Reviews

This film should be called "Poser Metal Lords" because that's exactly what it is.

Whoever wrote this doesn't understand what metal is about because it certainly isn't spoiled, rich kids living in the suburbs having everything they'd ever want handed to them on a silver platter, including new muscle cars and rooms full of brand new instruments and gear.

The two 'protagonists' aren't even really friends as the one kid basically has to drag the other into forming a band because he doesn't even like metal music. They aren't likeable, they don't have a believable arch, they aren't united in their love of metal and counter-culture, fighting against the social norms that refuse to accept them. They aren't from the bad part of town, or poor or minorities or outcasts. In fact, the bookish nerd, played by the ever-annoying Jaeden Martell, takes the first opportunity to sell out and join a band that's more popular and plays parties at the cool kids' houses.

That's not metal. NO ******* WAY.

Enter the weird, chemically unbalanced cello-playing girl who is secretly great and hot but too awkward to fit in anywhere else. It's like there's a cliche checklist. Of course she and nerd kid develop feelings for each other but only AFTER they've already banged each other because weird girl suggested to nerd they take each other's virginity for NO REASON at all. No build up, no history, it's almost one of the first things they do.

Somehow, this all leads up to a Battle of the Bands which is all the metal kid can think about for some reason. Maybe because the plot requires it. Of course there are montages of them rehearsing and trying to convince weird girl to join as their bassist and she refuses, blah blah blah. Id' really lost interest at this point because metal kid is a dick, nerd kid is annoying and a sell-out and weird girl doesn't want to be in the 'band'.

The big day finally arrives and SURPRISE SURPRISE, the weird girl shows up at the last minute looking all hot and they win over the crowd with their terrible song and.... who cares. Metal kid even wins a little of his dad's respect. BARF.

So many movies have done it better but hey... at least it's not a comic book movie or a reboot so it gets 5 stars.

From the period faithful production design to the acting, writing and story, this is a fantastic film.

This is a movie that takes it's time and creates a crushingly tense atmosphere while leaving certain elements to the imagination. It is beautifully shot and kept me engaged throughout it's length.

Having read some other 'reviews' that scored this film anything below a 6, they are plain wrong. Even if you don't care for the slow pace, the story or the accents, it's so well conceived and produced that it garners a high score on those merits alone.

But hey, people are stupid and the fact this film isn't an 8+ shows it as such.

In an age of comic book movies and seemingly endless reboots, along comes "John Wick": an original film with an aging Keanu Reeves as a retired super-assassin brought back into a world he tried to leave for the best of action film reasons... REVENGE.

What sets this film apart are the incredible fight scenes that are wide-shot, uninterrupted gun play extraordinaire... there's nothing else in Hollywood that comes close to this kind of combat choreography. This is close-range, brutally effective, 'tier one operator'-level stuff. You can tell Reeves dedicated himself to this role with vigor and the results are spectacular.

The story is lean and slightly cliche as are the one-note Russian villains, but when the gun play and stunts are is this good, who cares. I could never buy Keanu Reeves in the role of a bad ass (the Matrix) but his his performance in John Wick is very satisfying and really sells the idea that this guy could kill everyone in the room with a pencil if need be.

If you love action, do yourself a favor and watch this film. Thank me later.

John Wick and Dredd are the best action films to come out of Hollywood in the last decade. John Wick 2 carried on with the interesting world building, unsurpassed fight choreography and superbly shot scenes. So could they up the ante with yet another John Wick entry?

The answer is yeah.... pretty much.

While some of the shine has come off the scintillating gun play and the story is very lean, it still works because of the practical effects, long, uninterrupted camera shots and dedication of the actors and stunt crew to provide incredible fight scenes you won't find elsewhere. This is not your superhero movie, headache-inducing CGI action... this is as real as it gets.

The addition of Halle Berry's character and her dogs (a jaw-dropping sequence unlike anything I've ever seen) was welcome and injected some new life into the story and lore. She obviously took her weapons training as seriously as Keanu Reeves did because she looked just as competent and capable dispatching endless henchmen in elegant style; and still one of the most gorgeous women anywhere.

Our hero fights his way through countless assassins out to claim the bounty on his head and Mark Dacascos (how is this guy not a bigger star?) is a bright spot as Zero, the master of a sushi chef clan of ninjas working for the "High Table". Keanu looks tired by the end and I hoped he would finally get his rest but it seems there is one more chapter to be added to this story.

I'm still interested enough to look forward to it.

I went in with the impression it was a horror film akin to "the Witch"... it is not. That's not to say it's a bad film but it just wasn't what I expected.

There is no supernatural tormentor, no spooks, specters or ghosts. What haunts this poor family is far more sinister and real and it will not be for all tastes. This film is bleak and dour and while it's well shot, competently acted and has great atmosphere, by the end I felt beat up, frustrated and heartbroken.

The family (a mother and two daughters) start out victims of circumstance as the husband is killed during war and their crops fail. Then they are victim to the local robber-baron's ruthlessness and greed as he first tried to buy their land out from under them, and then hires henchmen to murder them and burn the homestead to the ground. All this while the mother struggles against deteriorating mental health, leaving the adolescent daughter to try and care for her and her younger sister.

With the world seemingly set against them, the robber-baron has his way when he beats the mother and burns her along with their home, at least allowing her two daughters to escape into the night, fate unknown. There is no resolution, no happy ending and not much more to be said.

If you feel like you want to kill an evening and feel terrible afterwards, this film will do the trick.

This film should be titled "Colonoscopy" because it's so far up its own arse.

While the cinematography and the film's lead are both gorgeous, this film is so pretentious, full of genre cliches and unnecessarily slow that I lost interest and had to come back twice in order to finish it.

I saw the reviews and thought that perhaps I was missing something and that it gets really good in the last act. Nope. Perhaps our heroine goes about dispatching these nasty guys in really creative ways. Nope. Maybe it will be a very realistic take on the genre. HELL NO. The setup for the antagonists is ham-fisted and clumsy and our lead is not overly smart or capable, which means she should have just died. She's barefoot in the wilderness and doesn't even think to take a dead man's shoes, or his belt or his coat.

If you're weak and stupid, why should I root for you at all? Because you're beautiful? She doesn't deserve the circumstances she's put in, but she was sleeping with a married man. If she was smart, the whole thing was completely avoidable.

I love horror. I love thrillers. I love revenge films. I'm not crazy about rape in films because it really upsets me but I understand it as a plot device. I'm able to suspend my disbelief in the service of an interesting film but when a 105lb woman is impaled through the abdomen by a tree branch, "seals" the wound with a red-hot beer can and then is running around barefoot in the desert with barely a scar to show for it.... it's pushing the limits even if the film were grossly entertaining, which it isn't.

If not for the practical gore effects and stunning camera work, this would be a total snore-fest. Yes, she's a very attractive woman but everything else is way too over-the-top for me and doesn't have anything new to say or take any real risks.

It took Sam Raimi to bring fun back to the horror genre, and I'm so glad he did. In a sea of 'torture porn' and 'found footage' garbage, this is a rare jewel that makes you realize what you've been missing as a horror fan.

If you're into Sam's other works, you will greatly enjoy this film as it hits all the right notes and contains many of his trademark moments and nods to his early films. It's light on the blood and guts compared to the Evil Dead trilogy, but I didn't miss it all that much because I was having too much fun with everything else.

If you don't get black comedy, perhaps this film will confuse or disappoint you or come off as 'cheesy', but this is classic Raimi style and I love it. It's good to see many practical effects back in action and his camera work is as great as ever.

I like horror films to be fun and this certainly fits the bill.

So I just finished watching this film and I quite enjoyed it, more than I figured I would. I'm not a die-hard ED fan but I liked the originals and I'd heard mixed reviews on this one but as a horror fan thought I'd give it a fair shake.

The film looks great. It has a kind of hyper-saturated, rich, retro tone to it that adds to the eeriness of the setting. The camera angles and some of the framing also contribute to it's look and the sets/environments were well designed. There is a bit of shaky-cam during some of the action as well as some jump edits, but overall it wasn't too distracting.

The story is, well.... we're talking about a horror film with demons and stuff so what logic is there to found in such things? It's passable enough to move things along, though there are plenty of horror clichés and people acting foolishly for no reason; perhaps you can blame their youth.

Gore hounds should be pleased with this film as it surpasses the original in that regard; I found myself saying "oh man!" more than once. There are a few scares and some tension but horror veterans will see it coming.

What's missing is a likable protagonist. The film centres around Mia who is a drug addict, at the cabin with her friends in order to detox via the 'cold turkey' method. She is also the first to fall victim to the evil presence lurking in the woods (I guess they have nothing better to do?) so the lead role shifts around a bit and never really settles on anyone in particular. You think her brother might end up being the "Ash" character, but he is a bit of a jackass and personally I was hoping he would die in some horrible way.

Overall, it's a fun ride and one that I will take again, along with the original. In a market flooded with bad horror films, this one is a decent watch if you can separate it from the Sam Raimi classic.

I've always liked the possession sub-genre of horror. There's something entirely unnerving about an internal tormentor that can't be fought with weapons but can only be defeated in a battle of faith.

The problem? There just aren't very many GOOD possession movies out there. 'The Exorcist' is obviously the gold standard (still gives me the willies) and films like 'the Exorcism of Emily Rose' and 'the Conjuring' are well worth watching.

So what about "the Possession of Michael King'? Yeah.... not so much.

This is supposed to be another "found footage" style movie, but no one finds the footage. Instead, we are watching this all happen via cameras that the main character has set up as he conducts these evil spirit experiments in an attempt to capture footage of the paranormal. The problem? We see things other than what is just being filmed by the character, we see what is being shot by the actual film crew, immediately dismissing the idea of this being a "found footage" or "documentary". Example: the last scene. Are there cameras set up in his front yard? Sloppy consistency there, fellas.

Then we have the main character who comes off like a bad, reality game show host. It's so painfully obvious that he's acting that it completely pulls you out of the experience. This is bad enough just watching him interact as a normal person, but as he descends into madness, it becomes so cartoon-ish that it's laughable. Much of the film is just him alone in his house, acting crazy and it's pretty embarrassing to watch.

Other than the acting, we have all the tired possession clichés. Jump scares? Check. Ghostly figure in upstairs, child's bedroom window? Check. Creepy voices? Check. See figure reflected in mirror to turn and nothing is there? Check. Static shot of kitchen framing the knife block at the centre, setting up for later when one of the knives is missing? Check. Evil spirit is a 'stealer of children' and wants the guy to kill his daughter? Check. And the list goes on.

Any horror fan has seen all this before; a statement I'm making far too often with modern horror films. It's been a long time since I've seen anything original, as "the Blair Witch Project" was probably the last film that brought something new to the genre. And with Hollywood's predilection for all things 'rebooted', originality is not a priority.

This is the finale in a trio of reminders that Star Wars should have ended in 1983. Unless you saw these films as a child, you can recognize that the prequels are not good movies. How, you ask? Well, let me tell you.

From the writing to the acting to the (lack) of sets to the designs to the characters to the dated and awful CGI... it all comes off like bad a fan film, not a mega-billion dollar franchise that changed film making forever.

It's a cautionary tale of giving one man unbridled power, a man so rich and powerful that no one could say no to him. He had the final word on everything and it really shows that George Lucas got VERY lucky the first time around and had people back then who saved him from himself.

If you do some research on the Original Trilogy, you'll see three names truly responsible for the success of Star Wars: John Williams, Ralph McQuarrie and Marcia Lucas. Only one of those names is still involved and the score is (as expected) spectacular.

Overall, this film is the high point for the prequels. Unfortunately, that's not saying an awful lot.

The only reason this "film" even ranks a 3 is because of Natalie Portman's mid-rift. Seriously though "Attack of the Clones" ranks among the Star Wars holiday special and those awful Ewoks TV movies for being black eyes on an otherwise great group of films. Of course I'm referring specifically to the original trilogy.

When I first saw 'The Phantom Menace' in 1999, I wanted to like it because I grew up and obsessed over the original films. I came away going... "well, at least it can't get any worse, right?" Boy, was I wrong.

"Attack of the Clones" makes "the Phantom Menace" look like freaking Shakespeare, especially the vomit-inducing courtship scenes between Padme and Mannequin Skywalker, the scene with Obi-Wan in the diner and pretty much the whole arena battle with 3P0 chasing his own head. Hayden Christensen managed to cock up the most badass villain in film history, though George Lucas is as much to blame. You'd think this was his first attempt at writing.... well, anything. At that he was a 14. And a little slow.

They even managed to make one of the coolest characters in the whole Universe less interesting by making Boba Fett a clone. Well, goodbye awesome back story that authors had spent time crafting for you in the novels...

Is the entire movie horrible? Almost. Obi-Wan being pursued through an asteroid field by 'clone' Boba and his daddy is kind of neat, and.... that's about it. Yoda fighting Dooku is utterly laughable because it goes against his very character. He wouldn't fight and doesn't even carry a lightsaber, but hey we have some time to fill and an extra $4M in the CGI budget to blow, so let's do that.

Of course there are plenty of people who say the old films were just as flawed and that we "old timers" are blinded by nostalgia. They are entitled to their opinions even though they are wrong.

Do yourself a favour. If you ever get the urge to watch this film, stop what you are doing, check that you've taken your meds and watch one of the originals instead.

This film falls under what I like to call "commercial horror", that being produced by a large, Hollywood studio for as wide an audience as possible. In that, I guess it's a success. Where it does not succeed is providing the horror-savvy viewer with anything new or interesting.

This film and it's director/writers borrow from other films in the genre (the Sixth Sense, the Shining, the Others, Poltergeist) but any seasoned fan should be able to guess where and when the scares are coming.

The first half creates a decent tone but the tired, horror clichés tend to skirt away any real tension and the overuse of sudden, jarring musical/audio cues jolts the viewer more than any of the imagery. It's as if they didn't think the movie itself was doing a well enough job of conveying the frights so they decide to hammer you over the head with loud noise to indicate that THIS PART IS SUPPOSED TO BE SCARY!! GET IT???!!!

The cast seem to be more horror stereotypes or caricatures rather than real people we can identify with and even Patrick Wilson, who is usually very solid, gets a little cartoonish towards the end. Things start to come off the rails in the third act as the film struggles to find its identity, especially when it can't decide who is really the villain: rip-off Darth Maul/goat man or the rip-off 'Woman in black'.

If you are a horror newbie, you might enjoy this but for the 'smart mark' viewer, you've seen this before and executed better in other films.

Is anyone else really tired of unresolved, open endings that allude to an obvious sequel? I know it's about trying to milk the marks for all you can, but I think it leads to lazy writing, and this film is proof.

After just having seen this film, I can tell you it's a convoluted hodgepodge of themes, styles and rip-offs from other films that ends up just a giant mess.

Is it a ghost story? A haunting? A murder mystery? Paranormal investigation? Inter-dimensional time travel? It's all of these, which means it has a pretty big identity crisis, coming off as a schizophrenic jumble of half-realized ideas and tried, horror clichés.

The jump scares are again plentiful, but are wasted on horror vets as we've seen all this before. The jarring audio cues are back from the first film, again letting you know via sudden, high-decibel jolts that THIS IS SUPPOSED TO BE THE SCARY PART.

The cast reprise their roles from the first film, including the duo of paranormal researchers who provide unnecessary comic relief and tend to suck all the tension out of any scene they are in.

Insidious 2 suffers from too many things going on at once. I found I wanted to know more about Parker and his story than anything else but like many things in the film, it was never explained. There is also another tedious, open-ending to this film, no doubt allowing for a third installment to make more money.

James Wan shows potential as a horror director and I quite enjoyed "the Conjuring" but he's not in the same league as classic films such as "the Exorcist", "The Shining", "the Others" and "The Sixth Sense" and I'm not sure he ever will be. I guess we'll see.

Oddly enough, the high point of both these films for me was the beautiful old homes and sets they shot in. I love that style of architecture and it was a real treat to spend some time there.