Hernandez continues to show why he's one of the steals of the season, his goal was utterly absurd (as most of his goals tend to be, like Bebe's wacky goals except he means to score them that way) (okay, maybe not that Chelsea one), he could have had another if he'd converted that flying volley off a Nani header and he was crucial for Nani's goal. His turn was marvelous. He might be the best finisher in the team, although Berbatov and Rooney are better in the buildup play so they're superior overall, but Hernandez is gonna get the goals. Nani didn't do too badly in that particular exchange either. The Nani and Rafael combination is pretty frightening at times, especially when Nani's in the mood to track back a lot as he was on Tuesday. It's still too early to be anointing us champions considering we still have to play Arsenal away, Spurs away, Liverpool away, City at home, plus Chelsea at home and at Stamford Bridge. Lots of games to go. Not a bad position to be in, mind. "We're shit and we're top of the league" indeed.

Ratings: Kuszczak 6, Rafael 8, Vidic 7, Smalling 7, Evra 7, Nani 8*, Gibson 6 (Carrick 7), Fletcher 6, Giggs 7, Berbatov 7, Chicharito 7 (Owen 6)

I'll be honest, just that result aside, this week couldn't have gone any better. When I say that the only disappointments, and I mean the ONLY disappointments, are that Tom Cleverley and Danny Welbeck got injured, that should tell you how good it was. Arsenal and City drew with each other, Chelsea lost, Liverpool lost, Spurs lost. The City/Arsenal game was somewhat amazing because this is the second time this season that City have parked the bus and played for the draw, which is fairly impressive for a team that costs so much and has so much attacking talent if they decide to deploy it (I'm looking at Adam Johnson here). I've read a few people compare them to, say, Inter at the Nou Camp last year, but at least Inter were winning going into that. They were defending a winning position. What I'm sayin' is that the Roman army didn't win wars by staying in the tetsudo formation. They had a go at winning the battles 'n' all. At least this one had some excitement, mind. This fixture last year - also 0-0 - was one of the worst games of the season. Literally the only highlights were Shay Given injuring himself, leading to City bringing on that Faroe Islander man, and a VOTE FOR EBOUE banner.

Which reminds me. Emmanuel Eboue. Mr. Motivator costume. Live on Sky Sports. What better way to celebrate their 20th anniversary than to dress like a man from 1991?

Anyway. Absurd revision hours for exams have lead me to listen to the last few days of the Radio 1 breakfast show, hosted this week by Zane Lowe. I've not heard his regular show but he's sure as fuck better than Chris Moyles, if just because when you tune in you're 95% certain to hear a piece of music. Whether you like it or not (I usually like it), it's music. If you listen to Moyles, which I do for about 15 minutes when I have 9AM lectures, the music fits into the other 5%. 95% of the show will be crap banter. Apparently that's some people's cup of tea. Makes for a fun Twitter search though. On one side of the ring, people saying how good Zane Lowe's show is. On the other side, people clamouring for the return of "Moylesly". The latter are a dangerous subculture for sure.

Watched some movies. Will review them in a bit if I can remember much. The Expendables was one of them. I did not like.

Today's TUNE: "On My Own" - Yasmin

Movie Review: Black Swan (2010)

Black Swan (2010): This was a mixed bag of sorts, but in the end it was good enough to warrant my attention. The premise of this film is that there's a ballet production of Swan Lake. Natalie Portman's character is up for the main role and is perfect for the "White Swan" role whereas Mila Kunis personifies the "Black Swan" side of the character. Throughout the film we see Portman's character descend into madness, to put it bluntly, discovering a darker edge to her character, and by the time the film reaches its peak it's very enjoyable. I'd say the final act of the film, which comes after a sex scene (woo lesbians), is where the film is at its best. It's also where it's at its creepiest, although for me the film never ran over into "scary" horror territory. Black Swan is at most unnerving and weird but not scary. The movie prior to that is fine albeit unremarkable, although I suppose that's setting the scene for the final crash, establishing Portman's character's frailties before fully exposing them at the film's conclusion, although it wasn't the most interesting of setups. But to be honest this is just worth watching for Mila Kunis being utterly filthy. She could probably read the Third Reich and make it sound dirty. I don't think they give out awards for that. Well, Oscars anyway. One thumb up (+ one cock).

DanLowth @ FlickChart.com

Movie Reviews: Inglourious Basterds, Machete

Inglourious Basterds (2009): I was kinda shocked when looking at my FlickChart "list of shame" or whatever it's called, which lists highly-ranked movies that you haven't seen, and at the top of my list was Inglourious Basterds. Not only was it quite recent unlike most of the other films on the list, most of the reviews I'd read hadn't praised it completely. Safe to say, it wasn't universally positive stuff. So I watched it and yeah, it wasn't perfect. But I still really enjoyed it. The film's split up into several chapters and individually these chapters are superb. The dialogue is fantastic, particularly the one set in a bar with Basterds going undercover as Nazis. When viewed collectively I don't think it all gelled perfectly but the component parts were great. Brad Pitt's character, by the way, would have fit right into Machete. Two thumbs up.

Machete (2010): This was, well, different. It was completely and utterly absurd, a proper B movie, and completely by design. The violence was like something out of a hack-and-slash video game, the characters were cartoon characters in live action form, the sound effects were massively cliched and the dialogue was so campy. The fact that the film involved some notable faces, Robert Deniro, Lindsay Lohan, that Frank guy off Lost who got hit with the submarine door, made it all the better. Not only that, but they had a film involving Jessica Alba (internationally-known sex symbol) and Michelle Rodriguez (the woman who always plays the role of the butch tough woman) (read: lesbian) and made Michelle Rodriguez into the sexier of the two, which is probably worth some sort of award alone. I'm not a big fan of this type of movie but this was good fun. Needed a bad guy to get crushed with an ACME anvil at some point, though. One thumb up.

DanLowth @ FlickChart.com

Movie Review: The Social Network (2010)

I've just finished Social Network, so here's a cheeky little review. Yeah, suck it Ebert. Blow me Kermode. New kid in town. Nah, but srsly, will keep it short.

The Social Network (2010): I really, really enjoyed this film. I think I probably have a mild form of ADHD, my attention span is nonexistent, so you can assume this was gripping by the fact I watched the first hour and 40 minutes without checking the time, messing with my phone, anything like that. I just watched the film. Part of the reason the film was so enjoyable was the audacity of the subject material. They'd taken the origin story of a fucking social networking website and turned it into a gripping drama. No extravagant set pieces needed, just a good script about some contemptible young nerds, and that's exactly what was provided. The only character you were left feeling any sympathy for was Eduardo, for obvious reasons. The rest of them come across as, to varying degrees, dickheads.

Jesse Eisenberg plays the nerdy character in most of the films I've seen him in, most recently Zombieland, but if the Zombieland nerd is the lovable, amusing nerd, his take on Mark Zuckerberg is like the darkside of that character. Andrew Garfield was also tremendous, which is funny considering so many shit on him after it was announced he was the new Spiderman just because at the time nobody had heard of him (save those who watched Red Riding and that shitty Doctor Who two-parter he was in). I was also surprised at just how competent of an actor Justin Timberlake proved to be. Not only did he not stand out for negative reasons, he was genuinely impressive.

This isn't the type of film I'd usually go for so I didn't go in expecting to be blown away but in the end this is probably one of the best films of 2010 in my opinion. If only it weren't for that damn Inception. Toy Story 3 'n' all. Drats. Two thumbs up.

DanLowth @ FlickChart.com

The New Year has seen some top notch footyball. Not that I've seen much of it on account of my absurdly fucked up biological clock (I really need to sort that out at some point in the next week or so). However, a number of things have been getting in the way of that. Mostly TV and films, elaboration on that in a bit probably.

But yeah, I missed the first half of the United/West Brom game, and it sounds like that was a wise decision. It was actually partly by design, like a university lecture that you don't actually have to attend, don't really want to attend but feel in your gut that you have to. The easy solution? Sleep through it. The recent away matches have filled me with dread and everything I've seen of the first half suggested it followed that pattern. The second half was similar but at least the last ten minutes at 2-1 up didn't follow the pattern of about seven other matches this season and we didn't concede an equaliser.

I suppose it all works out in the grand scheme of things, what with the Lee Bowyer goal against us in the previous game, but whatever. If the game showed us one thing it's that Gary Neville's time is up, as it probably has been for many years. This season alone he's been torn apart by Matt Jarvis, Jerome Thomas and Matt Etherington. All are decent enough players, probably some of the better players in their respective teams, but Rafael is by far and away the first choice right now and I'd probably have Fabio and even Wes Brown ahead of Neville at this point, solely because they can run at a speed faster than glacial drift.

I did regret not catching the Villa/Chelsea game though, if just for the rollercoaster of emotions I can only imagine the Sky team were going through. Chelsea went from fallen champions to championship material back to fallen champions all in the span of about 10 minutes.

For now, I'm catching up on random movies and TV (while burning on with The Shield, obv). For now, Social Network. Then Shutter Island and Expendables. Also, Primeval on ITV. I've watched the first episode of the new series which was alright, especially the bizarre moment when they played that S Club 7 song while Hannah Spearitt was running around battling a dinosaur, but nothing remarkable. The CGI was more noticeably amusing but that might just've been due to extensive closeups of the creatures. So they should probably avoid that.