Film Reviews by None

I went into watching Hunter Prey without any real prior knowledge of the film, except that it did have a lot of positive reviews about it on the web.

After a sceptical first 10 minutes I was somewhat expecting a Star Wars Boba Fett bounty hunters rip off, but after 15 minutes I was hooked as the storyline unravelled, 30 minutes in there was a terrific twist to the story and from that point I was glued to the screen until the final credits rolled.

It's hard to give a full review as don't want to give away any of the plotline, (part of the brilliance of the film is the way the story unfolds), but I have to say this was one of the best Sci-Fi films I've seen in the past few years. Well directed, decent acting, with a subtle use of decent quality special effects.Hunter Prey is an excellent example that you don't need $100+ million to make a decent Sci-Fi movie.

I can only echo what other reviewers have posted, Martyrs is a unique and truly disturbing film. I would consider myself a horror fan, fairly gore tolerant and someone who doesn’t scare easily, but Martyrs is the first film in a long time that genuinely made me feel very uncomfortable with what was being played out on screen. The first half of the film is a fast paced gory French horror/revenge thriller; the second half is something altogether quite different, it’s slower paced, less gory but far more horrific and disturbing, and incorporates an intelligent storyline which puts the horror and violence into context. Even days after seeing this film it still makes me feel uncomfortable thinking about it, and while Martyrs is an outstanding piece of French Horror and something I'm pleased I saw, there is a part of me that wishes I had never seen it.

Apart from the clichéd cinematography, abysmal characterisations, dull dialogue, and often frighteningly amateurish acting, (Zach Braff apparently thinks gazing blankly into the camera communicates some form of soul stirring information on the nature of the character he plays), this film is just plain awful by anyones standards. The story is full of unnecessary scenes that don't connect or contribute towards the story or characters, but are thrown in for the sake of being ‘quirky’. The entire film is full of extra meaningless shots and scenes that could easily have been, and should have been cut. The story contains virtually no conflict, drama, emotion, humour, or originality. The audience has no reason to care one way or the other about the character of Andrew, (Braff), or any other of the characters in general. Garden State is a movie that is so preoccupied with trying to be ‘alternative’ and full of ‘pathos’ that it fails to be anything at all.

I'm not much of a fan of the Planet of the Apes movies, but this was a surprising good film with really good storyline and a consistent amount of action throughout. Some of the CGI was a bit flakey but the emotion in the eyes of the apes, especially Ceasar, was incredibly well done. As another reviewer pointed out, don't turn off when the credits begin, there's an extra scene after a few seconds.

Overall, this is a worthy prequel to the 1968 original movie and far superior to the Tim Burton remake. Well worth renting and looking forward to seeing a sequel.

The plot of 'Eternal Sunshine Of The Spotless Mind' is essentially a love story in reverse. Joel is a quiet introverted man who discovers that after a particularly bad argument Clementine, his loud; extrovert girlfriend has had an experimental medical procedure to erase him from her memory. So traumatized and emotionally hurt is Joel that in retaliation he tracks down the clinic of Dr. Howard Mierzwiak the inventor of the treatment, and asks for the same procedure to remove Clementine from his memory. During the procedure Joel finds himself revisiting all the memories of his ex-girlfriend inside his mind. However, as the memories become older and fonder, Joel finds himself again remembering the love he and Clementine shared and begins to regret his decision. With the procedure steadily wiping memories of Clementine from his mind, the unconscious Joel tries to fight the erasing process by taking memories of Clementine and hiding them within other memories. As bizarre as the idea behind the film is, once you've seen it, you know it couldn't ever be told any other way, and although sounding complicated, the way the story is told is relatively easy to follow. One of the most amazing aspects of the film is the performance of Jim Carrey; he gives the most restrained, emotional and quite honestly the greatest performance of his career. Kate Winslet is equally good and her overtly extrovert portrayal of Clementine is the perfect balance to the shy Joel. Aside from the exceptional performances from Carrey and Winslet, what really draws you into the film is the honesty and sincerity that director Michel Gondry and writer Charlie Kaufman put into the story, turning quite a complicated idea into an accessible, entertaining and moving masterpiece.

The second half of the Tarantino/Rodriquez ‘Grindhouse’ double bill, Robert Rodriguez ‘Planet Terror’ is a far superior effort to Quentin Tarantino’s ‘Death Proof’. Where ‘Death Proof’ was a messy, contrived and pretentious take on 70’s Grindhouse, ‘Planet Terror’ is a far more respectful and truthful homage to the genre. The plot is paper thin; an experimental biological weapon is accidentally set off after a bungled arms deal in a remote Texas military base. It’s not long before the virus spreads turning everyone it infects into homicidal flesh eating zombies and an assortment of characters from a nearby town are thrown together and join forces to escape to safety. Though the plot is simple enough, it’s both the characters and the all out action that holds this film together, and as the film progresses it steadily gets better and better. I was initially put of this film by just how bad Tarantino’s ‘Death Proof’ was, but I'm glad I rented this as it’s an enjoyable explosive and gory romp and a great horror film in its own right.

After the fairly average 'Land Of The Dead' and awful 'Dairy Of The Dead' I had pretty much written off George A. Romero as a director who was out of ideas and just rehashing his old movies. 'Survival Of The Dead' is though is a real return to form for Romero and a surprising good film to boot. The storyline is simple and well paced, with good characters and a nice balance of drama and gore. Overall, this is a genuinely enjoyable horror film which shows Romero back at his best.

After the energy corporation ‘Lunar Industries’ finds a cost efficient way of mining the clean and abundant gas Helium-3 from moon rocks it solves the Earth's growing energy problems. As the lone employee the Lunar Industries mining station based on the far side of the moon, Sam Bell is on the last two week stretch of a three year contract and anxious to return to Earth and be reunited with his wife and daughter. His job entails overseeing the automated harvesting machines, which in an all in one process mine rocks from the moon’s surface, extract the gas, and compress into canisters which Sam periodically loads into a bay which rockets its precious cargo back to Earth. With a faulty communications system which only allows for the sending and receiving one way video messages Sam’s sole companion is ‘GERTY’ an artificial intelligent computer system which attends to his day to day needs. After a three year stretch of enforced isolation Sam has had time to reflect on his life, his troubled marriage and tackle his own personal demons, though the pressure of the solitude is now starting to affect him. Following an accident with a moon harvester Sam wakes up in the infirmary to find not everything appears as it seems and he soon begins to doubt his own sanity and true identity.

I really didn’t have many expectations for this film; I just rented it as it had a bit of media coverage for being directed by David Bowies son Duncan and had gained good reviews from critics, but I have to say this for me was one of the best films I’ve seen of 2009.

The design of the film is fantastic, paying huge homage to the look of films like ‘Alien’, ‘2001’, ‘Silent Running’ and TV shows like ‘Space 1999’, the 70’s retro modular white plastic set is visually stunning. The design of ‘GERTY’ is also very clever. Voiced by Kevin Spacey ‘GERTY’ is an intelligent computer system which can only exhibit basic emotions via a small screen which displays ‘MSN’ style emoticons. The subtle use of CGI reserved for exterior shots on the moon surface are high-quality and never over the top and the overall attention to detail towards the look and feel of the film really adds a huge amount it.

The film only has one ‘physically’ onscreen actor throughout the entire film and it takes a very special type of actor to be able to single-handedly carry a film for an entire 97 minutes, but Sam Rockwell does a phenomenal job. There are no showy over the top acting performances, just a gently paced portrayal of a lonely individual who has to face an unimaginable revelation that shatters the reality of his own existence. There are no aliens, no futuristic battles, no faster than light spaceships, just a lonely astronaut with only an impassive computer for company, and an engaging and intelligent storyline which will hook you in from start to finish. The actual twist in the story comes quite early on in the film and changes the film from what could have been a thrilling mystery into a quiet, thoughtful, moving and incredibly poignant tale.

Original, intelligent, well written and beautifully directed, this is easily one of the best films of 2009 and a future classic.

This is a well above average five part mini-series from HBO, the cast is top notch and the acting is nothing short of superb. The only thing that lets it down is a story line which peters out towards the last two episodes. Well worth renting though if you're a fan of mini-series.

This is another solid and well made movie from director Ben Affleck, with a nice mix of character based drama and gritty crime thriller. The Blu-Ray features two cuts of the film. The two hour theatrical release and a two and a half hour extended version. In my view the extended cut is the superior movie, the storyline between Doug and Claire is more developed and the extended version also includes additional scenes which flesh out the relationships between the main group of characters.

The main problem with Firefly is that it tries to appeal to the audience of two totally separate genres that just don’t mix. Joss Whedon tries to combine Wild West culture within a Sci-Fi environment and creates a universe set 500 years in the future that: has no aliens, planets which all look like the set of Bonanza complete with horses and cattle, people dressed as if they are in the 1900's, weapons that consist of revolvers and shotguns, and an evil Empire run by a Big Brother style government. Combine this with really tedious boring storylines that don’t really go anywhere or explain any past history, a cast that is devoid of any real characters, at times some appallingly bad acting; and it’s easy to see why FOX cancelled this show only halfway into its 15 episode run. If you’re a Joss Whedon fan then this is something you’ll probably want to rent. However, if your just a fan of Sci-Fi or Wild West shows and are looking for a new series to get into, then Firefly is isn’t something worth going out of your way to see.

Inception is about a small group of crooks who are involved in corporate espionage in which they tap into an individuals dreams and steal information, sometimes creating a dream within a dream. After getting caught out by a Japanese businessman they are trying to steal from, he offers them a job which has been thought to be impossible, the act of inception, planting an idea in someone's mind within a dream. To create this illusion they have to create dreams within dreams with each dream layer time passing faster than the dream layer before. While the story sounds complex it isn't that complicated and easy enough to follow. And while there seems to be loads of hype about the film, especially the explanation of the ending, it seemed fairly straight forward to me. The CGI was very good (especially the zero gravity scenes), but to echo another reviewers comment the sound level, at least on the Blu-Ray was really erratic and throughout the film I was constantly having to turn the sound up and down. All in all, this is a fairly decent action thriller, not as mind-bending, clever or profound as the hype makes it out to be, and feels every minute of its 2 hours 45 minutes running time. It's a solid rental title but not the must see movie I was expecting.

Based on the book of the same name writer John Ajvide Lindqvist’s film adaptation of his own novel is extremely clever, he removes a lot of the horror, gore and character history and strips the novel down to its core story which is the relationship between the characters of Oskar and Eli. The result is something completely unique, a blend of vampire horror, social drama and coming of age tale which revolves around a beautifully tender and awkward relationship between a socially isolated twelve year old boy and a 200 year old vampire forever trapped in the body of a twelve year old child. Director Tomas Alfredson paces the film perfectly, never overcomplicates the story and captures genuinely outstanding, subtle and vulnerable performances from the films two child lead actors. There are scenes of violence and gore although they are never lingered upon, it just part of the narrative which has to be shown in order to illustrate what Eli is, how Oskar deals with that knowledge and is left to you as the viewer to pass judgement on the events unfolding on screen. Overall, at a time when every film studio and TV broadcaster is jumping on the vampire bandwagon, ‘Let The Right One In’ brings something completely different to the genre and to judge it as just a vampire film does it a huge disservice, this is without doubt one of the best foreign language films of the past decade and one which both fans of the vampire genre and foreign cinema should not miss.

This is a fairly decent supernatural thriller which is very similar in tone to films like 'Omen', 'Orphan' and the 1972 film 'The Other'. It's an enjoyable film, not that scary and a solid rental. That said, if you've not seen the 2009 film 'Orphan' I would rent that first, it's a much better movie with a clever storyline and a far, far meaner little girl!

Bertram Pincus is a grouchy and bad-mannered middle aged English dentist living in Manhattan, New York. Bertram hates people; he lives in the apartment building next to his dental surgery to avoid mixing with commuters, stuffs patients mouths with cotton to stop them from speaking and avoids any unnecessary contact with work colleagues. When Bertram goes into hospital for a colonoscopy under general anaesthetic, he dies for seven minutes and when revived leaves hospital to find he can see and communicate with ghosts, all of which want his help to finish their personal business on Earth. The most forceful of the ghosts is Frank, a sharp talking businessman and adulterous husband of Gwen, an Egyptologist who lives in Bertram's apartment building. After constantly being harassed by ghosts and worn down with lack of sleep, Frank manages to make a deal with Bertram, if he can break up the engagement between his widow and her do-gooder lawyer fiancé, Frank will make all the other ghosts go away. Bertram then embarks on forging a relationship with Gwen in order to complete his side of the deal, the trouble is Bertram soon realises he’s falling in love with her. While it’s doubtful Ricky Gervais is ever going to win an Oscar for best actor, he does a fine job in this film and makes the character of Bertram fully formed, completely believable and throughout the film progressively more and more likeable. Greg Kinnear is a solid support and Tia Leoni is a clever choice as the attractive, intelligent though believable romantic interest for Bertram. The pacing and direction of the film is good with some beautiful shots of Manhattan and the dialogue is sharp, funny and well suited to Gervais’ dry wit and comedic timing. Overall the film is a funny and engaging mix of comedy, romance, drama and human redemption, and the final 20 minutes of the film are exceptionally sweet and tender. And while the story is a bit predictable, the interesting, likeable characters, charming nature and sheer quality makes this a must see.