Bruno: review

Delight, disgust and shocked, just some of the emotions you may leave the cinema with after seeing Bruno. Truth is though that no matter what you feel after this film, Sacha Cohen has won. He doesn’t give a shit what you think of the film, all he wants is a reaction and a reaction you will certainly give him.

Bruno is a homosexual Austrian living it up in the fashion world, having been let go of his duties with his current line of work he seeks what most teenagers this generation crave….fame.

This is of cause just an excuse for him to put together some hilarious sketches and vaguely get a story out of it. It plays out almost to the exact template of Borat which could have been a drawback, however Borat was the freshest comedy in ages so who can blame him, or us for wanting to see something similar with a twist.

I can’t really go into to much detail, doing so would ruin a lot of the gags but all I can say is they are fucking hilarious. This film does things that should never have been cleared, he still does it though and gets away with it, purely because at the end of the day comedy is the biggest winner.

He so craftily exposes the homophobic nature of many people in this world, in this case mostly the Americans. Its shocking that in today’s society people still think this way, America (and other countries) so hell bent on inflicting their views on others, maybe someone needs to turn it around on them.


It’s incredibly scary at one point a karate instructor says “if they attack you they will most probably come from behind”

It’s this insane mentality that every person who is gay fancies every man on the planet, along with the fact there all out to get us! This is of cause complete bullshit.




Sacha Cohen knows this all to well, which is why you can almost see the twinkle in his eye as his hopeless victims fall into his traps. Hell sometimes they do a good job of making themselves sound like idiots without even a push.

Half way through I did begin to worry that I wasn’t enjoying it as much as Borat, however when the second half kicked in that thought didn’t even cross my mind. The plot device of him “realising” that maybe he should turn straight to become famous was a terrific idea. This obviously leads to hilarity as he half heartedly listens to Americans telling him the way it “should” be.

There were only a couple of scenes that I personally felt was a step too far, saying that though what’s the point in shocking comedy if it isn’t shocking?

I applaud you Mr Cohen, Bruno is a master class in comedy and manipulation, I couldn’t recommend this enough, maybe not to my mother though.



Notable mention to my girlfriend Hayley, she stacked it down the cinema stairs on the way out, one man saying “that should have been in the film”….. to which I agree, as I bloody missed it!

District 9: Full Trailer (geek porn)

You may have remembered mentioning a film called District 9, the film is all about an alien race that is being held captive in south africa. As the teaser trailer told us, they just want to go home.

Poor little blighters, they probably just miss the home cooking, plus the suburbs of south africa isnt the most ideal nesting area for our insectoid guests.

Joking aside it looks fucking awesome, however i am a complete sucker for good old fashioned alien yarns.

With Peter Jackson the hobbit lover on board as a producer i am raising my expectations! with this and "moon" coming out, my sci-fi juices are certainly flowing! pass the tissues!

Enjoy!

Brick: Review

Having found out about this film on a film website I decided to check it out, its been out since 2006 and was the directorial debut of Rian Johnson (brothers bloom)

He made this independent film on about 400,000 dollars which is peanuts and the result is really quite incredible. It’s an old fashioned detective story set in a modern day high school. Our protagonist Brendan finds his lover dead and with the help of his friend Brains he searches out the truth, as the film goes on and the plot thickens he gets caught up with a drug dealer called Pin and finds himself getting out his depth.

Don’t expect fast pace action as this is not designed to appeal to the masses hence its independent status. This can either be a good or bad thing, In one respect they don’t have creative choices limited by the confines of a film studio, however on the flip side with no one to stop them, some choices can leave audiences alienated.



For example the actors talk with 1930’s s slang and at times this can be hard to keep up with, I however found it both amusing and original, although I have been informed this is common with Film Noir. Having listened to some of the director’s commentary Rian Johnson explains that when you are a teenager the events that take place at school at the time feel like the most important thing in the world. So he wanted to reflect this in the language despite the setting.



The ending is not the dramatic rug pull from under the feet that you may have been expecting, however this could be reflective to the dramas we faced as teenagers, do we ever look back and think the problems we had were ever as confusing as they felt at the time?

It’s defiantly worth a watch and the plot is great fun to follow, it’s a cult classic and bloody original. Just be warned it’s not for everyone. The performances from a cast of young adults are amazing and put a lot of “bigger” stars to shame. However this could be mostly credited to Johnson’s story and directing.

If you not a fan of slow burning detective stories I would give it a miss, however I found it incredibly interesting, mostly because amongst all the remakes and sequels its nice to see something fresh.

8/10

For fans of Donnie Darko

The Children - Review

I am sitting in a cold uncomfortable chair, one leg is slightly shorter then the other so it rocks from one corner to the other, the walls look like they should have been redecorated years ago and the lady talking to me could probably earn more money getting her breasts out in front of a camera then working here.

The sounds muffled, I cant hear anything and this woman is pointing at me telling me something, my hearing comes back and I promptly, with no grace, fall out the chair, trying to achieve what would be a good free fall technique from the plane. I hit the ground, fuck!! That really hurt, everyone in the room laughs, sweat soaks the back of my t-shirt and I wonder how I ever got myself in this situation.

For those of you thinking “ok….he has finally lost it” I am talking about the lesson we had before I sky dived in Australia at 14,000ft. I still to this day have no idea how I ever managed to do it.



Those thirty minutes before we got in the plane was probably the start of the scariest two and half hours of my life. Very little can make me feel as terrified as I did that day, I don’t regret doing it because the experience was amazing, however it was fucking scary.

Now in the comfort of being in front of a TV I love being scared the shit out of via horror films, me and my girlfriend have probably seen an unhealthy amount from all different countries and I like to think I know what I am talking about in this genre.

I like to feel how I did that day in Australia, that rush of adrenaline, the sense of peril but I like to know that my life isn’t in any genuine danger.

The first horror besides “Drag Me To Hell” that I will review is a film called “The Children” that I saw over the weekend, It’s a film released in 2008 and is British.

Now British horror has been a bit pants recently, we have had the likes of “28 days later” and “Shawn of the Dead” which are fantastic films that are very well made, however not really that scary.

We had also had “Eden Lake” which is another in the “home invasion” set of films, nice middle class couple get their holiday ruined by chavs. The film is horrific but only because it’s so real, if I wanted to watch a bunch of chavs stabbing and burning people alive I would just pop into my local KFC.

So how good is The Children?



The plot is simple, one family goes to visit another family at Christmas and their children play together gleefully while the men talk about pretentious business plans and the women talk about washing dishes and sipping wine. One of the children gets sick and all hell lets loose.

The film has all the right elements to suck you in and whilst character development takes a bit of a back seat in horror, this film at least makes you care about half the characters.

Hannah Tointon who plays Casey, most famous for playing Warrens annoying sister in Hollyoaks was actually quite good in this. In Hollyoaks she was god awfully annoying but it looks like that’s mainly down to the character and script in the show. Although by writing this I am not only admiting to watching Hollyoaks, I am also watching it enough for one character to have actually annoyed me? oh dear.



The stars in this film are the children themselves, easily some of the best child acting I have seen in bloody ages. I was actually petrified of them, just the way they went from cute kids playing in the snow to cold hearted killers and doing it so convincingly as well.

A few flaws crept into the film, there was a half hearted attempt at an anti abortion sub plot and a weird love interest going on between Casey and her parents friend. Both would have been fine but there was no real reason for it and they didn’t seem to go into any real depth.

There are defiantly better scares to be had with other horror films then this, saying that though this is a great film on a watch once basis. Solid British horror with some fantastic acting from the children, offering more scares in the form of psychology rather then jumps with a nice splash of gore as well.

7.5/10

Transformers Revenge Of The Fallen - Review

When I have heard people slate the first Transformers film for being unrealistic, over the top and genuinely ridiculous. They couldn’t be more correct, although I would say it’s for those reasons that I loved it rather than loathed it.

Let’s be honest, the concept is thoroughly ridiculous, the original idea came from plastic toys that you could make into various vehicles. Hardly up there with the Blade Runner or The Matrix.

Although ask yourself, would you want to watch a Transformer film that spent less time on robot destruction and more on a complex multi-layered plot with character development?

No, not really. Transformers has a very simple formula, Big robots, pretty women, Shia running from everything and a load of humour thrown in.
Which brings us to Transformers 2, bigger, better, louder and I really could go on.



To quote Team America its “9/11 times 1000” although far less Al Queda and a lot more deceptions.

Michael Bay certainly knows how to direct action scenes with aplomb, really improving on the last outing by making less quick cuts and close ups and more long shots that let you see who is fighting who. Something that probably helped by having a much bigger budget.

Acting on the whole was very solid, no Oscars will obviously be won although everybody did their job credibly. Megan Fox pretty much being paid to look pretty, and boy does she do that well. Yes she may be “trailer trash” yes she is air brushed beyond recognition. Do we care though? .......no didn’t think so.

Comedy was also upped, something I think really helped me fall into the film. The fact Transformers isn’t played straight I think should win over a lot of the critics. I genuinely found the comedy moments extremely funny to the point of laughing out loud. Only one joke towards the end involving Decepticon testicals (yes I did say that) felt a bit to much.

The one major flaw was that it’s too long, the first 2/3rds of the film flow at a break neck speed, keeping you thoroughly entertained. It’s only when they reach Egypt that I feel the film sags a little. They could have easily have cut 10-15 minutes from the last act which would have made it flow a lot better. I can understand they wanted to give the fans as much as possible but Michael Bay might want to watch Star Trek and take a bit of pace advice from JJ Abrams.

Micheal Bay is also guilty of shameless self advertising for his other blockbuster, as Shia poses next to the Bad Boys 2 film poster.....shame on your Micheal Bay, shame on you.

If you rate this film on all the usual film boxes that need to be ticked this film would probably get about a 6/10. This film tries to be nothing more than a great escape from the pressures of life, i was laughing at all the right bits, thrilled by all the action scenes so what more could have i wanted?

On the whole though this film is incredibly watchable and if it wasn’t for the wallet raping prices of cinema’s I would defiantly see again.

8.5/10

Beats Terminator but not quite as good as Star Trek, blows the first instalment of Transformers out the water, which I think is all we wanted.

Cybertron next anyone?.....

Being lazy...............

Due to my holiday at Download festival I havent updated the blog, legions of fans have been pestering me to write something..........what...they have.

Well next week we shall have my review on the dick shrinking experiance that was "The Women" although if your thinking "hey fucker i want to watch that film today, tell me what you think!" then sir i issue the following:

"Funny in places, though you will feel your penis turn into a vagina at the very first scene. Plus there are no men in it!!! so imagine that, a big crew of women all working together for such a long period of time, the tampax bins must have been overflowing!

Transformers review also coming... yaaaaaaayyyyy!!

For the mean time, enjoy my generic google image from the search of the word "lazy"

Terminator Salvation: Review

Well I think we can all agree on one thing, Terminator Salvation is defiantly not the future Sarah Connor warns us about. With the timeline having been altered by the actions of the previous films the writers were given a bit more freedom with the story they could tell. The question is – was the story any good?

We are placed in the year 2018 at the early stages of the humans fight against the rise of Skynet and the relentless Terminators. Skynet’s army is at a primitive stage of development and John Conner is yet to be the leader of the resistance.

They had to change the formula used in the previous films, so on this front they have succeeded, it was exciting to see an instalment that had a completely different take on the series along with how they would cope without Arnie.

First of all you have to take your hat of to McG, the director of “Charlie’s Angels” was always going to be the first one the blame if this fell flat on its face and I believe he may have won over a few doubters.

Marcus Wright (Sam Worthington) was instantly likeable as the bad guy who comes good. He sells his body to Cyberdyne Research in the year 2003 while on death row, after being executed he wakes up during the war against the machines with more questions then answers. He befriends Kyle Reese, the hero from the first film who was sent back in time to protect Sarah Connor. In this film he is a fired up young adult who survived Judgement Day unaware of the importance of his existence.



John Connor and Kate Brewster are married with child, with John still working his way up the ranks as the “prophet” who knows more then anyone else regarding what lays ahead. With all this in place we have enough compelling characters to pull of a great film, somehow though they just missed the mark.

Christian Bale was a let down in my eyes, he was trying too hard with the poor lines he was given. He has done some brilliant work in the past but his performance in the Dark Knight and Terminator leaves me to think he is trying a bit too hard. He might also want to invest in a packet of lozenges for that nasty croaky voice he has developed.

A lot of the plot points were not very clear for those that haven’t watched the previous films and even for those that have. A number of the scenes didn’t flow as I would have liked and there was periods of nasty editing that jarred the film slightly. I am hoping this will be fleshed out in the 30 min of added footage were promised for the DVD.

Having said that let me tell you what I did like about it -

There were a couple of scenes where McG had one shot sequences that I thought were bloody brilliant. Anyone that has seen Children of Men will know what I am talking about. For example the camera shows John Connor entering the helicopter, taking off, flying, being shot down and then fighting a terminator on the ground without a single cut being made. This kind of shot is made easier with the aid of seamless editing which can be achieved with CGI, I loved it as it gives you a real sense that you’re in the film with the character.



The set pieces had me gripped and the cinematography in the human holding area in Skynet was beautiful. My one gripe would be that more Terminators should have been shown, think we only see the T-600 about four times.

Anton Yelchin and Sam Worthington were superbly cast as Kyle Reese and Marcus Wright, I especially enjoyed Yelchin, the little characteristics of Reese that he portrayed were brilliantly done, even him reloading his shotgun the same way.

Also loved the cameo from a CGI Arnold, a few people after the film laughed at this but I really appreciated it, was also the first time the film engaged me 100%. I am not saying this film needed Arnold but more scenes like that were required where you could see the pure terror of the Terminators.

So it’s a bit of a 50/50 for me, for every scene that had me groaning in my seat I was then dished up another that made me forgive it. Having said that though there were slightly more negatives then positives.

They have laid the foundations and there is more to come, with the technology of Skynet evolving we will hopefully get more of a glimpse of the future we see in T1 and T2 which is what we are all really craving.

Iron out the creases, fire the writers, get people in that can script good dialogue and the next film could make me forgive this ones failings. Their mission was to create something new and not make it god awful, for that they have succeeded……Just.

7/10