Reviews

OK, it was better than the previous version but was it because they had incorporated many more ideas from the MCU? Because that's what it looked like to me, especially the flash scene. The baddy had also become much more Thanos like - both baddies in fact, but despite all of that, the characters shallower, the plot thinner and it just lacks the panache, the entertainment value and the humour that the mcu have displayed over the last decade. So, sure it was better than the previous version, but that still doesn't make it great.

I don't understand how this rates at 6.7 on IMDB when you page through the reviews most people are panning it - and I expected it to be worse than it was. Sound track was fun, the commentary was fun, Margot Robbie is a class act, but there's a continuous shot in Knight and Day with Cameron Diaz and Tom Cruise where they run at full speed across an exploding beach in one continuous shot and during it they pass a table and she wrangles her bag and gets it over her head and onto the her shoulders while they are running. Cameron Diaz was fit. Margot Robbie isn't, she clearly lives a sedentary life style that doesn't translate well into an 'action' movie, although she is a better runner than the flat footed Kristin Stewart. Cathy Yan's direction is better than Elizabeth Banks's by a long way, but the weakness of the stunts especially towards the end is really, truly appalling when you compare it to just about any other action movie, ever. Compared to The Joker or Deadpool? Awful, really, truly awful.

This script had everything in it. Commentary on the arms industry, feminism, racism and a moral imperative where our major player takes ownership of his own social irresponsibility. I have seen nothing else so far this year which comes close. It is a remake of Mayhem, which in itself was a cracking little, highly entertaining, low budget movie. But Office Uprising just took it so much further in terms of social commentary. And if you didn't see that, look again.

Great soundtrack, nice cutting, more character development than a lot of Hollywood's offerings, demographically a chick flick for the over 30's but it made me laugh and I'm an older guy. Very quick dialogue, lots and lots of color, central characters are both flawed but human and apart from the saccharin ending, really entertaining. I see lots of reviews by offended Americans but I guess that is because it is also a piece of social commentary, and in some ways, society doesn't come off that well. But the only way anyone can improve is by seeing and admitting their flaws, if you can't do even that, then I guess you really are arrested. Lots of great little supporting roles and features, good slapstick and plenty of physical comedy, what's not to like? Swearing? Well, there's a bit, but it's not super offensive. less than perfect characters? Get real... And of course great chemistry between the protagonists...

He's invulnerable and indestructible, right? So how does he shave? I wouldn't have to ask other than he does appear in one scene with stubble but is clean-shaven throughout the rest of the movie. I'm thinking kryptonite razor blades? Anyway, there were other confusing issues with the movie, some of the early scene changes were very badly strung together with little bridging explanation. That said, Jesse Eisenberg did a sterling job of personifying a psychotic baddie although the you got the impression that he was pretty much running on empty, principally because of lack of direction and content. Otherwise Afflick and the other main characters were well cast and put in solid performances, but Gal Gadot seemed a curious piece of casting. OK she's a looker, albeit with a very low brow, so put her in a $8,000 dress and stand her in anATM line and she looks good. I'd look good standing in an ATM line wearing $8,000 worth of clothes and I'm an ugly, balding, 65 year old man. Mercifully though her actual speaking lines were kept to an absolute minimum, because she cannot act. To call her wooden would be an insult to trees. I think they wanted to hide her ugly foreign accent as well. I can only assume that she was a political appointee, designed to further the Jewish military agenda in Hollywood. For example, Batman's parent's killer, who was replayed several times throughout the movie, looked distinctly and I think unnecessarily, Arabic just to encourage Islamaphobia. Batman's new moral code doesn't prevent him killing people (even if they are baddies) in order to steal any item he wants for his own purposes. It also doesn't prevent him attempting to kill people for no other reason than he thinks they might be a threat. Are those ideas that we want to popularise through the media of mass entertainment? Or is this the self justification of a beleaguered, brutal, military dictatorship? DC comics always lacked the colour and vibrancy of Marvel comics and in the early '60s used to read almost like a party political broadcast for the Republican Party. Superman was white, (despite being an alien) he was brought up on a small farm in Kansas by poor, God fearing Christian simpletons that taught him to fight for truth and justice. Batman was white and rich, he inherited wealth and drove fast cars and loved gadgets but at least he didn't go around killing people to get what he wanted. So is this movie more representative of modern day Republican Party values where It is alright to kill people, especially if they are Arabs? But the best part of the whole movie for me was Batman hitting Superman over the head with a bathroom sink, that was truly awesome. That made up for all the other failings. I think when a movie has political undertones in it and a politically cast foreign national actress and when the agenda is so obvious, that it is never going to be great. This isn't entertainment, this is the coarsest propaganda and it doesn't work for me, not at any level.

It's all very well for Russell Crowe to complain that people criticise this movie without having seem it, but I've seen it and the best thing about this movie was Emma Watson pretending to cry. OK, this is one of perhaps the more interesting myths of creation, but the biblical version varies from others in making man the guilty party but this twisted, bleak ugliness really takes it too far. I think it might appeal to the bible belt of America, to stir up a bit more hatred of sinners, but otherwise I can't see the intended audience for this. It's like taking the worst of Cormac Mcarthy, Leonard Cohen and Edward Munk and combining their talents for finding dark clouds surrounding every silver lining and putting it into one miserable work of exceptional ugliness. In the beginning was the screenplay and the Lord Crowe passed over the face of the screenplay and decreed that it was good. Yeah, for gravitas he added the Hopkins but added also the Winston to take away the gravitas of Hopkins in double measure. The Lord Crowe said "Let there be cockney accent and posh little English accent in equal measure" and yeah, let the Lord Crowe get all the awesome lines such that the cinema going public see the magnificence of the Crowe in full measure and then let the Lord Crowe be badass until the very end when he shall yield allow the human race a second chance, for we are not worthy of his greatness.

Riki Lindhome is sweet as a bad assed bitch, but I lament the fact that talented and funny actors like her have to put up with crud like this to try to make a name for themselves. Otherwise, it was well cast, poorly scripted, all the main characters acquitted themselves really well, the supporting characters did well also. The soundtrack was effective, the cutting OK, but whether you are a fan of the genre or not, you have to admit that this could have been SO much better. There was no humour, no visual puns, no irony, no references to other movies of the genre it just could have been so much better than it was. But it wasn't. It was dire. It was sad. It was the kind of movie that makes you not want to watch movies anymore. As someone once said 'The movies are a place where people with no imagination go to watch the bad dreams of others'. And apart from that, the flesh shots in the beginning really lower the tone to a bad excuse for soft porn. To lift an expression from that genre, this movie sucks /\ss.

OK, so everyone knows it was a disaster, but it would be good to hear what the 'creative differences' were that caused Sam Worthington to drop out. He would have been better in the role than Johnny Depp. No disrespect intended because I like Johnny Depp a lot and he does such good comedy roles, and it's not that the he plays this badly, he doesn't, but it's the lack of director foresight that leaves you so disappointed at the end. There are no clues at all towards the 'twist' in the plot, but by the time it is revealed the whole thing has become so lame that it looks just like and ego yank for Angelina Jolie. It's as if it is nothing more than a succession of scenes which entails Jolie getting dressed up in posh frocks (designer dresses) so she can walk into the various rooms followed by the admiring glances of all the men in the room. In her dreams. And when the do have the opportunity to have all her clothes fall off in one scene, they don't bother, because to do so would be to reveal the saggy, middle aged carcass of a vain woman too lazy exercise. It's not too late for Cameron Diaz, her clothes can still fall off and without the use of a body double, she'd still look hot because she gym's it all the time and it shows. So Angelina, there's the challenge for you, Meg Ryan and Sandra Bullock embarrassed themselves and the public by stripping off long after the point, so we think it's time you did it as well. Go on, you're vain enough...

I feel sorry for actors like Ving Rhames and Danny Trejo because I think they deserve better than this, since this movie lacks any redeeming features at all, nothing. The shooting, direction and continuity are so bad I find it incredible that this has even been finished, produced and distributed. It has all the quality and finesse of a Jean Claude van Damm movie made in Rumania. It could have been OK, except that the action scenes were all so weak, so poorly hashed together, the continuity between scenes is laughable. Some of the characters, like Prudence contribute nothing material to the plot or the story and then they exit taking no further part, when they could have easily been written into it more effectively. It is so badly written that they had to retrospectively explain in laughable detail, because not enough care was taken in the first place to have it hang together. The writers and Roel Reine concentrate so hard on cheap and very nasty titillation that the have even left in an up skirt shot, which I presume was supplied courtesy of the wind and coincidence, because they couldn't have contrived it themselves and they shouldn't have bothered leaving it in. As far as cheap and very nasty titillation is concerned the only thing left out was a little girl on girl action and whereas with a Jean Claude van Dam or Steven Segal movie they are SO bad that they are almost good, this isn't. This is not bad enough to be good, that's how bad it is.

The attraction of Vampire (and zombie) movies to the movie maker is that they legitimise as much wanton bloodletting and gore as can be served up inside of 120 minutes. 'Body count' movies became politically unacceptable after 9.11 and this became the favoured Hollywood solution. On that score this movie will not disappoint. The extreme violence and CGI blood spatter will not disappoint those with the appetite for gore. A cast of complete unknowns must have been necessitated by the refusal of any known actor, however minor, to participate in such a mess of blood and guts and the greatest disservice imaginable to one of America's greatest presidents. They are all well cast and acquit themselves with whatever dignity is available to such bottom feeders. The ultimate irony would be if every other (historically accurate) record of Abraham Lincoln got lost in the mists of time except this movie and 2,000 years from now our ancestors believed that the American Civil War eradicated not just legalised slavery but also vampires. That would be funny and make it altogether worthwhile.

One of the best cast and best directed movies I have seen all year. I am not a fan of prohibition or of the romanticising of criminals, but this is a very gritty and realistic true story of the history of the US during the 20's. Most people will not be disappointed. Every character comes across as realistic and credible, from the main characters to the ancillary. The script does not deviate from authenticity for the period, there is no modernism, nothing out of place and the sets and costumes are well researched and as authentic as can be. It is a triumph of authentic period drama and a good story well told. I hope to see this movie represented at next year's Oscar nominations.