Experimentation ... Evolution ... Extinction

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Part 3 of the RE film series.

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Team Sparta: Greece Police is the latest result of Hollywood's burning compulsion for translating comic books into big screen fodder. It's not so much a film as a slideshow of gorgeous desktop wallpapers. It is, however, huge amounts of fun. The eponymous comic, of which the film is (for the most part) a faithful scene-by-scene translation, is itself extremely loosely based on the battle of Thermopylae, in which a small Greek contingent faced off against the might of the Persian Empire in 480 BCE. The group comprised some 300 Spartans, plus a few thousand assorted Greek soldiers of lesser calibre, and estimates of the invading forces arrayed against them range from 100,000 to over five million. Despite these overwhelming odds, thanks to martial superiority and clever use of terrain the Greeks managed to hold up the entire Persian advance for a period of several days, and inflicted a grossly disproportionate number of casualties. While the magnitude of the Persian forces may...

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Anchorman: The Legend of Ron Burgundy Director: Adam McKay; written by: Adam McKay, Will Ferrell Will Ferrell stars in this spoofy look back at the newsteams of the 70s, before there was VCRs, before there was cable and before there was a female presence in the newsroom. Ron Burgundy (Ferrell) is a local news team anchor and self-proclaimed God amongst men. His macho man outlook and perfect sign-off - "stay classy, San Diego" - leads the Channel 4 newsteam to the top ratings in San Diego, much to the irritation of the other local newsteams. The immaculate hair, suits and rather dashing moustache he sports all make him a hit with the ladies (and some men) but he isn't prepared for what the dreaded word "diversity" could do to him and his newsteam. Station manager Ed Harkin (Fred Willard) decides to bring Veronica Corningstone (Christina Applegate) onboard to appease the affiliates and things go along fine since Veronica is only given small-interest stories...

Pompous Western

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Seraphim Falls is ultimately a film about nothing. It sets itself up as a revenge western, with Liam Neeson gunning for Pierce Brosnan in the wilds of the post civil war American west. Revenge in the Wild West is a staple since the silents to Unforgiven and beyond. It‘s always been that way apart from when the movies are about Red Indians, but usually it‘s about revenge AND Indians. Sometimes it was Indian getting revenge on cowboys. Fuck it, hey were all about revenge. Cowboys need an excuse to shoot each other I suppose. So far so good except the film never goes anywhere and never delivers anything along the concept of entertainment, like For A Few Dollars More or as like last year’s The Proposition any notion of making you think. After a fairly tight first half hour or so the film dissolves into a series of episodic moments, including losing horses and meeting Quakers, much like how the longer Spaghettis were drawn out but Seraphim Falls is no Italian epic, it’s...

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Two buddies, John Beckwith (Owen Wilson) and Jeremy Klein (Vince Vaughn), gatecrash weddings to pick up women for one night stands. It's all going well till John makes the mistake of falling for Claire Cleary (Rachel McAdams). Meanwhile Jeremy’s being firing into Claire’s sister Gloria (Isla Fisher). Wedding Crashers gets off to a slow start, introducing the two main characters and showing them crashing a few weddings, then begins to drag even further as it jumps back and forth, increasingly interspersed with shots of weddings. By this point I was worried I'd picked a clanger. Then we get to the main event—the wedding of the season—Secretary Cleary (Christopher Walken)’s daughter's marriage. This is where the film really kicks in. Isla Fisher’s character steals the show from this moment on and you'll be laughing from then till more or less the end of the film. Walken plays a wonderfully menacing father figure but more could have been made of Jane Seymour’s role as his frisky...

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There’s an inherent paradox whenever someone tells you about a “classic” film, album, or something else, in that to be considered a classic it has to appeal to a wide range of people and hold that appeal over a great length of time. That, to me, suggests that a lot of what is actually considered “classic” should actually be lowest-common-denominator crowd-pleasing no-brainer slices of entertainment. That classic film and albums generally do not fall into this category is generally pleasing and indeed welcome. Classic films do seem to be remembered not for box office returns but for fantastic performances, well constructed set pieces and memorable scenes. It was the latter in mind that I purchased “Apocolypse Now: Redux”. Reasoning that as it was considered a “classic”, there was no possible way I could be disappointed. It was practically a no-brainer: strong literary heritage (being as it is essentially a version of "heart of darkness"), weighty subject matter (the Vietnam...

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Antiques buyer Francois makes a bet that he can find a best friend within ten days, and enlists the help of taxi driver Bruno to do so.

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Days of Glory (or Indigènes to the rest of the world) covers the tale of a handful of North African volunteers fighting among the Free French Army during the latter parts of World War II. Built around the strong performances of Jamel Debbouze (Amelie), Samy Naceri, Roschdy Zem and Sami Bouajila as the volunteers, the plot covers the traditional ground of raw recruits bonding together and surviving to go on and prove themselves as brave and valuable soldiers. The film has received much praise for the addition of a strong political message about the racism shown towards the central characters, but unfortunately I felt the horrific prejudice and inequality suffered by the Arabic and African troops was too often dealt with in an offhand manner, encouraging its dismissal by the audience as of little consequence and frequently appearing irrelevant. This, however, doesn't detract from it being a great war film: the battlefield scenes are handled very capably, capturing the personal...

Poison in his veins, vengeance in his heart

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It's not going to blow your mind, but if you want 87 minutes of fast-paced action and Statham sneering at people you won't be disappointed.

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Heart stopping.