A Dragon Warrior and Legendary Assassin

Dreamworks haven't half made some shit. As I discussed earlier with my friends, they've been a bit of a shitmachine, really. Shark's Tale, pile of bollocks. Shrek 2, unforgivable. Some people don't like Madagascar but I happen to.

Kung Fu Panda had the potential to be one of those films with lots of talented actors, but nothing else, but it wasn't. Dustin Hoffman is hilarious, and need I mention Jack Black? Mr Black rarely plays anyone but a fat guy who fails at life, but this time he's a.....fat panda who fails at life. Said panda is 'accidentally' picked to be the legendary Dragon Warrior, who has to fight some scary tiger when he comes out of his prison. It's not one of those kids films that has enough for the adult audience to keep them interested, it's just funny anyway. It doesn't have the adult undertones that some films try to add, but then fail at making a good film, this is just a good story with funny bits that everyone can enjoy. I imagine there are slapstick bits that will have kids pissing themselves, but I can admit I giggle alot at them too. It's just a good film, really nice story, really good landscapes (I know they're just cartoons), and really quite funny.

I also watched Wanted, this morning, giving it my full attention, really trying to like it, but I struggled. That whole bending bullets thing they did on the trailer was used about....twice? It's visually superb, but I expected nothing short of that from Timur Bekmambetov, the director of Night Watch and Day Watch, they're stunning films. Also, the story and twist aren't too bad either, the twist is obvious but it's done in a nice way. There was a wee bit of exposition at the start that I didn't get to see due to the writing being in Russian (Damn Region 5 DVDs), so the story couldn't have either been ruined or enhanced by that.

I had one main problem with the film, and that was casting James McAvoy as Keanu Reeves-cum-Jason Statham. He can't be a insignificant weed who angrily rants in his private life about how much he hates his job and friends, nor can he be the guy who walks into a room and kills everyone. He's the sort of guy who needs to be slightly funny, slightly Hugh Ro-Grant-ic and slightly hard, if needs be. The whole film reeks of the Matrix, from the grey-scale of McAvoy's office job, to the 'you have an inert ability to be mint' information bestowed upon him by a mentor, in this case Morgan Freeman, and him rejecting said power, but then realising it'd be kinda awesome to have it. There is also no need to mention 'bullet-time' as that is used so often in action, although it is argueably just slow-mo in action movies, but this is actual bullet-time, complete with spinning cameras, tracking the bullets. I'm so not looking forward to Max Payne and the unstoppable arguments that is going to cause. The film shouldn't have been made to look like the Matrix, as the comics had already been criticised for looking like the Matrix, there should have been something new, and I think the trailer tried to make the bending bullets trick 'the thing the Matrix DIDN'T do', but fell on its arse when using it.

One final review for this evening, The Strangers. What a pointless work of cinema. If you like being shocked three times in ninety minutes, or like 40 minutes of couples arguing and proposing to each other that leads nowhere because they seem perfectly in love, then you'll like this film. I hope no-one on this earth likes either of the above things. Unless the shocks come in a film that doesn't market itself as a horror/thriller then it's fine. Also I have a point to pick with the haven of Wikipedia. How come no-one in there has noticed that this film is an absolute rip off of Ils (Them) the French/Romanian horror from 2006. If you haven't seen it, I have on DVD, or it's about £3 in HMV/Zavvi, watch it. It's canny scary. It uses SO MANY things from that film, such as bird calls as freaky noises to make lasses turn their heads and then they turn back and there's a blokey there. They also use splatting mud-bombs off the window. THAT pissed me off, because that's the sort of thing that a director would think of for scary people to do ('Let's have them throwing mud, that's really scary?'), but then it's in Ils, this film reeks of Ils, so as soon as it happened I had my hands in the air shouting 'HAWEY, MAN!'. There is one scene that is really really shocking, especially for an american horror about marriage trauma. It involves stabbing. It's quite hard to watch. But it doesn't rescue the film at all.
Don't see it, unless you have 90 minutes to sell your soul. Unless you're a lass, lasses like shit like this, but don't pay to see it, just download it.