HI KIDS.

Hello stranger. It's good to be back.

I haven't blogged since I returned to the country, so I have a few films to talk about.

Firstly, as it is freshest in my head, Saw V/5/Five. YOU WON'T BELIEVE HOW IT ENDS (pssst...yes you will). I will spoil Saw 1/2/3/4 in this so if you haven't seen the, I don't recommend reading them

I'm a defender of the Saw franchise, they've taken a battering off the critics so far. Yes, the acting is terrible; Yes, the scripts are terrible. BUT...a huge BUT...the twists are great! They're entertaining, as are the torture devices. Jigsaw created the US torture porn market, and it has died down to an extent, but the Saw franchise is still booming.

Sadly, I feel I can no longer defend the franchise. Firstly, the advertising campaign. Using the tagline 'you won't believe how it ends' is ridiculous, especially when the whole concept of the film is to sit through flawed garbage, then get twisted, and forget how bad the film was and how good the twist was when you walk out.

Saw V is a 'best of' compilation of the Saw's so far. It jumps back and forward in time, as expected since Jigsaw is dead but the actors name is in the credits, with Straham still hunting the Jigsaw and Hoffman the new Jigsaw, now Amanda is no more. The story is good, the 'strangers in a room like Saw 2' part of the film is reasonable, mainly as it is the only opportunity to stick in new torture devices, some of which are awesome, others are pretty shoddy and flawed.

Maybe it's just my brain being 5 years older, and much more wiser to the world of horror, but since the first Saw, and up until the third one, they have been getting more and more obvious. Saw 4 changed that, it added a whole new slant to the film sequencing and timeline and the twist was fantastic. I came out of that film wholly impressed. But Saw 5 cuts back to the obvious, so much, in fact, that you can work it out far too early. They have done a Derren Brown and put in vocal clues to the twist throughout the film, but really have overdone it and you end up totally believing how it will end. The first last sequences, mind, are fucking brutal, the hardest scenes to watch for gory reasons in the series so far.

All I can say is, if you are a fan of the Saw movies, definately go and see it. It does add to the canon of Saw in many a way, has some great tortures for the gore fans, and will, I hope, definately benefit next halloween when Saw VI comes out. If you haven't seen them, obviously avoid at all costs. The numbers don't work like Halloween, or other horror series, you need to see the first 4 in order to get anything out of the film. At LEAST see the 2, 3 and 4, as Saw 1 doesn't really shine too hard on this film as it has in the last 2.

Reet, another film time..

I can't talk much about this film as it has been about 4 weeks since I watched it, but all I can say is WATCH ME. The film I refer to, of course, is The Fall. It's a 2006 (I think, i'm writing without the aid of imdb) drama/fantasy/comedy about a 1920's Hollywood stuntman who takes a fall and ends up in a hospital. Inside, he meets a young orphan girl, and befriends her, so he can tell her a majestic and fantastic story about revenge. But his ideas turn sinister and dark.

The fantasy sequences in the film are some of the best I've seen outside of J-Movies. It has the epic feel of Hero, or Golden Flower, and uses the same pallette as the two. It's rich in colour, foregrounds and characters stand so prominintly out from the background, which is often wide desert or large greenery. It's a beautiful piece of cinema in that respect. It delves into Oz, in that it's characters are all enhanced and romantic versions of people that we meet in the real world.

The real scenes in the film are hilarious, the orphan girls struggles through conversation in broken English, to the point of cutesiness. The characters we meet outside of our protagonists are all light, but incredibly relevant to the story. The light meets the dark in integral points and make for a fantastic up and down ride.

It does get dark in the end, to the point of tears, but as you'd expect, laughter is interspersed (sp?) within.

If you have seen The Fountain, or the Wizard of Oz, see this for similar reasons, enjoy it as epic fantasy-meets-real world. If you were wowed by the cinematography of Hero, then watch this and have your socks blown off again and again.

Final film to talk about...Get Smart.

Get Smart is a James Bond spoof. No more, no less. But spoofs are funny. (Sorry, CAN be funny. Let's not ignore the 'Movie' series still going. Superhero/Epic etc, they can all fuck off, although I did laugh a few times during Epic Movie)

BUT ANYWAY. Get Smart really is a good pastiche of the Bond movies. It splices Moore's quips with Lazenby's appallingness in many a good way. The gadgetry is hilarious, and the support cast (with Masi Oka in, and groundhog day, Ghostbustin ass Bill Murray) stands it's ground. It made me laugh A LOT, for about 40 minutes, but then does the staple 'Oh we've actually turned INTO a spy movie now' but, where the jokes stop, the kissing begins, and the film can be turned off.

Dwayne 'The Rock' Johnson is really good in this film, I'm really starting to appreciate him as an actor. He can be funny, but then the eyebrows come into play and he gets all serious, and, lets not forget, good. Anne Hathway is a waif, but hot, so I let her off in this film. Steve Carrell is HILARIOUS for, as I've said, 40 minutes, then turns serious so gets crap. Bill Murray is a tree, I'll say no more.

I'd see Get Smart, as I've said before, if you're babysitting. Kid's find this absolutely genius, with or without seeing a Bond movie. I'd also say that use growned-ups should watch it, but only if you fancy it, I'm not saying rush out and buy it or anything.