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InTheWakeOfReason
Reviews
Magicians (2007)
Passes the time, but don;t expect laughs-a-plenty.
Mitchell & Webb have done some very funny material in the past. This film is, at best, mildly amusing.
The premise is amusing, in a black comedy way.
The characters are amusing, occasionally.
The script is amusing, in places.
Individually all of the contributors are capable of so much more and it is disappointing to end up with a film that aspires to be funny but falls short in so many ways. It simply fails to sustain any interest. Much of the humour is hackneyed and its predictability takes away so much of the punch that you find yourself hunting for humour that ultimately is not there to find.
Overall the best I can bring myself to recommend is if this comes round on TV and you have little else to do on a rainy day give it a try.
28 Weeks Later (2007)
Say it ain't so...
Staggering! How anyone could consider this film anything but appalling is beyond me. It's predecessor '28 Days Later' is brilliant, this is nothing short of shockingly bad.
Relying on cheap 'shocks' (which fail to shock since they are telegraphed by the use of the most clichéd cinematic devices) this film fail on every level.
Shaky cameras are interesting when intelligently deployed, but tiresome when overused - guess which camp this film falls into.
Robert Carlysle does himself no favours in this film. He is an incredible actor but obviously failed to read the script before signing on the dotted line for this one. Ouch! Robbie, you really can do so much better than this pap.
--Spoiler time--
This film is so full of bad cinema it is hard to know where to start. The plot has as much substance as jello, the acting aspires to mediocrity (with the occasional exception), he choice of lighting (especially the naff 'simulated night-time imaging' sequences) leaves much to be desired, the shaky camera with very rapid cutting fails to inspire, shock or entertain (it simply annoys).
Let's look at the plot...
We follow on from 28 days later, but 28 weeks later (brilliant), all "infecteds" are supposedly dead. Two children (children of Carlylse character) are passed into a "safe zone" (WTF? Who would bring their children into such an environment, I'd be trying to get out to them!). Okay, perhaps Carlylse's character is a humanitarian (not that the film suggests this) and he wants to help. So, the Amaericans have invaded yet another country and are clearing up London and attempting to repopulate it. The children "escape" the safe zone into London (passing armed guards, climbing outside bridges, and being spotted AND REPORTED while doing all this and the Americans cannot catch them! DUMB or what!
The children then proceed to go home to recover a photo of mother, only to find mother is still alive (having survived an attack earlier in the film - it turns out she is somehow immune to the rage virus). Okay, if we forgive the kids for being as dumb as house bricks, and the American's for being hopelessly incompetent, and the script writers for... (No, sorry, that one is unforgivable!)
So, mother is brought back to the safe zone as a "survivor". Note, SHE IS BROUGHT INTO THE SAFE ZONE. No quarantine outside the safe zone until we know what is going on. No quarantine for the children who have been wandering around outside the safe zone. Nothing. Oh, sorry, they are locked in an apparently unguarded room.
At this point my suspension of disbelief blew a gasket and the whole film collapsed into silliness. Despite my best efforts to forgive incompetent scripting, poor story line, lousy film making and generally sad acting I really, really, really recommend you give this a miss.
Even the gore is weak.
I'll give it two because I'm in a very generous mood.
Spider-Man 3 (2007)
Entertaining
Sam Raimi knows his craft and Spider-Man 3 is a great example.
There have been many 'critics' who have accused this film of being 'too complicated', or of 'trying to fit too much into a single movie'. It's a shame that people strive to simplify films, to dumb them down to mediocrity. Spider-man 3 contains many threads and the film is well paced as a result. Anyone should be able to follow the story with ease and the pace of the film is sustained and enriched by the intertwined stories. None of the plot threads is particularly challenging but they sustain the story which is, let's face it, all that matters.
Okay, the characterisations are not deep, but they are at least three dimensional.
One critic I read criticised Tobey Maguire's performance as Peter Parker under the influence of the symbiont. Sure, the performance lacks power, but it moves the story along and when I watch a comic book superhero story I'm not looking for depth, I'm looking for motivation, character and, above all, ACTION! Spider-man 3 delivers action IN SPADES.
This is a chewing-gum superhero comic book story and Raimi's interpretation captures this perfectly.
If you like fast paced fantasy action superhero web slinging sand blasted sky surfing love stories then Spider-Man 3 will be right up your street.