Johnny English: Reborn Review

Johnny English has returned! The question you got to ask yourself is, why?

When I heard that Johnny English was making his triumphant return to our cinemas, I didn’t really know how to feel. To me it always felt like one of those franchises that never got off the ground, a film that has some good points but had by this point been generally written off as simply ‘mediocre’, despite its genuinely good cast. I didn’t really think that anyone thought back on it that fondly, or felt as if a sequel was warranted, nor that it made enough money to require one of those awful ‘just for the cash’ sequels that we all love so much. So what is Johnny English Reborn? A Reboot? Kicking an already Dead Horse? Or was did Rowen just feel like giving it another go? Well who knows, and in the end it doesn’t matter all that much. Despite the time gap, we have another film which is essentially of the same mould, with many of the same laughs (or similar types of laughs at least) and another story which in the end is just a vehicle for Rowen’s funny Mr Bean-like antics. It’s as if the last eight years never happened!

Trailers: The Avengers

I think my face just melted. I would attempt to try and decipher the ins and outs of the film from this trailer alone, but instead I advise you to just head over to here and read a proper analysis from people who know what they are talking about (at least more than me): Link

From the DVD Shelf: Orcs! Review

A film that does precisely what it says on the tin, here’s another low budget, low-rent comedy horror with well...Orcs (!).

I seem to be riding this strange film wave at the moment, avoiding all that seems notable or what reviewers would term ‘good’ (whatever that really means), instead making a b-line towards what many would term ‘awful’. Well Orcs! (because plainly Orcs wouldn’t be as impactful) certainly falls into this low-budget-straight-to-DVD-awfulness category, but that doesn’t mean it is without its charm. Actually, I had a good time with it, take that film media! (but also, you are probably right). At least it isn’t zombies again. Right?

From the DVD Shelf: Mega Shark Vs Crocosaurus Review

Probably as low budget as you could probably ever get without breaching some kind of law, Asylum Film Studio’s brings us another mockbuster classic asking the pertinent question, who would win in a fight, a big shark, or a big crocodile? By the end of the film, you may have lost the will to live. I certainly had.

Asylum film studios are well known for their terrible direct to DVD releases, many of which rip directly from new releases in an attempt to make some quick cash. Let us not forget the Mockbuster classics that were ‘Sunday School Musical’, ‘Transmorphers’ and ‘Snakes on a Train’ (yeah, really). Alongside these examples of flagrant disregard for copy write law, Asylum has also created (I use that word loosely) a series of monster flicks, such as Mega Piranha, and most famously Mega Shark Vs Giant Octopus. Well now the Mega Shark has returned, but this time, he is facing off against a different, but luckily equally sized foe, the Crocosaurus (which, if you didn’t guess, is just a huge crocodile).

The Inbetweeners Movie Review

It's ungraceful and at times it certainly isn’t pretty, but if you were a fan of the series, or if you just love faecal matter and penis jokes, you’ll probably enjoy the movie spin off of this somewhat popular British television series. Otherwise, I’d steer well clear.

I’m not sure how I feel about the inbetweeners television series. At first I was rather a large fan, enjoying the first series rather a lot. From the heights of the first series though, as with many television series', the creativity of the story lines waned as it progressed and , to my mind at least, there seemed to be a reliance upon increasing crudeness to get laughs (an ever increasing use of slang descriptions of ladies for example), rather than through interesting story lines. To me, then, the film is a pinnacle of this transition, swapping out the interesting and sometimes cleverly written episodes of the first series, with a story line that is probably as bog standard as you can possibly get, but one where the rude jokes are almost always present. I’m not saying that I’m against this, and sure I did laugh rather more than I was expecting, but really beyond these moments there were many others which had me cringing, not because of the constant references to private parts, but instead because the character interaction, dialogue and plotting was so mind numbingly dull, clichéd and in many points arbitrarily enforced.

Super 8 Review

E.T for a new generation? Not really, but it’s still that summer blockbuster that we have been waiting for with all the charm of a coming of age story, with the action that movie goers of today have come to expect. Anyway, E.T. never had an exploding trains in it, so suck it Spielberg!

I don’t know what I was expecting. O.K. maybe I do know, an E.T for the new generation, or perhaps another Goonies, but with aliens. Well Super 8 isn’t really any of those things, but it certainly plays homage to that now seemingly passed age of cinema that those films represented, when a group of kids can have an innocent adventure, save the world, and be home in time for tea. It is certainly trying to evoke the same vibes, even setting itself within the same time period into which those films were created, evoking all the same 80’s vibes. It would be wrong to suggest that super 8 is nothing more than this though, and it has levels of intrigue and action which far surpasses these contemporaries of genre, even if the story elements aren’t as perfectly constructed.

The Rise of the Planet of the Apes Review

Been on holiday, that's why I haven't written anything. It's definitely not because I'm really, really, lazy...

Stunning special effects and a great cast projects this prequel to the Planet of the Apes saga from a simple money spinner into something that is entertaining, heartfelt and even somewhat believable.

When I heard that a ‘prequel’ to the Planet of the Apes, a series which I don’t really hold any affinity for thanks to a rather poor effort by a one Mr Tim Burton, I was sceptical. How do you portray the world being overrun by apes (a seemingly ludicrous premise) without it seeming ridiculous? Well apparently Director Rupert Wyatt had the answer, and I have to admit, I was wrong. It is possible, and I never thought I would ever say this: I’m excited about where this long running series is going to go next.