Unkown Identity

Starring Liam Niesen, this is a well made flick. It is supposed to keep coming up with new twists, but it is predictable.

Liam Niesen arrives in Berlin and leaves his briefcase at the airport. When he gets to the hotel, he notices the briefcase is missing. Leaving his wife to sign in, he takes a taxi back to the airport, but there is an accident and he loses conciousness...

4 days later, he wakes up in hospital, he can remember his name and sets out to go back to his wife and the conference, where he is to give a speech. When he gets there, he finds another man has taken his identity and his wife doesn't recognise him. That is the opener, now the pace picks up, as he sets out to find out what has happened to his wife, and to find out why somebody else has taken over his life.

With a great supporting cast, including the excellent Bruno Ganz (Hitler in Der Untergang), and Frank Langella, the film is well made and has a reasonable amount of action, which is mostly not overdone.

If you like your spy thrillers, you will probably have worked out what is going on fairly early in the film. Both my girlfriend and I had worked it out in the first act... But it is still an enjoyable romp.

Have you seen Taken, D? Similar sort of vein with Mr Neeson.

Saw Red at the weekend, not mind-blowing but definitely worth a watch, and a good laugh with it

Gnomeo and Juliet

An animated version of the classic Shakespear romantic tradegy in 3D and 2D.

A pleasant family friendly film that keeps on referencing the Bards plays. Nothing too heavy or demanding on the brain and for once I soon forgot about the specs I had on and enjoyed the 3dness. Plus a film that has Hulk Hogan and Ozzy in it (although just the voices) has to have something going for it!

If you want something to take the kids to (or a wife that loves animated kids movies ) I would give this a thumbs up

Gantz

This live-action japanese movie is based on a long-running manga and anime series. It deals with the concept that not everyone who dies actually stays dead. A 'lucky' few are kept in a kind of limbo, given hi-tech weapons and costumes, and sent out on missions to track down and kill aliens who are causing trouble on Earth. Controlling the team is Gantz, a black sphere enclosing a man who is in a kind of coma. By projecting information on the surface of the sphere, Gantz tells the team of their current target and then teleports them to the location. They then have to deal with the alien in the allotted time in order to gain points with the eventual aim of being restored to their old life.

I found this film surprisingly enjoyable. It is well directed, with an atmospheric touch to the photography and good special effects. The teleportation scenes are great as each person is gradually disassembled in the manner of an MRI scan. Gantz is a bit less childish than many japanese films of this sort and is quite gruesome at times. The downside is the English dubbing. Rather than release a subtitled version, it seems there's only an American dub (at the moment) which is so bland and unemotional it's ridiculous.







Overall, well worth a look if you like japanese films of this type.

7 out of 10. Would have been 8 if it had been properly subtitled.

Taking advantage of Blockbuster's offer of 5 movies for £5, I had a bit of a catch up of some recent films I'd missed.

Alice in Wonderland - Looks good but is strangely uninvolving and overlong and is exactly what you'd expect Tim Burton's version to be like. I'm sure it made so much money because of the 3D aspect because like Avatar, it's literally a bit flat in 2D.

5 out of 10

Centurion - Set in Scotland in AD 117, this film tells the story of the Ninth Legion, sent by the Roman governor of Britannia to deal with the Picts whose guerilla tactics are causing a lot of trouble for the occupying Romans. Things go wrong quite early on, and a small band of soldiers have to make their way back to Roman lines through enemy territory.
Well directed by Neil Marshall, the film is fast-paced and reasonably tense though it is surprisingly violent for a 15 certificate. Good cast doing what they can with a script that requires little depth in the acting. There's some beautiful sweeping landscape shots, similar to LOTR, and if you liked Gladiator and Braveheart, you might like this.

7 out of 10

Clash Of The Titans - No surprises here. The CGI FX are bigger and better than the original but it shares the same problems as the 1981 version, namely meandering episodic story and poor acting. Sam Worthington as Perseus is terrible and seems to have wandered in from Avatar playing the same role and makes no attempt to modify his australian accent. The fantasy aspects of the '81 version are diminished so that Perseus isn't really trying to save the princess, he just wants to antagonise the gods of Olympus. The Medusa sequence is the best bit and is very effective.

6 out of 10

Final Destination 4 - If you've seen any of the FD movies, you'll know how this goes. However this is nowhere near as good as the first three (well, two). The set up isn't as good and the characters are really bland. The creative deaths are boring too. However as it was in 3D and made a lot of money, more are on the way.

2 out of 10

Cemetery Junction - British coming of age movie set in Reading in the early 1970's. Really enjoyed this story of three guys wondering how they're going to get out of their dead-end town. It's both funny and sad and benefits from good direction and script from Ricky Gervais and Stephen Merchant who both appear in small roles.

8 out of 10

Just watched The First Movie directed by Mark Cousins.

This has to be the best documentary, no the best film I have seen in a very long time.

The film asks the question "What’s it like to be a child in war – not when the conflict is raging, but when the war tide is out, as it were, when kids are telling stories or playing games? The First Movie is about the “not-war”." Focusing on a small village in Kurdistan, the director (who grew up in Northan Ireland in the 70's) takes a small projector and some childrens films to show to kids who have never seen the Cinema. Then he gives them small HD video cameras to have a go themselves.

This film is beautiful, wonderful, inspiring, heartbreakingand engrossing in equal measure. Capturing the beauty of the landscape one moment and the beauty of kids playing the next all the while letting the villagers speak for themselves.

A film that speaks about war and the aftermath of war, but not from the typical "WAR IS HELL - TELL ME HOW BAD IT WAS FOR YOU" strident tones we get from most modern film makers and the news.

This doesn't appear to be available on DVD (my wife had put it on our PVR when it was on over Christmas, then forgot to tell me), but if you get the chance to see it, please do.

Faster 4/10

Watching The Rock shoot people does not a movie make.
And really, that's about all there is in this film.

Skyline 3/10

I was looking forward to this but it was vacuous, slow, poorly written, poorly scripted and unoriginal in both the ideas themselves and their application.

It gets 3 because I'm feeling generous.

It's an extended SFX reel, really.

I might give Source Code a chance simply because it mentions "Moon" in the tagline, Moon is one of my favourite sci fi films.

La Horde

French action/horror (subtitled). Things go wrong for a group of french cops when they carry out a revenge attack on drug dealers in a Parisian tower block. Not only does their mission go badly wrong, leaving them at the hands of the murderous villains but something else is going on at street level which will force the two sides into an alliance to save their skins.

French horror films are often quite brutal these days and this is no exception, but after a promising (and very bloody) start you get the same plot elements you see in every zombie movie. Although it has some good moments, there are no sympathetic characters so there's a lack of empathy and tension.



6 out of 10.

Nice review, you've saved me some time there since that was the impression I got from the release trailer, and there's quite a few other things I should probably watch first

Source Code is good and IMO nothing like or related to Moon at all

In other news Catfish is on More4 tonight and is supposed to be well worth a watch.

13 Assassins

This movie from notorious japanese director Takashi Miike tells the story of a covert team of samurai who undertake a mission to kill the Shogun's brother, Lord Naritsugu, whose sadistic behaviour will topple Japan into a new Age of War when he comes to power. Knowing that Naritsugu is shortly to make a long journey along with his loyal retinue, respected samurai Shinzaemon recruits his small team and plans an ambush which he hopes will end Naritsugu's reign of terror and ensure peace.

This movie has had many positive reviews (not least from timark a little while ago) and I went with high expectations. Seen on the big screen 13 Assassins does not disappoint. It is very much a film of two halves; the first being the recruitment and planning, the second being the ambush and subsequent battle.....and it is some battle! Bearing in mind Takashi Miike's previous films, this is remarkably restrained and has little of the stylisation of his earlier work. It's also nowhere near as bloody as I'd expected, though there's a horrible moment early on which is very reminiscent of Audition. Everything is handled in a relatively realistic manner, 13 Assassins is not like Crouching Tiger... or House Of Flying Daggers. A great action film and well worth a look.

8 out of 10

Black Swan



When the New York Ballet's director decides to stage his own version of Swan Lake, he picks Nina Sayers (Natalie Portman) for the lead role. However the lead role is actually a double role; there's the more straightforward 'innocent' White Swan but there's also her alter-ego, the fiery and passionate Black Swan.

When the director tells her she lacks the expression and passion in her dancing to play the part of the Black Swan, Nina starts to psychologically crumble under the pressure. She begins hallucinating and becomes unable to tell reality from imagination.

This really is a straightforward horror/ thriller and very often resembles Dario Argento's Suspiria (ballet school setting) and Opera (newcomer gets their big chance on stage). It's very efficiently acted and directed and shows that Portman deserved her Oscar for Best Actress; she's very good in the role of Nina. The ballet scenes throughout the film are effectively done with lots of moving hand-held camerawork that puts you onstage with the dancers. Suspenseful and intriguing, it's well worth watching.

8 out of 10