Posts Tagged ‘movies’

The future is here!

12 hostages. 24 hours. 1 Partridge.

Steve Coogan bringing Alan Partridge to the big screen has been long awaited. Was it worth said wait? Yes, it probably was! While other comedies build up to huge, though sometimes disappointing, funny moments, Alpha Papa delivers clever, funny dialogue from start to finish.

There is always the danger that a comeback will ruin the franchise, but Alpha Papa has no such concerns. It does a fine justice to the Partridge legend.

We went to Everyman Cinema, which once again offered an excellent experience. We meet up with Chris and Carly beforehand for pizza in the restaurant that delivered to its usual standard as well.

Watching Star Trek Into Darkness was my first experience of 3D cinema.

On the whole, I’m not totally sold on the idea. Comfort-wise, it was fine. It was uncomfortable at first, but that was probably because I was expecting it to be and once I settled into the movie, it was fine.

I found the 3D pretty tacky though. It reminded me of pop up books where there are just certain things that pop up – one character would be further forward than another but everything else still felt rather 2D. I also didn’t like the way they would constantly only have one character in focus at a time.

A few of the effects worked quite well though, I think I probably ducked a few times when things came flying out the screen. It was good, but I can’t say I was amazed.

Obviously the new Star Trek films completely ruin everything with their inaccurate depiction of events (you know, when they really happened in the original films). But that being said, I did rather enjoy the new movie.

I imagine there will be spoilers before the end of this article.

I had no problems accepting Benedict Cumberbatch. I struggle with Doctor Whos in other things, but for some reason he isn’t set in my mind as Sherlock. Or maybe I was so distracted thinking about how he looks almost identical to Keanu Reeves playing Neo in The Matrix. That was annoying.

I was also very close to jumping up and screaming “KHAN!!!!!!!!!!” at the appropriate point.

I wasn’t a huge fan of the British girl, who seemed more like she had been added to bring another pair of tits than a deep and meaningful character and it was a bit shallow at times – Admiral Marcus was a bit too much of a stereotypical evil villain.

Ultimately though, any film with a tribble in is going to warm your heart.

I’ve finally got round to watching The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey. It’s the first in a trilogy of films based on the book The Hobbit, which is a lot of films given the whole of Lord of the Rings was covered in the same time. As Elina points out, if you have time for a song at the start, your film is too long.

Overall, I didn’t think it that good, but I wasn’t disappointed (because I had already lowered my expectations).

I didn’t like Martin Freeman as Bilbo. I like Martin Freeman in general, but we spent most of the film asking why Arthur Dent slash John Watson was running round Middle Earth. Not a problem I’ve had before, but he seemed a little more out of place here.

While The Hobbit was always a lighter book than Lord of the Rings, I felt the film was almost comic and silly. For example the orc king in the Misty Mountain was just a silly joke character and the fact that they survived that while being mobbed by such huge numbers was one bridge of disbelief too far.

Despite that though, it held my attention for the whole time (though we did watch it over two evenings) and I’m looking forward to seeing the remaining films.

Recently, I watched the film The Master, that was released last year.

Overall, I wasn’t that impressed. While it was interesting, I think there are a number of points that let it down.

It’s loosely based on the life of L Ron Hubbard, founder of Scientology. Though it is also based on some other works, I don’t really think it would make any sense unless you were familiar with Scientology and its origins.

This really shows in the fact that the plot line doesn’t make much sense. Again, if you’re familiar with the origins of Scientology, then you can see what they have done. But if you’re not, I imagine you would by simply left wondering what was happening and why, when there doesn’t seem to be any apparent reason behind it.

Secondly, nothing really happens in the film. It doesn’t really feel like it’s the story of a man who gets taken in by a cult – because he just walks in there on day one and signs up to everything. It feels like just a series of things happening, with no interesting storyline behind them.

It is worth noting however that the film received almost universal acclaim from the critics – so what do I know.

I don’t normally go to the cinema – it involved sitting still for two, maybe even three hours. But this summer I’ll be making an exception. Why, in one sentence? A Seth MacFarlane film, featuring Mila Kunis!

If the video isn’t embedding properly, you can also see it here.

If for some reason you’re not already 100% convinced then a) there is something wrong with you and b) here is a different trailer, this one voiced by Patrick Stewart. Enough said.

Given we were all a big fan of the original Johnny English film, myself, Elina and Norm headed out to the cinema to see Johnny English Reborn.

The film was good, not great. It was entertaining, I didn’t find myself clock watching, which I often do at the cinema, and presented quite a few laugh out loud moments, but it was always going to get compared to the original and in the end, wasn’t quite as funny.

More of a concern though was the fact that my ticket into the cinema was £9.25! I’m sure when I was a kid it was like £4 to go to the cinema, now it’s more expensive than being a DVD to own :S.

I also got an earful off the guy checking out tickets in on the way in because I had bought Elina a student ticket but she didn’t have her student card on her. I understand they need to check it occasionally, but given we had bought full price tickets for myself and Norm, it seems pretty obvious that we were being honest – if we were trying to scam them we would have just bought three student tickets.

On Tuesday we had our second Movie Goer’s Guide to Life & Death at A-Soc. It was basically a load of clips from American Beauty and while I found some of the analysis dubious I certainly enjoyed seeing the clips again very much enjoyable. Smile – you’re at Mr Smiley’s!

Tuesday night saw us screen Dogma for another relaxed night of de-stressing between revision periods. This was of course followed by the usual social at The Terrace though I think the best attended all evening was actually the committee meeting.