I’m not sure whats going on with the site lately.

If you move off of the start page, the format goes all wonky.

Also I don’t think any of the games are working anymore. I think this is because the websites

for the games no longer seem to be there but it might be related to the format issue

I still exist. I just haven’t had the heart to post anything when I’m pretty sure nobody is reading.

This blog is on a hiatus until such time that I get enough interest to start it up again.

In the mean time you can find me under Vincent Shearman on facebook. Feel free to send me a friend request – make sure you let me know why you want to be friends, I’m in the habit of ignoring people who say nothing and have nothing on their page (There are a lot of hackers around.)

Spoilers

An impressive little film although the CGI was lacking in places.

The apes looked very cartoony at least at the beginning of the movie.

I’ll admit I thought this was going to be an origin story in the same kind of vein as Greystoke. I suppose technically it is an origin story of sorts, but it picks up after Greystoke has returned to England and taken his rightful place in society.

He gets and invite back to Africa by the Belgian monarch whose representative, Ernst Stavro Blofeld is using local natives as slave labour to get at the local diamonds.

Blofeld kidnaps Jane (what else was going to happen in an Edgar Rice Burroughs story?) and Tarzan reverts to type in order to rescue her and stop the big bad guy.

Other than the poor CGI, there were a few problems, mostly they involved the liana that Tarzan swings on to reach the train. It goes on forever. Also before he reaches that vine, he and his buddies are running along a kind of tree highway, a nice flat road of thick branches with no leaves and no other branches to get in the way, jump over or duck under etc.

The ending felt a little rushed. As if they weren’t sure how to finish it. I might almost claim they had taken the idea of summoning nature from the movie Avatar if making use of animal stampedes weren’t a Tarzan staple.

Not a single ungawa through out the entire move!

They’ve had twenty years to prepare, and this was the best they could come up with!

Way way back in the distance annuls of time (1996)  I watched the original movie and wasn’t all that impressed. The effects were good, but it was filled to the brim with cliches. This long awaited sequel keeps up with the cliches, I counted at least three in the first ten minutes.

1) The Hero and his sidekick working a menial job, 2) going out of their and risking their lives to save the moon base single handed. & 3) The commander of the moon base chewing out for hero for having saved everyone’s lives.

The cliches would continue throughout the rest of the movie.

From the very start, the dialogue felt stilted and unreal. Even Jeff Goldblum who has been a fairly good actor in the past seemed to be reading his lines straight off of the page. Some of the dialogue does improve as the movie progresses, but it never really gets past the feeling of a B movie.

The effects were good. The alien fighter craft still remind me of Cylons.

Perhaps if the story consisted of a little more than it did, it wouldn’t have felt as if, what story was there, existed merely to bridge one set piece to the next and the characters themselves wouldn’t have felt so two dimensional.

Seriously it’s a B movie with big budget.

Judd Hirsch felt unconnected to the rest of the story. It was as if they couldn’t work out what to do with his character, so they had him drive across the U.S. with a bunch of kids that had no other purpose in the film.

And what was the Alien Queen doing at the end? The world is about the be destroyed, I’m going to win, so I’m going to chase that school bus because….. reasons.

The alien sphere tells of a large group of survivors from attacks by the aliens on other planets. These survivors have superior firepower, yet they can’t hold their own against the aliens, not like the plucky primitive Earthmen can!

Seriously???

Not a very impressive movie

Oh and one more thing. The Aliens are drilling into the centre of the Earth to get the molten core to power their ship. So, one presumes they had to destroy their own planet in order to launch their ships in the first place. Why not drain power from the sun which is both a much better source of power and infinitely more accessible? If they really must use the molten core of a planet, why target populated planets where the population might shoot back?

I half expected to find the aliens to be allergic to water.

By the way, the aliens invading Earth to get at the molten core of the the planet thing? It’s been done. http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0060278/

Wikipedia describes this a a live action version although it is pretty much CGI from beginning to end.

Actually it’s an excellent remake of the cartoon,  with only one or two songs. We spend a bit more time finding out about Mowgli, why he’s in the jungle and about the wolves who brought him up.

Shere Khan looks fake, though that’s probably on purpose since he’s the only character to actually die in the movie

Most of the cartoon is retold in a slightly different way with each of the animal characters having their own motivations.

I liked the ending, with Shere Khan dead, Mowgli no longer ‘Has’ to leave the jungle and so he doesn’t.

I wasn’t expecting much from this, a roman tribune tries to find out what had happened to the body of Christ after it disappeared from it’s tomb.

Not too bad a movie, perhaps a little strong on the religious side, at the ending felt a little lacking, but all in all the think the movie told the story well.

I’ll admit I’m not too sure about the jet engine effect when Jesus made his final disappearance

Anyway, I’m going to keep this short because I really don’t have a lot to say about it.

★★★★★.

*Warning spoilers*

We start right with the action and far too much shakey cam. The shakey cam improves later, but in the early action sequences it’s so bad that you can’t even be sure if the actors are who they’re supposed to be. Maybe the main cast wasn’t available for this bit and they got in the B team.

The Main plot seems to be about an accident that the Avengers team have while in a far off African land. The Avengers are blamed for lots of deaths both in this city and in the Age of Ultron movie, They are told they need to sign some kind of document that will put the how and when the Avengers are used in the hands of faceless bureaucrats. (never a good thing)

They seem to just gloss over the small detail of a nuclear weapon launched at a major American city in the first movie. How many would have died had the Avengers not redirected it into space? Those deaths wouldn’t have been the fault of the Avengers but of the faceless bureaucrats.

The avengers divided themselves into two factions, those willing to sign their rights away and those who refuse. Basically it’s Iron Man vs Captain America, both of whom enlist other heroes as well as Avengers.

To be honest after 5 rotten Spiderman movies, I think this is the best I’ve ever seen him.

In all, the story isn’t too bad, it fact it’s a better movies than Ultron was. The story does though require a lot of luck on behalf of the villain. The plot requires both the Captain and Iron man to be at a certain location at the same time having independently come to the conclusion that they need to be there.

Nevertheless, A lot of fun

Warning Spoilers

It’s nice that story in the movie seems to envelope the original. It was also good that What’s her face didn’t make an appearance in this one

It was slow starting. The white witch losing her child and trying to steal children from nearby villages to compensate for her loss.

Thor is one of these children, growing up to become the Huntsman in the previous movie and obviously in this one.

Silly moments with Goblins and Dwarfs and the One Mirror made it feel like a kids movie, but it got better.

Talking of the One Mirror, there were time it felt as if we were back in Lord Of The Rings territory or in some cases even Narnia.

The Mirror is possessed by the evil Queen from the first movie, she is summoned and thus we see how weak the white witch (her sister) really is.

Entertaining in it’s way, there were some scenes that the absence of which would have made them more entertaining.

Warning Spoilers

Let me start by saying that I’m glad the opening scene turned out to be a dream. I would have hated it if the first thing they did was try to claim that Batman could now fly.

It seems to be about an old fifty plus year old Batman and a young fresh newly introduced Superman, the events taking place shortly after Man of Steel. There were a few images of Batman walking through the Batcave past old suits and various Memorabilia that might easily have made better movie.

Not that the movie was bad.

Bruce Wayne/Batman is so obsessed with the destruction of Metropolis and the death of so many people during the big fight at the end of Man of Steel, that he plans to hold Superman responsible and kill him.

To do this he decides to steal a large lump of kryptonite from Lex Luther who at this stage in the movie isn’t yet known to be a bad guy. Indeed, Batman chases after a convey containing said item, calmly brushing the cars defending the item aside with no concern for those driving them as if he is some kind of super villain. Admittedly the convoy was defended by cars carrying heavy machine guns, but I guess they made for a more exciting chase.

Batman is only stopped because Superman turns up.

Batman gets the item later, weaponises it and attacks Superman. AS he is about to win, Superman asks him to save Martha (Apparently batman’s mother was also called Martha) and this tops Batman making the killing blow. When he asks why Superman used that name, Lois tells him that it’s the name of Supe’s mother. The thing is Lois was miles away when Superman uttered the name, unless she has suddenly attained super-hearing herself, she did not hear him!

After the battle, Batman gets out of his armoured suit and into a more normal bat suit. Since he’s in a hurry to save Martha Kent and we don’t see him change I can only assume it takes no time at all. I was reminded of the spray on bat suits from the Adam West era.

Lex Luthor, armed with fingerprints from the dead General Zod (nice that Krytonions have fingerprints) is able to take over control of one of the old Kryptonion ships. There are no other failsafes.

Told by the ships computer that the thing he wants to do is illegal according to the council of Krypton, he asks where the council are now? When told they are dead, Lex tells the computer to carry out his orders. Apparently that is enough logic for the ship to do as it’s told.

I wonder if the actor who played Zod in Man of Steel was surprised to get a call back? Hello, yes, yes, we’re making a sequel and we want you to be in it. What, yes, we know, we want you to play a corpse.

Finally the big climatic battle versus the grey Thing. Lois having thrown the kryptonite spear away decides to go and retrieve it. I guess she was Genre savvy enough to realise it would be needed by the end of the movie, I know I did. The thing is, she then goes at gets herself into trouble with no help from any bad guy. Trouble that only Superman can save her from, causing him to leave the battle against the whatsit beast to save her.

Was I entertained?

Yes.

I liked the way that Wonder Woman was introduced slowly throughout the movie and not suddenly dumped on the viewers at a key point.

I’m sure I did a review of he Martian sometime in January and yet it doesn’t seem to be here.

I gave it four stars.