Reviews in a nutshell
The violent, sexist silliness that is Robert Rodriguez’s Mexploitation action saga Machete, starring Danny Trejo as ex-Federale assassin Machete, is back with another equally violent, sexist, silly sequel. If you enjoyed the 2010 film, it’s much the same gleeful juvenile B-movie humour the second time around. In fact, according to Rodriguez, this film was not …
There’s no surprise at the anticipation surrounding the screen adaptation of Cassandra Clare’s bestselling novel, directed by Harold Zwart (2010’s The Karate Kid). With a gap in fantasy adventure market left by the globally successful Harry Potter and Twilight sagas, studio bosses are hungry to find the next best thing. It needs the right mix …
Continue reading “The Mortal Instruments: City of Bones ***”
Those hoping for a repeat of the cool shock tactics of Kick-Ass might come away feeling rather short-changed after watching the sequel. Granted, all the key characters are back, in particular, Kick-Ass himself and the petite purple dynamo Hit-Girl that sees Aaron Taylor-Johnson and Chloë Grace Moretz take up their costume-clad roles respectively, verses Christopher …
X-Men fans yearn for an improvement on X-Men Origins: Wolverine (2009), with more strength to their clawed hero. Director James Mangold and team may well have granted just that with The Wolverine, complete with some impressive action to boot, as well as a more vulnerable Wolverine (Hugh Jackman) who is more intriguing to watch. Comic-book …
Guillermo del Toro gets the teen audience, totally, so much so, he’s gone and taken a bunch of Transformer Power Rangers and pitched them against alien sea monsters of centuries old-looking. This less than perfect film offers loads of thumping good 3D action, which on occasion can feel relentless to anyone older than thirteen or …
Best way to describe Louis Leterrier’s new thriller is a ‘magical Ocean’s Eleven’. It has the gloss, the sassy style, the balls and a little extra, magic. But with all the tricks up its confident sleeve, it’s still not a pitch-perfect performance, racing away a lot of the time like the director’s Transporter films to …
You can imagine that a literary adaptation set in the self-indulgent Roaring Twenties about a fateful love story that’s given the Baz Luhrmann touch would be as extravagant as ever. Think Moulin Rouge. Indeed the flamboyant director does not hold back with his version of The Great Gatsby and even tries to shoehorn in a …
What happened next to billionaire Tony Stark, aka Iron Man, after facing an alien wormhole over Manhattan in last summer’s hit The Avengers? Writer-director Shane Black (of Lethal Weapon fame) with screenwriter Drew Pearce co-pens the answer in the latest of the Iron Man franchise, a sequel to The Avengers, showing Stark as more vulnerable …
The future of mankind is ripe and fertile filmmaking ground, always holding some potential intrigue and hopefully throwing up new questions about our possible destiny. The latter is a must in the sci-fi genre, but not to the extent that some questions leave you unnecessarily hanging, in terms of simple plot explanation. It’s true to …
