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tommoben97
Reviews
The Reward (2013)
Brilliant, cute, funny, entertaining.
This is a fantastic little adventure that people of all ages and languages can enjoy.
In response to the unnecessary and blind 4/10 review posted before this one, what the bloody hell is wrong with you? "Didn't feel connected to the characters." Seriously? It's a 9 minute short film, and yet the characters were fun and entertaining to watch. Whether you feel a connection or not is rather irrelevant in this instance.
It's animation style is rather unique and very colourful. It was a pleasure to watch. 'The Reward' contains humour, satire, simple life lessons, and even spawned a short series.
To give an animation like this such an abhorrent score is wrong. For those of you who are interested in this, please ignore that 4/10 review. Besides, it's 9 minutes long. It is more than worth your while.
Logan (2017)
No One Word Can Summarise This...
{Minor Spoilers Ahead}
This is it. After all the good, the great, the disappointing and the abhorrently awful, this is it. This is the single greatest comic book hero film of all time. There is no topping this. There will never be quite as unique a lead-up, with 17 years worth of love for these iconic film characters and these recurring actors. There will never again be any actor that can compete with Hugh Jackman or Patrick Stuart. There is no competition. It wouldn't be fair...
It is nigh impossible to fully to describe this. Overall, 'Logan' is depressing, dark, gritty, and terrifying. Yet, it is also uplifting, heartwarming, real, and beautiful. I have never seen anything quite like this. 'Logan' is a difficult film to watch. To see these beloved characters so broken is almost too painful. You cannot sit down and just "watch" 'Logan'. It doesn't work that way. Once you settle in and the film begins, it becomes impossible no to be drawn into the pain. Johnny Cash was the perfect choice for the trailer soundtrack, 'Hurt' portraying everything you need to know before becoming involved in 'Logan'.
'Logan' is worth it. For the difficulty I personally felt when in the cinema, I was richly rewarded. This the most rewarding film in the 'X-Men' movie franchise, and for me one of the most rewarding films I have ever witnessed. It is often the most challenging that are most worthwhile. 'Logan' is no different.
I am now ready to say goodbye to the original 'X-Men' cast. Where the joint cast of 'Days of Future Past' was partly intended to be a handing-on of the torch, 'Logan' allows for infinite possibilities. I know that it's too soon to think about a follow up, and I know that it is impossible to create anything off the back of 'Logan' quite so easily, but it is important. I don't want another Wolverine. I don't want another actor to replace Hugh Jackman, James Bond style. I don't like the new 'First Class' cast, and I didn't enjoy Apocalypse. So where do we go from here? Do we move on and have these new mutants take over? Would that be preferable? I know that Hugh Jackman cannot be replaced, but that's why Laura is such an important character. Along with helping to give Logan a heroic send- off, she is a new Wolverine, a Lioness as described by Xavier. With so little knowledge of this new world, her immature eyes and Wolverine-esque rage can be how we might experience this new time period. Yet it may be more appropriate to let 'Logan' be.
If you thought 'Deadpool' was gory... The film itself, while filled with an absurd amount of emotion, still packs in incredible action, and lets loose with it's rating. Back in 2003, when 'X-2' came out, audiences loved seeing Wolverine have more violent fight scenes. They thought they were finally witnessing an unleashed Wolverine. It's ironic that he is enabled to truly tear people to pieces in 'Logan', when he is least capable of doing so. Don't let that fool you though, 'Logan' is gory beyond belief, and it's gorgeous. I know many people would dislike this level of violence, as they would have in 2003, but if you're against it, 'Logan is still worth it. My friend hated Deadpool due to it's gore and violence. She spent 99% of the movie with her eyes closed. But she watched 'Logan', and she f#&@%$! loved it.
I don't know if I can really say anything else about this movie. To me, 'Logan' is perfect. I'm sure it has it's flaws, as all movies do, but I don't care. This IS the best superhero film ever produced. I don't believe it will ever be topped. 'Logan' may be as difficult to watch as 'The Avengers' is easy, but it is infinitely more rewarding and worthwhile because of it.
I know this review won't be read, and is very unprofessional, but... James Mangold, Thank You.
'Logan' is a Masterpiece.
The Mist (2007)
So Close
Now, I know this review will be lost in the extraordinarily large number already given, however, I want to warn you before you read into this. This film is good but you don't want to watch it just before you go to bed. You will likely be kept awake for a while thinking on human stupidity, and maybe the movie as well.
***From this point on there WILL be spoilers. This is a review, not an opinion, (Though I think that slipped a little.)***
'The Mist' is a good film, yet like many before it's fatal flaws dig into me as a viewer. Primarily the characters. When I watch a movie I want to be drawn into it's world. "I want believe." When elements like such as wooden characters and stubborn script writing pull me out of the rabbit hole, I don't tend to be all that happy with it. But, for any critique I can place on it, I would prefer to say the good things first.
The first half hour was near perfect. A small neighbour-based dilemma and some terrific tension building. I enjoy a leadership powerfully in a survival situation, which is what this film is entirely based around for and hour and 55 minutes. Yes, that leaves the last 5 in a two hour horror story.
When it gets into it's defense phase of the story, it was awesome. The CGI was actually pretty good, not I would expect any less. Violent death ensues throughout the film as one would expect. It even did something few movies do that others may only hint at. It offers some answers and keeps then moderately vague. The sci-fi element was great. The social commentary was, I believe, pretty accurate. You may believe what you will but I feel that in an unknown crisis people will do what they did and start to get primitive and sacrificial.
That, I'm afraid, is where the realistic approach to an unrealistic situation ends. In this film there are two major downfalls: character reactions and the ending, which is also an unrealistic reaction to a situation. In every situation the characters are tossed head first into, they do two things. The first, they scream. OK. Alright. Horror movie. Screaming? Covered. The second being that they don't run from creatures far superior to mop handles. A dude loses a chunk of leg and dies. Another gets face melted and eaten. Fine, but why did this happen? Because they tried to use 12 bullets, an absurdly blunt fire axe and sticks to fight when there was clearly no point. Why didn't they run? Oh, right, it's just a movie.
When someone like me sees a flaw and the only real explanation is, "it's just a movie," then something somewhere has gone terribly wrong. Probably the script. Yeah, it's the script. So this guy, this group of seemingly level headed morons are allowed to gawk at a dude with alien bugs in him, (thanks, 'Alien', we owe you one) but there is no excuse to getting two people killed for a dumb engagement. Run! No one will blame you.
When the religious madwoman manages to conjure up a following of everyone but eight supposedly smart people and a kid until they sacrifice an innocent guy and demand they kill the kid, and the "whore", and then all of the 'willful' people, the eight leave. They hop in a car, losing four more. They drive away to some LOTR style epic/dramatic music. Everything's all cool. They even see a creature like the ones Godzilla had to fight in 2014... Huh. Then they run out of juice. Lo and behold, four bullets are left in the gun.
The last four (plus one child) decide instantly to kill themselves. Huh. I thought these were the willful, stand up to the religious guys. There was no, "Oh, should we fight, go it on foot, or should we, the smart ones, just give it all up and kill ourselves, cause that's the smart thing to do that goes against the whole law of nature. You know, that one about survival of the fittest even though we are the fittest of them all?" No, just, "Gun? Coo. Let's all die. Rather than lining a pair of heads so the main character whose name we've all forgotten can also die before the tanks come around and the mist magically vanishes." That's their first thought. Just give up. Fine, try for an ending like 'The Thing' in the dumbest way possible. Sure, they couldn't get away that made sense. This was JUST ******* DUMB. I can't begin to describe how much that ending made me hate the rest of movie.
But I digress. This is what I think the conclusion is meant to sound like: This is a good movie will science fiction elements, well made CGI and some genuine horror for some people. However, it's predictable,painful to watch at times and suffers from dull characters who barely seem to know right from, judging by the way no one seems to know where the exits are to run. While some may benefit from their endeavour to watch this film, others among you will despise it. I give it an 'A' for effort, 'B' for CGI, 'C' for the poor acting of some of the extras and even some of the secondary cast and a solid 'D' for displaying backwards human reactions to clearly hopeless fights. Defending the store was fine when there was no where to run, but otherwise poor effort. They really didn't care about and organised defense, did they? Oh well, religious nuts will be religious nuts when they aren't gagged to prevent idiocy and blind faith in what seem to be empty human shaped shells waiting to be filled with bible references. And a 'B-' for social commentary.