Road Trip

I love Tom Green and he's great in this movie. This follows a dude's rush across the country to rescue a tape that was sent by mistake to his girlfriend that is gonna be trouble if she see's it...
Car's blow up, they get into all sorts of mess and Tom Green eats a mouse. Pretty much it - but funnier than it should be in an Animal House kind of way.

Sky
Colour
***

Texas Chainsaw Massacre

This remake of the 1974 movie is the usual affair. Not particularly interesting, dark enough or with any of the horror of the original... Nah.

Sky
Colour
**

Resident Evil: Apocalypse

This is a neat sequel (seen an odd number of good sequels recently...) which picks up exactly where the original leaves off. Basically we see how the Umbrella Corporation tries to cover up the action of the first movie and meet some new people, a great monster and loads and loads of zombies. Apparently they had to close some of Montreal for a few days to pull off the exteriors and it seemed to pay off.

DVD R2
Colour
****

Ginger Snaps 2 - Unleashed

Watched this on Sky this evening as I really enjoyed the first Ginger Snaps movie back in 2000. It followed a girl who was slowly turning into a werewolf and this sequel follows her sister Brigitte as she tries to avoid the same fate as her sister... great sequel.

Sky
Colour
***

Resident Evil

Time for this one again - Viruses and Zombies...
This is one of the best movies based on a video game (not usually a great start - House of the Dead anyone?), I guess the main reason was that the game was actually scary too. This is a tight movie with a cool story about a corporation that's conducting research into genetics and viruses in an underground lair. Someone lets the virus out and the computer in charge takes action... loads of moody corridors, zombies and mutant dogs to look out for. Coolio.

DVD R2
Colour
****

Godzilla versus Hedorah

Following an email from George Dawn I dug this one out of the VHS archives!
This is Godzilla versus the Smog Monster - an evil monster that feeds off the polution and smoke of Tokyo. It's a classic and amusing movie - the Smog monster is a large grey blobby thing with evil red eyes. The best scene in the fights was the part where 'zilla blows fire and aims it at the floor to propel himself through the air... The songs are great too, as are the animated scenes that appear throughout.

VHS
Colour
***

Napoleon Dynamite

Cool movie about Napoleon, one of Idaho's geekiest kids. He lives with a mad grandma and a 32 year old brother who spends ages on the net chatting to women... He juggles his bizarre family life with helping his mate to become class president. Great fun, some cringey moments and a hilarious final dance sequence... wait until the final scenes after the end credits too.

DVD R1
Colour
****

Jersey Girl

Ok. It's taken a while to build up the courage to watch this Kevin Smith movie. Smith is an awesome writer and usually hilarious film maker so why the delay... J Lo. Basically the whole problem was with the Ben Affleck / Jennifer Lopez thing. This is the movie that there relationship started on. This was bad for dear Kevin as the subsequent media blah overlooked the actual movie... anyway, so I watched it. It's great. One bonus is that J Lo dies early on! What's left is a thoughtful movie about life, kids and the rest. It's well written with the usual Kevin Smith things going on in the background - it's better than the average romcom thing and I liked it mucho.

There's some awesome extras on the DVD - especially Roadside Attractions made for the Jay Leno show...

DVD R2
Colour
****
.

Arabs in the Midst

Attended this premiere of a documentary that explores the perceptions of Arab people in the UK. Made by a local guy, he travels around the country interviewing people about how they feel Arabs are potrayed etc as well as their feelings about being integrated or not into communities in the UK. It was an interesting idea and full points for getting a movie made and screened, but I found it overlong (90mins) an hour would have been better and as it was mostly talking heads it got kinda dull by the end - there's a series planned so hopefully some of these issues will be addressed later on, be interesting to see what happens - some intriguing ideas to follow.

UGC Cinema
Colour
**

Psycho 2

Norman is back.
Ok it took 22 years before he was released and starred in this sequel but it was worth the wait. I remember going to the movies to see this in Bradford at the ABC and although it's maybe not the best film in the world I love that house... Perkins is great as Norman and the soundtrack is especially creepy around the edges.

DVD R2
Colour
****
.

Catwoman

Halle Berry does Catwoman. This is an 'origin' movie that is a little different plotwise to the DC Comics versions but as an action movie is ok. There's loads of CGI stuff and although the acting is a little hokey at times - this wasn't as bad as I expected! Think comic book and it's ok stuff. One weird thing was that Halle Berry does seem to be coloured to match the CGI rather than the other way around... intertesting approach.

DVD R1
Colour
***
.

Assault on Precinct 13

Caught this again at a late show...
Looked really carefully for the forest but still no luck...

UGC Cinema
Colour
***
.

Sideways

This is a great movie. It's a kind of mid-life crisis road movie, with wine tasting.
It's one of those rare treats that's a great movie and doesn't pretend to be anything more than that. Well deserved of the recent Oscar nominations etc - let's hope it does well...

UGC Cinema
Colour
*****
.

Team America World Police

Yeah.
Went with Andycam - it's funnier the second time...
"I'm so ronely, I'm so ronely..."

UGC Cinemas
Colour
****

Murder by Numbers

Sandra Bullock stars as a hard nose detective in this formula crime thriller. I had seen the first half of this last year so was keen to catch the end (not that I couldn't work it out!). It's a genre movie that has a couple of smart (but annoying) teenagers who think they can plan the perfect murder and then come up again Sandra the detective who works it out... including the obligatory cliff top ending - literally in this case. Not too bad - if you like genre crime thrillers, easy and unchallenging.



DVD R2

Colour

***

But I'm a Cheerleader

John found this movie in the sale at WHSmith whilst we were doing the Costa Coffee thing and looking for stuff to spend Christmas Gift Vouchers on. The description made us both laugh so we got it. The plot follows a cheerleader who goes out with the quarterback from the football team at high school who is sent to a place called 'True Directions' by her parents who suspect she is a lesbian (this is news to the cheerleader!). It's a sexual re-orientation camp that has the opposite effect. This is a great movie that handles the subject well and turns out a funny film from an idea that could have so easily gone the other way...



DVD R2

Colour

***

The Girl Next Door

Not a bad teen comedy thing about a dude who falls for the girl next door only to discover that she's an adult movie star. It's actually better than it sounds... honest.



DVD R2

Colour

***

Godzilla's Revenge

This is I believe 10th in the Godzilla series, and most would argue a lowpoint... although Ben & Jake loved it. The plot follows a little boy who is bullied and wishes he was on monster island. He visits the place in his dream and becomes friends with Godzilla's Son who inspires him to be brave. The saving grace is that there's some ace battles where Godzilla does his thing with various monsters... the dubbing is ace - especially Godzilla's lad.



DVD R1

Colour

***

Ocean's Twelve

The sequel to Ocean's Eleven (which itself was a remake) comes with a stunning cast and crew, loads of gloss and some cool editing and production. It lacks however much of the charm of the earlier one.



I found this a little annoying at times, there's some good stuff in here but it doesn't hold together well, is a little show-offy and basically I don't really get why 11 criminals would want to pay back the loot from the previous job with interest anyway? I'm a heist movie fan, but not this one.



UGC Cinema

Colour

**

Assault on Precinct 13

Remake time here - this one is an update/reworking of the John Carpenter classic from 1976. I like the original so didn't hold out much hope here. The plot has been developed more and wasn't too bad, in fact it was tense in places - all in all it was good.



The last scene which involves running around in a forest was entertaining, especially because the forest wasn't that visible in either of the aerial shots earlier in the movie, yet a run out of the door and a right turn leads straight into it when needed...



UGC Cinemas

Colour

***

Piranha

Joe Dante's 1978 classic killer fish movie.

Has a secret military base that have been breeding mutant piranha fish that are unwittingly let loose into the river network. Of course there are more people swimming and playing in the river that day than any other. I love these movies...



DVD R2

Colour

***

Las Vegas

Caught up with a couple of episodes of Las Vegas.

Episodes 2.2 and 2.3. Cool.



Sky

Colour

****

Driller Killer

Seemed appropiate after the previous movie.

Abel Ferrara's movie about a guy who slips into madness due to various pressures and a punk band that rehearse next door. This was before cordless drills yet he seems to do his stuff around the place without having to plug in at all... not noticed that before!



DVD R2

Colour

*

Along Came Polly

Another Ben Stiller movie - this is an entertaining romcom with Stiller playing the usual loser character and Jennifer Aniston doing her usual thing. For some unknown reason it also featured a ferret. In fact the only interesting extra on the DVD is a programme about the ferret making it to the premiere. really.



DVD R2

Colour

***