Tortoise In Love (2012) 5/10

Starring : Tom Mitchelson, Alice Zawadzki, Tom Yates, Mike Kemp, Steven Elder
Director : Guy Browning
Running Time : 81 mins

Tom (Mitchelson) is the gardener at the large home of a rich family, and is very slow when it comes to making a move with the ladies, so when attractive au pair Anya (Zawadzki) moves into the house to take care of the son of the family, Tom slowly tries to pluck up the courage to make his move.

This is one of those movies where you really have to have likeable characters for the story to work – the problem is that the only characters that are not likeable are those played by Mitchelson and Zawadzki. It’s not that they’re unlikeable, it’s just that I didn’t really care what happened to them, especially Tom who had such little character it was hard to tell he actually did fancy Anya. Coupled with the oddly unnecessary Carry On style music, and this was a pretty uncomfortable watch.

You’ll like this if you liked :

12 Rounds (2009) 7/10

Starring : John Cena, Aidan Gillen, Ashley Scott, Steve Harris
Director : Renny Harlin
Running Time : 108 mins

New Orleans police officer Danny Fisher (Cena) is promoted to detective when he takes down arms-dealer Miles Jackson (Gillen), but accidentally causes the death of Jackson’s girlfriend in the crossfire. Almost exactly one year later, Jackson escapes from custody and comes looking for Fisher, choosing to kidnap his girlfriend Molly Porter (Scott) and threatening to kill her if Fisher doesn’t successfully complete twelve tasks in an allotted amount of time.

Renny Harlin is a pretty decent director – I even enjoyed The Long Kiss Goodnight which is often panned in the media – and here he manages to keep the pacing up on this homage to the Hercules legend masquerading as a cop thriller. Gillen is great as the villain, and Cena isn’t the bad in the lead role, delivering some memorable lines with an surprisingly well-timed flair. As with most thrillers these days, there is a twist, but it’s a twist that has been milked by many movies before.

You’ll like this if you liked : Die Hard With A Vengeance

Ice Age : Continental Drift (2012) 7/10

Starring : Ray Romano, John Leguizamo, Denis Leary, Queen Latifah, Peter Dinklage
Director : Steve Martino & Mike Thurmeier
Running Time : 88 mins

When continental drift starts to affect their home, Manny (Romano), Diego (Leary) and Sid (Leguizamo) find themselves separated from their friends and cast adrift at sea, where they find themselves at the mercy of bizarre sea creatures and the evil pirate, Captain Gutt (Dinklage).

The Ice Age movies are still fun, especially the sequences featuring Scrat, but it really is time that Fox came up with a new series to concentrate on. Seriously, these have been going for over a decade, and they teach kids some bad things, like the fact that there are humans in the first film and dinosaurs in the third? Still, on the positive side, there are some new characters introduced in this, and the animation seems to be getting better.

You’ll like this if you liked : Madagascar : Escape 2 Africa

Contagion (2011) 7/10

Starring : Matt Damon, Kate Winslet, Jude Law, Gwyneth Paltrow
Director : Steven Soderbergh
Running Time : 107 mins

When a lethal infection is discovered to be killing the general population, a group of scientists race against time to find out what caused the first victim, Beth Emhoff (Paltrow), to succumb to the illness and what they can do to stop it before the entire planet is infected.

With a star-studded cast – and one lead actor dying almost immediately – most people would expect this to be brilliant and thought provoking. I have three words for you – I’ve Seen Crash! The bigger the cast of stars, the worse the film, that’s my opinion, so I thought this movie was going to be God-awful. Granted, it is slow in places, but it isn’t that bad, and the inference at the end that the infection is swine flu really hits home how possible this movie could have been.

You’ll like this if you liked : Outbreak

The Dark Knight Rises (2012) 8/10

Starring : Christian Bale, Tom Hardy, Anne Hathaway
Director : Christopher Nolan
Running Time : 165 mins

Having taken the blame for crimes he didn’t commit in order to help restore order to Gotham, Bruce Wayne (Bale) has hung up his cowl and cape and retired from being The Batman, but when a criminal named Bane (Hardy) holds Gotham City hostage with a nuclear device and removes the wealthiest members of society from their homes and puts them on trial, Bruce is forced to once again don the mantle of Batman.

In spite of an incredibly long runtime, this is an engrossing thriller that manages to keep up its momentum from start to finish. Fans of Batman will be impressed with this third part in Christopher Nolan’s Batman Trilogy, and may be surprised or even a little disappointed at how it ends, but Bruce Wayne has never been better as a host of villains manage to worm their way into this dark and brooding finale.

You’ll like this if you liked : The Dark Knight

Nanny McPhee And the Big Bang (2010) 7/10

Starring : Emma Thompson, Maggie Gyllenhaal, Ralph Fiennes, Ewan McGregor
Director : Susanna White
Running Time : 105 mins

Nanny McPhee (Thompson) travels to the country to help out Isabel Green (Gyllenhaal), whose husband Rory (McGregor) has been sent off to war. She has been left to look after not only their farm and their children, but also the children’s two spoiled cousins who have been sent from London to live with them.

Fans of the original movie may not immediately warm to this sequel – the kids are purposely not as likeable or roguish as in the first, they are just basically annoying, while Nanny McPhee herself doesn’t seem to be important enough to the plot as she is in the original, and the five lessons she’s supposed to teach the children went practically over my head. Eventually things get going, and the childish humour quickly takes the fore, but this really could have done with more focus on the humour and less on the maudlin story about their missing father.

You’ll like this if you liked : Five Children And It

Abraham Lincoln Vampire Hunter (2012) 6/10

Starring : Benjamin Walker, Dominic Cooper, Anthony Mackie, Mary Elizabeth Winstead, Rufus Sewell
Director : Timur Bekmambetov
Running Time : 106 mins

When a young Abraham Lincoln (Walker) witnesses the death of his mother at the hands of a vampire named Jack Barts (Sewell), he makes it his life’s work to track down the murderer and kill him for his crimes. As a direct result of embarking on this mission he makes the acquaintance of a man named Henry Sturges (Cooper) who teaches him the methods for disposing of a vampire in return for the promise that he will only kill those vampires Sturges tells him to.

Just the title of this movie made me cringe, and I braced myself for a Stan Helsing type of movie, but this at no time slips into parody. Instead we are given an Underworld style of movie with Lincoln as the vampire killing protagonist. By not making this a comedy, it is in fact more enjoyable to watch, and if it wasn’t for the stove pipe hat you wouldn’t even remember that this is supposed to be about Lincoln. Fans of generic monster movies will like this for its simple vampire lore.

You’ll like this if you liked : The League Of Extraordinary Gentlemen

Brooklyn’s Finest (2009) 6/10

Starring : Richard Gere, Don Cheadle, Ethan Hawke, Wesley Snipes
Director : Antoine Fuqua
Running Time : 133 mins

This is the story of a day in the life of three cops; Tango (Cheadle), and undercover cop who is forced to set up his criminal friend Caz (Snipes), Sal (Hawke), a man who will do anything to help his family make it in the world, and Eddie (Gere), an ageing cop with only a week left until retirement.

I was looking forward to the three cop stories coming together at the end in one big explosive finale, but when none of them linked up I was really disappointed. This is just lazy story telling – basically taking three cop movies that don’t have enough substance to maintain three films and combining them into one mediocre movie? Fair enough, the performances weren’t bad, and it was surprising to see who lives and who dies, but when the end credits finally rolled, I did think to myself, ‘Is that it?’.

You’ll like this if you liked : Street Kings

Act Of Valour (2012) 6/10

Starring : Roselyn Sanchez, Jason Cottle, Alex Veadov, Nestor Serrano, Ailsa Marshall
Director : Scott Waugh & Mouse McCoy
Running Time : 111mins

When CIA agent Lisa Morales (Sanchez) is kidnapped from an intelligence meeting in Costa Rica by drug smuggler Christo Troykovich (Veadov), an elite team of Navy SEALs are sent in to rescue her.

It was a great idea to intersperse real Navy SEALs and actors in this imaginative action flick, but it suffers from the fact that the Navy SEALs are not actors. Their delivery is predictable and hokey, and ‘characters’ that you know are going to die talk about their families back home literally seconds before they explode or something. Sanchez is weak as the victim of the piece, and Veadov is almost a non-entity as the villain, but I’m sure that Americans will love seeing their boys fighting for life and liberty in this surprisingly well-received flick.

You’ll like this if you liked : The Hurt Locker

Hoodwinked Too! Hood Vs Evil (2011) 7/10

Starring : Hayden Panettiere, Glenn Close, Patrick Warburton, Joan Cusack, David Ogden Stiers, Bill Hader, Amy Poehler
Director : Mike Disa
Running Time : 87 mins

Red (Panettiere) and the Big Bad Wolf (Warburton) team up once more when Granny (Close) tries to rescue Hansel (Hader) and Gretel (Poehler) from the clutches of an evil witch (Cusack), only to find herself captured and forced to bake a recipe for a truffle that will make whoever eats it undefeatable.

I had heard some appalling reviews of this movie, so was expecting some directionless nonsense with little or no plot, bad characterization and minimum humour. This actually wasn’t that bad, with a plot that was interesting and slightly reminiscent in parts of The Incredibles – which is high praise to say the least. The voices were okay, and the animation, though slightly cheap looking compared to big budget companies, was better than the original. This is definitely worth checking out.

You’ll like this if you liked : The Incredibles

The Amazing Spider-Man (2012) 8/10

Starring : Andrew Garfield, Emma Stone, Rhys Ifans, Denis Leary, Sally Field, Martin Sheen
Director : Marc Webb
Running Time : 135 mins

While searching for the reason behind his parents mysterious disappearance, Peter Parker (Garfield) discovers that his father had a business partner named Curt Connors (Ifans) who now works for a company named Oscorp. Disguising himself as an intern, Peter sneaks into Oscorp to search Connors lab for information, where he is bitten by a radioactive spider.

In many ways this is a much cleaner cut version of the Spider-Man origin that manages to avoid the whole topic of why a multi-national company would have such dangerous equipment lying around in the open. It’s a shame that Parker isn’t as nerdy as he is in the comics and the Sam Raimi movies, but Garfield and Stone do a great job in the leads, with Ifans playing an almost perfect version of the Lizard.

You’ll like this if you liked : X-Men : First Class

Battle Royale (2000) 8/10

Starring : Tatsuya Fujiwara, Aki Maeda, Takeshi Kitano
Director : Kini Fukasaku
Running Time : 109 mins

Following a mass exodus of students from schools all over the country, a law has been passed in Japan meaning that one class is picked each year to take part in Battle Royale, a fight to the death forced upon the students by stranding them on a deserted island with nothing to help them survive but their wits a bag containing a random weapon.

Arguably the most famous Japanese film of all time, Battle Royale is an excellent example of how to portray multiple characters in a battle situation. Every person in this film has their own unique personality and manages to get at least a little bit of screen time to express themselves. In spite of the ultra-violent nature of the film, this manages to remain quietly humorous from beginning to end, and is an interesting parable about how the youth of today have little or no respect for authority.

You’ll like this if you liked : The Tournament

Snow White And the Huntsman (2012) 6/10

Starring : Kristen Stewart, Chris Hemsworth, Charlize Theron
Director : Rupert Sanders
Running Time : 132 mins

Snow White (Stewart), the daughter of the previously overthrown king, escapes from her imprisonment at the hands of the evil Queen Ravenna (Theron) only for the queen to discover that Snow White holds the secret to her immortality. She sends out a group of men, lead by a noble Huntsman (Hemsworth) to find the young girl, but the Huntsman turns against the queen and helps Snow survive the attack.

Fairy tale movies seem to be something of a fetish this year, and this seems to be at least the second Snow White movie. Unlike Mirror Mirror, this is a bit more grown up and probably aimed at teenagers rather than pre-pubescent toddlers. It’s a little too long to stay enjoyable from start to finish, but it’s always nice to see Snow White actually trying to do something herself rather than relying on others to do her dirty work, and Charlize Theron’s Queen was absolutely perfect.

You’ll like this if you liked : Red Riding Hood

Green Zone (2010) 7/10

Starring : Matt Damon, Jason Isaacs, Greg Kinnear, Brendan Gleeson
Director : Paul Greengrass
Running Time : 115 mins

When American Army Officer Roy Miller (Damon) is told by CIA operative Marty Brown (Gleeson) that there are no weapons of mass destruction hidden in Iraq and that the American government is making claims of weapons in order to take over the country and install a puppet leader, he goes rogue and makes it his duty to discover the truth.

This is a fast paced thriller that doesn’t mess around in getting down to things, but it failed to latch onto the amount of twists that it could have taken. Miller instantly trusts Brown, but it would have been nice if the writers could have made Brown a little less trustworthy as it would have added to the intrigue of the film. Damon is pretty good, as are the supporting cast, but the fact that this movie – about deception on a grand scale – is so straight forward makes it a little disappointing.

You’ll like this if you liked : Jarhead

Dark Shadows (2012) 7/10

Starring : Johnny Depp, Michelle Pfeiffer, Helena Bonham Carter, Eva Green, Jackie Earle Haley, Jonny Lee Miller, Bella Heathcote
Director : Tim Burton
Running Time : 114 mins

In the mid-18th Century, Barnabas Collins (Depp) is cursed and turned into a vampire by a witch, Angelique Bouchard (Green), for spurning her advances. The town’s people bury him alive and there he lies until he is dug up in 1972. When he awakes, he makes his way back to his home only to find that it has fallen into disrepair and that his descendants have allowed Bouchard take over the town and rename it Angelbay.

I didn’t have high hopes for this modern imagining of the popular American soap opera – personally, I’ve never seen any of the over a thousand episodes – but I was pleasantly surprised. Don’t get me wrong, this isn’t a laugh out loud comedy, but it does have its light moments mixed with the perfect amount of melodrama, keeping it faithful in some ways to its soap opera background. Fans of Tim Burton will enjoy this, and fans of monster mythology will like this interesting twist on how things could be.

You’ll like this if you liked : The Addams Family

Ghost Rider : Spirit Of Vengeance (2011) 7/10

Starring : Nicolas Cage, Violante Placido, Ciaran Hinds, Idris Elba, Johnny Whitworth, Fergus Riordan
Director : Mark Neveldine & Brian Taylor
Running Time : 96 mins

Johnny Blaze (Cage) is called back into action from his hiding place in Eastern Europe when a monk named Moreau (Elba) asks him to save a young boy named Danny (Riordan) and his mother Nadya (Placido) who are both in danger from the evil Roarke (Hinds) who plans on using the boy to take human form on Earth.

Ghost Rider isn’t a jokey comic book, so I don’t know why Cage plays the role in a borderline jokey fashion. I guess it’s to make his psychotic behaviour seem a little more unbalanced, which I guess is a good departure from the first movie which really didn’t portray the character in a faithful fashion. Fanso f the original movie will hate the changes in his character, but fans of the comic books will love the loyalty to the original Johnny Blaze character and the move toward a more overtly violent Ghost Rider.

You’ll like this if you liked : Punisher : War Zone

The Harsh Light Of Day (2012) 5/10

Starring : Dan Richardson, Giles Alderson, Sophie Linfield, Niki Felstead
Director : Oliver S Milburn
Running Time : 79 mins

When occult novelist Daniel Shergold (Richardson) witnesses the beating and subsequent murder of his wife Maria (Felstead) at the hands of a group of thugs that have broken into his home, he makes a deal with a mystery man (Alderson) to give him the power to destroy those responsible for his wife’s death.

This isn’t a terrible movie, it just feels like someone threw in the plot of every other British movie made recently (Harry Brown, London Boulevard, The Veteran, etc…) and thrown in vampire powers for good measure! Granted, this manages to do a lot for its tiny budget, but you don’t need a budget to write interesting characters and make you actually care about them. Instead we are given one-dimensional performances from boring characters who do little to endear themselves to their audience.

You’ll like this if you liked : The Veteran

Rollerball (2002) 6/10

Starring : Chris Klein, Jean Reno, LL Cool J, Rebecca Romijn-Stamos
Director : John McTiernan
Running Time : 98 mins

Extreme sports enthusiast Jonathan Cross (Klein) is recruited into the world of Rollerball – a dangerous game with no rules that could easily lead to death for any of its players. But when Cross discovers that his recruiter, Alexis Petrovich (Reno), has been paying players to make trouble in the games, he realises that players deaths and injuries is exactly what sells the game and that many injuries are not accidental.

This isn’t the best futuristic sports movie I’ve ever seen, but it isn’t the worst. Basically this is roller derby with motorbikes thrown in. About halfway through there is some attempt at coming up with a plot, involving crooked officials and underhand dealings, but it doesn’t really have enough subtlety to make this thoroughly enjoyable.

You’ll like this if you liked : Death Race