Reviews

I won't discuss too much about the plot as most people are aware of the premise. A psycho surgeon kidnaps a group of people in his sick attempt to create a human centipede. He succeeds.

What can I say. This film is bad, but it's also quite watchable and you're always wondering what will happen next. The actor who plays the Surgeon is one of the better villains of recent times. He looks, dresses and acts creepy as anything we've seen in a while and reminded me of a German Hannibal Lecter. You may feel that his performance is over the top at times but he's clearly crazy so normal character rules don't apply.

The film is not without its share of tense moments. The scene where the Surgeon takes 2 girls into his home after their car breaks down is suitably eery. You know these girls are in trouble and soon enough they know it too. There are a few escape attemtps before we reach the halfway point and we see 3 people stitched together, mouth to anus, and yes, there is a brief scene involving a number 2.

Like many horrors, there are a number of moments that should annoy you as a viewer, such as the inept cops towards the end (where's the back up fellas, and your police radios?) and the Japanese mans failure to kill the Surgeon when he has a clear and easy chance to do so, instead opting to crawl away (if it were me i'd have stabbed the Surgeon repeatedly in the neck but nooooooo not this guy) All in all, Human Centipede is a mixed bag. It's not as sick or scary as you might be led to believe but it does have a tense atmosphere, the acting by all is good and with the Surgeon, we have one of the better villains of recent years. I recommend it for horror fans but don't expect it to blow you away. it's not Texas Chainsaw and it's not The Exorcist. It has more in common with one of the Saw sequels.

The Karate kid Part 3 is a film that if looked at again today reminds you of how great the 80's were. No CGI, no massive budget, no massive stars, just good old fashioned entertainment where Daniel LaRusso yet again succeeds against all the odds.

This film is not perfect by any means. It has a fairly weak story and some poor dialogue and character motivations are somewhat unbelievable. Don't the villains have anything better to do with their time than to harass our hero into entering the tournament. does it really mean that much to them to get Daniel to fight. come on, get a life guys.

As has been stated on countless other reviews, the love interest here is pointless because their relationship goes nowhere, they decide to be friends because she has an on off boyfriend. Her purpose here is to hang out with Daniel and eat macaroni cheese with him. not exactly Romeo and Juliet. heck its not even bert and ernie! However, in my opinion the positives just about outweigh the negatives. Mr Miyagi is yet again the strongest link, adding his usual mix of humour and wisdom in equal doses. As his friendship with Daniel slowly disintegrates, you really feel for him as the sadness washes over his face, that his surrogate son is for the first time against him and not with him.

Mike Barnes is a good foe for Daniel. you can really believe that he is Karates bad boy as his PR make him out to be. You believe that Mike could and does kick Daniels ass at almost every opportunity. He is much more threatening and abusive than previous opponents.

The music in this film is beautiful. Bill Conti in all 3 movies has done some of his best work. The music that plays over Daniels Kata training is tranquil and memorable. The music that plays over Daniels final bout leaves goosebumps all over your body.

And speaking of the final fight, yes it is a letdown that Daniel doesn't need to make his way to the final this time because of a new rule that allows the previous champion to automatically reach the final. Its almost as if they thought Macchio didn't have it in him to do another 6 round fight montage due to his obvious weight gain. whatever the reasons for this, it sucks. its like you wait 90 minutes for the inevitable fight and unlike the first movie where you watched Daniel make his way to the final, here he goes straight into the final. I mean doesn't he need those early fights to warm up. Obviously because he gets his arse whipped big time.

Daniel gets beaten up but Barnes keeps the score at 0-0 because he deliberately loses a point for kicking his balls and punching his face. he's basically trying to make him suffer until sudden death over time. and when sudden death over time arrives, your either gonna be split into two camps. you'll either laugh and call it ridiculous or you'll be swept up in the moment and think, wow, that was magic movie-making in 1 minute. i'm for the latter. i love the ending. the whole scene from Miyagi telling Daniel to shut the hell up and find his best karate inside and let it out to Daniel getting up with a new determination in his eyes to the music to his opponents confusion and to the final move, it all just gives me goosebumps and almost brings a tear to my eyes. silly and unbelievable it may be but you could say the same about the crane kick. i personally like this film quite a bit despite its flaws. rewatch it and maybe you'll agree.

Die Hard is one of those 80's movies that, as the title suggests, doesn't die. It still holds up today as one of the best action thrillers ever.

Bruce Willis has probably never been better than here, his first and best outing as New York cop John McClane. Willis seems to have a hunger to prove himself here, something he far too often doesn't exude. This was his first real big budget attempt to break into the big league and he succeeded. His John McClane is a moody, sarcastic quick witted tough guy, but more importantly he's a regular Joe, he's no muscle bound Arnie Clone dispatching bad guys with ease, quite the opposite, every kill comes with blood and sweat, taking the steam out of our hero on numerous occasions, and at one point, he comes close to tears. This kind of vulnerability is what makes John McClane so likable. He's really up against it, one man against at least a dozen terrorists led by the excellent Alan Rickman.

Alan Rickman also excels in what is still one of the best bad guy roles. He plays Hans Gruber as a suit wearing classic music loving ego maniac, who will do anything to get what he wants, but always remaining gentleman like, rarely cussing and rarely losing his cool, even when faced with McClane. It's a smart, classy portrayal and he makes for a great villain in contrast to Willis wisecracking New Yorker.

The rest of the cast are also great, even the smaller roles seem authentic and real, from construction workers, to swat team members, to FBI agents to news men. Rarely does an action film feel this way. Too often smaller characters are just their to fill out the story and say their lines but here they feel like they really are in this situation and this is one of the reasons Die Hard is so good, everyone is on their game. Standouts include McClanes wife Holly, who remains a hostage throughout, Ellis, the coke snorting obnoxious yuppie who is likewise a hostage and feels he can negotiate with the terrorists, and Al, the nice guy patrol cop on the outside who communicates and bonds with McClane from the outside via walkie talkie. A mention also has to go out to the terrorists themselves. Each one has their own identity, each one their own ticks,they argue with each other, they debate with each other and most of all they just want to kill McClane.

The action by todays standards might seem poor if your more interested in CGI overload, but back in the 80's CGI was barely existent, and instead if something needed blown up, it was blown up, and in my opinion, this way is much much better. This film is down and dirty explosive and bloody. When McClane gets into numerous hand to hand fights they feel real and messy, like a fight ought to be, not choreographed into an inch of their life like a Van Damme film for example, these fights are raw, head butts, check, bashing heads on pipes, check, shooting a guy on the balls, check, it's all done so well and unflashy and only adds to the realism. Unlike so many other films of this kind, this one feels like the events could happen, nothing here is so far fetched, unlike the inferior sequels.

What is also so great about Die Hard is the claustrophobia. The events of Die Hard take place in one very tall building in central LA. McClane is limited to where he can hide and manoeuvre, he climbs down lift shafts, crawls through ventilation shafts, watches outside police activity through the window and at one point jumps spectacularly off the exploding roof and into a window via a fire hose pipe.

The script is one of the best I've seen in a mainstream action film. Classic lines and scenes are here aplenty. You'll be quoting from this film for years to come.

Die Hard is a strong contender for best action thriller ever. Unfortunately the sequels have gotten worse and worse and the recent Die Hard 4.0 is the nadir of the franchise so far. Everything that's so great about the original was only partly present in Die Hard 2 but even that failed to capture the magic of the first.

So forget the sequels for now and if you haven't seen this, and frankly there's not a lot of you out there, go see this now. Yipeekaye.

When a horror film evokes more laughs than scares you know the film is in troubled waters. This remake starring Nicholas Cage is bad. Very bad. Let me explain why.

The script is uninspired and lacking in psychological or physical scares. Rather it evokes unintentional laughter through crass lines and silly scenes. He is a police officer who can't tell the difference in weight between a loaded gun and an unloaded gun. He runs around in a bear costume at one point to blend in with the local celebration. You'd be forgiven for thinking this was Scooby Doo.

The film lacks tension and logic. After the film you're left wondering why the islanders didn't just knock him out when his back was turned rather than continue the elaborate missing girl plan until the very end.

The only enjoyment I took away from this was how unintentionally funny some scenes were. The aforementioned bear scene, Nicholas Cage pointing his gun at an unarmed woman to apprehend her bike and telling her to "step away from the bike", the villagers and their cuckoo ways, it all adds up to some comedy gold.

But make no mistake. This is poor stuff. You gotta wonder why Nicholas Cage agreed to appear in this. Maybe he thought there was potential. It evokes the 1998 Psycho as another pointless poor remake.

I recently watched this on DVD. I saw the nominations, I saw the reviews, and this was from the talented female director of Point Break, a film I'm very fond of. So my excitement at watching this was very high. Unfortunately, in what seems to be a constant tread at the moment, this film for me doesn't quite justify the hype. Damn those over eager critics who refer to this as a "nerve shredding masterpiece". It's not by the way.

Don't get me wrong. This is a good film. It reminded me of "Tigerland", the 2000 film which starred Colin Farrell. In that film Colin played a character who's a bit of a rebel, a bit of a risk taker, a guy who doesn't seem to give a damn, and the lead actor here displays similar characteristics. He is played with confidence by Jeremy Renner and he is one to watch in the future. He was apparently very close to being offered Mad Max 4 based on his performance in this.

The style of this film is down and dirty gritty, all shaky cam to give that documentary style to proceedings. The story if you're not familiar is very simple. A bomb disposal team stationed in Iraq defuse bombs, and each one becomes riskier than the last. There is some combat in between each bomb threat and some character development within the team. We see how the new leader to the bomb disposal group goes about his job, which surprises the rest due to his almost reckless attitude and daring personality. He doesn't think, he just does and this causes some conflict within the group. It also makes for some tense moments and some interesting character conflicts.

On a more disappointing level, there are parts of this film where not a lot happens, and although this may be true to life, it doesn't exactly make for riveting entertainment. Talky interludes between the action made me lose interest from time to time. Scenes that you think are leading somewhere don't really lead anywhere. A subplot for example involving our lead going on a quest to find the killer of a young local boy takes him to a house and a confrontation with a suspect, only for our lead to run out of the house again and back to base camp. That was a bit pointless mate! Did you just need a jog? As i've said, this is a good film. at best it's tense and gritty, and it's shot in a documentary style, and it has a good cast doing a good job. Just don't expect a ... what was it ... a "nerve shredding masterpiece". If you want that, go watch "Eden Lake" or "Inside"

I went into this movie knowing it had a 90% fresh rating on rotten tomatoes, and 8.1 here on IMDb, not to mention award nominations galore. So I was expecting something special.

Unfortunately, as with a lot of films that are highly praised these days, I thought this was quite an average film made up of some witty moments, but generally, too much of this was dull and un involving and not nearly as moving as it could have been.

George Clooney is good in the role of Ryan Bingham, a man very content in his life and jet setting job, a man who doesn't appreciate change. George is on screen for almost every minute of the film, and he does well here but it's hardly a stretch for him. We've seen him do this kind of thing before with slight variations of character in films such as One fine day, Oceans 11, 12 and 13, Intolerable cruelty and Out of sight. The rest of the cast are also good, no real standouts, but a cameo from JK Simmons made me sit up.

The script has some amusing moments, none are laugh out loud, merely amusing, a chuckle here and a chuckle there.

What disappointed me most was the lack of emotion I felt whilst watching this. For a film thats 2 hours long and has only its characters talking to keep us glued, the lack of emotion I felt whilst watching was a huge letdown.

To summarise, it's a witty film, along the lines of Sideways and About Schmidt. It's very talky and not a great deal happens. It's focus is on George Clooney, who's character, by the end, doesn't seem to evolve as much as expected. Nor did I!

Antichrist received much controversy upon its release. Disgusted viewers were walking out of screenings not halfway through the movie. Those that watched until the end were divided. Some thought it a masterpiece, others thought it was a pretentious bore fest. This was a similar reaction to 2008's French masterpiece, Martyrs. Antichrist, in my mind, is no masterpiece. Far from it.

I knew this movie might not appeal to me when I sat down to watch it, but when a film divides so many critics as this did, and when so much controversy is put upon a film, my curiosity to see it for myself is too much to resist. Lars Von Trier directed this film and he is not to everyones tastes. For example, his 2003 Nicole Kidman film Dogville was set entirely on a stage, so it felt like watching a stage production rather than a traditional film. He is a very experimental director and sometimes this comes at the cost of entertaining his audience, as is the case here. This film is just not entertaining enough to hold interest.

The story involves a couple played by Willem Dafoe and Charlotte Gainsbourg. Their baby son dies at the beginning of the film and the rest of the film focuses solely on these two people and their emotions and their turmoils following on from their sons death. They retreat to an unoccupied woodland cabin where things start to slowly turn ugly between them.

The acting from both lead actors is very good. It needs to be as they are both the sole occupants of this film for the majority of its running time. Unfortunately, the way the story is told and the events that unfold are very tedious and very, well boring frankly. I can see why there were walkouts. Aside from the slow and boring progression of the story, it also changes gears toward the final 3rd and descends into shock tactics. I won't go into details but extreme nudity and violence play a strong part. Two scenes in particular will make both male and female audiences either look away or squirm in their seat.

What I was left feeling after watching Antichrist was how boring it was. I wanted to fast forward scenes, I wanted the story to be less pretentious. It's as if the director had a nightmare and he woke up and decided to he was going to turn it into a film. This could be partially true as I've read that the film is partly based on the directors thoughts and feelings during a period of depression.

If you want to be depressed, and bored at the same time, this is for you. But if you like your films to entertain, then I'd give this a miss.