Movie: Fury

This movie, I am happy to say, is just a good old fashioned WWII war movie, but made with the advantages of modern technology.

The casting of this movie is what makes the whole thing work. You have Brad Pitt, who just gets better as he gets older, as the leader who is most at home in his tank. Then you have Shia LeBeouf, who does his best work ever with this role. I just wish he gets himself sorted out because he is clearly a very talented actor. Then there is Michael Pena, who comes across as a very likeable guy, and Jon Bernthal, who somehow manages to come across as both likeable and unlikeable at the same time.

And finally last , but certainly not least the is Logan Lerman, who plays the new guy, the guy straight off the boat and completely clueless about what he is going to soon face up to. I was sitting there, thinking "where have I seen this guy before?", and of course, with the later help of IMDB, I now know he was in Noah, and he was in the Percy Jackson movies. I just couldn't put my finger on it.

But all together, this cast is just a magic mix.

The stellar cast of Fury: Shia LeBeouf, Logan Lerman, Brad Pitt, Michael Pena and Jon Bernthal, with their Director, David Ayer.

One more thing. I'm a big fan of 3D, and there is no doubt that certain scenes in this movie would have looked fantastic in 3D, but I'm glad that is movie is not in 3D  given the subject matter. I think it would have been more of a distraction than anything else.

However, this is a great movie. I'm very tempted to go see it again next week.

Movie: Stephen Fry

I went to see Stephen Fry  at my local cinema. He wasn't there in person of course. He was in England and he was beamed in. He put on a one-off show to promote his new book, "More Fool Me", another volume of his growing autobiography collection. You can get it from here, and other places no doubt: http://www.stephenfry.com/store/

Stephen Fry is a great entertainer. His words are witty, interesting and well constructed. And he knows about Perth, Western Australia, where I live.

He started off the show talking about the countries where he was being broadcast in cinemas, hence the mention of Perth.

He read a chapter from his book, concerning a visit to his place by Lady Diana and Prince Charles. It went on for a while, but every sentence was so well constructed that I was carried along.

But alas, before I knew it, it was over. I was having such a good time that I was disappointed when it was over. I just wanted him to go on for just a little bit longer.

Please Sir, can I hear just one more chapter?....

Movie: 3D Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles

This movie is just plain fun. It makes no attempt at any type of intellectual comment on the world at all.

This is the type of movie that 3D is particularly suited to. There is one scene in which the turtles are careening down a mountain side which just wouldn't look good in plain old 3D.

The movie is yet another reboot of the turtle origin story. Fortunately, the turtles do NOT come from outer space, which was one of the early ideas for the film. In fact, they weren't going to be teenagers either. The film was going to be called just Ninja Turtles, and some people speculated that the turtles would be middle aged aliens! Fortunately, good sense kicked in along the line and that idea was dropped. Now, I'm all for letting film makers experiment with the source material, but in this case, a teenage mutant ninja turtle will always bee a teenage mutant ninja turtle

One change I did find fresh was the way that April O'Neil was tied closer to the origin of the turtles. I thought was a nice addition to the existing story.

By my count, this is the third reboot of the turtle story. I quite liked the energy of the first one. the second one, the CGI TMNT was ok, but not outstanding, and this one is just different enough to make it enjoyable

Movie: 3D Sin City - A Dame To Kill For

It's hard to believe that the first Sin City movie was 9 years ago. I can't believe there haven't been many more movies made with the unique visual style of Sin City. I would love to see a superhero movie made with in this very unique and original style.

For those who aren't familiar with this style of movie, it's literally a comic book made with real people. It's very dark, it's mainly black and white, but there are splashes of colour. It reminds me a little of the Humphrey Bogart detective movies of the forties and fifties, but everything is hyper-real.

This film is visually stunning. It's also horrendously violent. People lose body parts on a regular basis throughout the film. The spurting blood however is white, not red.

The plot is fantastic. There are a number of sub-plots, which are mostly connected up by the end, but there is still enough mystery to open up the possibility of a third installment.

The casting is brilliant. Nearly all of the main characters are back, and there are quite a few little cameos throughout the film. Try spotting Stacy Keach. Powers Booth is just superb as a crooked senator, but Joseph Gordon-Levitt and Josh Brolin are brilliant as well. They are not playing real people in this movie. All of the characters are hyper real. Mickey Rourke returns as Marv, this time more as a good guy. This is a role he seems to have been born to play, to use an old cliche.

I know it doesn't really mean much, but the box office of this movie doesn't look to good. According to box office mojo, this move has made only 27 million on a budget that I suspect is quite substantial, where as the first Sin City movie made 150 million on a 40 million budget. I just hope that this doesn't mean an end to this style of film making. Do we really need a 19th reboot of Batman?....

Movie: Into The Storm

Hey, it's no Twister, but once it gets moving, it's a real ride.

I have to admit that I am a huge fan of natural disaster movie: the afore-mentioned Twister, Volcano (yes, the one with Tommy Lee Jones), and Dante's Peak.

Like I said, this one isn't bad once it gets going. It doesn't have the humour of Twister, but the visuals, and especially the sound make up for that somewhat.

It doesn't really have an all star cast like Twister has, or even a good soundtrack (the Twister soundtrack is one of my favourites). There is only one actor whose name I recognised, and that is Richard Armitage. I didn't recognise him at first, because the last thing I saw him in was The Hobbit, where he played a four feet tall dwarf. In this film, he is his full height, which has got to be at least six feet.

Some of the dialogue was heavy handed at times, but most of that was at the start, and was passed by relatively quickly. The plot is fairly simple. This movie is about trying to recreate the experience of being inside a tornado, and it does that very well. The movie proves that special effects technology has come a long way since the tornadoes of Twister. If you've seen the trailer, then you have seen a pretty good sample of what the film contains.

One thing that I thought was odd is that this film was not shown in 3D. If there was ever a film that cries out for 3D, it's this one. I think a golden opportunity was missed there.

Movie: The Inbetweeners 2

These four guys are our generation's version of the Marx Brothers, sort of...

I think this film is easily better than the first one, but I put that down to the fact that it is set in Australia. Well, it's the English version of Australia, which as an Australian, I find hilarious.

This film is definitely not for the faint of heart. This movie makes Kevin Smith look like a boy scout. For example, there is one scene at the beginning of the film where one the characters dresses up as Hermione from the Harry Potter films, sans underpants. They end up in a pub, where the said character is bent over a pool table, playing pool of course. Dangling in full sight beneath the skirt are a pair of rather large testicles (probably rubber...), and a dog comes up and starts to lick them. It actually works better in the film than I can adequately describe here, but that's the kind of humour that this film is all about.

You probably need to see the first movie before this one (well, it does have a 2 in the title after all...), because some of the plot points are linked directly to stuff that happens in the first film.

Movie: 3D Guardians Of The Galaxy

This is an excellent movie. Easily better than I expected.

I had great reservations when I saw that one of the lead characters was an animated racoon. I had unpleasant flashbacks to Jar Jar Binks in the Phantom Menace, but this racoon fits in well with the universe and the other main characters. This is a film that does not take itself seriously, and the film benefits a lot because of that. Well done James Gunn and friends.

I wonder how much Vin Diesel got paid for his turn as the walking tree, Groot. He says a total of four words "I", "Am", "Groot" and at the end, "We". Mind you, Chewbacca doesn't have much in the way of dialogue, but Han Solo seems to understand what he is saying.

The rest of the casting is very well executed. Ex Doctor Who companion Karen Gillan is total unrecognisable as one the the lead bad guys. She also gets to kick some serious butt:

I also like the actor who plays the chief bad guy, Ronan, a guy called Lee Pace, who I actually have never seen before. He has a real big screen presence.

The movie starts out very depressingly. I actually checked my ticket because I thought the cinema was showing the wrong movie.

The 3D in this movie was very well executed. I am a huge fan of 3D, almost verging on addiction. I'm almost at the point of not seeing a movie if it isn't 3D.

You need to hang around for the now traditional Marvel teaser after the credits. This one concerns a certain bird, which George L tried to bring to the screen in the eighties with such ineptness. That would be a hoot if he actually turned up in Guardians II, but I don't think it would happen.

And finally, a shout out for the soundtrack. They have used classic seventies tracks as a backing for some of the scenes. In one scene, they used Cherry Bomb by the Runaways, and at that point I zoned out and didn't actually hear the dialogue. I was grooving away to Joan Jett's guitar.

"Cherry Bomb" by The Runaways

There's also a CD of the songs used in the film (actually 2 CD's, the songs on one and the score on the other). It's quite a good selection:

1: Hooked On A Feeling - Blue Swede
2: Go All The Way - Raspberries
3: Spirit In The Sky - Norman Greenbaum
4: Moonage Daydream - David Bowie
5: Fooled Around And Fell In Love - Elvin Bishop
6: I'm Not In Love - 10CC
7: I Want You Back - Jackson 5
8: Come And Get Your Love - Redbone
9: Cherry Bomb - The Runaways
10: Escape (The Pina Colada Song) - Rupert Holmes
11: O-O-H Child - Five Stairsteps
12: Ain't No Mountain High Enough - Marvin Gaye and Tammi Terrell

As of today, August 23, 2014, this soundtrack is at number 2 on the Australian album charts.

I'll race you to the CD shop right now....


Here's a great review I just found: "Guardians Of The Galaxy" review

I keep finding all these links on YouTube. Here's another good one, a Q and A with Chris Pratt, Zoe Saldana and Vin Diesel: Cast Q and A