richardbrunton:Reviews: Movies

Having seen the excellent Oldboy by Chan-wook Park I was eager to see this movie on release. Unfortunately the screener I was passed was damaged and I decided to catch it at the weekend with everyone else.

My frame of mind was very much set in Oldboy, as I hadn't seen the first in this linked, but not connected, trilogy Sympathy for Mr. Vengeance. With that I felt would come much baggage as Oldboy is a superb movie filled with visually exciting scenes, intense emotions, and one surprising and quite shocking ending. So I was concerned if this movie would deliver even despite the local reviews I'd seen pitching this as an excellent five star film.

Continue reading "Chinjeolhan geumjassi (Sympathy for Lady Vengeance)"...

Aeon Flux

Monday 13 February 2006 | Movies - 3 Stars | Comments (0)

This movie was pretty much trashed by the US critics, and this film just goes to prove that sometimes they get it wrong, not totally, but wrong none the less. Aeon Flux is not such a bad movie as they make out, in fact there's some clever aspects to it and a not bad British cast too. So don't listen too much to the US press about this movie and go make up your own mind about it, after reading this review of course!

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Derailed

Monday 13 February 2006 | Movies - 3 Stars | Comments (0)

I've been seeing hype for this film for some time, all around bringing Jennifer Aniston back to the big screen in a surprising role and being teamed up with Clive Owen. The trailer promised chasing and running filled with sexual tension and perhaps even some naughtiness, yet without spoiling anything the trailer is all part of the misdirection, and very good misdirection it is too.

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Charlie and the Chocolate Factory

Sunday 29 January 2006 | Movies - 3 Stars | Comments (0)

The original Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory with Gene Wilder in the lead is somewhat of a classic for many people, and much like with The Planet of the Apes, I just didn't think it should be remade, or indeed could be.

Yet in this version the story is very close to the original and only deviates in some places.

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Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire

Saturday 26 November 2005 | Movies - 3 Stars | Comments (0)

There are a number of things I have to say right up front. Firstly I don't read the Harry Potter books, secondly I know this is late but when I was in the Edinburgh Ocean Terminal Vue Cinema I couldn't believe how many people were still going to see this movie, the cinema was packed, and what was more surprising to me is that it was packed with all manner of people. Young kids (way too young) with their parents, couples my age, and even a couple of old ladies who had to be helped up the stairs! Fantastic, when have you seen that diverse crowd in a cinema?

So, late or not, this review is going up!

Continue reading "Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire"...

Ong Bak

Friday 25 November 2005 | Movies - 3 Stars | Comments (0)

I was spoiled for choice of which version of Ong Bak to get from Moviesville, but eventually set on the VCD version featuring the original soundtrack, the original uncut film and complete with the original not so sweetened ending. This was a version I'd never seen before and it looked extremely interesting.

I knew I was taking a hit on the VCD side though, they just don't have the quality or content of DVDs. Moviesville were also good enough to offer the suggestion to look for the DVD version if you couldn't listen to the dual audio tracks mixed with Chinese subtitles. I could live with that, in order to see the uncut original version.

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The Constant Gardener

Tuesday 15 November 2005 | Movies - 3 Stars | Comments (0)

The Constant Gardener was a bit of a mystery for me, I had seen the trailer and some of the blurbs associated with it and it really did look like a great huge conspiracy thriller. I was expecting high talent and some edge of your seat. It's really pretty clear from the beginning of the movie that the pace was a lot slower than I was expecting, and there was bags of style as well as some superbly natural acting.

First though, many thanks to Ocean Terminal Vue Cinema for letting us all see The Constant Gardener.

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Flight of the Pheonix

Monday 7 November 2005 | Movies - 3 Stars | Comments (0)

I've not seen the original, before you ask, but I do know of it, and quite frankly I'm sick fed up of remakes. Yet there was something that attracted me to this story, the cast was one. A nice multi-national crew featuring Dennis Quaid, Hugh Laurie and Tony Curran, and the fact that it's a very simple story with nothing other than desert and cast to deal with. It kind of gave me the feeling of a slightly larger Ice Cold in Alex.

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The Dark

Friday 26 August 2005 | Movies - 3 Stars | Comments (0)

Sean Bean is such a lost talent, he's a great actor and never seems to be given a decent or lead role. Even in Lord of the Rings he was cast as the turncoat. So I was excited to hear that he was the lead man in this movie, although not the lead it was a good step. Plus it was a British film and a horror. These things all combined to make me think that this was a movie to see.

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Green Street

Wednesday 24 August 2005 | Movies - 3 Stars | Comments (0)

Another highlight of the Edinburgh Film Festival for me, and one that I actually paid to see! Starring Elijah Wood, Green Street (or Hooligans for those folks who don't know what Green Street is, including me!) is a film about English Football Hooliganism, mainly between the West Ham and the Millwall Firms (Gangs).

Gritty, violent, stylish, but in no way does it glorify the lifestyle. The bad is shown to so heavily outweigh the good, and when people fight they get hurt. There's not that much good to be seen in the movie, but it is a very good movie, and I would think something which captures the feelings and beliefs of these groups of people very well.

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P

Friday 19 August 2005 | Movies - 3 Stars | Comments (1)

The last showing of the day during my second day at the Edinburgh Film Festival 2005, and not only that but also my first ever chat with a Director\Producer\Writer\Actor...and whatever else you can list. Meeting Paul Spurrier, the man responsible in all the aforementioned ways for the film P, was indeed a very interesting experience, and one I hope to repeat before he heads off home again. More about that chat later, back to the screening for now.

P is the first Thailand film Directed (Screenwritten, Produced, Musically arranged and Edited) by a British talent. It's also not a tourist movie, it's an explorers movie, as Paul recounted one interviewer asking him. He hasn't arrived in Thailand and made a Thai movie only to disappear. He's lived there, learned the language, the customs, and made every effort to understand the country and the people before making the movie, and this makes a huge impact onscreen.

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The Magician

Thursday 18 August 2005 | Movies - 3 Stars | Comments (0)

This is one of the films I went to see during the 2005 Edinburgh Film Festival on a whim, seeing an empty space one day I decided to select a movie that was playing to fill it. I could have gone and selected some of the movies I haven't seen from the video\DVD library that they have, but what the hell I thought, the Festival is all about taking risks and seeing new things.

So the movie began, with handheld shots of a man sitting in his darkened car explaining to the camera that he's going to follow the bloke into the garage and then "give him the good news", and that he does.

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Dark Water

Sunday 24 July 2005 | Movies - 3 Stars | Comments (0)

I've seen differing reviews of this movie, some which say it's okay and others which really go to town on it. I think the latter is very unfair and shows that there's still a gulf that exists between the style of Asian horror and Hollywood. A gulf that I can't really see will be resolved by continuing on the remake road. Having seen the original movie I liked it a lot and was very spooked by the end of it, so I was keen to see for myself if this movie had managed to travel well from the to the Hollywood style.

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Fantastic Four

Friday 22 July 2005 | Movies - 3 Stars | Comments (0)

All the production news, pre-release rumour and reviews were all pointing towards this being a bad movie. I was waiting for and expecting it, but as someone who has grown up reading comics, these years are the ones we are looking forward to. Our comic heroes are coming to the big screen and they are coming in droves, and not in eighties low budget style, but in big screen and with big budgets.

Basically I couldn't miss this, I couldn't dare, despite what people said about it. Yet I still feared the worst.

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Hitch Hikers Guide to the Galaxy

Sunday 1 May 2005 | Movies - 3 Stars | Comments (1)

I have to admit that I went in with some heavy preconceptions about this movie. The first review we saw was bad, the comments from the fans were variable to be very fair, and the chances of such an epic and very British story making it to a single movie without being altered heavily, and possibly ruined, were low. So, the question is, is it any good?

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Sahara

Saturday 9 April 2005 | Movies - 3 Stars | Comments (1)

I know, I watched the trailer and I still went, but to be honest I was expecting just what the trailer offered, excitement, laughs and big explosions. That's what I mostly got.

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The Last Temptation of Christ

Sunday 20 March 2005 | Movies - 3 Stars | Comments (0)

I'm a big fan of those old religious epics, The Robe, The Ten Commandments, those old Sunday movies with the real Stars of Hollywood. Huge stories, huge stars, huge emotion and huge entertainment, fantastic.

However todays epic religious movie is more about challenging belief, presenting new historical findings, and being controversial. For me that's lost all the passion of the religious epic. Strange I feel this way considering I'm not even religious. However, late night the other week I happened to come across Last Temptation on the Channel 4 Banned Film season, and I gave it a chance.

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The Dirty Dozen

Sunday 20 February 2005 | Movies - 3 Stars | Comments (0)

It's difficult when you approach an old movie to see it for the first time and you have to try and drop all the baggage associated with it from reviews and analysis over the years. The Dirty Dozen is such a movie. I just watched it for the first time last night on TV, clipped though it was for those smaller brained people among us who don't like to see dark bits at the top and bottom of their screens.

It's interesting that there are three real character acts to this movie. There's the dark opening and character introduction, the fun act where the characters meld together into a team, and the closing act where the mission, and the war, become a stark and deadly reality. That last act is dark too, although there a couple of accidental laughs in there for the worst character expression at a death ever, and one particularly bad death scene.

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Requiem for a Dream

Friday 12 November 2004 | Movies - 3 Stars | Comments (0)

For the most part this movie ambles along, caught up in a few stylistic touches that it doesn't quite manage to deliver. The repeating mundane and reinforcing dialogue and visuals just go to remind you of events and circumstance that you already know.

However, it is in the second half of the film where it really gets its message forward. It shows how four peoples lives career out of control when drugs begin to take over their lives, and not all from the illegal point of view.

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Target

Sunday 7 November 2004 | Movies - 3 Stars | Comments (0)

I'm a huge Gene Hackman fan and I remembered seeing this film many years ago and thinking it was quite cool, and when I saw the title in the paper again, I thought I would find out how right I was.

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K-PAX

Saturday 30 October 2004 | Movies - 3 Stars | Comments (0)

An interesting film with a good performance from both Kevin Spacey and Jeff Bridges. Both are excellent actors with charisma galore, but poor Spacey is restricted within the confines of a character with little outward emotion and it almost seems like he walks through it, he's either bored by every minute or enjoying himself, it's difficult to tell.

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Hellboy

Tuesday 28 September 2004 | Movies - 3 Stars | Comments (0)

I know, by the score I've already made a few people go "What?!". Well tough. This film has been getting a lot of bad press, and to be honest I really can't see why.

Okay, it doesn't have a very intricate plot that makes you think, fills you with dread or ensures you are leaping out of your seat (although I technically did twice, then laugh!). It does, however, give you a fun packed value for money movie.

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