John Carter (2012)

I missed this in the cinema and while I thought I might catch it one day, I couldn't not read Film Crit Hulk's take on its script. I didn't remember every detail from that article (in fact I would say it doesn't really spoil much) but the concept of him having a slowly revealed tragic backstory certainly stuck with me and I wondered if that knowledge might help overcome some of the film's perceived problems. I can't say that was the case though and re-reading that article, I wondered if Hulk was talking about the same film. With his opening criticism being that the script tries to answer every question the audience could have, I suddenly felt rather dumb for spending most of the film confused.

Right from the opening scene establishing the warring factions on Mars (or Barsoon as the natives call it), I was easily wrongfooted. In time the bad guys and good guys are almost comically identified as red vs. blue but this first confrontation is very confusing. I don't think I was being too presumptuous in assuming that a ship ambushed by superior numbers likely belonged to the 'good guys' but it doesn't make any great attempts to convince you otherwise - apparently the two factions saw no problems with sharing almost identical ship designs. This conflict is abruptly halted by a god like being who grants Dominic West's red leader (sorry, I mean the Jeddak of Zodanga) near unlimited power for some vague reason - I guess leaving you to assume this God is the real villain by virtue of being played by Mark Strong.

Anyway, as Hulk mentions, none of this matters for the first 50 minutes or so. You're then introduced to John Carter twice, with a weird mix of a few scenes I found funny, intermingled with his brief cryptic flashbacks. When we finally make it to Mars (which happens instantly and seemingly by accident), I gathered that he was able to jump so far due to the difference in gravity but in no way did these scenes look like someone coping with low gravity. In fact it looked exactly like someone being pulled up by wires at random intervals while they scrabbled around to prevent themselves tipping forward. Combined with some unconvincing blending between CGI and real life I was worried about how much more of it I could take.

Thankfully things gradually started to improve and for a while you can just follow along with John Carter's experience, learning what's going on just as he is. There are some funny scenes, some good action scenes and there's even some semblance of a general goal if you can follow all of the Martian terms. I still felt like it didn't need to be this cryptic though, like with the whole Red Vs. Blue war and whether the Reds were truly evil - there's a place for a story which looks into the grey areas but this just didn't seem like the place for it. Since it seemed to be aiming for a simple action adventure it should have avoided overcomplicating things and had a clear goal from the start.

It's eventually made clear that the God-like Therns are the real villains but by this point it just felt too late for me. If this had been clear from the outset I might have felt that it was heading somewhere, I could imagine a slightly different opening narration that would touch on the Therns attempting to control the destiny of planets and feed off their followers. You've then got the idea that they're the overall villains and everyone else is just a pawn, before diving into John Carter's tragic backstory and how he ends up on Mars.

Once things did start to become clear, the film seemed to accelerate towards the end very quickly. I was particularly surprised by how short the gladiatorial fight with the white apes was, given that this seemed to be one of the most iconic parts of the movie. After so many whispered references to them throughout the film, it was pretty anticlimactic but also surprisingly violent - if it weren't for the fact that the Martians have blue blood. The same could be said of the final battle too, with missing limbs and crushed skulls that would otherwise be quite horrific.

Without spoiling too much, there is a slight twist at the end that is perhaps the only time that the more mysterious nature of the film works. In the end I think you can lay most of its problems with the script, though I haven't even mentioned the fact that it's two main characters are pretty unexciting - maybe that's why I was initially drawn more to the 'evil' characters, that seemed to have a little more to their characters in comparison.

What I did take from it though was that I might just have a little faith in Disney taking on the Star Wars franchise. While the plot was a bit all over the place, the actual design, some characters and the action was quite fun and more enjoyable than the prequel trilogy at the very least. It's definitely not the worst film I've ever seen, strangely it also felt like it might have been more enjoyable in a different medium, with a few scenes making me imagine a version from the minds of Studio Ghibli for example. In fact a cartoon adaptation might well have been a good way of getting over the strange clash between human and alien characters, it's a shame that it's very unlikely we'll see anything based on these books again.

Wreck it Ralph (2012)

In recent years I've sometimes forgotten how long it used to take for films to come out in the UK after the US. Many of last year's blockbusters even had their premières in Europe, with others being released only days or weeks apart. So in the lead up to Wreck it Ralph's release, I never really considered that I'd have to wait so long to see it. I'd watched its trailers, got excited about it, saw it released to mixed reviews but only then discovered its UK release date and felt my enthusiasm for it gradually drain away over the following months. Even the bonus of its groundbreaking preview short 'Paperman' was somewhat neutered by its release on YouTube. And to top it off, this post has been hugely delayed due to the arrival of my first child.

So it came as quite a surprise that when I did finally get to see it, I loved every minute of it. I knew of nearly every criticism that had been directed at it but that sense of expecting the worst meant that none of it really bothered me. Formulaic plot with a rift developing between the characters before making up at the end? - that may be the case but I didn't see the reason for this coming and in the end a story needs some kind of conflict. Vanellope von Schweetz was too annoying? - it hardly felt like she was in it long enough to really start to grate and you'd have to be fairly cold hearted to not feel something for her situation by the end. Sags in the middle and spends too long in one game? - None of it really dragged and the 'Sugar Rush' world was always interesting even if it wasn't really like a game (okay, I just wanted to chew the ground).

Any fear I had that this might just be cramming in game characters for the sake of it evaporated pretty quickly, as you could tell it was made by people intimately familiar with games. There's just so much to see in the background that you could never catch first time, which will make it a mandatory Blu-Ray purchase. I've heard that they started the project assuming that they had free reign to use any characters that they liked and that they would sort out permission later, which you can definitely see from how much fun they had with it. In fact the only character notable by their absence was Nintendo's moustachioed plumber - though he does get a shout out at least.

While Litwak's Arcade probably couldn't be found in the real world any more, it looked totally convincing and was probably created with the same yearning I have to see arcades popular again. Although having to pump 8 quarters into the modern shooter 'Hero's Duty' was a familiar trend from real arcades that I'd like to see the back of. I liked the fact that your main human focus in the real world was a little girl who would happily play anything, not concerned with whether the game was aimed at her. I also had to chuckle at the offensive teenage boys monopolising the day-glo pink kids racing game and ignoring the rules of 'I Got Next'.

Most of the story takes place late at night when the arcade is closed, with the characters free to travel between different arcade machines. Ryu and Ken leaving for a root beer at Tappers was probably one of my first laugh out loud moments and it's finally revealed where the bad guys go for their group therapy session. For rather obvious reasons, leaving your game while the arcade is open is a strict no-no and Ralph threatens the future of his machine in his quest for a medal in 'Hero's Duty'. Despite the name, I wouldn't say this game is really a reference to the Call of Duty series but is more of a mix of Gears of War and any modern lightgun game you can think of.

Very little time is spent in this game and while I could have stood to see more, there's not really much to it - true of almost any rail shooter you can think of. Jane Lynch's badass commander does stick around for the rest of the film though and her teaming up with Fix it Felix was another unexpected bit of fun. Her tragic back-story was hilariously clichéd but it did feel exactly like something you'd see in a game - possibly a direct reference to the Gears of War series but I haven't played past the first one to be sure.

As I said earlier, 'Sugar Rush' didn't really ruin the flow for me but I can kind of see why many have picked up on it. You do spend a lot of time here and it kind of stretches the concept of being part of a video game to breaking point. I still thought there were some very imaginative uses of sweets and candy, plus I'm a sucker for bad puns and there were quite a few here that made me chuckle. When you finally see the game in action I couldn't help but be impressed by how right they've got the feel of a karting game. I also liked their spaghetti-like representation of a game's code, which was accessed via a method all gamers should be familiar with.

I can't decide if someone not familiar with video games would get the same level of enjoyment out of it as I did. There's certainly gamers that didn't enjoy it as much as me too, which I can sort of understand if you expected it to feel more like being part of a game or have more involvement from existing characters. I think that the way it has turned out is pretty well balanced though, with plenty to interest gamers but little prior knowledge required that would alienate other viewers and an interesting story with a few surprises at its heart. I'm just happy to be in that middle ground where almost everything worked - perhaps I'm just easily amused but it just left me feeling that it was a film made just for me, right up until the gorgeous pixelated end credits.

Have action movies seen their day in the Cinema?

One of last year's saddest movie stories was how much of a flop Dredd 3D was at the box office. I wasn't personally its biggest fan but I could appreciate what they were doing and would have liked to see it developed more in a sequel. But making nowhere near its meager $50m budget pretty much sealed its fate as a stand alone film. There seems to be a similar feeling about The Last Stand this year, only recently released in the UK but already consigned to its flop status in the US, with Stallone's Bullet to the Head not looking particularly healthy either.

However, once Dredd was released on DVD and Blu-Ray it has done incredibly well, despite criticism of the 2D Blu-Ray's picture quality. It was top of the Amazon charts for a fair while and has become the biggest seller so far this year. Clearly there were people out there who want to watch it and I've heard from many others who would have picked up a copy straight after seeing it in the cinema if it was available. Others have taken a chance on it via LoveFilm and the like, pleasantly surprised after not being aware that it was unconnected to the 90's Stallone version.

The Last Stand was covered in the recent episode of Half in the Bag and while I was slightly surprised by Mike and Jay's negative reaction compared to some other critics, they also made some good points. In particular Jay's disappointment at watching it in the cinema as opposed to at home with a bunch of buddies, who could laugh and poke fun at it more freely. There are still occasions where being in a theatre full of strangers cheering or laughing at the same thing can be a great experience but that more mocking tone of criticism is something best left among friends as you never know who might be offended by it. It would also be especially awkward in a near empty cinema that I would expect for these films.

I look back at the golden age of action movies in the 80's and question if the people watching in cinemas then would still go out to see films now. Looking at people of my generation, we were likely never part of the cinema audience anyway, as I'm sure many teenagers discovered classics like Commando on VHS, with friends whose parents would look the other way. If you're grown up thinking of action films as a great group experience, it becomes more difficult to organise a group trip to the cinema as friends get older and start their own families. The Expendables films have somehow managed to tap into this nostalgia factor and convince enough people to put up with exorbitant prices and stale popcorn to get that 'cinema experience'.

So would most action films be better out of the cinema - or at least with DVD and digital distribution options available simultaneously? It's not just action movies that people want to have available at home immediately but it does seem like a particularly good fit in this case. Sadly there are still many business hurdles to work out for this to come to pass and I imagine film producers would see it as lost revenue to only make one DVD sale compared to a ticket for each viewer. This might be true in some cases but I'm sure there are plenty of examples of watching with friends and word of mouth leading to people buying their own copies.

This is all hard to prove though and there could still be future films that do incredibly well in the cinema. The Last Stand and Bullet to the Head may have actually deserved to fail from a quality perspective, though Dredd still feels like it didn't deserve its reception at all. All I can say for sure is that I would personally much rather be able to watch films at home more easily and I wish there was less of a stigma to a title going 'straight to video' - whatever the video format may be.

The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey (2012)

If I learnt anything from my abandoned posts last year, it was that films I didn't feel strongly about were the ones that tended to get left on the shelf. I could already see this film fitting into the same sort of category and I knew if I didn't do something with it soon, it would probably end up in next years wrap up post.

I guess I'm finding it difficult to bring anything to the table that hasn't been said already. I didn't see the HFR version so I can't comment on that (even though as a gamer and someone generally interested in tech, I was quite intrigued to see it for myself). I've also not read the book for a long time, so I don't really have any insights on how well it's been translated or if it justifies a trilogy. And Devin Faraci already summed up my feelings on it pretty well - The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey is perfectly okay, which isn't exactly a great starting point.

With that said, while the film gets a lot of criticism for how long it takes to get started, I did enjoy the very first scenes giving a history of the Dwarven stronghold under the Lonely Mountain. It was a good idea to give you an idea of what the Dwarves were fighting for from the beginning as opposed to just seeing everything from Bilbo's point of view as he's dragged along. I've also been a fan of the Dwarven architecture and design throughout the Lord of the Rings series, so it was nice to finally see some of it in all of its geometric glory while it was still in its prime as opposed to mere glimpses of long abandoned structures like the mines of Moria.

Sadly straight after this is where the film really puts on the brakes and spends an unnecessarily long time getting up to speed again. I found myself thinking "Yeah, I get it, this scene is directly before the start of Fellowship of the Ring, get on with it". I'd much rather we'd got to Martin Freeman's Bilbo quicker, even if the final transition between the two was nice. But once it got this out of the way there is something incredibly comforting about settling back into the world of Middle Earth - something that I probably wouldn't have felt if I had to wear uncomfortable 3D glasses for 3 hours.

Despite most of it feeling fairly familiar, the company of dwarves helped to give the film a slightly different character from the Lord of the Rings series. It's nigh on impossible to remember all of their names but there was fun to be had as they ate Bilbo out of house and home, with a slightly out of place musical number rounding it off. I also liked how "Far Over the Misty Mountains Cold" became the main theme of the film, although neither the vocal or orchestral version had quite as much impact as the blend of both that was used in the trailer.

I'm finding it hard to place the films events in order and a lot of them didn't really have any impact on me. I enjoyed Sylvester McCoy's madcap Radaghast, though he was involved in some of the worst looking CGI in the film as he attempted to provide a diversion that the dwarves completely squandered. The fighting mountain giants was something else that left me cold, especially given how much it had been built up in some reviews as being inspired by Shadow of the Colossus. The scenes with Gollum I couldn't really complain about, they looked great and were pretty much spot on from what I remember of the book.

Sadly I found that it was starting to drag soon after this, as I had no idea where it was going to end and so found myself wishing that it would. I think I remember the 'out of the frying pan into the fire' nature of the book after Gollum and the Goblins and obviously the separated factions needed to join up again but I really needed a break by this point. Perhaps it needed a pre-defined goal for this individual film so that it didn't feel like it had no idea when it was going but then in the Fellowship of the Ring I didn't really know where it would end either. The end of Fellowship at least felt like the distinct end of an act, whereas in this I would say that getting the ring and escaping the Goblins felt like a natural end, so to continue on from there made it drag a little.

The whole trilogy might come together as something that will be an event to sit down and watch at home, with the ability to take breaks and still see it all in close proximity. But right now, without the rest of the films it was very clearly only part of a story and left you feeling that it had taken so long to get nowhere in particular. I think people will forever wonder what Guilermo del Toro would have come up with and could he have created a tight one film adaptation.

A 2012 Wrap up

My friend Stu recently posted a very honest look at his abandoned game projects of 2012. For one reason or another, I seem to have ended up with a lot of unfinished draft posts over this year - not exactly the same thing but I thought it would be interesting to take a look at what I haven't published and look at why I didn't feel like they made the cut. Hopefully it will also allow me to feel like I've aired my thoughts on these subjects, so that I can let go of the half finished versions cluttering up my post history. So without further ado...

This Means War

I saw this film quite early in the year and I think at the time, I was perhaps ready to give it an easy ride. It made me chuckle a couple of times and I wasn't quite sure how to criticise a comedy that's at least done its job once. Looking back on it after seeing more comedies this year, it pales into non-existence when you can count the funny moments on one hand.

In the end I think I didn't publish this because the film felt so slight overall. It didn't feel like something I could totally tear apart (though I did think they were lazy with Tom Hardy's character in the end) and there wasn't a huge amount to recommend about it either (Tom Hardy's paintball scenes were a clear highlight and the main part that made my wife and I laugh). A middle of the road film lead to a middle of the road write up and I guess I just didn't see the point of sharing it.

21 Jump Street

This was a film I really enjoyed at the time and was leagues ahead of This Means War in the laugh stakes alone. I kind of wasn't expecting to like it, situations where characters spend most of their time narrowly avoiding being found out more often than not just make me cringe. The way the film mocks the premise of adults pretending to be high school students perhaps helped to make it more palatable (and in a way is also making fun of so many actors playing characters much younger than themselves *cough* Amazing Spider-man *cough*).

I guess I got a bit hung up on what I didn't like when writing about it though, which seemed like very minor niggles. Firstly that the film couldn't seem to decide if it was trying to mock hollywood cliches and show that they're just not true in the real world or to completely live up to them. It spends a lot of time trying to set up the idea that it is set in reality and that ludicrous action scenes don't really happen and then forgets about it as the film goes on. You could say 'that's the joke' but it just felt a little lazy to throw away the real world consequences of these crazy actions when the repercussions could have been funny too.

It also seemed to have mixed messages about drug use - the whole premise of the film is that there are negative consequences to them but after setting things in motion they are never shown in a bad light again. The hilarious but ultimately tragic youtube video that introduces you to the effects of this new synthetic drug was constantly revisited for comedic effect, which felt slightly... disrespectful, even though it wasn't real. The film also seemed like it was building towards someone else suffering similar consequences from taking the drug but the situation never materialised. I couldn't decide if it was trying to make some kind of point about the drugs themselves not being intrinsically bad but that their illegality has more of a negative impact due to the people involved in their trade. I imagine I'm over thinking things there though and it was just done for what was funny.

Again, these all seem like minor issues and there was a lot to like in the film, including a surprising performance from Channing Tatum. But I just felt like these minor things detracted from the film as a whole, when it could have been more focussed and turned it into a really memorable film. Just perhaps not worth a whole blog post to whine about them.

Bridesmaids

I didn't actually start to write anything about this but it's been on my mind to mention it in relation to this years comedies. Obviously it's not from this year but it's certainly the funniest film I've seen all year. On top of that I just couldn't really find fault with it - working well as a cohesive whole and not overstaying its welcome. I have come across a few people who don't care for it but it seems to be an almost universally liked film and I feel slightly disappointed that I can't bring to mind much more detail to support why I thought it was so good.

A review of games reviews in the 90's

A trip home to pick up any remaining childhood belongings lead to me finding a large stack of old gaming magazines, mostly Sega Power and PC Zone. After reading though a few, I had the idea of writing about them in the same style - firstly attempting to create a mandatory 'hilarious' intro. I thought that I was trying too hard and that it wasn't really funny, though in a sense that may have been the perfect tribute.

I don't know that I had any great insights on what they included in reviews back then, they often seemed very vague and didn't really get across what made games fun. I also noted that 'those programmers' would always be the ones to be criticised for failings or praised for good features. This was probably not far from the truth back then but it did stand out in statements like "that animation must have taken some clever programming".

I was also surprised by how biased some of it seemed, with the hobbled Mega Drive version of Street Fighter 2 still scoring 94% and the future of 'full motion video' gaining Night Trap 84%. It's funny to look back on those 'photorealistic' games that had everyone so excited, when more average scoring games late in the system's history are the nuggets we'd remember today and almost anything on the Mega CD now looks like garbage. I was also going to question how much games journalism has changed in terms of heavily biased scores, with the events of last year proving 'not much at all'.

One Album Wonders

This was an idea for a regular feature so to speak, where I could go back and listen to records by bands who only ever made one album - or who only had one that was good at least. I suppose it's something I could still do, though I really don't get around to listening to music in depth anymore. You could also perhaps say that Jon Croshaw kind of stole my thunder, with his website Keep or Cull covering quite a similar idea with less of a narrow focus.

It was prompted by wanting to listen to One Love by Delakota again but when I finally got around to it, I found it a much less impressive record than I remembered. My youthful inexperience of Hip-Hop had perhaps left me with fonder memories than it deserved, with most of the album resembling a jam session over chunky beats. However 'The Rock', which was the song that brought them to my attention in the first place, still seemed as good as it ever was. I also discovered that their drummer now plays with the live incarnation of Gorillaz, which seemed kind of appropriate.

Expendables 2

Looking back I wrote more than I thought on this. I'm not sure if I didn't think what I was writing was good, if I felt like I'd missed the right moment to post about it or again if I just didn't care enough about it to finish it off.

I did feel a little out of step with critics though, with most suggesting that this was moving in the right direction compared to the first film. There's not much in it but personally I liked the first film just a little more - despite its rather slow and serious feel, when something did happen it seemed to stand out more. I think there was a better sense of cause and effect, with most of its little plotlines leading to a satisfying conclusion, whereas the sequel just felt like a bunch of stuff that happened.

Okay, so I suppose the death of Chris Hemsworth's character was supposed to be the main motivating factor in everything that followed but it was so blatantly telegraphed he might as well have had "Shoot Me" stuck on his back. This was kind of like the first film's Oscar reaching, tear jerking performance from Mickey Rourke, where it was trying to build up this big emotional involvement that it didn't really need. I can understand they wanted to show that Jean-Claude Van Damme was a right evil bastard but they should have had the balls to kill off someone in the main team who would have been unexpected (again, they wussed out on killing off Dolph Lundgren's character in the first one).

I'll always look back to Commando as the perfect 80's action film, how it manages to have constant action and quips throughout but still build up to an even more explosive ending. Expendables got the ending right and the sequel had more action throughout but it was definitely flagging by the end. Hearing that there wasn't originally going to be a final fight between Van Damme and Stallone seemed ridiculous, even Van Damme himself realised that getting blown up on an escaping helicopter wouldn't be a satisfying conclusion. As it stands, their fight wasn't bad but it certainly felt limited by what they could both do physically and didn't feel like Stallone got the upper hand fairly.

All of this lead to me being a bit disappointed by Van Damme's role, having had it built up to near legendary status beforehand. There's no doubt he was the best thing about the movie but he just wasn't in it enough, seeming to disappear for huge chunk of the movie. Maybe I'd appreciate his role more on a second viewing but I'm not exactly champing at the bit to see it again, nor am I holding my breath for Expendables 3. If I'm ever craving a classic action film then there's already plenty in my library.

Sinbad

This was a TV show that showed some initial promise but then went downhill really quickly. It's difficult to explain why I stuck with it to the end, I'm not sure if it was to see if it could redeem itself or if my wife and I were stuck in a chicken kind of situation, with neither of us wanting to speak up in case the other was committed to seeing it through.

The first warning signs came in an episode that tried to cram in backstory for every crew member at once. It made for a very confusing and unfocused story when a simpler concept was just screaming to be used - maybe it just needed to bump up the running time. There were a lot more episodes after this that had no clear purpose.

My biggest issue with it was that it did everything it needed to do, saw Sinbad go through a character arc of redemption and come to a dramatic series finale... but then just carried on going. The rest of the episodes felt pointless and lead to Sinbad going back on what he'd learned as the series continued. The actual end of the series should have been somewhere in the middle, as he should have come to terms with the death of his brother before he could even consider forgiving the man who killed him and in turn taking responsibility for the wrong he'd done.

Of course I don't think he had really done any wrong in the first place, with the mysterious Taryn (played by Orla Brady) hinted to be responsible for everything. There were plenty of occasions where her acting seemed to be totally abysmal but her bizarre shifts in character probably didn't help matters. By the end of the series she'd stacked up a fairly impressive body count but you were still expected to feel for her because she'd done it all in the name of returning her daughter from the land of the dead. Other characters would have been well within their rights to kill her earlier on in the series and it would have saved them an awful lot of trouble later on.

I feel bad to pick her out specifically though as in general none of the regular cast were anything to write home about, with their wildly varying accents not given a second thought. Even Timothy Spall guest starring as Death himself seemed to get dragged down into their milieu of bad acting. I'm not sure if it will get a second series but I certainly won't be watching.

Final Thoughts

At least a few of these posts I never quite finished because I felt like I'd waited too long after the event, which I've already decided I'm going to try and cut out from now on. Others I perhaps thought didn't quite warrant a full blog post and were only for my own satisfaction, so from now on I think those kind of things will either be scribbled in a notebook or on 750words.com. That way if I do think they're worth sharing I can retrieve them but otherwise they're effectively thrown into the Abyss. Hopefully some of that might have been of interest to someone and at least there probably won't be another one next year...

The future of video game movies

I recently read an article by Devin Faraci on BadassDigest.com, where he suggested that we could be on the cusp of finally seeing a good film based on a video game. To my mind he seemed overly optimistic and I have to say I'm not sure the two examples given there will lead to great movies. Splinter Cell especially, the mere announcement of Tom Hardy as Sam Fisher didn't particularly inspire me. Okay so the games have the potential to make either a good action blockbuster or a taut thriller but one good actor doesn't really make a film. Certainly when I heard that the Prince of Persia movie was going to feature Jake Gylenhall and Ben Kingsley I thought they were good choices but it was still fairly disappointing.

It got me thinking about what has been the best adaptation so far but looking at a list of films based on video games, I think I'd forgotten how universally terrible they've been. Even though it scores the best in terms of Rotten Tomatoes ratings, I wouldn't really count 'Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within' among the rest as it's essentially an original story. You're then left in the rather embarrassing position of having Resident Evil and Dead or Alive joint third after the Prince of Persia film. I'd probably be among the first to mock Paul W. S. Anderson's efforts but sadly on a personal level, I actually kind of enjoyed his take on Mortal Kombat back in the day - as a straight adaptation of a game it's probably the most accurate. Given that I wouldn't really rate anything on that list very highly, it feels like the old comic book movies that Devin describes have nothing on games to be honest, where even before breakout hits like X-Men and Spiderman, there were at least reasonably rated adaptations of its leading franchises in Superman and Batman.

So I would say we're really waiting for our first passable game adaptation, rather than being in a situation where plenty of great films are suddenly going to appear. I think an Assassin's Creed film has potential, though but it will take something special to make a truly memorable film. My first thought is that with Michael Fassbender on board, he should play both Altair and Desmond (and Ezio if he comes into it). I really liked how the first few games basically used the same model with a few tweaks for each ancestral character, relying on the voice acting to differentiate them. It made you wonder whether what you saw was totally historically accurate or if it was coloured by the person using it, even if the real reason for doing this was probably just to cut modelling time. I was a little disappointed that the developers seemed to bottle it and start making major changes to the character models in Revelations, at the same time severing this perceived link to the past.

Having the same actor play multiple roles would be a nice nod to its video game roots (and their frequent re-using of assets), while at the same time being a challenge that most actors would relish. It's something that has also been done recently in the Wachowski's take on Cloud Atlas (perhaps stealing some thunder from this idea). I think that there would need to be a bit more depth to the characters of Altair and Desmond though, to either distinguish them or to draw parallels between them more clearly. I've always thought that the games never really clicked with me until Ezio was introduced, giving someone whose journey you actually want to follow.

As mentioned in Devin's article, when translating from game to movie it's important to remember the different strengths that each medium has and I think another way of making the distinction between the two media would be to change how the Animus system works. Since films are missing the aspect of interaction it could focus more on the visual aspects and have the past memories be like a film within a film. Make it more clear that when in the Animus the subject has to be an actor and put in a convincing performance, not just be a passive observer of the action. That would really work well with the concept of real life and virtual reality becoming blurred as you spend more time in the system (a little like Avatar perhaps).

Perhaps I'm getting ahead of myself in thinking of things to make it a truly great film but I think it's important to aim high, rather than end up with just another passable attempt. Overall I think that Assassin's Creed shows promise because it has a lot of good ideas that could be adapted but that I'm not overly precious about the story, so a film could tread its own path - in fact if the film ended up slavishly following the plot of the games it's probably guaranteed to put me off. The same is probably true of other games that I wouldn't mind seeing as films - Halo is one example where I thought that the combination of the religious zealotry of its alien antagonists, its 'rampant' AI characters and the hidden purpose of the halo device could make for something interesting without directly adapting one of the games. The same could possibly be said for the Mass Effect universe but I think with that series so centred around player choice, there's less of a desire to see one definitive story put on film - and if they went with a male Shepherd it would be wrong!

I suppose the question is how many people really want to see movies based on games. I know that when I was younger there was certainly a feeling that it would see the medium justified but I think I've moved past that and can appreciate their differences. There was also the desire to see some games fully realised in a way that primitive 16bit graphics could never achieve but that's much less of an issue now. When games can look almost as good as a CGI movie, would it be improved in any way by appearing on film with human actors? But if these films are perhaps no longer being made specifically to cater to the demands of gamers, maybe it bodes well for the creation of something worthwhile on their own.

Looper (2012)

This was one of those films where I was keen to see it as soon as possible, scared that I might end up having bits of it spoiled otherwise. After seeing it I'm not sure it's really the kind of film where knowing the final twist or resolution would spoil the whole thing, though I will try to keep my thoughts here as spoiler free as possible. I'd say it's a great all round movie and that the journey through the film seems just as important as the end.

I think I did benefit from knowing very little about it going in though, which kind of felt like the reverse of Dredd, where it's trailer was so on the nose about what was in the film. Here the trailer didn't really give much away other than its basic premise and left me with the impression that it would be set in a time not that different to ours. Instead, it's near future setting portraying a strange crumbling society with a mixture of modern and futuristic elements made it immediately engaging.

Right from the start I was impressed by Joseph Gordon-Levitt's efforts at channelling Bruce Willis, in the rather measured way that he spoke and acted. Surprisingly I barely noticed the additional prosthetics and make up he had, which have been a stumbling block for others. Even knowing what Willis looked like in his youth, JGL's look still felt like a valid version of him so to speak. Willis too was on better form than I've seen in a long time, even if he gets a lot less screen time than I expected.

Another surprise to me was the film's sense of humour, when I was perhaps expecting something darker and more serious in tone. From the perfectly placed slapstick of someone being hit by an opening door to its almost fourth wall breaking jokey tone when dismissing the need to explain things. I initially thought that its method of sending a message to your future self was amusing but this gradually became quite horrific once you realised how far this was going to go.

This also set out the films own rules for time travel, with changes affecting your instantaneous situation and not taking into account how that would have affected your life up to that point. I think I've had enough arguments about the practicalities of time travel in my life, so while I might have quickly pondered if it's approach was possible, generally I was just happy they picked a method and stuck with it. The film kind of reinforces this point when JGL and Willis finally sit down for coffee, with his older self stating that debating the principles of time travel isn't really important.

I also loved how scenes which were revisited multiple times usually had a slight twist the second time around. Willis' escape from his former self, so familiar now from the trailers, had a great simplicity to it when shown as one take in real time. This also helped to keep things moving when repeated sections in time travel based films can sometimes make things drag.

Despite having some humour, the film does go to darker places as well, especially when it comes to the idea of killing off people who could become 'The Rainmaker' - the film's antagonist from Willis' point of view. Here you could say that there were some similarities to The Terminator but with the important distinction of our time traveller not being an unfeeling robot. The film makes it clear that Willis' actions have an impact on him and I wasn't sure if he is supposed to experience a change in his memories after killing someone, hinting that he is changing his life for the better and forcing him onwards in the attempt to achieve his goal.

When it came to the end, it may have seemed slightly predictable but I felt it was a strong finish and you could tell what the film was trying to say. While Willis initially accuses JGL of being selfish, by the end you can tell that Willis has become the more selfish of the two, blindly trying to restore his life with no care for the consequences. While his younger self could perhaps have resolved the situation differently (I'm trying to stop calling things that a character could have done plotholes), the important thing was that he was now prepared to make sacrifices for others, something Willis learnt much later in life. You could perhaps look at both of them as representing the two sides of the nature versus nurture argument, asking whether the Rainmaker was destined to exist or if his path could be changed.

I'm always unsure of whether to read other reviews before writing my own, in case they influence my point of view too much. For the most part I've avoided anything about this and I'm now quite looking forward to delving into others impressions to see what I didn't pick up on. Even things like its focus on mother and father figures wasn't something immediately obvious to me, which I think shows that it will have a lot of value in repeated viewings. But like Inception, it feels to me that understanding these extra themes isn't mandatory or vital, with your first viewing still giving you enough to appreciate it as a whole and understand its basic premise.

Dredd (2012)

This review was also posted on ArtFist.org

When I found this film a little disappointing, I felt very alone in my opinion - especially given how much I wanted to love it beforehand. All around me critics and fans were praising it almost universally, with only a few negative knee-jerk reaction reviews that didn't feel like they matched my opinion either. In writing a review of it, I felt like I owed it to the film to really think about why it didn't work for me and to be clear that I didn't think it was a bad film either.

My first thought was to look at the impact of its initial trailer, which created a fantastic atmosphere, perfectly mixing in Skream's remix of Bulletproof. It also encapsulated the whole plot pretty well and perhaps left you with the feeling that there would be few surprises. I'd also watched pretty much every preview clip available, including some of the gory slo-mo scenes, which may have ended up having less impact. One thing that actually seemed to be missing in the cinema was how the blood effects were so over the top that they managed to extend right out of the film frame (highlighted in this preview clip). The final film is also perhaps different in tone than the trailer suggests, with some of the rather clichéd exchanges highlighted in the trailer coming off much better in the final cut. There was also one reasonably big surprise remaining, which I was glad hadn't been spoiled by anything.

Another consideration is just how much I was anticipating the film. For a long time it held a 100% fresh rating on Rotten Tomatoes, only toppled from this position when the Daily Mail decided to wade into the argument. All this lead me to expect something truly spectacular, when its modest budget should perhaps have suggested that it would be more grounded. That's not to say that its low budget affects its execution much, more perhaps the scope of it seeming quite limited. It was also very slow and methodical in places, being less about non-stop action and imaginative set pieces and more showing the Judges taking the best tactical approach possible to deal with threats. I think that this was a totally valid choice and highlights how rigidly they would have been trained but I could certainly see a lot of people drawn in by its rave reviews being disappointed by this approach.

I have to mention the 3D as well and I wasn't impressed that I had no choice but to see it in this format. While some of the long shots gave a great sense of scale and the slow motion looked amazing, the rest seemed like a mess to me. I doubt it was the film at fault but there was lots of ghosting, parts that looked the wrong depth, reflections on my lenses and of course the discomfort of the cheap plastic glasses gradually pressing into my nose. For this film in particular I would have loved for it to have been able to use 3D only in those big scenes where it worked, with the more fast paced scenes being 2D. I've heard of a few people refusing to watch it in the cinema at all though, which seems a bit extreme and I'm glad I put up with the mild discomfort to show my support for it.

I'll be honest and say that my own experience of the comic book character is pretty limited, which is something that I'd like to rectify but is another possible reason why I felt underwhelmed by it. Other than reading the odd issue in the distant past and hours lost browsing wikipedia articles, the only book I own is a collection of stories leading up to Necropolis, which I mainly bought in the mistaken assumption that it would feature Judge Death. It's actually been interesting to go back and read it again, as I found some similarities between it and the film. A lot of it focuses on Dredd evaluating a different rookie Judge and even features a fight scene while the rookie is in handcuffs. It also mirrors the ending of the film, with Dredd failing his rookie in the book without any concrete reasoning, while Anderson gets a pass in this film despite actions that could have been an instant failure.

I think overall I was just expecting a little more from it on many levels. It's a rather shallow film in terms of any political subtext to it, when I was perhaps expecting something more satirical along the lines of Robocop or Starship Troopers. Its complete and utter committal to an unquestioning portrayal of the Judges is one of its strengths but it also feels like it has little to say on the issue and has become a sticking point for those writing negative reviews. The irony of a right wing paper complaining about 'a fascist dream of a policeman' was certainly not lost on me, seemingly showing a staggering lack of self-awareness. I definitely think that it could have stood to say a little more, though having Dredd be much more human at this early stage may have made the whole thing fall down. Giving only the merest crack in his armour to show he's still a human being is just enough to suggest it could be explored more in future movies.

It was also surprised by how deranged Lena Headey's gang leader Ma-Ma appeared on film, which was strange when there is a prequel comic that shows her in a... well not exactly a more positive light but you certainly get a better idea of how she reached this point. But the film is what matters and I think it missed an opportunity in portraying her as an insane sadist, which just made her seem unrealistic. I would have liked to have seen her as more of a desperate figure, going to any lengths to protect the empire she'd scraped together - at least giving some impression of why she'd become so extreme. It could have also focussed more on the cyclical nature of violence and how the Judges can never bring an end to it. The harshness of the Judge system should sometimes seem unfair and not just make the audience feel it was justified in removing a truly evil villain. I would say that on the whole the comics were aiming to expose just how flawed the kind of justice some people want is. The ending might have felt more meaningful when Anderson lets one of the gang go because she feels he is a victim, if we had also seen Ma-Ma as just another victim in a sense.

Despite all of this, I still think it's a great accomplishment and it feels like the best version of Dredd we are ever likely to see on screen. Details like the body armour feel totally right in the final product, despite plenty of people, myself included thinking that the proportions looked a little off to begin with. The distinctive design is very pragmatic and I feel like that's a good way of describing the film as a whole, which perhaps doesn't quite feel like it could encompass some of the weirdness found in the comics. Even though the writer of the film has talked about potential sequels eventually leading to aspects like the Dark Judges, I'm not sure I could see the two fitting together. It's this that makes it difficult to decide whether this is best served remaining as a standalone film or if it can still be a jumping off point for more films. There's certainly a lot more to draw from without bringing in more fantastical elements, which has me interested in reading some more early Judge Dredd stories to get a feel for what might inspire them. Hopefully I can watch it again at some point in the future, with less pressure or expectations on it and appreciate it for the bold, strong film it is.

Total Recall (2012)

This review was also posted on ArtFist.org

I'm not sure if it's significant that my wife and I didn't discuss this film at all when we walked out of the cinema. She was very tired and it was a reasonably late showing for us but we would normally have at least asked each other whether we liked it. That initial reaction you have walking out of a cinema is often the most honest, no matter how long you mull things over later but I think if I had been asked at the time I would have had difficulty responding.

I knew I was always going to have trouble with this film being a fan of the original, but I can't honestly say that it's turned out horribly. The design of this messed-up future earth was astonishing and managed to induce that slight shudder of vertigo on numerous occasions. As implausible as it may be to have a lift that can travel through the core of the Earth in around 17 minutes (requiring an average speed of around 28,000 miles per hour), it was executed very well. Weirdly it felt like Mass Effect was one of its biggest design influences, especially when it came to its armoured robots. I felt that it was pretty lazy having no British or Australian accents given they were supposed to be the main world powers but I can let that slide too. I was just left feeling that it was a bit of a waste to go to all of this effort and then tell the exact same story as the original, I would much rather have seen something else set in that same world.

I also can't deny that there were some good action sequences in this, which varied between the unbelievable and more grounded, well thought out sequences that took note of the surroundings and allowed the viewer to follow them through. For example I liked Kate Beckinsale's slide towards a descending lift in the hope of making it through the door, only to miss it but still land in the lift due to the top previously being ripped off. In a sense both the original and this are good examples of a typical action blockbuster of their day but no matter how well this version does in some areas, the original is just so much more interesting because of two areas in particular that this film just doesn't seem to get.

Firstly, it misses out on any kind of proof that Hauser/Quaid (Colin Farrell) was originally a bad guy. The video message left to himself by Arnie in the original made it very clear that his old self was very different. Without something like this I think it detracts from the idea of how we define our own identity and whether our past has any bearing on what we do in the future. Here Brian Cranston's Cohagen might just as well have been lying to Quaid to mess with him, there was no real confirmation that there was any point to it.

I felt that without this to focus on, you start to see more plotholes creep in - why did they go to this much trouble? Why didn't they just capture an actual resistance fighter and implant the fake kill switch information in his head? And just how did doing this help them track him down again once he went to the resistance? Why were they annoyed he'd gone to Rekall and started this whole process when that was what they wanted to happen anyway? All criticisms that could be levelled at the original film too but they don't seem to stand out as much and can also be explained if you take a particular view of the original...

That being the idea that it was actually all in his head and he never made it out of Rekall. Here I felt there was no real ambiguity over whether it was in his head or not, other than some lazy tacked on echoed phrases and a wistful look at a Rekall sign at the end. By opening with a very clear dream as a memory, it really feels like there is no doubt that these are real repressed memories in this version. There are also few cuts in the Rekall sequence that could make the audience believe they have missed something, it seemed very clear to me that the Rekall team had not yet done anything to affect his mind at all.

The genius of the original version is that every single action ties into the idea that it's all in his head. Arnies dreams for example are not of former events but a nightmare about dying from a lack of oxygen (in a very unrealistic manner). He has never actually experienced this and that dream goes on to form the climax of the film. Discovering this theory makes watching the original again a very rewarding experience but here there is not really anything clever that would be enhanced by a repeat viewing.

All of this added up to a film that I felt like I'd totally checked out from by the end. When Quaid escapes from the guards and manages to land on 'The Fall' unopposed I should have been ranting about its lack of logic but I just couldn't force myself to care. Having a final fist fight with Cohagen at the end also felt really out of place as he had done nothing to suggest he could even last 30 seconds against Quaid throughout the rest of the film. When this film was first announced sources suggested that it was going to be a re-interpretation of the original Philip K. Dick short story 'We can remember it for you wholesale'. As implausible as that sounds if you've read that very short, jokey story, it would still have been preferable to see something crazy and different than the bland retread we ended up with.

Ted (2012)

This review was also posted on ArtFist.org

I've struggled to finish reviews of any comedy films this year, so after seeing Ted I promised myself I would complete one for once. As a formerly huge fan of Family Guy this was a film I was both intrigued and apprehensive about - I wasn't totally sure what to expect from it but had a fair idea of what the humour would be like. I'd also not read a single review of it beforehand - not something I actively avoided so it seems a little weird that there has been relatively little coverage. I certainly enjoyed most of it at the time but some issues sprang to mind as I started to write about it.

Perhaps the best way to describe it as a whole is overindulgent. Despite a strong opening I really felt that it dragged for a while after that, spending too much time on the in depth situation of each character. Sadly I don't remember it being particularly funny either. It didn't really pick up for me until you see Ted in a suit, off to try and get his first job. There was also a section later on that seemed to exist purely to get a celebrity cameo in, which was neither funny to me or moving the plot forward in any meaningful way.

I find it funny that I can pick out large areas to cut when the film itself is just a shade longer than Brave, which felt like a very short, concise film to me. I personally wonder whether Seth MacFarlane had enough experience in telling a story of this length when most of his cartoons are self contained 30 minute episodes. While there have been a few Family Guy stories that span multiple episodes, Ted ends up feeling like everything and the kitchen sink was thrown at it to pad it out. But then that overindulgence has always been a hallmark of his cartoons too. I couldn't help but think back to Family Guy's ridiculously long chicken fight in one particular scene, which managed to go through the feeling that it was much longer than it probably should have been and still come out the other side being funny.

Like Family Guy I also felt that it had an over reliance on pop culture that was very specific to the US and didn't immediately amuse me if I didn't get the reference. Probably my main reason for moving away from watching Family Guy was the realisation that it was starting to rely too heavily on the 'random' cutaway gags and that these generally only made me laugh once out of surprise and didn't really work if you watched them again. You could say Ted took this even further with a random flashback among the character establishing sequences that I didn't find funny in the slightest.

And it makes me feel so old but I also feel like the overuse of the F-word in this was hardly ever funny. Restricted by what you could get away with on a TV network, Family Guy was always pushing against boundaries to see what they could get away with and even the occasional bleeped swear could seem shocking and humorous at the same time. Here it got old fast and I don't think it was just me, I can't recall hearing a single chuckle at an F-word just dropped into conversation but there was plenty of laughter in its more inventive parts. Perhaps I wasn't really there with the target audience since it had been out a while when I got to see it but to me the overuse definitely wore down the impact it could have had if it was used a little more sparingly.

I do feel like there's a good movie in there somewhere and I liked how it approached the idea that Ted could eventually become normal and forgotten about. But there were parts that seemed to hinder the story unfolding as if it was realistic by going so over the top and assuming that everyone is in on the joke. It all adds up to a mixed bag that leaves you feeling a bit unsatisfied. Perhaps I've often struggled to finish comedy reviews as I may have laughed along at the time but not really felt like the film went anywhere or had much to say. Here you question what had really changed about the characters situations by the end of the film but it's played as a happy ending, all problems solved, which just didn't convince me.

People will always say that humour is subjective but I think it can also seem temporary. Like Family Guys one off random gags with a short shelf life, you also had the problem here of seeing a lot of those in trailers. It can be difficult to remember specific funny parts later and even then if I was to try to list or explain jokes it would only lead to them not sounding funny at all. So while I can almost certainly recommend this to people who won't be offended by its humour, I would have just liked it to be a more focussed and consistent film on the whole.

The Increasing Irrelevance of High Street Retail

Arguments about pricing aside, it seems that the one remaining good feature that high street shops have is convenience. You can know all the cheapest websites in the world but when it comes to a Friday afternoon or a Saturday morning and you want something to play/watch for the weekend, then I'd wager most would absorb the extra few quid and walk into a shop to pick up what they want there and then. However it seems more and more often that I can't even achieve that on the high street...

Take the recent release of Darksiders 2, a sequel to a game that I'm still yet to play. With the hype surrounding its release I thought to myself that I'd finally look into trying the original. A search of every available game shop for a copy proved completely fruitless. I didn't even expect to find a new copy but thought I might get lucky in the pre-owned section but alas it wasn't to be. It just struck me as bizarre that I have become so complacent with this state of affairs that I'd pretty much taken a tour of the shops just to confirm my suspicions. Say what you will about high street DVD and book stores but they sure know that when you have an exciting new release, you make sure there are copies of previous and related works available for interested parties to get a few more easy sales.

However later that same day, I came up against a ridiculous inversion of this idea in HMV. I recently caught part of the second Iron Man and while it might not be the greatest film, I felt the urge to watch the whole thing again. Being the only recent Marvel film I didn't have on Blu-Ray there was also that OCD completionist aspect of wanting to fill a gap in my collection. Now while I might not expect to find every film ever made in HMV, I certainly expected them to always have something as well known and popular as Iron Man 2 in stock. But looking around I couldn't even find an empty section for it, which was true for the original Iron Man as well, with dividers jumping straight from Intolerable Cruelty to The Island.

This seemed a little bizarre so we asked the guy behind the counter when buying something else. Looking very apologetic he replied "yeah, they've recalled all of the Marvel films - apart from The Incredible Hulk and others that weren't in The Avengers. They're waiting for that to come out so they can sell them all together". I just chuckled and shook my head, so often it seems those on the front line are as much at odds with the management decisions as the public are. I'm guessing there may be more to it behind the scenes but it just seems so bizarre to negate the possibility of any sales right now to guarantee you won't run out of stock later.

Writing this up has reminded me that I still hadn't picked up either but even on a Friday I can use Amazon Prime to make sure I can get something for the weekend, making that trawl of the shops even more pointless with just a bit of forethought. Though while Iron Man 2 was easy to find it seems that Darksiders is much more illusive, out of stock in most of the places I would normally try. This suggests to me that there's a bigger issue with finding older games in general than just the High Street...

Brave (2012)

This review was also posted on ArtFist.org

'Nice' can sometimes be a surprisingly divisive word. For some people it's the epitome of average, only a shade better than okay or 'meh'. For me I don't know if it's just my 'Englishness' but it can sometimes feel like relatively high praise. I think it's quite telling though that I keep wanting to use it to describe Brave.

Whatever I think of the finished product, it feels like the trailers for Brave had done their best to convince me that it would be terrible before I'd even seen it. They seemed to suggest something on the level of an average Dreamworks film, full of dumb jokes and body humour, not to mention the potential for terrible scottish stereotypes. It didn't seem at all like a typical Pixar film (maybe discounting the Cars films, as I haven't seen any of those). As it turns out though, these trailers at least kept most of the plot secret, with me only figuring out some of it beforehand due to seeing certain toy lines in the Disney store...

The overt 'Scottishness' from the trailers did look like it would be more along the lines of how Americans view Scotland but I didn't find it too bad in the end. While Scotland is never explicitly mentioned, it is clearly set there and not some mythical equivalent as a map in it names the Isle of Skye. Some of the phrases felt a little more English and there was a distinct lack of Scottish slang but for the most part it felt fairly natural. Even if it would probably be more Scottish to say "Wheesht!", it still felt quite rare to hear someone say "Shut your gob" for example, which gave it a nice homely sort of feeling.

There was one character with an exceptionally thick accent, which you aren't meant to understand but it amused me all the same. Especially when one line is finished with "ken?", which reminded me of my days as an Englishman in Scotland. It was always those with the hardest accents to follow who would finish their sentences with "ken?" ("do you know what I mean/understand?") and I'd just nod my head hopefully. I'm not sure if this accent can be placed to a specific location, I'd be interested to find out and to hear from any native Scotsmen what they thought of it as a whole.

While most of the story is not particularly surprising, I have to give it props for being a major film that focuses around a mother and daughters relationship. I was expecting it to be yet another 'tomboy wants to prove herself and goes off on adventures with the men' kind of thing so it was a pleasant surprise how it unfolds. Most of the other characters are fairly under-developed but making the mother/daughter relationship the focus meant that this didn't stand out. I would say overall it felt like quite a short film and I'm not sure if that is a negative issue or just means that it was to the point.

The ending did feel a little contrived to me though, like it was just playing for time to make it seem more emotional. I honestly thought there was going to be more to it but then it suddenly shifts to happy ending mode. It reminded me of a couple of other films with a sudden happy ending, Tangled and Wall-E, the latter being one I watched again recently. Tangled at least gave a plausible reason for how it turned things around but Wall-E feels like it switches from an impossible situation to make it momentarily seem more sad. It's perhaps a different topic to get into on whether Pixar/Disney films can have anything other than a happy ending though.

Overall I would say that it's worth watching and should keep you entertained, unless you have a very high brow sense of humour. I saw it in quite a mixed audience and apart from one or two jump scares that might set kids off, I think it will appeal to everyone. It's not one of Pixars best and I would also say that it isn't as good as Tangled or the best of Dreamworks in How to Train Your Dragon but still better than virtually anything else from that studio. I'm not sure how long it will stick with me or how well it would stand up to repeated viewings but I still think it's a nice film - just a shame that it's unlikely to reach the dizzying heights of appreciation I have for other Pixar films.

The Dark Knight Rises (2012)

This review was also posted on ArtFist.org

It's difficult to know where to start when talking about this film. Like a lot of people, I've been looking forward to it just a little bit. I'm a big fan of Batman in almost any form, but I grew up on the Tim Burton films and Bruce Timm's Animated Series especially, only searching out famous stories from the comics later on. I can remember seeing Batman Begins for the first time and thinking that it was enough that it's ending could tie into the Burton films, but still being pleasantly surprised when The Dark Knight was announced. TDK immediately became one of my favourite films for numerous reasons, the beautiful full frame IMAX photography, the tense bank robbery that reminded me of Heat and Heath Ledgers unique take on the Joker among many - I didn't even care that Batman wasn't really the focus any more.

So I obviously had huge expectations of this film but I think I didn't have specific expectations of it, if that makes sense. I hoped it would be a good film but at the same time I trusted Christopher Nolan to do what he wanted and not just expect famous comic storylines in movie form. But if I was ready to trust Nolan, in some ways this feels like a film more designed to please fans. I certainly enjoyed it at the time, but it seems less of a complete package the more I think about it. Whereas The Dark Knight always felt like the furthest you could take a comic book character into the real world, this felt like it was embracing its comic book roots a little more. Things like its expository dialogue and characters hopping around the world felt like things that happen in comics a lot. Even though critics have levelled the same complaints at some of Nolan's other films, this was the first time that these issues particularly stood out to me.

I thought that it got off to a shaky start too, I don't think I've seen many reviews that didn't have some issues with the first act. There are a lot of new characters and multiple plot lines running at once, with a few taking a while to really go anywhere. There were a lot of things to hold in your head and I found myself uncertain of which characters were important. On reflection there isn't much of importance here and I have seen debates on whether parts of it could have been cut, as well as entirely different takes on how it could have opened.

Selina Kyle (as played by Anne Hathaway) is almost certainly the highlight of these early sections. She is receiving almost universal praised for her role, one thing I liked in particular was that her interactions with Bruce Wayne also provide a bit of humour in a largely dark film. I loved how she revealed her true self when she first meets him and deftly disarms him before making her escape. A lot of people seem to think that Bruce Wayne was faking his injuries at the start of the film but I'd like to think that he was actually surprised by her, which then intrigues him enough to want to track her down. You generally get the impression that she is capable of continuing to frustrate him, with the lines "My Wife?" and "Huh, so that's what that feels like" making me chuckle especially.

I think it was important that the rest of the villains in this weren't particularly sympathetic though. Almost everyone rooted for the Joker to some extent but Bane doesn't really have the same attractive personality and seems more likely to kill innocent people in his path. Some of the violence meted out actually made me feel like the film deserved more than a 12A rating, despite the fact that it never shows anything graphic. Though there isn't exactly much competition, I feel this was the best representation of Bane there has ever been. On occasions he seems like a strange mix, especially how his voice doesn't really feel like part of the scene but the calm delivery gives the impression of intelligence that he really needs. In the original comics, despite his strength increasing venom serum, it was always suggested that he only managed to defeat Batman by engineering situations that would break his spirit as well as his body. I certainly found myself on the edge of my seat wondering if he was going to do what he is most famous for in the comics.

What's perhaps hardest to argue against is that the film as a whole doesn't really say anything. Bane's aims and actions seem to have some common ground with this year's 'Occupy' protests (although likely written before they started), which initially seems like a negative commentary on them. But these ideas aren't really followed through and leave it feeling very half hearted. There seem to be a lot of points like this, where there is a spark of something interesting but it doesn't receive much focus. Then there is also the question of what is said by the ending but I'm not sure I can discuss that much without heading into spoiler territory...

*Fairly major spoilers from this point on*

Not everyone liked the ending and to some extent I can see their point, with the powerful message of Batman making the ultimate sacrifice being undone by him surviving - not to mention how much pain and anguish it would cause his friends. But despite all that, to me it felt like what Batman would have done and it specifically reminded me of the end of The Dark Knight Returns. In that story he may have faked his death to continue to train others in secret but giving up the role of Batman felt right for this series and felt like a much better way of introducing a possible new Batman than any attempt that has been made in the comics. I really appreciated what the whole trilogy has done with Bruce Wayne - even if it moves away from the established view of him, he seems more human on the whole. In Begins he initially struggles with the desire for revenge against those who wronged him, rather than immediately trying to fix the system. He wants the world to change so that he doesn't have to be Batman anymore and then even gives up the role after the loss of a loved one, questioning what he has left to fight for. I think it's totally fair that this film then allows his journey to come to an end.

People have said that the revelation of John Blake's real name being Robin made them roll their eyes but I just saw it as a little joke for the fans, especially since Nolan has stated he would never add the Robin we all know. It seemed obvious to me that Blake would take on the role of Batman or at the very least would be jumping straight into a 'Nightwing' like role. What I felt was important was that Blake's character had taken a different route to this point than Bruce Wayne, which indicated that he could be a different sort of Batman. Someone who would focus on the downtrodden and fight against abuses of power by those in control, rather than focusing on criminals amongst the poorest in society. This left me with the feeling that the film wasn't trying to be 'anti-99%' and to paraphrase The Dark Knight's final line, perhaps this new Batman could be the hero that Gotham and the world actually needs right now. I also felt that even though the film brings this trilogy to a definite close in a nice circular fashion, I would still be interested to see someone take it onward from this point.

So my final thought on what I took the film to say is that we will always need Batman - but Batman doesn't always need to be Bruce Wayne.

The Amazing Spider-Man (2012) Vs. Spider-Man (2002)

Lets just say that my expectations of The Amazing Spider-Man (TASM from this point on) were pretty low. Before I even knew anything about it I was of the opinion that it was too soon for a reboot, so it was never going to be top of my must watch list. Thinking that I would not get around to seeing it at all, I've pretty much devoured every available review and opinion piece I could find on it. The majority of these did not do much to convince me that it was worth watching, with only a few positive opinions from people that I respected to hint otherwise. I didn't set out to compare it to the original Sam Raimi film but when I finally got to see it and then ended up watching Spider-Man later the same day it just felt pretty natural.

To begin with, I was most concerned about sitting through an entire origin story again but I was surprised at how much I enjoyed the first half of the film. The growing relationship between Andrew Garfield and Emma Stone is quite nicely handled and wasn't what I expected after hearing that it was "A Spider-Man for the Twilight generation". The first scene after getting his spider powers was also pretty funny and I thought that this scene amongst others showed a more realistic, street level view of New York than the original films (he says having only visited the place once).

In comparison though, what struck me about the original Spider-Man was how quickly it gets going. In the first scene you find out everything you need to know about Peter Parker and the supporting cast via the minimum amount of information. I think within 7 minutes he has received the crucial spider bite, allowing the film to be more about the joy of discovering his powers. The irony being that this feels like exactly what this new version should have done, deal with the transformation quickly and move on, just like The Incredible Hulk did after Hulk. Even if the first half of the film turned out to be the best part, it still seems strange to spend around an hour on the same stuff that was originally handled in about twenty minutes.

A lot of attention has been placed on who plays a better Peter Parker/Spiderman and it might not be the popular opinion but my money is still on Tobey Maguire. I still feel that he captured the nerdy Parker perfectly and Spider-Man allowed him to lose his inhibitions. He way not have been quipping every five seconds but I thought there was enough enthusiasm there to get across that he was really enjoying himself with this persona. Andrew Garfield's Parker is a pretty different take and I can respect that but he was nothing like either the comic or cartoon versions I know of. I felt that his Spider-Man veered over the line of cocky quips into just plain being a dick, I didn't get the sense that taking on this hero persona was bringing out the good sides of his personality.

Looking at both interpretations I wouldn't say that either of them are perfect, perhaps Maguire didn't have enough of Parkers characteristics, whereas Garfield just adds far too much stuff into the mix. It might have been different if Raimi had gone with the idea of webshooters (though I'm not someone who thinks the organic webs are ridiculous) but you never get the feeling that he was the kind of person who could engineer them. Garfield on the other hand starts off as a handsome guy who is a photographer, inventor, skateboarder and all around science whizz - no one with that many interests could be top of his game at all of them (and still get the girl without added spider confidence).

Though most will probably associate the Green Goblin as Spider-Man's most iconic enemy, growing up with the cartoon version I would probably vote for the Lizard instead. I remember a lot of storylines that revolved around Dr. Connors' struggle to overcome the beast and with Spider-Man usually being involved in his initial transformation, it forms a very strong link between the two characters that makes sense for an origin story. The crocodile like creature in a lab coat is also an incredibly iconic image. So it probably comes as no surprise then that I was very disappointed by his representation in this, which felt like a completely wasted opportunity.

Aside from the lizard design being as ugly as sin, in his human form Connors veers into total insanity for no real reason before finally overcoming it at the end just because the plot demands it. It makes me wonder if they were concerned about The Lizard ending up too similar to Raimi's version of the Green Goblin, in terms of how Norman Osbourne had no idea what he was doing every night. But I think it had every right to make this a more explicit Jekyll and Hyde type situation, as that's historically been his story - while I've always found the Green Goblin to be more intimidating when Norman Osbourne is fully aware of what's going on too. Again it seems kind of ironic that pretty much all of the films in the Raimi series took a pretty black and white villain and turned them into a more sympathetic character for this to then screw up an established character that had a very sympathetic story to begin with.

Looking back at Spider-Man it is in no way perfect. The Green Goblin suit is still terrible and a lot of the CGI is looking pretty ropey now - something that the practical effects of TASM will hopefully alleviate in the long run. But I think the original's strength has always been in the journey of its characters and it has a much stronger ending. The ease with which the new Parker does exactly the opposite of old Parker is disturbing and his final line caused involuntary eye rolling. The problem is not so much that Uncle Ben doesn't say the exact line "with great power comes great responsibility" but that Parker doesn't seem to have learnt this lesson - or anything else from the whole experience for that matter.

Magic Mike (2012) - A straight husband's view

This review was also posted on ArtFist.org

Though my wife probably doesn't believe me, I did actually mean to tell her about this film before she randomly saw an advert for it. I'd heard about it a while ago with critics’ early opinions being pretty positive, and combined with the fact that it was directed by Steven Soderbergh, it sounded interesting to me. So when my wife demanded to be taken to see it, I didn't feel like it would be too much of a hardship for me to go along. I'd recently made her sit through Prometheus, so I owed her a movie choice anyway and I didn't think it could be much worse than that...

That said, it was quite a strange experience to see the theatre slowly fill up with women, I can't think of another film I've seen with a similar audience ratio. I wasn't the only guy in there, but there were only a couple more and they looked a lot more miserable about the prospect than me. However, being on the back row right under a spotlight I guess I stood out. "Oh my God there's a man in here! I feel so sorry for you mate!" came a cry from someone finding their seat in front of me. All I could do was chuckle to myself and give a wave of thanks for the sympathy. I did wonder whether the crowd would get a bit rowdy as there was a loud shout of "Oh Yeah!" down to my left the first time Channing Tatum's ass appeared on screen, but for the most part it settled down.

It struck me that one of the characters you meet early on worked quite well as a way for men to get into the film. Adam/'The Kid' (Alex Pettyfer) is thrown into the world of these strippers quite unexpectedly and his initial reactions are probably similar to any men in the audience. There is a lot of comedy in these early scenes, as long as the whole situation doesn't just make you feel awkward. What I found the funniest section in the entire film might make some people just want to curl up into a ball and cover their eyes (the same effect that The Office and Alan Partridge often have on me).

The movie as a whole is more focused on the title role of 'Magic' Mike (Tatum) than Adam's story. In fact, I was quite surprised that there was very little attention paid to Adam "learning the ropes", which was pretty much handled in one scene - very different from something like The Full Monty, where the preparation for their first performance is the entire film. Mike is a mentor to him in a more general sense and also just a friend, with their relationship becoming strained as Adam is drawn into more destructive aspects of the stripper's lifestyles. It's that question of where you draw the line when trying to look out for someone and at the same time let them make their own decisions.

Mike's own story is a familiar one, both in terms of having a dream that he would give up stripping for and also issues that you hear people struggle with in the real world right now. He works non-stop to save up money and runs into problems trying to get any kind of loan from a bank. It quickly becomes obvious that his life is not perfect and you question whether he really fits in to the world of stripping. Tatum's performance is great, which I probably wouldn't have expected before seeing 21 Jump Street earlier in the year. I particularly liked how he struggles and stumbles over what he's trying to say in one scene, which came across as completely natural and believable when it could well have turned out disastrous. In fact the response to this bit of dialogue feels much more scripted and kind of takes you out of the moment, reminding you that you're just watching a film.

As for the actual stripping routines, they are generally not too explicit and didn't make me feel uncomfortable. A lot of the dances are pretty cheesy and even my wife admitted that most of them didn't do much for her, it was more the confidence that all of the dancers have that makes them attractive. I would say there is one routine that almost anyone could appreciate though, especially if you are a fan of groups like Diversity, which is set to Calypso by Excision & Datsik.

If I had any complaints it would be that the ending doesn't feel all that satisfying, I'm not sure whether that is down to it aiming to be realistic or to leave things open for a sequel. But because 'The Kid' doesn't really learn anything from the whole experience, you are left with the impression that he could just continue on his downward spiral. Overall I would say that men shouldn't be scared to go and see this film though. It tells an interesting, believable story, with a good mixture of humour and drama. You just might want to avoid peak times...