Reviews

The only thing that detracted me from giving this movie a ten is exactly why I decided to write a review on it.

This film, so far, has been the most negatively received film in the Middle Earth saga, for lack of a better term, and some how I can see why. Lord Of The Rings fans are incredibly dedicated and I think expect more than they will realistically get. These films, to me, are as close to perfection you will ever get.

However, I do take issue with a few things in this movie, one being how incredibly short it is, in comparison to its predecessors. The film seems to lack depth and detail and it left me feeling unfulfilled. This is primarily because I have read the book and know that several scenes have been left out. Of course I am aware that the extended edition will be released at some point and this does excite me because the scenes missed are some of the more crucial details in the book by J.R.R Tolkien. Another issue I have is the acting from certain characters, primarily the dwarfs and Bilbo. The scene in which Thorin Oakenshield is being pushed down with a blade by the Pale Orc was incredibly unconvincing, since Thorin's facial expression seemed somewhat relaxed considering he was moments away from death. I think Richard Armitage is an exceptional actor and Jackson is an exceptional director, which leads me to believe that Jackson wanted Thorin to look this way? The final scene between Bilbo Baggins and the dwarfs of Erebor was incredibly cold, considering Bilbo had been on the road with these guys for almost two years, I felt it lacked all emotion. And of course, the return journey was somewhat missed entirely from the film. My hope is that more will be added in the extended edition.

The film didn't lack emotion entirely, the final scene between Thorin and Bilbo was absolutely heartbreaking and I found myself crying A LOT! I also especially enjoyed the scene between Thorin and Bilbo when Bilbo tells him about the acorn from Beorn's garden, in which the acting was sensational. It was incredibly emotional mainly because of Thorin's dragon sickness and the way that Bilbo is the only person he can still feel emotional attachment to.

Again the CGI in this movie was nothing short of stunning and as near to perfect as you will get, but I do think the scene between Legolas and the Orc was rather ridiculous. I realise this is a fantasy movie with dragons and elves, but Middle Earth is meant to be an ancient time period on OUR Earth today, meaning surely the laws of physics still apply? Right?

However, this was just me being picky, all in all, I found the movie to be brilliant, and to top it off, we had the fantastic Billy Boyd performing 'The Last Goodbye' for the credits, which again reduced me to tears. The only reason I couldn't give this movie a 10 was purely due to the fact it wasn't 100% perfect.

Only recently watched The Purge after the recent release of its sequel and was surprised to see such bad ratings after the buzz the sequel created. First off, I don't think this is a bad movie at all, the storyline was pretty good, and the idea was incredibly interesting and thought provoking. Problem is at times I found myself thinking about the idea of the purge rather than concentrating on the story.

The set for the film was limited as it was mainly focused on the house of the family involved. This isn't necessarily a bad thing because many films can pull off one location sets very well, however I think it would of been beneficial to have seen more perhaps.

The acting was pretty decent too, although the kids annoyed me like hell! Incredibly dim witted and useless but hey! thats story telling I guess! The film was overall well made, good cinematography, nothing outstanding but of standard and it seemed relatively believable throughout. One thing I found with this movie is that the ending was a sequence of plot twists, I was half expecting the homeless guy to turn around and say, 'no in fact you're mine!'. Either way I think its safe to say, Anarchy won't be the last we see of these films, and hopefully the following films will tell the story to its potential which is something this movie failed to do. It didn't quite live up to my expectations although I can't quite pinpoint what I did expect anyway.

It's worth watching definitely, but reviews will be mixed I believe.

In Bruges is a British black comedy film directed by Martin McDonagh, released in 2008. It follows a pair of hit men named Ken and Ray who are hiding out in the Belgian town of Bruges after Ray accidentally murders a child during one of his jobs.

I found this film pretty entertaining throughout, it had clever, witty dialogue which conveyed both characters very well. The characters themselves are very convincing and both very 3 dimensional, the relationship between them both is presented very well as it shows their closeness and shows their emotion despite having a seemingly emotionless job. I thought the dialogue and acting was extremely credible to Farrell as he perfectly conveys Ray's fragile state of mind and presents his character differently to how you'd expect.

The story itself was pretty basic but well written and perhaps the only part of the film that let it down was the ending, which I was not fully satisfied with. I feel like it was a little unconvincing and unrealistic with there being a shootout in the middle of a film set and no one seems to take any action and prefers to carry on with their business! I think this was a bit of a silly sequence and although the fate of the characters was relatively appropriate, I still feel it wasn't authentic enough. This film was set in a beautiful location and when it isn't making you laugh or wince, it instils emotion into the viewer with its stunning soundtrack and appropriate cinematography. The cinematography was very revealing for the characters and shows off the setting of the film extremely well. It also intensifies the dialogue and importance of scenes. The editing of the narrative was quite clever and I liked how we found out what Ray had done after he sees two children walking with their parents. It was an appropriate link and therefore a good time to reveal Ray's actions.

I watched Eden Lake a few years ago and it horrified me then. I re- watched it yesterday and really was reminded of how gruesome this film is.

I think it was clever of James Watkins to write a horror film that did not possess any supernatural elements and it definitely lives up to a thriller status with its extremely intense chase scenes. You really do feel on the edge of your seat while watching Eden Lake and some scenes physically make you grit your teeth.

I loved that this film was based around violent youths, as it really plays into the intimidation modern day people feel about teenagers, although people may argue that it reflects a negative image on young people and shows an unrealistic representation of them. To me, this is still an issue we face in real life and I think this adds to the terror you feel while watching this film.

It was well made in terms of camera-work and editing and each scene was effective in creating tension and atmosphere.

However, this film does have it criticisms with certain scenes and makes you want to scream at the TV sometimes.This is displayed most when Steve enters the house of the youths to find their parents. A rough child usually stems from a rough parent and you certainly wouldn't wander into someones house, especially with such hostile children inhabiting it. I found that really unrealistic.

All in all, I have a positive review for Eden Lake, worth watching!

In all honesty, I was never inclined at all to watch The Conjuring since most horrors that are massively talked about, mainly by teenagers, seem to almost always let me down, but this was an exception.

In hindsight, I should of been less doubtful as I rate James Wan as an extremely talented director who always seem to pull of scares. I enjoyed Saw and both of the Insidious films so The Conjuring was bound to be at least decent.

First off, I think the sound in this film was fantastic, it created suspense, tension and atmosphere and really made your skin crawl as you watched it. It perfectly suited the cinematography and was timed brilliantly. This was hardly a surprise really, and it did sound similar to the Insidious soundtrack. James Wan has a tendency to use contrapuntal sound and we definitely see this here.

The cinematography is extremely professional and effective, you see clear use of thirds and the different shots and angles were creative. A particular shot that caught my eye a couple of times was the rotation of the camera and upside down shots, these were unusual and interesting as well as a breath of fresh air into cinematography itself. If there was something important needed in the shot, it was always shown and also created plenty of false expectations in the viewer, which were unusually a good thing.

Acting was believable and honest, each character was played perfectly and naturally and there was no cheesy or conventional lines or performances. All actors showed genuine emotion and behaved in a manner that did the story line justice. And of course the story line was relatively impressive too, the story was dark,shocking and held the conventions of horror with interesting and original twists.

I must criticise the use of Annabelle the doll, since it really had little to do with the main story at all, I have heard about the proposed sequel but was there really any need to bring the doll into the equation in this film.

Either way, this film is definitely worth a watch if you want a genuinely scary horror movie and for once is actually based off a true story!

The Children is a 2008 British Horror film directed by Tom Shankland. It follows a family as they try to escape the grasps of their suddenly estranged children who show signs of murderous behaviour.

I found this film interesting and extremely shocking, mainly due to its representation of children. It is often conventional for horrors to use children as they represent purity and innocence so it shocks and affects a viewer strongly to see a child taking part in strange, paranormal and evil behaviour. However, many horrors write children to be possessed or turned evil and in the end, the child will be cured, which we see in the film Insidious, directed by James Wan. In The Children, they are abnormal right from the start of the film and they aren't changed, leaving the audience in mystery as to why. I think the most shocking of all though, for me at least, was the extremely graphic and violent deaths involved. Most films will shy away from killing off a child character at all costs, but The Children doesn't hesitate. In fact, we see the parents of these children murdering them, violently and horrifically, which is something that most parents couldn't even comprehend in their heads. It turns the relationship between parents and offspring on its head and makes it extremely evil and twisted and, arguably, sadistic. The cinematography for this film was to a good standard but probably not the best I've seen. It was definitely impressive for a seemingly low budget film. It allowed you to get a good view of all the action while making it interesting and creating tension. The soundtrack was also very crucial to this film and I feel it heavily relied on its soundtrack to create suspense, tension and atmosphere. All in all, a good film that definitely got my attention! It left a few memorable expressions on my face! Definitely worth a watch and really represents the British horror film industry well.

This instalment in the Paranormal Activity saga sees Jessie experience strange occurrences after invading the home of a mysterious woman after her also mysterious death.

Honestly, I wasn't expecting much from this Paranormal Activity, in fact, after seeing the first two films, I really did lose interest.

This film started out actually very promising and didn't seem to make you wait an hour before anything 'scary' happens, like the first film which seemed to take forever to get into. No, it wasn't boring, but it really wasn't that scary. Yes, it had jump scares, but only really making me jump out of my seat in the cinema because of the ridiculously easily scared teenage girls sitting behind me.

I was rather confused as to why this film centred itself around witchcraft, I really have no idea. It completely takes away that 'poltergeist' feel the first couple had. It seems that this film doesn't follow the original idea of Paranormal Activity. I found myself in absolute hysterics actually at this film in places which was intentional in places but obviously not in others. Sometimes it felt like it was trying to make it more comedic than it should have been.

There was also parts that really made the directors 'piecing together' of the film, extremely see- through. An example of this would be when Jessie goes into that basement/secret room full of pictures of him. 'we shouldn't be in here, better close this TRAP DOOR' in a HOUSE WHERE THEY HAVE HAD EXTREMELY NEGATIVE EXPERIENCES. Really? that bit was ridiculous.

I think the ending could have been 100 times better than it was too, because the idea was pretty clever, the integration of all the films and everything, but it was done too quickly and it was all over the place. I felt confused over the doors and so on, there seemed to be one person in one place and someone else in another, then a goats head on the floor and then a creepy door with pentagrams on but never once did it seem to flow cleverly and successfully.

It really left a lot of loose ends, whether that was intentional to lead on to yet another film, I don't know. I mean I would have really liked to have known what was in the fridge that was locked?

I don't want to seem like I have nothing positive to say but really, it started out promising and just deteriorated. I wouldn't even say it was better than the first two in reality, it seemed cheesy in parts and an extremely random instalment. Overall, my advice would be watch it for the experience.

Wow, what can I say about 'No Tell Motel' apart from the fact it is absolutely awful. It follows a group of teenagers on a road trip (unoriginal) who somehow manage to flip their RV over through just having a simple argument. They conveniently stop by an abandoned motel they then find out later is haunted.

I have numerous problems with this film, first and foremost, the horrific acting. None of it was believable, the arguments looked fake and down right cheesy. The most notorious one being when the blonde girl Megan Walsh says 'it's settled, we're staying' at this point,I just laughed because it sounded utterly ridiculous. Nothing was ever properly explained and random things just seemed to be thrown in and we never actually find out what significance they have to the narrative, if they have any at all. One example of this would be when the 'boyfriend' i'm guessing? since its never actually solidified he is, takes some sort of drug that we are never informed on what it is so we are left wondering what the hell he's been taking and he randomly pulls a gun out of no where. where exactly did he get that from? we don't know, and we never find out!

the narrative was extremely badly written, nothing made sense and nothing had any relevance. It takes all the expected horror movie traits and makes them worse than they could possibly be. If anything, I actually found this movie quite humorous especially when Megan's friend get hit by a car. She is laying there dead in the road, blood coming out of her head, they run over and couldn't look less surprised. either she wasn't a very good friend or the actors evidently didn't know how a group of whiny teenagers should react to the death of their friend. What really made me laugh is the fact they completely dismissed her death, left her dead in the road and brought the guy that hit her into the motel. A total stranger that they didn't know? I also don't think running over a girl's head would make you crash so severely that you're knocked out and bleeding. For the rest of the film, there's no mention of her!

The film overall was predictable as hell and I couldn't possibly list all the things that annoyed me about it. I found it really difficult to watch it till the end since I was just so bored, I stopped paying it so much attention after about 30 minutes. Despite the fact I should probably write something positive about it, I'm finding it really hard to pick out anything I liked, I guess the cinematography wasn't too bad.

my advice for anyone thinking about watching this is, don't. And for the life of you do not pay money for it, if you want to laugh at the expense of terrible film making go ahead. But if you're looking for scares, don't bother, you wont find any here.

if you asked me to write a summary of the plot for Insidious chapter 2, I would definitely struggle, this film was understandable but difficult to explain.

Insidious chapter 2, directed by James Wan, follows on from the first Insidious movie, it follows the same family and is written following straight after the first movie. Insidious 2 revolves round the father of Dalton Lambert, the boy who was 'possessed' in essence in the first film. This follows his father,Josh, who we see murder Elise. This film allows us to find out the mysteries of the first movie in greater detail and understand it better as well as give us a good story, in this sense, it was a good film.

I don't think this movie was quite as scary as the first one, and it came across like a regurgitation of the first Insidious. Most of the 'scares' were caused by the sounds, which I must congratulate, Insidious has possibly the most disturbing soundtrack. None of the content was actually that terrifying, yes, it was quite menacing and creepy, but wasn't going to leave me with sleepless nights.

The overall mise-en-scene of the film was very good, the acting was good, the editing was not under done or over done. It had some good twists and turns which were interesting and kept me engaged throughout, so it wasn't a bad film.

The use of time in the film was confusing and the script was complex making this film extremely hard to explain the plot.

A favourite scene, was definitely where Josh throws the kettle at Renai's head, knocking her out. I can't imagine this should of been as funny as it was, but I am guilty of laughing out loud in the cinema at this part.

The ending has left me thinking that we will almost certainly see an 'Insidious 3' which I have a feeling will be a major let down, as many 3rd installments in horror franchises are.

give it a watch by all means, it has equally good and bad points. It was a very average film, and didn't top the first one. Both Insidious films are pretty much on an equal level.

Iron Man 3 follows Tony Stark on his mission to stop the Destructive terrorist 'Mandarin'or more so , Aldrich Killian. Iron Man 3 is the third instalment in the Iron Man trilogy but was not directed by the same director as Iron Man and Iron Man 2, which were directed by Jon Favreau ( who plays a cameo as Happy Hogan, Tony Stark's former bodyguard) Iron Man 3 was directed by Shane Black. Iron man 3 had a $200 million budget and made over $1,000,000,000.

One thing I can say about this movie is the lack of 'Iron Man' since Tony Stark was not in the suit for most of the movie which in a way takes the Iron Man essence away from the whole movie. As much as I did enjoy Robert Downey Jr's performance, I felt it was more about him than 'Iron Man'. Much of the time, it isn't Tony Stark/Iron Man fighting the enemies, and even the ending shows Pepper saving the day, which can be seen as quite a positive thing and may please the female audience for the girl power element.

The addition of Harley, the child character is definitely a clear sign of Disney's influence, and I don't necessarily see it as a bad thing, but this film was far from dark and we see this with the amount of humour that included. Don't get me wrong, I love the humour as it was clever and definitely gave me a laugh but I would have preferred it to be darker, much like The Dark Knight Rises. The film had brilliant editing and I especially loved the intro with the addition of Eiffel 65, which definitely was a blast from the past! I enjoyed the opening scene and it was a relevant and clever introduction to the storyline. The plot twist with The Mandarin was interesting and at first, I didn't like it too much, purely because the storyline with The Mandarin as an evil, twisted terrorist seemed so much more threatening so I felt a little let down but it was quite a comical twist on the storyline and didn't work out too badly.

I would recommend it but I wouldn't expect too much from it as you may be disappointed.

A Serbian Film has been a much talked about film but I never dared to watch it. Nevertheless, with an open mind, I finally decided to watch it and I'm extremely impressed by it, I would go as far as to say that it has been one of my favourite films to watch this year.

The film follows Milos, a semi retired porn star who lives with his wife and son. Financially,Milos and his family are struggling, so when he is contacted by a fellow porn actress about a porn film which offers him a hefty pay, he accepts, despite his doubts as he is not allowed to view a script or see previous work, little does he know that he has been caught up filming a snuff film.

I thought the quality of film making was superb, the cinematography almost spotless and it was edited very cleverly. The script was simple yet complex and the storyline was beautifully original, and in parts relatable. I loved the characters and feel they clearly represent two different ends of society, with Milos representing the underhand of society and Vukmir being the authority and power. this film fantastically represents what desperation can drive us to do and how our minds can be warped making us agree to things we wouldn't think to do in our right minds. This film has a very dark, seedy and yet interesting narrative. Yes, in parts it is horrific and rather vulgar, but it is thrown in at the appropriate times and not as a shock factor but nonetheless it will shock and leave you with images and thoughts that will stick with you for weeks on end.

I really don't see it as offensive as many others have, it is a film that you MUST watch with an open mind, it is a movie that makes you think no doubt! I would recommend it completely if you're a horror/gore fan who is looking for a challenge and something interesting!