Reviews

Having just been to the cinema to see Transformers: Revenge Of The Fallen, I must express my complete and utter disappointment, anger and contempt towards the director Michael Bay and the writers who came up with this utter trite, hackneyed rubbish to use a mild term they have churned out. I mean don't get me wrong it started well with the story picking up a few years later where after the defeat of the Decepticons and their leader Megatron the main human hero Sam Witwicky having finished high school is now off to college and is trying to maintain a long distance relationship with his girlfriend Michala. The Autobots are now an integral part of human society, and to that end they help the government track down any Decepticons that have gone into hiding since their defeat and help eliminate that threat. But unfortunately after that it soon fell apart and it turned into one big corny joke fest where the one liners were so poor a ten year old could have written better jokes and a better script for that matter. I was so disgusted and angry at how this film was turning out I was very tempted to walk out the theatre in disgust, which for me very rarely happens because I like to stay until the end even after the credits have rolled. My main bugbear about this film was the characters, chiefly the Autobots and the Decepticons and perhaps a few of the human characters as well who were supposed to be military officials but turned out to be jackasses instead. The characters became parodies of what they originally started out as in the first film. For example in the first film even though Starscream was subservient to Megatron he did not turn into a snivelling, cowardly piece of scrap like his cartoon character, he came across as being a bit more stronger than that. Not to mention having Jetfire (aka Skyfire) voiced like a cockney, old man with slight dementia problems that just ruined it for me and made me wish I could have my money and those 3 hours back of my precious time! So Mr Bay if you even bother to read any of these reviews at all my message to you is this: The next time you decide to do a sequel Don't!! Just take a gun, shoot the writer and then shoot yourself to save us from the *****! you insist on churning out again and again. I honestly think that you've ruined the franchise Mr Bay I hope you are happy!!

I knew very little about the story before watching this but even from the beginning I knew that I would not be disappointed. From the moment we meet first meet the bitter and angry Sweeney Todd to the dramatic climax. The cast itself was an excellent mixture of known and unknown actors/actresses who all played their roles to perfection and of course the delightful Johnny Depp who shows us why he's such a sought after actor not only can he act, he can sing as well! Not just Johnny though but all the actors did an amazing job of singing and acting Alan Rickman, Helene Boham Carter, Timothy Spall, and even Sacha Baron Cohen! The story itself is a wonderful dark macabre story, the underscore music fitted perfectly with dark undertones of the story along with delightfully wicked dark humour. The chemistry between Helene's character (Mrs Lovett) and Sweeney Todd (Depp) was fantastic to watch as she fell deeper and deeper in love with him even willing to lie to him about his wife being alive - she did tell him his wife poisoned herself but neglected to mention that she was still alive albeit a bit loopy. Rickman and Spall did a excellent job of playing the evil judge and the cruel corrupted Beadle, all through out the story you could sympathise with Sweeney and I wanted him to kill the nasty pair because they were just simply vile evil creatures. I even found myself cheering when he finally did kill them but takes a rather sad, tragic and ironic twist at the end where after Sweeney murders the mad beggar woman he orders Mrs Lovett to open the oven door and in the firelight he sees that it was his wife that he had murdered. Driven insane with rage he turns on the woman who loves him Mrs Lovett and kills her in the worse possible way by burning her alive in the oven and shutting the door. Beside himself with grief he clings to his wife's dead body not noticing the small boy that Mrs Lovett took in who sneaks up behind him slits his throat with his own razor his blood poring over his dead wife's body the boy leaves the underground bakehouse.

This is an excellent film I would gladly watch again and again.

Jumana

I've just been to see Fool's Gold last night at the cinema and although there have been mixed reviews on this I have to say I really liked it. The plot is somewhat basic hunky man and gorgeous woman goes searching for lost treasure at the bottom of the ocean, throw in a couple of minor characters (one of them a very rich millionaire played by Donald Sutherland), some stereotype bad guys add in a little bit action and humour and that's Fool's Gold in a nutshell. The chemistry between Matthew McConaughy and Kate Hudson is brilliant (they worked really well together even on 'How to lose a guy in 10 days'.) and the humour made me laugh out loud especially the stupid comments of the dim-witted dilettante Gemma Honeycutt played by Alexis Dziena. Although when the main bad guy (Bigg Bunny aka Bugs Bunny)asked his henchman 'Where's Cyrus?' to which the henchman replies 'he'll be up in a minute' followed by Cyrus' mangled, water spout corpse being blown up in the air I had to cringe a little at that one. The other thing that got me was when Moe got shot in the water by the harpoon gun and he was bleeding why were there no sharks around to feed on him? (unless the Bahamas doesn't have sharks? I have no idea) But when you go to see this film don't expect too much as it's supposed to be silly romance comedy. so I give it my 7 out of 10 vote.

Jumana P.