Frankenweenie - review.

Martin Short, Charlie Tahan and Catherine O'Hara as Edward Frankenstein, Victor and Susan Frankenstein.

Think of every schlock horror or B movie ever, add in all the cheesy monster ideas, silly special effects, then update it to 2012. The final result, hopefully, should be Frankenweenie. Tim Burton returns back into his proper comfort zone after the shocking Alice In Wonderland and Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter. Dark Shadows was brilliant but Frankenweenie has topped that. 
After poor Victor's (Charlie Tahan) dog, Sparky, is hit by a car, Victor goes all "Victor Frankenstein" and brings the deceased pooch back to life. The dog suffers minor scars but is essentially the same beast. Victor's "secret" is hidden from his unsuspecting parents, (Martin Short and Catherine O'Hara) but is accidently revealed to a deformed, igor-like schoolmate (Atticus Shaffer) of Victor's, Edgar. The drama is set in the small town of New Holland, a white picket-fenced group of cul-de-sacs reminiscent of Burton's fictional neighbourhood in Edward Scissorhands. The mayor is Mr Bergermeister, a fat and grumpy man who spends more time attending his precious flowers and plastic flamingos than to his teenage niece, Elsa (Winona Ryder). Once the secret is out to Edgar he can't possibly keep it and soon many of New Holland's youngsters know of the Frankenstein-like revival.
Its absolutely brilliant, giving you ever cliche known to any horror movie fan, giant creatures, resurrected hounds.. the key ingredients to a brilliant movie.

4/5

Untouchable - review.

Suave drama...Omar Sy and François Cluzet in Untouchable.

Its been hyped to the max and sugarcoated(wolfgang) to almost every level, Untouchable is a charming buddy movie about an ex-con and his quadriplegic employer. I first saw it advertised a few weeks ago and it came emblazoned with four or five star ratings from critics. An American voiceover tells us "critics rave about it" and I merely assumed it would be pretty awful as it looked pretty cheesy and unattractive to a movie-goer like me. I ended up going and now I've come out of it literally raving. Omar Sy is the ex-crook, (a rather undeveloped plot strand) Driss, who has just done time for robbery. To gain benefits he enters an interview to become carer to wealthy quadriplegic Philippe (Cluzet). A trial month ensues and Driss quickly becomes a full-time carer and friend to the millionaire. For once I actually enjoy the embarrassing sequences that are supposed to be 'heart-warming'. I wasn't cringing, shamed to be in the audience, I was just grinning like an idiot. The relationship between the two doesn't rise above sentimentality but keeps the pace going. When Driss discovers Philippe has lost his love, he sets out to match his employer up with his pen-pal Eleonore, a woman he's been enticing with romantic poems. The jokes are fresh and witty, bouncing off Philippe's condition and others around the pair. Now lined up for a foreign language Oscar, it will surely win. Untouchable is one of those films, you'll remember the next morning.

4/5 

Doctor Who - The Angels Take Manhattan - review.

Karen Gillan, Matt Smith and Arthur Darvill in The Angels Take Manhattan.

I have been dreading this episode for a long, long time. Ever since, the wonderful, glorious Pond couple graced our screens two years ago, I knew we'd have to suffer the same heartbreak that we endured when the likes of Rose and Donna left. I knew this, because it was Moffat, he made that wonderful scene at the end of "Forest of The Dead" where River dies. I knew Amy and Rory would bow out in a brilliant and emotional way and so they did. The Doctor takes the lovely Ponds to New York for a break. There they sit and enjoy a picnic in Central Park whilst the Doctor reads "Melody Malone" out loud and Amy squints through a nice pair of reading spectacles. Rory, feeling slightly left out, goes and gets coffee for the three but is sent back in time by the sinister cherubs. Meanwhile, Amy glances at the Doctor's book and they discover the mysterious detective, Melody Malone is really River Song (Alex Kingston)... being particularly saucy this time - "My lipstick was primed and ready, and I was packing cleavage that would fell an ox at 20ft." After some irritating time distortions throw the TARDIS off course, the Doctor, Amy and River set out to find Mr. Pond. River Song in this episode is a more fun version of last year. She still packs the sexy and hilarious lines but doesn't have the weight of last series' arc. Now she can flounce around without worrying too much about having to reveal something. The sad thing about Rory is that he, for the majority of the episode, is alone. For his final episode, he gets some screen time but doesn't have a chance to slip in some dialogue with his co-stars Gillan and Smith. The Weeping Angels in this episode are far from a threat - after thinking in my head, what their diabolical plan was, I've come to the conclusion that their one true lust in the universe is to become landlords... or landladies. Serving customers such as S. Garner (Rob David) and R. Williams (Darvill). If you cancelled out the Pond departure, then 'The Angels Take Manhattan' is actually a half decent episode. The plot is interesting, with River's "Melody Malone" book detailing the episode nicely. My eyes were so thick with tears by the end that it would probably be unhealthy for me to not cry. All I can say now is, farewell Ponds, we will always love you as the best 11th Doctor companions... unless Jenna-Louise Coleman tops you in the second half of Series Seven.

NEXT TIME:
Well, its so long, Doctor Who till Christmas. But the teaser trailer promised the new companion, snow, sinister looking men and the Victorian era.. I do love the historical episodes.. until then, see you at Christmas!

Looper - review.

Dizzying high-octane stuff... Joseph Gordon-Levitt in Looper.

Over the past couple years, many movie makers have tried to recreate the sensational Inception. There was a big hype about it when it was first released and not many films have successfully made a good sci-fi film. Now Looper is the closest thing to it. Joe (Gordon-Levitt) is a Looper, a hired assassin from 2044. A Looper's job is to dispose of anyone that the mob, from the further future, 2074 wants "gone". Joe's Loop spot is in a field where the victim is transported onto a tarpaulin and shot with a futuristic shotgun. Strapped to the corpse will be iron bars in which the Looper converts into money. Joe does this regularly, its his main source of income, until he has to kill himself. His next victim appears as an older man whom resembles himself. Its an older form of Joe, played by Bruce Willis. The film goes along nicely and stops for some down time at the residence of Sara (played by my new favorite Emily Blunt). Blunt is good as the angry and defensive mother. Unfortunately she loses this a bit towards the end but its made up for by good acting. The plot isn't as confusing as you'd think and gets enjoyable as the action is ramped up. 


4/5

Now Is Good - review.

Nothing new... Dakota Fanning and Jeremy Irvine in Now Is Good.

Now Is Good is one of those teen dramas that is predictable and unoriginal. Almost all teen dramas are like that but you'd expect this film to be slightly better than the usual formula considering its rather delicate subject. US actress Dakota Fanning plays Tessa, a young girl from Brighton suffering from leukaemia. She creates a bucket list full of illegal and mischievous things that she and her friend Zoey (Kaya Scodelario) to do. All the while she is having a tense relationship with her stoic father (Paddy Considine doing a rather brilliant job). Her mother (Olivia Williams) is a rather flaky woman who seems to spend most of the time on her phone rather than looking after her ill daughter. Attractive next-door neighbour Adam (War Horse's Jeremy Irvine) arrives on the scene and instantly woos Tessa over. The pair spend an hour of the movie flirting and eventually it concludes with a kiss. It tries to do a decent job at dealing with a rather hard subject, unfortunately it doesn't rise much. There are some decent performances by Considine, Irvine and Williams but thats all this rather boring drama gets right.

2/5

Doctor Who - The Power of Three - review.

Arthur Darvill, Karen Gillan and Matt Smith in The Power of Three.

Chris Chibnall has always been a favourite of mine when it comes to his Doctor Who scripts. In 2007, he gave us the tense claustrophobic '42' and then Moffat brought him back in Series 5 with his Silurian two-parter, 'The Hungry Earth'/'Cold Blood'. For Series Six he was absent but this gap has been filled in by his two episodes for Series Seven. The first episode was episode two, 'Dinosaurs On A Spaceship', and looking back I have to say I enjoyed it. It was rather fast but still a good old Doctor Who romp and I was delighted at the turnout of Brian Williams, Rory's dad. His second episode, 'The Power of Three' to me looked like it had so much potential. It featured the return of UNIT last seen in the David Tennant 'Specials' and mysterious black cubes. From all the pictures, clips and general publicity of the episode, I had high hopes and besides, its written by Chris Chibnall. What the episode delivered was severely disappointing. It was the Pond-centred episode of the series and perfect for the couples' penultimate episode. From the opening monologue to the end, it was a 41-minute Pond homage. This means that it has to unfortunately dump the other 'stuff' - e.g the villains, the plot, the supporting characters. All it left space for was Doctor jokes. I like a 'Doctor joke' as same as the next Who fan but the jokes given in 'The Power of Three' were forced and at times extremely unfunny. The only two characters that leapt out the screen for me were Brian Williams and Kate Stewart. Stewart is the now head of UNIT, taking over from her father, the late great Brigadier Lethbridge-Stewart (Nicolas Courtney). Jemma Redgrave (niece to Vanessa Redgrave) portrays the scientific head of research and does it superbly, if Moffat does not bring her back, I'll be pretty annoyed RAGING. From her first scenes she steals the show, even outdoing Matt Smith's acting (which in his case is hard to do). Unfortunately Chibnall is too busy zooming the camera in on Amy and Rory to actually give the character any development other than she likes the Doctor. 
Normally in a Doctor Who review, you'd concentrate on the villain quite a bit. I would of course do this had the villain not have had twenty seconds screen time. From promotional photos all we could see was cubes. The cubes play a large role in the episode and there is about fifteen minutes worth of "oh my God, there's cubes. Woah! Look, loads of cubes. Can you believe there are cubes!" Yes, talk about stating the blooming obvious! Finally in the climatic scenes in the Shakri ship, the cubes are stopped. You'd think they would be stopped them with love or reasoning or they would realise the error of their ways (all of which have unfortunately been used as plot lines). No, the Doctor uses his sonic screwdriver to zap some controls and effectively deactivating them. By now, dear reader you will be wondering what the cubes did, well they gave people heart attacks for the simple explanation that the Shakri (bald, wrinkly guys) want to stop humans colonizing. Why do they want to stop humans colonizing? Haven't the foggiest. There is so much that confuses me even now - the strange pouting fish-like men that seemed to do nothing? And why would Brian go to the hospital to help when he's spent over six months watching the cubes and then when they move, he goes off to the hospital? The Shakri hologram just lets Amy and Rory evacuate their drugged prisoners while its still in the room? When the Doctor is complaining he's bored, he goes out, plays football, paints the fence - the Doctor would never do this, he'd just hop in the TARDIS and go to the next galaxy. When he says he's bored he doesn't mean, "lets watch TV" bored, he means "lets save the universe" bored.

NEXT TIME:
Its the Ponds' final episode, Weeping Angels, New York and River. Said to have you crying by the end, I really am not looking forward to saying goodbye to the Eleventh Doctor's companions.

To Rome With Love - review.

Enjoyable farce.... Judy Davis and Woody Allen in To Rome With Love.

Woody Allen returns front of camera this time in his latest trip to a European city. To Rome With Love sports some stunning sights and a excellent view of the city for non-travellers but the plot disappoints you, marginally. It focuses on numerous people leaving you interested in parts of the film. The first is a tale of parents, Phyllis and Gerry (Davis and Allen) visiting their young daughter (Alison Pill) and her fiancé (Flavio Parenti). This tale escalates quickly from an elderly couple visiting their daughter to the father recruiting his daughter's fiancé's father to sing opera. This strand of the plot is the furthest fetched and the most unconvincing. The next is Jack, (Jesse Eisenberg) a nerdy wannabe architect living with his girlfriend, Sally (Greta Gerwig) in a backstreet of Rome. He encounters famous architect, John (played rather well by Alec Baldwin) who discovers Sally's best friend, Monica (Ellen Page) is coming to stay with the couple. When Monica arrives, John becomes the cynical voice in Jack's head advising him of the dangers of flirting with this woman. The story begins rather sensibly before escalating as most of these story strands do. One of the most enjoyable of the multiple strands is the tale of Antonio (Alessandro Tiberi) and Milly (Alessandra Mastronardi), a pair of rather clueless newlyweds who arrive in the capital to spend a honeymoon. Things go from bad to worse and Milly is hanging around with famous Italian movie star, Luca Salta (Antonio Albanese) whilst Antonio cavorts with call girl, Anna (played by Penélope Cruz). This strand is enjoyable but again, unconvincing. The last storyline is that of, Leopoldo (Roberto Benigni), an ordinary clerk whose life is turned around overnight. This strand is the most ironic, making fun of people who are "famous for being famous", Leopoldo is asked his opinions on the weather, what hand does he use to scratch his head and when he shaves. This strand is slightly irritating and repetitive but the moral is clearer than the rest, if there is a moral in the rest. 
Its certainly different from Midnight In Paris but has the same charm. You should certainly view To Rome With Love in the same way you viewed Midnight In Paris.


4/5