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Cloverfield (2008)
The Blair Witch Project + War of the Worlds = CLOVERFIELD
This film is one of those rare few where the plot really doesn't matter, your just completely blown away by the stunning visuals and realism of each shot of the movie. Just like Daniel Myrick and Eduardo Sánchez's Blair Witch Project, the film captures every scene on a typical handy cam in the hands of the 6 protagonists of the film, trying to escape the inevitable doom thats wrecking havoc in the city of New York. The plot overall is just like War of the Worlds, much closer to Steven Spielberg's version. It really has no backbone of any such, most of you will even question the protagonist's choices in the film that build the story, always choosing the worst solution over the best and ultimately showing us what we came to see. The story never feels like it is telling the audience much of whats going on, you learn everything the same way as you would in real life if such a situation could occur, on the news. However, If you think the film will be a cheesy action film then your sadly mistaken. The film really speaks to you through that camera as you are shown the spectacular special effects of building's collapsing, the explosions and the onslaught of damage by both the army and the monster. Certain scene's definitely reflect 9/11 and make you believe its almost real. You can honestly feel like being there, as their are no 2nd or 3rd person views, the camera definitely adds authenticity to the quality of the film, really acting out as a documentary than a pop corn flick.
The antagonist of the movie, the monster, was much more amazing than expected, you won't be disappointed, it truly doesn't keep you unsatisfied it definitely has a place among King Kong and Godzilla as a great sci-fi villain. As an unbeatable force, it truly has no weakness or match and completely leaves you wondering if it can even be stopped. You really do get to see it quite a bit in the film, enough to satisfy almost anyone wanting to see it.
I would suggest it to almost all ages, you will definitely feel like your on a roller coaster for some of the scenes and when you step out of the cinema you will probably hesitate to believe everything that you just saw was a movie and not real.
Transformers (2007)
definitely more than meets the eye!
My review Saw the film yesterday in Australia, have to say, it is definitely one of the best films this year, 8 out of 10. I found this film to be a great science fiction/comic book movie, I can safely say it is much more entertaining than any of the previous blockbusters that have come out this year such as Spider-man 3, Pirates of the Caribbean 3 and Shrek 3 but I felt it still lacked things other people are going to agree with.
So here's my quick rundown:
The good:
·The films story telling is amazing, you never once feel like the story is dragging on, or boring, it really keeps you entertained and satisfied.
·The acting is terrific by some, I absolutely enjoyed listening to some of the funniest calls made by some of the human characters, Shia definitely steals the film with his wit and humour and never leaves you unsatisfied. I found Megan Fox as hot as ever and was quite a good actress, though her acting began to decline towards the climax of the film and I didn't find it too convincing, she pulls a Jessica Alba in one scene.
·The Autobot's were fantastic to watch, they absolutely kill in this film, and they were entertaining to watch when the fights broke out with the Decepticon's. I thought they were incredible and really well designed.
·The Decepticon's in my opinion stole the film, they were more entertaining and had a better story to bring to the film, and I felt they were the highlight of the film.
·Hugo Weaving was superb as Megatron, you will not even recognize him, it took me a while to realize it was him and I felt he did the best job voicing his character over everyone else.
·The special effects were awesome; it was great watching the transformations and fights. The detail was really good and the destruction caused by the transformers looked so incredible, that it was hard to believe they pulled all of it off with CGI.
The Bad:
·The dialog for the transformers was in my opinion very bad, it was too immature and it felt like Tim Story from Fantastic Four 2 came along and wrote them up himself. It felt to me that the Autobot's were mildly retarded, whether this was intentional to show how their translation from Cybertronian to English isn't very good, to make it more realistic or the writers were just bad at writing dialog and weren't sure how the Autobots would talk to one another.
·The Decepticon's were much better in dialog, which doesn't say much, they showed more maturity in their dialog and were easily taken more seriously, sad enough as I was cheering for the autobot's the whole time and expected them to be the more serious of the two races.
·Only three of the Decepticon's ever really speak; Megatron, Starscream and Barricade have actual dialog, the rest speak in Cybertronian in one scene of the film, and Frenzy swears quite a bit which I actually found amusing.
·The most under used Autobot had to be Jazz, he makes little appearances and I wasn't pleased with him one bit being a fan of the character in the cartoon series. He only speaks 3 or 4 times in the film, but had the most mature dialog out of the Autobots showing the most compassion to his follow Autobots.
·Brawl is the most underused Decepticon, he only says one thing, and appears twice in the film and that's about it for him, you will barely notice he was even there the whole time.
·Frenzy had to be the weirdest transformer, some of the scenes he's in left me saying to myself wtf, as he does some awkward things when hacking through computers.
·Certain scenes with the transformers were hard to intemperate; so much detail made it hard for me to understand what was happening and what the Autobot's were doing in the fight scenes.
·A lot of the action is rushed and frustrating to follow and was quickly done so it was kind of like Ghost Rider for some scenes, which left them pointless.
·Hardly any references to G1, I only counted about 3, so many of you who expected it to have good references, I'm afraid it doesn't.
Over all, don't take my criticism to heart, it is nothing compared to the good in the film. I recommend seeing this film; it is worth seeing and really enjoying! It has become one of my favourite films of all times and I can't wait to see it again!
Fantastic Four (2005)
Extended Edition changed my opinion
Originally when I saw the theatrical version of the film, I found it very cheesy, to rushed and unconvincing based off the dialog and the story telling. The editing was very poor and at times I felt bored and felt it wasn't even making sense. However keeping this short, I got myself a copy of the extended edition and found the changes incredibly remarkable, notably the fact they actually add a lengthy amount to the film, and that I believe makes the film now watchable, in my opinion, disregard the theatrical and get hooked on this extended edition, it actually builds story on all the characters, the plots are not rush anymore, the dialog being stretched made the conversations held in the film more mature and believable, not so artificial and Jessica Alba seems to be acting now, its like they removed all those scenes intentionally for the theatrical to make it look like she cant act.
However it still has a few moments you kind of question, "are they doing this for fun or are they retarded?" but on positive side rent or buy the extended edition and enjoy a re-release made well and worth every penny.
Ghost Rider (2007)
You can't complain if you knew from the start it was going to be about a skeleton on fire riding a motorcycle.
Having seen this film, I must say it's probably not the best Marvel film, not even close but when you look at the others, there's one thing fans should draw into perspective: Previous Marvel films like Fantastic 4, Daredevil, the Punisher and now Spider-man 3 all did bad(not putting the box office inconsideration) due to the fact that they tried to be too serious and spun out of control turning every moment in the film into something cheesy, unfunny, unrealistic and unnecessary which made those films do bad and not succeed viewer's expectations. This film did the opposite, it was intentional with the cheesiness, unrealism, and humor and in my opinion portioned it out well, so it wasn't over the top much like those other films. It also was more controlled and stayed in its limitations and didn't make a running gag go to long to the point it was lame or embarrassing to watch like those other films did, such as spider-man 3, with spider-man dancing in the streets or Fantastic four having Johnny Storm doing bike tricks at a stadium and coming up with the groups names - very unconvincingly; Doctor Doom with his one liners and Daredevil with Matt Murdock's unrealistic montage.
Why else do you think with the Ghost rider film, they created new villains (aka the fallen) instead of doing what every other marvel film did and take them out of the comics to draw in more fans? Because it's not suppose to be taken so seriously and its not suppose to be 100% based off the comics. They don't want to waste fans' times with big villains like sandman and venom just popping up for no reason and doing barely anything to the storyline.
In my opinion the whole purpose to the film was to see a skeleton on fire fighting demons and riding his motorbike, why do you think they delayed the film from 2006 to 2007? So Ghost rider would look great on the big screen, not so the story could be developed better or the acting be improved. Your not paying money for good acting or a great storyline your paying to see exactly what the title advertise's and if your not happy then you shouldn't of ever assumed in the first place such an unimaginable thing could be a realistic very well made blockbuster like Little Miss Sunshine (odd comparison, I know) or the Matrix or batman begins(not realistic but was as realistic as you could get a character like that to be)
So see this film for what the title actually advertise's and not for what you'd expect it to be.
X-Men: The Last Stand (2006)
Great for a third installer.
I got the chance to see it at the a charity screening here in Sydney Australia on the 22nd and i must say it is worth seeing if you've seen the last two or are a huge fan of the comics. Although it doesn't deserve full stars because it does lack quite a bit in the film. For one, fans who were hoping to see bigger roles out of character such as Professor Xavier, Colossus, cyclops or Iceman I'm afraid to tell you that they're under used in this great film. The story is great but Brett Ratner wasn't very good at achieving it as we see the film is very fast paced in the first half of the movie, no time to stop and take in everything that just happened, However the second half slowed down a lot allowing fans a little thinking time to keep up with whats happening and the special effects are much better than the last two. My personal problem was once again huge Jackman aka Wolverine hogged the light for almost 60% of the film followed by Halley berry aka storm who had some scenes i personally thought were unnecessary and could've been good for other characters. Ian McKellen didn't seem as convincing as magneto as he did in the last two, I mean he still had the personality but during the fights he seemed a bit lazy, he seemed out of time with the special effects. i won't go on but i recommend to all fans to see, by the way theirs only two words i guess you could say are swear word and no sex scenes for any one who's been wanting to know.
Zoids Fuzors (2003)
What Shouldn't of been..........
I love zoids, chaotic century, guardian force and of course who could forget, new century zero. They were all different in their own way, and always kept me and my friends glued to the screen. However this show seems to disappoint more and more as i watch it. Its not a bad show its just everything about it is re-used and they don't do a good job of concealing it, the main characters are obviously spin-offs of the characters from new century zero and and the main characters zoid is none other than the liger zero which of course was the main zoid of new century. The shows only original concept which the name of coarse spoils is that the zoids can now fuse which i might add got incredibly boring after seeing it happen three or four times in one episode for no reason. None of the characters are unique either, they seem to struggle in each episode to make a decent plot for which they can fight in however they are pretty much the same. I say skip it and stick with the old shows, its not bad especially if u haven't seen the others but this just really disappoints big fans of the other series.
Hulk (2003)
Terrific film, bad advertising
When I read the reviews for this film all I heard were criticism which made me skip it when it was in theaters but when i rented this film I realized what idiots some of the critics were for calling this film crap or awful or what ever word they used to insult it. Because of their reviews not very many people went to see it which made it very unpopular. If your reading this i urge you to rent this film and make up your own opinion of the film. I thought this film was fantastic they really explain the hulk very well in this film and the way it's shown on the screen, with different scenes that are happening at the same time displayed at once made it look a bit like a digital comic book which i enjoyed about the film even though you may focus on one of the shots and miss the others. This isn't as good as x-men or spider-man but you shouldn't really compare because its completely different in its own way. If you love the hulk comics or your just love action films then see this film without listening to any one else and you will see that its in fact very good, very well made film by Ang Lee and terrific acting by Eric Bana, Jennifer Connelly and many others.