Saturday, 26 March 2011

From the DVD Shelf: Timecrimes (or Los cronocrímenes)



A breath of fresh air for the Time-travel genre, this low budget Sci-fi thriller is certainly mind-bending, but in an extremely good way.

At first glance this film seems to have everything going against it. First of all it has a silly name, a poor translation of its original Spanish title, Los cronocrímenes? (I don’t know, I don’t speak Spanish!). Secondly it’s directed by someone you most likely haven’t ever heard of, Nacho Vigalondo, who sounds more like a bad Mexican super-hero than a great director (no offence Nacho!). While finally, at first glance it looks like a poor, low-budget, slasher-flick, with a main antagonist that resembles a trench coat wearing, scissor wielding, Mummy (If you see the DVD cover you’ll know what I’m talking about). Hence, though I had even been recommended this film by other websites and purchased it, it sat sadly on my shelf for months before I finally got round to watching it. Plainly though, this film is demonstrates clearly why you should never judge a book (or in this case DVD) by its cover, for what we have here is something both imaginative, exciting and extremely thought provoking.

Wednesday, 23 March 2011

The Eagle Review



4/5

Varrus, give me back my…Eagle?

[WARNING]: This review contains explicit and disturbing references to the acting ability of Channing Tatum, parental caution is advised.

To my mind there have been few truly great historical action-adventures in the last couple of years and not since the days of Ridley Scott’s Gladiator over a decade ago now, have we seen anything spectacular in that mould, at least not in a Roman Context. That is not to say that the Eagle is the film to fill that void, but it certain does scratch the same itch, if not to the same extent, and it is definitely better than Centurion.