Wednesday 21 November 2007

Doom

When I first heard that they were making a Doom movie my first thought was "Oh great, I wonder how they're going to fuck this up." My second thought was "Its probably going to be about genetic engineering." My third thought was "I need to pee."

Shares a name with the video game, shares a few terms and weapons, shares characters. Is not DOOM.

Doom was about demons overrunning a scientific outpost on Mars (and later Earth), Doom the Movie decides to pander to the audience of the early 2000's and throw the actual plot of the game in the bin in order to make a story about genetic hybrids.

God, it's been done! And not very well I might add (admittedly 28 Days Later loosely involved gene splicing as the initial catalyst for the disaster that followed, and it was a good film).

However The Rock once again proves that he can in fact act (apart from one scene which was a total mess on all parts) and does manage to save a bit of face for the show, and the innovative first person sequence was enjoyable but I can see why they decided not to do it for the whole film.

There were some nice tongue in cheek references to the game heritage, such as the Pinky Demon and Sarge (The Rock) saying the actual real world meaning of the 'BFG' abbreviation.

The action isn't bad and the 'silvery blue eyes in the otherwise black sewer' scene is creepy as fuck, so as an action movie along the Predator lines Doom fares quite well, you just have to forget that it is supposed to be about Hell crossing over.

In this case it's more like Hell freezing over.

Rating: C

Cliffhanger

Cliched. I'm really not sure how much more I can say.

"You want to kill me, don't you Tucker. Well take a number and get in line."

The dialogue never gets any better. Some of the action isn't bad though, but there are better action movies out there.

Rating: E

Kingdom of Heaven: The Directors Cut

Kingdom of Heaven was an alright film, on an average day I would give it 3/5. The Directors Cut on the other hand really ties the film together and goes into far greater depth about the actual final years of the short lived Kingdom of Jerusalem, the characters are explored in far greater detail and the hypocrisies and lunacies of religion are properly highlighted. As someone who is a great lover of Middle Eastern History (more so Byzantine, but apart from maybe Islam nobody cared more about that territory) Kingdom of Heaven: The Directors Cut is a very enjoyable cinematic experience. As an added bonus the movie also helps to remove some of the deific reputation that has grown up around the Knights Templar thanks to modern mythology and shows them to be much the same as any other knights- bloodthirsty bastards.

Rating: A

Monday 19 November 2007

Interview With The Vampire

Perfectly cast and excellently played.

Tom Cruise excels as the charismatic (and slightly homoerotic) Lestat who by now has seen it all and done most of it, and a young Brad Pitt is on fine form as Louis who too late realizes the true meaning of the unlife that has been afforded him. Antonio Banderas is superb as the bored Armand and a 12 year old Kirsten Dunst gives a phenomenal performance.

Its not a deep film, you certainly should not be seeking the meaning of life or a morality tale highlighting the pitfalls of hedonism. I imagine that hedonism probably has more tits in it.

It is simply a gothic tale of the life of a vampire with excellent set pieces, fantastic delivery and full of intense dialogue. And personally speaking, I love how it ends, "You know, I've had to put up with that for centuries" (that isn't the last line, but to say anymore may spoil it).

Anyone who wants to complain that the movie isn't as good as the novel... go suck on a lollipop and stop whining like a child. The film adaptations are almost never ever better than the novel so stop trying to tell us what we already know. And don't ever say that this is a movie for girls because of the 'poster boys', it was thinking like that which stopped me from seeing 'Fight Club' in the cinema.

Rating: B