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tommadalla
Reviews
The Taking of Pelham 123 (2009)
Don't look at it as a remake and you will like it
I'd never seen the original version of this, so thankfully I had nothing to compare it to, which seems to be bringing this film down.
Easily the best thing about this film is the interaction between Washington and Travolta. Their performances are truly brilliant. Especially Travolta, who really creates some atmosphere of insanity with his instant, hugely effective switches between a calm conversation and threatening to blow someone's brains out. However the film can be marked down in the acting category, aside from the two front-men (and in some cases the Mayor, who provided some comedic relief) the rest of the performances were less than memorable.
The story is good, it's impressive how the entire film is set in two locations and yet the pace is still high throughout and it never seems to drag or get boring. The sounds helped the pace of the film a lot too, with quick drum and bass songs accompanying a high speed car/bike scene and the everyday rumble of trains passing by elsewhere to really create the feel of how this is occurring in an everyday scenario.
The dialogue is good, aside from the often pointless abundance of the 'f' word, and I think the characters are believable and are developed well, especially in Washington's case. One small problem that cost the film half a star for me was a very over the top shootout that occurs in the film, if you watch it you'll know what I mean, it just derailed the reality of the film for me slightly.
Overall though, a good thriller that should please most viewers, that's presuming you haven't seen the original, apparently.
Season of the Witch (2011)
Not a bad historical flick
I went into this film with a relatively open mind, knowing I'd never seen a Cage film (shocker) in its entirety and neglecting to look at any reviews, but I was pleasantly surprised. For the most part it's well acted, Perlman played a blinder as Cage's sidekick and Cage himself was quite good too. It was good to see MisFits star Robert Sheehan in a starring role, and the writing wasn't bad either, aside from the odd cheesy line. As far of the story goes, it works, although some of the aspects (such as Cage's motivation for going on the journey in the first place) seem a little far fetched, it's difficult to understand that Perlman's character in particular would go to such lengths for something which only affects Cage, perhaps a more developed background of the two knight's may have helped. The special effects, although in my opinion at times rather unnecessary, are pretty good, and I think the atmosphere of England suffering from the plague was recreated very well, except for the plague suffers seemed to look a little extreme.
I would have scored the film higher, except for that I feel it is very much aimed at quite a small audience, if you don't like the themes this film explores, you won't like it. The film could also have been longer (at 1h34m including a 10m credit sequence) I feel certain things (such as the Cage/Perlman background) could have been developed further to provide a more well-rounded film. Still worth a watch though, not as bad as people are saying.
L.A. Noire (2011)
It's Brilliant because it's so Different and Revolutionary.
*VERY small spoilers*
After GTA IV and Red Dead Redemption I was unsure of whether Rockstar (alright, they didn't actually 'make' the game but you get the idea) could recreate another setting in another era in such a high quality game. And although the game mechanics have change minimally, there are two main things that this game has that makes it brilliant.
The first of these is the facial recognition software used. Rockstar pioneered a new technique whereby 32 cameras are used to capture the faces of their voice actors, and you can really tell in the game. Characters' mouths actually forms words, they blink unlike robots, hell, you can even see them sniffing at times.
This leads on to the second defining feature of L. A. Noire. A lot of the game involves finding clues and then using these clues to interrogate suspects, where the facial recognition is important as you will need to tell whether your suspect is lying or not. As far as I'm aware this is not incorporated into any other game, or at least it is not done so well or is not implemented on such a high scale, and that's what makes it great: it's new and different, a feature that is rare in gaming these days with the endless slew of FPS and driving games.
That's not to say there isn't any of the 'go here, kill him' missions everyone has come to know and love from Rockstar, there are just fewer of them. The cases you have to solve aren't repetitive either, each one involves different people in different circumstances (except for a few in the middle of the game, though those are just as gripping as the victims of the crimes all have exactly the same M.O).
The game is long and packed full of things to do outside the main story line - it ships on 3 Xbox 360 discs because it's so huge - and you won't get bored with street crimes to solve (side missions), cars to collect and tourist attractions to find. And with lots of DLC planned, it doesn't look like a trade-in or rental either, a top game.