Reviews

Forensic psychiatrist Dr. Jack Gramm (Al Pacino) testifies at the trial of suspected serial murderer Jon Forster (Neal McDonough). Gramm's testimony is crucial to help convict Forster. After receiving his conviction by the jury, Forster taunts Gramm, saying "Tick- tock, Doc." 9 years later, as Forster's execution date approaches, several similar torture murders occur. On the way to his class, Gramm receives a phone call from someone using software to distort their voice, threatening he has 88 minutes to live, and the film follows his efforts to discover who is trying to kill him. Gramm receives another threatening phone call while teaching and becomes suspicious of some of his students, as well as dealing with evidence that Forster isn't behind this attempt on his life. A game of cat and mouse ensues with the unknown would-be killer...

To be honest, I'm a huge Al Pacino fan and I often question what made him take this part. It's a pretty awful movie truth be told, but saved from complete notoriety by Al himself. I love nothing more than seeing Al play these kind of roles. Granted this movie is no Heat or Serpico but its not as bad as people would have you believe, either. Passable entertainment but the lack of decent supporting actors meant that Al was fighting a losing battle to keep this ship above water.

I remember in 2010 being really, really excited about upcoming release The Expendables. I've been a fan of all the big action stars since I was a child, and seeing the trailer for EX1 had me buzzing in anticipation. I DID love the movie when I saw it but was left kinda underwhelmed due to Eric Roberts being a pretty lame bad guy and Terry Crews, Randy Couture and Dolph not being involved with the team enough. Fast forward two years and they have righted those wrongs and also added way more bang for your bucks. Pretty much every scene features Couture, Crews, Statham, Dolph and Sly killing bad guys and making wise cracks together, plus way more fantastic screen time for Bruce Willis and Arnold Schwarzenegger. They are joined by new sniper Billy The Kid (Liam Hensworth) as Jet Li has had enough of the mercenary lifestyle and gone home. On a mission to rescue a Chinese kidnapping hostage in Nepal, the mercs encounter their old friend Trent (Schwarzenegger) and save the day. Trying to relax after their latest mission, they are thrown in to the deep end by Mr Church (Willis), who isn't happy that they took his money and didn't follow his orders in the first movie. He is sending them on a secret mission in Eastern Europe to retrieve a computer program used for creating bombs from plutonium. The problem is they are beaten to the device by the evil Jean Villain (Jean Claude Van Damme, at his glorious OTT evil best) and a member of the team is killed. Church isn't impressed and warns them they have to recover this device at all costs, and the crew are out for revenge and gunning for Villain and his henchmen. Throw in some wise-cracking ass-kicking from action legend Chuck Norris to the mayhem being dished out by Sly, Arnie and the gang and you have the greatest action movie ever to grace the big screen. This is shameless manliness at its best, highlighted by a shootout where Dolph and Sly happily high five after blowing away dozens of bad guys. I have just seen this movie in an advanced preview tonight (16 Aug) and I can safely say I have never left a movie theatre so entertained in all my life. I've been to comedies that didn't get as many laughs as this movie, with so many classic one-liners and gags added to almost all of the action. Seeing Chuck Norris pull one of his own internet 'Chuck Norris jokes' was worth the admission alone, and the climax of the movie gave me goosebumps- nothing will top seeing Chuck Norris, Bruce Willis, Arnold Schwarzenegger and Sylvester Stallone join forces and dispatch hundreds of bad guys in all their glory. If you want big stars, one-liners, guns, explosions, entertainment and a barrel of laughs then this is the movie for you. An absolute epic action movie!!! Only Expendables III can top this now...

I wrote a review of The Dark Knight four years ago which, as you can see, said that it was simply the greatest comic movie ever made and also one of the best films ever (http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0468569/reviews-2622). Well today I write a review of The Dark Knight Rises with a completely different opinion- The Dark Knight of 2008 is now second to this movie. People may say it is quite long at 164mins but let me tell you, I have seen this in theatres twice already this week and this movie is so compelling and absorbing that it doesn't feel anything close to being long, as the script is constantly moving and developing and taking you on a thrill-ride you wont have have experienced in a long time. It is set in 2016, and Bruce Wayne, (with Christian Bale now hitting a career best Batman performance), leading a reclusive life in Wayne Manor and Batman retired after taking the blame for Harvey Dent's evil doing at the end of the previous movie. Well he is retired, that is, until a maid at his mansion turns out to be a 'cat burglar' named Selina Kyle who steals his beloved mother's pearl necklace, so he dons the cowl and cape again to track her down. After eight years of inactivity, Wayne isn't the same man he was, nursing injuries and a broken heart, and doesn't realise the size of his latest challenge. As it turns out, Selina has a debt with corrupt politicians who have hired a mysterious masked mercenary called Bane (an excellent Tom Hardy) to seemingly help them run Wayne Enterprises. Bane has other ideas though. He wants to destroy Gotham and sends his message through a brutal fight with the caped crusader. He doesn't care about money or power. He is on a mission. With Bruce Wayne at rock bottom, physically and mentally, can he find the courage to rise up and defeat his deadliest enemy? You will enjoy every minute of this to find out. He cant do it alone. With the help of Commissioner Gordon and a moralistic young street cop named John Blake, Batman has to rid the streets of Gotham's evil reckoning and save his own soul. You will be blown away by the sheer size and brilliance of the trilogy ending Dark Knight Rises- one of the greatest movies ever made. After you have seen this you will realise why this was the most anticipated movie of its time. Batman goes out in a blaze of glory... or does he?

If i was summarising this movie in one sentence it would be ''From Paris With Love in outer space!'', and that is not a bad thing. Maybe Travolta's Paris movie was a box office flop and critics had a field day with it but critics are paid to criticise therefore i pay no attention to them. Travolta was fantastically OTT working for Besson in From Paris With Love. I absolutely loved it. Im an action movie junkie. I cant get enough of over-the-top characters like Travolta's Charlie Wax and Guy Pearce as Snow is no different. One-liners, insults, blatantly un-PC, he is a walking talking shoot 'em up throwback to the classic 80's action movies of Stallone, Norris and Schwarzenegger. Maggie Grace was quite irritating in another Besson action movie Taken, but she is quite lively in this outing being the sexy damsel in distress. In Lockout she plays the president's daughter on a study mission to the world's first outer space prison containment ship until the inmates take over the asylum and look to use Mr President's little girl as a bargaining tool to get their criminal asses back to earth. Its a good plan except for one thing- Snow. After being framed for a murder he didn't commit (another classic action storyline) he is offered a chance at freedom if he goes to the space prison and rescues the girl. Of course in action movies this is never plain sailing and he dispatches bad guys left, right and centre with no remorse all the while making wisecracks with sexy Maggie. Yes, action movie heaven. OK, so some of the special affects are more Xbox than Hollywood but its a non-stop thrill ride regardless. As an action aficionado i hate that movies like these are becoming less and less, and worse so, financially doomed in the sad vampire obsessed age of movies right now, but i will always pay my money to see some old fashioned ass kicking all day long. This is the best action movie of the year and will be at least until Expendables 2 comes out in August. Sit back, switch your mind off and enjoy. For action junkies only.

Considering Jaws is one of the greatest movies ever made, its pretty ingenious of a no-budget movie to be based almost scene for scene on that except the man-eating shark is replaced by a ludicrous man-eating pine tree. These movies are made to be cult hits, and they certainly are! Anyone who took this movie serious and insulted it clearly needs to get out more. This is pure tongue-in-cheek spoof at its finest. Even the character names are hilarious. In Jaws, Quint talks about never going back in the water again. In this, Squint spouting some speech about ''never going back in the forest again'' is so ridiculous my sides split. If you cant raise a smile when the evil tree gets his comeuppance at the end and the awful Brody or Cody or whatever his name is utters the iconic words ''smile you son of a sappling!'', then something is wrong with you. This movie is hardly up there with The Godfather or classics like that. It is a masterpiece of amateur film-making. Switch your brain off, get the popcorn ready and prepare to laugh so hard you'll wet your pants. Brilliant fun!

Im a big action movie fan and not normally a fan of John Travolta but after seeing the trailer for From Paris With Love, I thought ''Wow, that looks awesome!''. I was right, it was. I really enjoyed Taken (with Liam Neeson) which was directed by Pierre Morel, and thought this would be similar and therefore very exciting and enjoyable. Morel's breakneck directing style was perfect for Taken and adds to the flow of the movie.

Whereas Liam Neeson is a father hunting for a kidnapped daughter in Taken, Travolta plays CIA Agent Charlie Wax and is a completely crazy, old fashioned gung-ho American secret agent who shoots first and asks questions later. He's teamed with a Paris based, chess playing aide to the US Ambassador called Reese (played by Jonathan Rys Meyers), who, while he wants to see more 'action' in his job, is shocked by his new partner's 'unorthadox methods' in taking down a terrorist cell who intend to blow up visiting US delegates. Travolta is completely OTT in this movie, and looks like he had a blast making it. When Wax arrives in Paris, Reese picks him up from the airport then its straight to the action, as Wax kills a restaurant full of Chinese cocaine dealers, then moves on to the head of the Chinese criminals, killing a warehouse full of henchmen sent to get him. Wax and Reese then move on to Pakistani money-laundering pimps, with Wax killing dozens of them in a run-down apartment building, all while finding time to take cocaine on the Eiffel Tower and have sex with a French hooker while staking out the bad guys. When they finally find out who is behind the terror plot, there is a nice plot twist which keeps the action flowing. Reese is just a passenger as Wax racks up one of the biggest body counts i can ever remember in an action movie.

This movie is very old school, similar to a lot of action-packed Stallone, Schwarzenegger or Chuck Norris movies, where really the plot is secondary and its a showcase for the awesome Travolta. It's just non-stop blast 'em and work it out later, which is fine by me and I really enjoyed it but general audiences would probably reject such machismo in this day an age, which is strange as 2010 seems to be some kind of 80's revival movie-wise with remakes and action films by the bucket load. The plot is simplistic and not much thought is required but the target audience are not going to see this to hear Shakespearian dialogue! It's fast paced, violent, edge of your seat stuff and quite funny (thanks to Travolta). I would love to see a sequel or see it become a franchise. I am already imagining how awesome it would be to see something like From Moscow With Love or From London With Love, which hopefully the producers and Travolta think too. From Paris With Love is the best action film of the year to date, but with Sly's Expendable's and The new A-Team on the way in the summer, it will have competition but it made my day. Action fans will love it, other's not so much...