Once upon a midnight dreary

I love seeing films that I've never heard of before and thus have absolutley zero preconceptions about. It's super fun making judgements right from the title and as the opening credits run. And so my initial thoughts about this film were; 'Awesome! I love ravens. Ravens are great....'

This might actually be a rook, but the sentiment still stands.

The Raven (2012) 

Firstly, there's not enough ravens in this film. But there is John Cusack with an amusing beard as a down and out Edgar Allan Poe running around Victorian era Baltimore trying to trace a crazed obsessive serial killer who is reenacting Poe's fictional murders. It's all very dark and complex with a vaguely (and literally) tortured romance going on as well.

You're plunged into the scary dark world right from the onset. And having read none of Poe's fiction, I was totally unprepared for the grisly violence! I was feeling fairly creeped throughout the entire film as the body count notches up. Stylistically, it was like a time warped Se7en with touches of the game 'Hard Rain' for good measure the way you're led to consider 'whodunnit?'

John Cusack, as ever, is excellent and compelling. I don't really remember the rest of the cast, which goes to show... The script is surprisingly witty with some great exchanges between Poe and everyone he speaks to really. His is a very lovingly developed character.

The ending I thought was a very clever take on the actual facts surrounding Poe near the time of his death. 

Quoth the raven; it's a tongue!  

~Aim

Also when we saw this scene we both burst out. Is that a tongue?

~ Chris

We went to the cinema!

A film I actually experienced on something bigger than the 10.1" netbook screen! Seriously why do they even bother to mention the extra .1 of an inch? Anyway we stocked up on such cinema nibble staples such as PINEAPPLE and MELON before heading to Centertainment to enjoy the magic of cinema; an experience shared full of people talking and touching each other and using their phones and rustling all the shit they've brought with them. Oh, was that us? 


Prometheus (2012) 

I was horribly distracted by the light SHINING IN MY FACE for quite a lot of this film. But regardless, Prometheus was ok and I enjoyed various aspects of it but it was sadly disappointing overall with some pretty unforgivable plot holes. 


I loved Alien. It's one of my favouorite films of all time and I adore Ridley Scott. Perhaps because of these high hopes I felt the fail more keenly. I was also horribly teased and led on by the trailers which seemed to offer a more worthy companion to the original than how it actually was.


The bad bits: The stupid half-hashed characters. The stupid spirital 'meaning of the universe' plot.
Noomi Rapace as the nympho scientist religious fanatic with daddy issues.You're so annoying! How did this happen when you were so great in Girl with a Dragon Tattoo? And why are you making a face like a Mongolian hamster all the time.? And why wasn't Charlize Theron given more lines instead?

The good bits: Michael Fassbender as the android - This man is amazing, I want more of him. I'm going to watch every film he's ever done. Ridley Scotts's landscapes - You just know when you're watching a Scott film. The scares and creepy alien gore- I was pretty damn tense for quite a lot of the film. There's a lot of action, beautifully shot, with effortless effects and lots of disgusting, disturbing  violent alien bits. 


In all, I found it hard weighing it up and my initial feelings when I came out of the cinema can be summed up as 'meh' and 'but why?' If you can go and just enjoy the nice space romp with the cool scenery and nice nasty aliens then good for you. But if you were yearning after something more densely plotted, well characterised and challenging on par with Alien, then you'll be disappointed as I was. 


Grade: 





Go see it, just don't get too excited.


~Aim

I want my life back

I'm just glad it wasn't me who paid for this. Another one we chose from the infamous top 20 DVD releases in ASDA that appealed to us with its 'super awesome' cover art...

Dark Island (2010)

The premise: 'After losing contact with its researchers on a remote island, a military corporation hires a group of scientists and soldiers to find out what went wrong. When they arrive, the team quickly discovers that experiments performed on the island have unleashed a powerful and deadly entity that will stop at nothing to destroy them all.'

What we actually got: A dull and uninspiring cast with bizarrely uniform nasal voices running around a miserable Canadian island interspersed with some truly hilarious shots of pseudo cold blooded military personnel discussing things in a dingy office. Every now and again they are terrorised by some sentinent black dust.

I wanted to hate them, it would've made this whole viewing experience more enjoyable for when they started dying stupidly and horribly, but I couldn't even force myself to care enough. 

So many of the scenes in this film felt like shoddily made remakes and direct lifts from other films; ye old assembling of the 'crack team' of scientists and experts with 'clashing' personalities, (read stereotypical; the beardy mysogynist, the Asiatic expert in combat, the plucky female scientist etc) before shipping them off to a secret island used for military weapons testing to squabble and flail about miserably before causing each other's deaths through incompetence and deception.

The scariest thing about this film was probably the opening scene, but then that fails miserably as soon as the cast start speaking. There's some really quite tortuous dialogue that kills anychance of tension building. Another thing that stopped any tension whatsoever is the editing of the combat and action scenes. It zips about all over the place, with random close ups of random body parts. This is coupled with a soundrack that just doesn't fit, doesn't serve any purpose apart from to be irriatingly disonant from what you're seeing.

I'm going to try and pretend I didn't waste my life watching this. 

Grade:

Stupid ASDA.....

~Aim