Reviews

Honestly, I wasn't a huge fan of the first Guardians movie. This one worked a lot better for me, even though it does still have some of the stuff that didn't work for me.

The blend of story, action and CGI worked a good bit better, the cast really found their groove. Dave Bautista is hit and miss for me across his filmography, but to be fair he really does a good job here. Pom Klementieff as Mantis also stands out from the core group. I was also a big fan of Chukwudi Iwuji's performance, he's chewing the scenery a bit but it's all part of the fun.

The effects have definitely progressed from the first film, the blend feels a little more authentic. In the past the CGI was exceptionally jarring and it takes you out of the moment which didn't happen here.

My hang-ups? Chris Pratt still isn't convincing, any scene between Star-lord and Gamora feels entirely flat. In terms of the actual emotional core of this film it relies heavily on a host of easy tropes, cute animals are in danger, the children are in danger, a main character almost dies but comes back miraculously (twice), they even have two family related ones. The reluctant parent figure who ends up being good with kids and a family reuniting. Fine it's hard to avoid a trope, but using as many as this and all to try and add feeling into it is noticeable excess.

With the editing, there's a few too many slow motion shots and one of my gripes with the Guardians franchise has been the over use of music for jokes or badassery.

I enjoyed the motivation, everyone coming together to save Rocket, but it definitely could have done without the links to tattooing numbers and experimentation to make a perfect society being in it. Finally I did really enjoy the interactions with Cosmo, but did we care about Kraglin that much?

The inital idea of space travel, time relativity and finding another planet like our own has always interested me. So playing about with it in a movie is a good start for me.

Having read a lot of the reviews here I can see my opinion varies on both ends of the spectrum. Critical views think this movie is slow and boring... I liked the slower pacing and it's not a boring movie, there's a lot of interesting elements in it. Positive views praise the soundtrack, as much as I usually like Hans Zimmer scores it's overbearing in this. It was closer to bursting my ear drums than it was to building any tension.

I also find it a bit over the top to suggest this is will be classic piece of cinema, it's a perfectly good movie but when it comes to classic movies with space travel you think; Star Wars, Planet of the Apes, Apollo 13... I can't see it in the same bracket as that, it's more like a Star Trek: The Motion Picture than a Wrath of Khan.

The main flaw with Interstellar for me, is that ending. It's rushed compared to the slow burn of the first 3/4, it kind of wants a happy ending and half delivers on it, it kind of wants a sad and touching moment and half goes in on that. It also wants a twist that he was his daughters "Ghost" the whole time, and he solves several riddles in what can only be described as a time library? It feels like it didn't really know exactly which ending it wanted.

On top of that it doesn't really make sense if you think about it for too long, Cooper realises he was the one sending messages to his daughter the whole time and regrets losing all that time with his family, so what does he do? Tries to get her to stop him going by giving himself the exact same message that he already recieved that didn't stop him the first time. The only reason for it seems to be so that the movie has a "mind bending twist" to gloss over and he can get his daughter to save humanity, which he seems to figure out and wrap up almost instantly.

AVTAK brings to an end my favourite Bond actors era, it is a James Bond film that only Roger Moore could get away with. He's definitely showing his age at this point, but he still has the humour and charm to keep this a very fun installment.

I think the main setback for many people, is for all of the good parts you get it with a blend of the bad. You open with a solid ski/snowmobile/snowboard chase, but it comes with a short tonal shift with the beach boys and iceberg submarine.

You move onto a great Duran Duran title song and your first glimpse of the villains of the movie, then again shift to an odd dinner with butterfly assassin. Somehow followed by one of the best stunts in the franchise and a great car chase, granted it's one of the stunts when Roger Moore is noticeably not the driver but that's easily forgiven here.

From there we get the same dichotomy, you get introduced to Tibbet played by Patrick Macnee, who like Diana Rigg and Honor Blackman are now, not only part of the Bond franchise. But they were originally in The Avengers which was a very Bondesque british spy action adventure series from the 1960's. So there was a nice link there. But on the flip side we get introduced to arguably the worst Bond girl in the franchise Stacey, which only sticks out even more next to Mayday who is a far more interesting character by the end.

The end of the movie itself is very strong, I like how dark the sequence in the mine is and the visual spectacle of the airship and golden gate bridge scenes. But I also feel at that point, Christopher Walken had been underutilized. He gives a great villains performance, but they could have given him more to do.

I mean, how do you even describe this movie? Nicolas Cage is an Angel and he gives up angelhood for 90's Meg Ryan?

The whole movie is shot like an early 2000's music video, there's shots of guys standing on a roof wearing leather dusters, then the same thing at a beach and at a library. They even have Nicolas Cage floating off a building at one point.

I struggle to call this a romance movie, it essentially starts with Nicolas Cage (as Seth) almost being an angel of death. He approaches people about to die and guides them to heaven or whatever? Obviously the prime place for this is at the hospital, where he sees and somewhat stalks Meg Ryan (Maggie) who can't see him at first because, something something angel power. But that changes and she quickly falls for him because of a book recommendation and a mini date to the aforementioned library and supposedly forgets about the colleague she was definitely seeing at the time.

Seth decides they can never truly be together since he's not a human, but meets an old guy who did the same job and quit for the same reason. The guy tells him how to become human so he can be with Maggie, which requires Seth jumping off a room i'm guessing it's meant to be like a fallen angel or falling from grace? Who knows.

Anyway he goes through with this, and has a lovely weekend getaway and strange shower. Before the movie promptly and I guess ironically kills Maggie?

It is just a strange tone, and pairing Nicolas Cage with Meg Ryan is such a bizarre pairing. It's a little hard to take seriously, in fact the end comes off closer to being funny than touching because it's so out of left field and moments beforehand you have Nicolas Cage screaming in joy for having a shower. I just don't think you can get away with that.

In terms of modern action movies it's one of the better ones. The story is somewhat secondary to the action which is absolutely fine. The cinematography is very clean, the characters are interesting and the locations look great.

My main hang-up with the John Wick movies and more modern action is ironically the fight scenes. Since there are so many, it all ends up following the same patterns. 50 guys will show up, he'll shoot two or three at a time, there will randomly be a big gap when he can run out of ammo or drop his weapon to do a mini fight and MMA takedown pick up another conveniently placed gun and headshot them. Then instantly some more guys turn up only when he's ready but he'll also miss the miniboss henchmen despite hitting everything else with headshots, rinse and repeat. It is too choreographed, even when they try to make it look like he could possibly lose.

I'm fine with suspending some disbelief when it comes to these things because it is fantastical, but the issue is that it's a little repepetive and there are next to no stakes the more it happens especially since he wears literal plot armour. Plus if you look at any background henchman during these things there are weird time fills. There's literally a part in this when he's fighting one guy and someone in the background stands up and hugs a drum and falls back down because they're clearly having to wait and it's just out of place. Especially when you have Donnie Yen in your movie who famously does fight scenes with multiple people all at once.

I do like that they change it up a bit with the car scene and the gunfight shot from overhead, the real shining moments of this movie are they go through with everyone essentially "winning" but still had the courage to end the movie the way they did because they could easily have chickened out. Plus of course big points for the whole dog part, it had the best story, best action and best humour and arguably the best ending.

There are a handful of things that hold this movie back, the main ones are that the trailer spoils a lot of it if you can connect the dots and that, on a similar note there is too much foreshadowing and a little too many twists.

A lot of it revolves around Dan, you know he is going to reach into a birds nest because the lead up to that moment is shot from the perspective of the birds nest. You could also safely assume he isn't expecting that and will fall, he does fall but has a safety line connected to Becky. Then there is a rather forced reason for him to disconnect the safety line, which goes as well as you'd expect. Keeping in mind the advert has the part when she is telling Hunter "I haven't climbed since..."

The latter part with Dan, I did like the idea he and her best friend had cheated as a thread in the story. But there is a lot of pointing to the obvious before they get there, he has his own catchphrase and her friend has it tattooed on her foot and we also have it spelt out when Becky is looking at some photos. These things were just a little too on the nose. I mean saying you have a trick to run a phone charger off a lamp, then making the point of the tower having a lamp... running out of battery then saying you only have charging cables? It's a bit clunky.

These next few are solely opinion based, the first half mentioning likes/shares/blogging/youtube/insta? Meh, culturally relevant or not it doesn't really need to be here and while it is a bit of an excuse to be able to do more fancy drone or selfie shots in the middle of a movie it's just a bit jarring to cut to. There is also a few too many breaks for motivational speeches as well as the over top need for more peril.

What really helped this film for me, was that even as someone who doesn't have a fear of heights I could still feel tension most of the way through it. I felt the foley artistry really helped here on top of some fantastic shots/views on the tower. I will also admit that the final twist did get me, there was a hint or two but they were a lot more subtle than the previously mentioned.

Besides I didn't really think they were going to have the courage to kill off half of the main party that far in, but it helped a lot especially since they even kind of laugh at the obvious flaw. That someone of a similar size would be able to have caught and pulled up the other from such a drop. So it definitely paid off more in that respect, sure there are similar twists in other movies but so what?

I know plenty of reviews have already mentioned it, the new animation really doesn't look bad, but it definitely does feel a bit like a cutscene from a game at certain parts. For the most part though it's not that big of a deal.

My biggest issue with the animation style was actually Dr Hedo, his character design looked a little out of place. Some characters are more classic cartoon villains like Commander Magenta who I thought was an excellent design, much like earlier Dragonball villains. Whereas the main characters feel much closer to humans than charicatures, but Dr Hedo kind of falls in between those styles.

As a character I felt much the same, his drive to make superheroes while siding with the villains (originally at least) and his change in attitude towards the end doesn't quite work as well. Especially since Gamma 1&2 make that turn better and it made a lot more sense for them to do so because they really did think they were the heroes. Hedo however admitted he knew he was wrong from the start.

I'll admit I have a great soft spot for Cell, so was glad to see him return again in some form. A little let down that he wasn't much of a character, he just kind of grunts and screams. Plus he appeared to be an adaptation of 2nd form Cell which, personally my least favourite form. But the design looks pretty good and the fight itself has a lot of good moments.

It probably sounds like i've been overly critical so far, so i'll finish with what I really loved about this. The humour is top notch and fits perfectly with what you expect from DB, the movie took a route I always want and in multiple ways. They finally did a story with Goku and Vegeta, but the heroes were essentially everyone else and they weren't just bystanders they all played an important part in winning the fight. On a similar note we finally got a transformation/upgrade for Piccolo who is a character who has always deserved it. They also had great Gohan appreciation and almost a return to his older power plus it is a great thumbs up that he used one of Piccolo's attacks one which is also acknowleged by Piccolo himself.

Finally this movie called back a lot to different parts of the history and lore, and it added to it. Despite being a fan of Dragonball since the 90's, the emotional scenes still make me misty eyed. Seeing Gohan fight for Pan or Piccolo, seeing Piccolo training Pan. Seeing Krillin's hesitation to fight but overcoming it to save 18 and help his friends? Those are parts I will always love.

This was a blind watch, I knew nothing about this film or it's source material prior to viewing. I did kind of expect it to be a low brow movie and i'm completely fine with watching bad movies.

In fact i'd say for a lot of this, I was on board for the kind of goofy fun and action. The moment the movie lost me was right after the cast all meet up again at the house and have a mini final battle. The fantasies essentially all played out and they could have wrapped up a perfectly average film. But the last 20 or 30 minutes turns into endless twists of, oh this is someone elses fantasy, no it's my fantasy, no it's your fantasy, lets destroy a magical well and it's just way too late to start doing any of that.

Michael Pena, Maggie Q and Michael Rooker all do a pretty decent job with what they were given, i've been a fan of some of the stuff Lucy Hale has been in, but she's pretty bad in this. They tried too hard to make the movie have a "clever" twist and that's not why anyone went to see this thing.

I decided to watch all 3 over the last two days and yes this is the best one. It is heavily carried by the original Jurassic Park cast and compared to the other two it definitely has the most interesting concept for a story.

I've noticed several things from a full rewatch, they have learned a little but not enough. The references in this one are a little more subtle minus the obvious Barbasol can and the original trio still wearing the same outfit after 30 years (but I can let that slide), they've learned that if T-Rex fights another dinosaur the T-Rex has to win. And on a similar note, everyone has wanted that Ellie and Alan relationship, maybe not via the Jurassic World franchise but it still works even if it is only due to the characters.

The main failing of all of these movies is that there is far too much useless action, all of it you see coming a mile off especially since it will foreshadow and heavily wink at you a minute or two beforehand. They reuse their own shots and tropes, this one yet again had several moments were predators duck down to look through a window. Movie logic may be a thing but many times they'll mention how fast and strong something is or how it is impossible to escape. These things will chase a motorbike/car/plane and then be outrun by a 14 year old girl. You never feel any danger because they're escaping so many times in the same way.

We have to see Owen Grady yet again do some taming of the raptor hand waving, multiple times in this movie. I may have praised the T-Rex has to win thing, but they literally did this in the last film including the fake out when it plays dead then teams up with a partner like they're in tag team wrestling matches. If you want to do that, fine do it once. I do like the introduction of new species, but they have to be the main focus they tried hard to wedge them in along with two other storylines and it becomes too much.

On top of that, the runtime really sags during it... in any action movie, the action should not be the thing making it feel bloated. This whole franchise could have been a lot better if they cut a lot of the action, especially since it really highlights that CGI still isn't perfect. The original had puppets and limited CGI plus they knew how to hide it a little better. Don't get me wrong the older movies effects have still aged but you can forgive it as it is but a tiny part of that movie. All three of these movies have a ton of it and less than half of it feels like there is another living being on screen.

In terms of what is good, story wise I did like the basic premise although the execution of it was essentially like if Steve Jobs ran Monsanto. "Stylish" billionaire genetically modifying seeds for profit (plus locusts and dinosaurs on the side?). As previously mentioned the original cast still clearly have chemistry, comedic timing and are good actors and they're the biggest reason to watch this. I still like seeing Dr Wu in these movies, he is a bit of a cartoon villain but i'm absolutely fine with that.

I'll admit i'm not a massive fan of zombie movies in general, there are plenty that are still watchable or at least somewhat original but woah this one was awful for so many reasons. Where to start is a little daunting, I mean right off the bat they start with a giant cliche. The US military yet again carrying out covert operations, bringing a crate with "secret" contents to Area 51. It of course escapes easily and starts to infect people in Las Vegas?

But don't worry they've managed to trap all those infected within the city and they're going to nuke them all so the movie is rightfully ended there and then? Of course not, a small group of expendables/generic heist members with the usual elite skills are going in there (obviously) for the worlds thinnest reason. For some reason a business man has just remembered he left his $200 million in the worlds most secure underground safe which he also can't remember the password to or something? This is endorsed by the fact they had to seek out supposedly one of the few super safe crackers on earth, so this thing is really tough and somewhere that is near impossible to get to... one would almost say it would certainly survive a nuclear explosion but this movie has two and a half hours to kill.

Not content without his $200 million and needing a human walnut to carry it (worth noting in large bills this would weigh about 2200lbs and they're bringing schoolbags to carry it), so he's willing to give the ever mumbling Dave Bautista a full quarter of this money for the privilege of carrying out this Las Vegas job dodging zombies and a nuclear explosion alarm clock. And if you think, Dave Bautista huh? I hope he carries out his world famous signature move the Batista Bomb during this may as well be three hour movie? You can rest assured he absolutely doesn't which is about the biggest curve ball this movie is going to throw you.

Before they begin businessman Tanaka tells them to take his pal Martin in with them just for observation reasons and not to stab everyone in the back later. They head to a zombie quarantine camp just outside the city where we meet another three plotlines, Dave's daughter who asks to be taken into the city so of course he says no (but don't worry she comes along anyway because otherwise meeting her would be pointless). We meet short haired badass quirky woman who everyone instantly thinks is infected because she is weird and vague for absolutely no reason other than to appear to be infected especially because she's the person they have to ask for help from later. Finally a camp security guard who we are assured is human garbage, he threatens women and takes bribes and this is very important to remember.

So anyway they decided all these three people are great to add to their already overly large team because $50 million is too much for Dave and he needs to try split it or at least raise the body count for the movie. Dave asks his daughter to promise not to leave his sight at any point so there's only about 15 minutes until that happens because Ella Purnell is the best actor in this movie and does her best to not be in most of it. But they enter the city and instantly short hair woman injures creepy security guard man but it's fine because we've already established about 50 times that he's garbage and therefore absolutely fine to use him as human bait. He quickly gets bitten but will return later to be woman threatening zombie garbage once more and die a well deserved death.

But for now everyone has made it into the building with a safe underneath it, but oh no we have to navigate through a room filled with sleeping zombies without making any noise? Of course nothing would cause that to go pear shaped and Martin only there for observation doesn't begin to do anything suspicious...

Several dead characters 'so pointless i've failed to mention them' later, they're at the safe. Long story short Martin stabs everyone in the back and locks them inside the room and one man gets locked inside the safe itself. The money gets mostly destroyed making the entire original premise pointless. But also there was a king and queen zombie, Lily short hair at some point stole the queens head and Martin now wants to have it like he's Billy from Jurassic Park III stealing raptor eggs. King zombie turns up angry that he doesn't have queen zombies head oh and she was also pregnant for some reason. So Martin dies and she (Lily) lures angry zombie man with this head and dies the last of i'd say three sacrificial deaths?! But destroys the head first to annoy everyone who wanted it and end another pointless plotline that was a literal dead end.

Dave and his daughter the only two characters we have been made to care about for this whole movie make it to another character who has been on a roof excitingly fixing a helicopter for the entire movie until this point apart from pretending to fly off and leave them (you know the old fake out), she flies the two to relative safety for a good three seconds before Bautista wrestles end boss zombie out of the chopper all just before the nuke explodes and before Geeta quickly crashes the helicopter to make sure she doesn't make it to the end of the movie.

Dave and his daughter have a lovely chat about how they have some of the remaining money and are going to live forever. But uh oh, he was bitten and has just enough time to finish his heartwarming speech before he zombifies and gets shot by his daughter who cries, takes the money and flies right out of this movie.

So that's all the loose threads tied up, or is it? Remember how we sent a team to get the money from the safe before the nuke destroyed it and the money, but one guy got locked in there? Funnily enough he survives along with some money because it's undeground and a safe and luckily there is no remaining radiation from nuclear fallout so he can just walk out completely unharmed.

So he survived the blast and has a decent amount of money, doing what any of us would, hires a private plane to go party in Mexico City but uh oh he was secretly bitten (thank god they didn't literally do this five minutes ago) also don't try to work out logisitics here, but he was bitten before he went into the safe, everyone else left had a couple fights and deaths, some people got on a chopper then Dave fights King zombie and gets bitten then quickly turns into a zombie shortly after that. Meanwhile my man here sat through all that, escapes the safe, hires a plane, gets on the plane and half way to Mexico, notices he has been bitten about half a day ago but has waited until this most inconvenient time to start to be a zombie mid flight. It's safe to assume that either he waits patiently until they land in Mexico City or he did his zombie pilots license and I swear this better not be a setup for a sequel.

That concludes this Zack Snyder "movie" that tries too hard to be an overly stylish all action gambit with endless twists you see coming from a mile away and scenes that came from nowhere and go nowhere.