Reviews

I took my 3 nieces to see Spiderman 2 on Sunday but it was all sold out. As a consolation I took them to see an advanced preview of Thunderbirds.

I was dreading it, I hadn't seen any trailers, I knew nothing about the plot or even who was in it because I just thought the movie was going to be so bad. I would never have envisaged myself going to see it and had fate not stepped in I probably wouldn't.

I came out at the end pleasantly surprised. It was quite good actually. This is definitely a kids movie, but one which adults can enjoy and I think Thunderbird fans will see a lot that will make them smile, but die hard fans will be annoyed at the amount of liberties taken with certain aspects of the story.

The Good – The look and feel of the Thunderbirds, Tracey Island, the Pink Limousine and all their International Rescue gizmos are spot on. They have managed to retain the retro sixties look while successfully merging it into a modern environment. I had goose bumps when the Thunderbirds launched and watching them in action took me back to all those lazy Saturday mornings when I used to watch the TV show. Some of the characters are a bit bland, but to be fair most of these do not have much screen time anyway. Of those that do, Ben Kingsley stands out as a decent version The Hood, but the two characters who steal the show are Sophia Myles and Ron Cook as Lady Penelope and Parker. They are spot on; playing off each other very naturally and providing a lot of the laughs for the movie.

There are also some wonderful references to the TV show, including an over the top mind control scene that makes one of the character walk like a puppet and one scene where a characters hand is very briefly (blink and you'll miss it) replaced with a puppet hand with string attached!

The Bad – We don't see a lot of the Thunderbirds or the Tracy characters in the type of action the TV show was famous for. This is because there is only one official rescue mission at the beginning, which is over fairly quickly. The TV show used to build up the tension, making the actual rescues exiting and nail biting stuff. In the big screen version, most of the Tracy's are incapacitated early on (although I'm glad Bill Paxton wasn't in it any more than he was because I think he'd researched the show a little too much and was acting rather wooden) and the rest of the film focuses on three children in an annoying kids movie style 'coming of age' cliché. When will Hollywood realize that a Kids movie doesn't necessarily have to focus on Kids?

The eldest kid, Alan Tracey, is the main focus of the movie. The trouble is his character is annoying and useless. Even at the end when the story has taken the predictable turn of him and his friends saving the day; he's rubbish. It's quite funny actually; he claims to know The Hood's weakness, which involves him banging his own head repeatedly against a wall until The Hood gets tired. Not literally of course, but when you see it you'll understand.

The other two children are only semi-annoying, but because the movie tries to hard to ram down the message of how important team work is and respecting everyone, even those with a stereotypical stutter, the story sometimes gets lost in the mist of all the moral messages.

Oh, and I've got a message for Ford. ' YES, WE KNOW YOU PROVIDED THE CARS FOR THE MOVIE, GIVE IT A REST WITH ALL THE 'IN YOUR FACE' PRODUCT PLACEMENTS!'

Despite all that, in the end I had fun and my nieces (none of which like the TV show that much) really enjoyed it. If you go in like I did, not knowing much about it, not expecting much and as long as you realize this is a kids movie, you might be pleasantly surprised.

Freeze Frame is an engaging psychological thriller which keeps you guessing right up to the final shot. It's a low budget UK movie which uses few sets and only a handful of characters. However the clever editing, where the POV switches quite frequently from the main movie cameras to one of Sean's many surveillance cams, gives the movie an edge of gritty realism and adds to the overall creepy factor.

That, combined with the atmospheric music and a surprisingly superb performance by a freakishly scary looking Lee Evans (who's movie career so far has been very poor, he was the bumbling Brit with a dodgy US accent in 'There's Something About Mary' and the bumbling Brit in 'The Medallion' with Jackie Chan) soon has you forgetting about the budget as you find yourself becoming more and more engaged in this well written, character driven movie.

On the minus side, some of the supporting cast performances are not the best and towards the end the plot almost spirals out of control. Personally I hate those type of movies where they try to cover up the fact that the writers didn't really have a clue how to end it, by creating twists within twists until the viewer ends up totally confused. Freeze Frame manages to pull itself out of that trap just before they went too far IMHO and the way it ends was the best they could do under the circumstances, although I could imagine some people feeling a little bit unfulfilled and disappointed with the conclusion. Personally I loved it and I highly recommend it!

Remember when a horror movie meant you had to be 18 or over to watch it? Remember what it was like to sit in the dark and be genuinely disturbed about what you were watching? I'm not on about the ghastly images of a 13 times resurrected man wearing a William Shatner mask on the prowl yet again, or the cliché filled one liners from a fire ravaged man with appalling tastes in woolly jumpers.

No, try to think past that. Try to remember the days when a horror didn't mean a killer on the prowl in a school full of perfectly formed teenagers, who all look like clones of ever other perfectly formed teenagers from a score of movies and TV shows. Try to remember when you were fighting with your girlfriend over who was going to hide behind whom. She always won of course and while she hid behind you, you had to lift up your arm to block the image for a second, because you knew something terrible was going to happen and part of you wanted to watch, but the sane part of you, the part that gets scared and truly believes in vampires, ghosts and monsters when you are on your own in bed at 2:30 in the morning and you've just heard a noise downstairs; that part of you couldn't watch. The funny thing is, when you gave up and lowered your arm, the demon would choose that moment to pounce and you'd jump out of your seat, almost knocking your girlfriend unconscious.

Remember movies like Texas Chainsaw Massacre, The Exorcist and Dawn of the Dead, Movies that were entertaining, but with gritty, disturbing realistic concepts? They had, 'What if' scenarios that were fantasy based on reality and were filmed in such a way that you believed it could happen, or at least you could imagine it happening and picture yourself trying to run around a supermarket trying to survive against hordes of zombies; something which I've always wanted to do actually.

Welcome to 28 Days later, a movie that takes horror back to its roots, whilst maintaining a modern edge that doesn't bow down to the Hollywood mainstream.

Jim wakes up in a hospital 28 days after a deadly virus is let loose on the unsuspecting, and I can imagine quite upset, British public. Society, as Jim knows it has collapsed (`It's worse then that Jim, everyone's dead!') but Jim is so shocked, he has to wander around a deserted London and bump into the reason for societies untimely demise before he finally gets it. The reason being infected humans. Now the infected are not like your classic zombie. They don't wander around like drugged up disabled people moaning, 'Brains.' You can't easily doge a hundred of them, nor can you quickly push triangle, circle R2, R2 on your Playstation to skip a level. These are humans whose blood boils with rage, they are totally consumed with a berserker fury, therefore they are just as quick and as strong as normal humans, but maybe a little more as their rage seems to fuel them. Plus they don't give a s*** about their own safety; they will gladly slice their own arm off if it meant they could get to you. Their aim simply seems to be to kill or infect other humans; that's it! So, the movie is basically about Jim and some people he meets up with trying to survive in a world gone mad, while at the same time it sends a message that humans do not need a rage virus to become inhuman.

The Director, Danny Boyle (Trainspotting) successfully draws the audience in to Jim, and humanities plight. The movie is low budget, but Danny uses all the tricks he can to add to the atmosphere, things like striking, powerful images of deserted cities and motorways, believable characters and some of the most realistic looking dead bodies I've ever seen in a movie. Even the use of digital cameras adds to the gritty realism.

Although not a very original concept, 28 Days Later is far better then any recent similar movies like Resident Evil, although it does borrow quite heavily from Dawn of the Dead, which if you think about it isn't really a bad thing!