Review - Cold in July

Cold In July

This film surprised me immensely thanks to the promotion for the film, which tells you hardly anything about the film.
Cold in July is a American crime drama, directed by Jim Mickle and starring Michael C. Hall, Sam Shepard and Don Johnson, based on a novel of the same name by Joe R. Lansdale.
The film is about Richard Dane (Michael C. Hall) who kills an intruder in his house, and has to reap the vengeance of the killer's father, Ben Russel (Sam Shepard)  who wants revenge on Richard's family, this is all I knew about the film going into it, but that is only the start of the film, the set-up for the real plot of the film, which follows Richard suspecting the cops hiding something from him which leads into something much more complicated. The film feels like a few different genres in one, it starts as a thriller goes into a detective story and then finishes on an slasher/action feel,  but it doesn't feel messy going from genre to genre it feels very organic and works perfectly. The standout performance in the film was the character Jim Bob Luke (Don Johnson) who is a detective who helps Ben and Richard solve the conspiracy around them, the character comes in at the start of the second act and brings a fresh new life into the film, a new positive, witty character that changes the film we are watching.

The music used in the film is very effective and emphasizes the emotion going into the film at that point, especially during Don Johnson's introduction, in which country music is playing out of his Cherry red car and you already know something about the character before he has even spoken.
I've talked a lot about Don Johnson's performance but the other two leads are very good also, Michael C. Hall's acting in the film is something completely different then his Dexter character and shows a different range of acting from Hall. Sam Shepard play a very threatening character and does so very well, and while scary you can also sympathize with him.

Cold in July is a great, thriller film that just keeps on changing genre and while doing that, becomes more interesting, my only problem with the film is that there are a few plot threads left dangling at the end of the film that needed to conclude.

4/5

What are your thoughts on the film? Please comment on tell me!

Review - Kickass 2

Kick-Ass 2 is a sequel to the surprise hit Kick-Ass, a lot has changed between the two films on and off camera, a new director, instead of Matthew Vaughn, we now have Jeff Wadlow (Never Back Down) also off camera, we have several different characters that now have different actors.

I loved the first Kick-Ass film and was very surprised of how well the humour and story mixed together and the characters themselves were so fresh and unique.

Kick-Ass 2 needed to be bigger, funnier and crazier to beat out its predecessor... and unfortunately it just isn't as good, that's not to say its bad at all though!
I'll start with the bad, i didn't care for Mindy/Hit girl's coming of age arc throughout the film, that has her dating guys and trying out for the cheer-leading team, i understand why it was in the story, it was needed to progress the character of Mindy, but i thought they could have done a lot better. One of her scenes includes an extremely awkward promotion for a band in one scene, which was ridiculous and completely took me out of the film.
A small thing that irked me about the film was Katie (Lyndsy Fonseca) had one line at the start of the film and just vanished!
Another bad thing is unfortunately there was toilet humour, which i find to be the lowest form of comedy, it's too easy and far too gross and it was very explicit here and i was very unimpressed.
The film kept on changing tones far too often, going from a dramatic death to a silly joke, this was something the first filmed handled incredibly well.
I also thought there was just a bit too much in the film, it felt like they were juggling too many things at once and thought that could have been handled differently and it all could of been fitted in perfectly.
The reason there was a lot to juggle was because the film is following 3 characters, Kick-Ass (obviously), Hit-girl and The Motherfucker (previously known as Red Mist)
Kick-Ass' story this time round was still very interesting, he wants to team up and be a superhero fighting team with Hit-girl, but she declines so he joins Justice Forever! led by Colonel Stars (Jim Carrey) Carrey was great with his role and stole the scenes he was in and turned out to be a very deep character.
The Motherfucker's story was a dark one, in the first scene you see him in he accidentally kills his mother after that he spirals out of control and becomes The Motherfucker, he hears that Kick-Ass has created a team of superheroes so he creates the first super villain team and wants to get revenge on Kick-Ass who killed his father.

Christopher Mintz-Plasse was the standout other than Jim Carrey in this film for me, his acting was spot on through his dramatic scenes and when he was in a dark scene he could still incorporate humour into his lines which is great.
The side characters in the movie were rather diverse and interesting having the opposing sides of the heroes and the villains, Mother Russia (Olga Kurkulina) was great, she was menacing, crazy and HUGE! and her fight against Hit-Girl was the best of the film, the other side characters were less interesting and had more screentime, Dr Gravity (Donald Faison), Marty/Battle Guy (Clark Duke) and Todd/Ass-Kicker (Augustus Prew) were funny characters who are perfect in their roles when on screen, while other such as The Tumor (Andy Nyman) and Black Death (Daniel Kaluuya) and Genghis Carnage (Tom Wu) didn't have anything to work with and were forgettable.

All in all, Kick-Ass 2 was a good solid film which was funny and interesting but just not as good as the first one, in my opinion because of the different director.
Hopefully we'll be seeing a Kick-Ass 3 in the near future!
What did you think of Kick-Ass 2? Comment and tell me!

Comic Con 2013 - Wrap Up

Ultron

Wow... Lots of awesome stuff from Comic Con this year!

I'm going to pick my favourite news topics and talk about them;

Joss Whedon announced the name for The Avengers sequel, it'll be called Avengers: Age of Ultron and will be focused on the villain Ultron who has been going up against the Avengers since 1968.

Zack Snyder announced that the sequel to Man Of Steel will be a crossover film with Batman! Inspired by the Dark Knight Returns story, which should be coming out in 2015, it also came out that they are planning for a 2016 release for The Flash and then Justice League in 2017.

Onto TV! The Walking Dead released a 4 minute trailer for Season 4 of the show, showing how the stakes are being raised
and that the walkers are as dangerous as ever: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Dxg27QsaIEY

Breaking Bad released the first footage for the last 8 episodes! Unfortunately there is no footage but i found an article which explains what happens: http://www.slashfilm.com/heres-what-happens-in-the-first-scene-of-the-breaking-bad-season-premiere/#more-18582

What was your favourite news? Comment and share!

Review - The World's End

The World's End is a British Sci-Fi, Comedy, directed by Edgar Wright, it's his fourth feature film and his third in the "Cornetto Trilogy" with Simon Pegg and Nick Frost.

The World's End is about Will (Simon Pegg) reuniting with his childhood friends, played by Nick Frost, Martin Freeman, Paddy Considine and Eddie Marsan, after twenty years to repeat a legendary pub crawl from their youth (which they originally failed) returning to their hometown once again to attempt to reach the fabled pub "The World’s End" but their hometown isn't as they remembered it.

I thought this film was great, it had the same feel that the other Cornetto films have and that's a good thing, Edgar Wright is a great director, the angles he uses with his shots and the transitions that are putting the shots together are very quick and fast and Simon Pegg and Nick Frost are as good as ever, i wasn't enjoying Frost's character at the start, but throughout the movie he blossoms into a drunken hulk! Pegg's character could grate on you because of his character's repetitiveness but i didn't mind it and thought he was very amusing.
The supporting cast were very solid also, Freeman, Considine and Marsan were interesting characters with a little background and funny characteristics, the love interest played by Rosamund Pike, was okay, she didn't have a lot going for her and most of her funny moments were from other characters in the scene.

The story is very interesting and there is a lot of mystery about what is happening in this town and why everyone is acting so strange, it's a pretty straight forward plot, going from pub to pub, but it's the conversation between the cast and the mystery that really keeps it going, the thing i enjoyed the most about the film was the fight scenes, they were so fluid and fast and extremely interesting, i was on the edge of my seat, some of the best hand to hand combat I've seen in film. The tone of the film changes frequently, from a comedic scene to a fight scene to an emotional scene, but it doesn't feel forced it feels very natural which Edgar Wright is great at.

The main problem i see with the film is the ending and i could tell it wasn't going to bea good ending because of how panicky and crazy everything got near the ending, it was a decent ending but didn't live up to the rest of the film.

I thought The World's End was a funny film, with great action and an interesting plot, a great way to finish off the "Cornetto Trilogy" and i'd be very welcomed with more films from these three.

3.5/5

What are your thoughts on the film? Leave a comment!

Review - Now You See Me

Review - Now You See Me

Now You See Me is a Crime/action film directed by Louis Leterrier (The Transporter, The Incredible Hulk)

When first seeing the trailers for Now You See Me, i thought this was going to be a great film and then the reviews came pouring in and they seemed surprisingly negative! So going into the film i had low expectations but was still very intrigued to see it and was delighted at the outcome.

The plot is about 4 top tier magicians (J. Daniel Atlas (Jesse Eisenberg), Henley Reeves (Isla Fisher), Jack Wilder (Dave Franco), and Merritt McKinney (Woody Harrelson)  who form a group called the Four Horsemen, who perform in Vegas sponsored by Arthur Tressler (Michael Caine) for the finale they pick a man out of the audience and make him rob a bank for their trick.FBI Agent Dylan Rhodes (Mark Ruffalo) & Interpol Agent Alma Dray (Melanie) are trying to figure out how the group are able to rob that bank and so they try to get help from Thaddeus Bradley (Morgan Freeman) who is an ex-magician who now exposes magicians and shows the public how magicians do their tricks.

The movie is pretty much a cat and mouse chase with Ruffalo's character always one step behind the 4 Horsemen and it's a pretty interesting one, the tricks the 4 Horsemen do are amazing, unfortunately they aren't realistic, everything else in the film is realistic but when it comes to these tricks, it is impossible for them to do, which is one of only problems I had with this film, there is a few other problems with the film were that it lost momentum half way through the film, but it picked it up for the ending, there is also a plot twist at the end, which comes out of nowhere and doesn't really make sense, but it's easy to get over it and just keep going with the film, another gripe is that there isn't really a main character, i thought Jesse Eisenberg's character would've been, after seeing the promotional videos and images, but he is always in the 4 Horsemen group and progresses when the group progresses and Ruffalo's character had just as much screen time as the 4 Horsemen which I found very surprising. There is also a forced in romance that didn't need to be in the film at all.

The casting was brilliant, everyone was great in their roles, no standout performances, but everyone was very solid. This was a very fun film, which you can't take too seriously otherwise you'll probably dislike it!

3.5/5