[ElConvoy]

No they are not. His bones are bones they are just covered in adamantium. The adamantium is not part of his body and is not affected by his healing factor.

[Kamen Rider Meteor]

Not normally a big movie watcher. But I saw Flight , the kings of summer , the to do list and catching fire, over the holiday weekend.

Nothing was terrible. But nothing became a favorite either. I was mostly impressed with how much I truly enjoy the hunger games series. I was dragged to all the twilight movies by my wife. So I was reluctant to watch the first Hunger Games. But now I find myself actually invested in the series. It doesn't hurt that Jennifer Lawrence is America's sweetheart.

[Dr Kain]

King Kong vs Godzilla: What is there to say about the idea behind this movie that isn’t brilliant? Back in 1933, the world was amazed with the monstrous gigantic ape known as King Kong with ground breaking effects at that time due to stop motion. It was amazing. Toho repeated a similar situation when they first created Godzilla. As such, what better way to show off these two colossal titans than to have them battle each other? It sounds great in theory, but the execution leaves something to be desired.

That is not to say this movie is bad by any means, as it is pretty good. Unfortunately, the plot behind it is weird to say the least, some of the characters are useless, and the monster designs themselves are less than stellar. First, the plot. Two Japanese men are sent to an island to collect berries when they come across islanders who worship a god named Kong. There, they find a way to knock him out and take him back to Japan to have him fight Godzilla, who has been freed from the ice he buried in in the previous movie. This plot idea just sounds better on paper than it does in action because using the berry juice to knock Kong out and then drag him across the ocean on a giant raft is just so goofy. And then to have Kong powered up by electricity while Godzilla is now weak against is also weird. To be fair, from what I have gathered, this movie was originally supposed to be Frankenstein vs. Godzilla, so the electricity powering Kong makes sense from that perspective, but having a giant gorilla randomly be powered by electricity out of the blue without any previous knowledge of it just comes off as random and be a sudden way to extend the fight beyond just Kong getting his butt whooped. For what it is worth, it does make the battle interesting and adds another layer, so I’ll stop nit picking against it.

My second gripe comes from the monster suits as I just do not care for their designs. Kong’s body looks fine but his face looks like it was beaten with a shovel as he eyes always look messed up and sleepy at every camera angle. As for Godzilla, I really do not care for this look. Yes, his head does look more reptilian than it did in the movie before it, but the costume looks more like a blow up doll than an actual monster. There does not seem to be any lining between the arms and shoulders, so it just appears as if the arms are just sticking out of the sides of the body rather than being actual arms. It also does not help when the costume seems to fold and crease when Godzilla is movie his arms about. Lastly, gone is his fourth toe and ears, which became an unfortunate trend throughout the remainder of the Showa saga. Nevertheless, as I said, these costumes just do not work for me all that well.

Moving on to the characters, some of them are good, some are fun, but some are absolutely useless. Osamu is fine as the main character, but it is like everyone else around him is a moron, especially his sister Fumiko. She is completely helpless. She has to be rescued from Godzilla’s attack only to then have to be rescued from Kong’s clutches fifteen minutes later. On the other hand, Osamu’s boss is a very fun character (see below).

Despite my issues with the costumes and plot, the effects are quite good in the movie. Kong’s face turning blue is really well done when he is struck by lightning, as are the crumbling buildings when he and Godzilla face off. The one that shines for me the most is the way they do the giant octopus monster. It is obvious they super imposed an octopus on a screen to make him look huge (which does take away from the scene, as you can see the shadows of the spears and stuff being thrown at the screen), but the execution of this scene is extremely well done. Lastly, the paint job they did on the islanders is actually pretty well done despite it being obvious that they are Japanese. It does what it is supposed to well enough, so there is no reason to nitpick it.

Overall, King Kong vs Godzilla is a missed bag of a movie in terms of execution, but for what it is, it is highly enjoyable and fun. I wouldn’t say it is anywhere near the best of Godzilla’s movies, but if you want a nice simple movie where you just see two popular behemoths go eat each other’s throats, you can do a lot worse. I give this movie a 6/10.

And here is not only what makes the boss man fun, but I can also see die hard fans making this reaction after they saw my score:

[Sentai]

That gif is way to large, it slows me down incredibly.

[Locke]

I know Mumblecore has become like a dirty word - this isn't helped by wannabe critics slipping the title on any piece of shit with a small budget - but it's actually one of my favourite genres of cinema.

On that train of thought, I just watched Supporting Characters, a fun film about two best friends who edit movies together for a living. It's "just another film about life" but when they're done well, they are enjoyable even if they tread similar ground.

The movie has a great sense of humour, Nick and Darryl's dynamic is fun and their friendship utterly believable. It manages to take quite a deep look at life and love, but deliver it in a casual, natural kind of way to avoid the movie seeming too pretentious or too preachy. And one of the best things of all, the movie is hilarious without need to contrast that with misery. I mean sure, stuff goes wrong, but that is life. It sucks, but it's true.

[Locke]

Jug Face is a film that scares more in the ideas, than of gory shocks and there isn't a single cheap jump scare to be found. There is gore, gore that is well done enough to curl the toes, but gore is also self contained and only ever used for crucial moments to the plot. That is damn refreshing after the steady churning garbage of the torture porn genre. And guess what? There isn't a jump scare in sight!

Perhaps most terrifying, for a mass audience though, is Jug Face's morals. The pocket of the deep south the film is set in, is completely detached from the real world. It doesn't quite seem to exist in a single time or place, everything from the aesthetic of their village to their opinions is a mesh of insane and outdated ideas and concepts. And at one point, when two characters flee for their lives into the "real world" the real world is so terrified of this little backwoods community, that they are happy to simply turn a blind eye. And when you think that is as low as the movie can go, equilibrium is restored in the movie, only when evil is finally allowed to win.

[Locke]

Place Beyond the Pines doesn't work. It opens with just short of an hour of rich characterisation, and a crazy genre mashup that shouldn't work but does. It's great, and I would have been happy if that was the whole movie, but then the protagonist of that story, Luke, dies and the movie just keeps on going...

You would assume that as the movie chose to keep going, it would have a sense of purpose and direction but in reality what you get right smack in the middle of this bloated near two and a half hour movie, is forty minutes of pure filler. The man who killed Luke, Avery, is a cop and although it initially deals with the aftermath of what he did, it soon spirals into a giant tangent, until by the end when his story starts wrapping up we're basically in a completely different, and incredibly less interesting, movie. Cooper is a good actor but his character Avery, lacks pretty much all of the rich complexity of Luke. And still it keeps going...

Once the filler is done, how do we wrap up this bloated mess? Well we basically make the final third Place Beyond the Pines 2 dragging the whole thing out until the only thing you're excited for is finally seeing those damn credits roll. Dreadful.

[Locke]

Been a while since I watched any world cinema, so I decided to check out 'New World', because who does Crime Operas better than Asian Cinema?

New World is one of those movies that, sadly, gets worse the longer the film runs for. For the first hour so the movie is perfectly solid, completely unoriginal granted, but well made enough to more than alleviate the abysmally generic story. Then, then the film actually has to progress the plot, raise some questions and then answer them. New World isn't a complex film, but it goes about things in such a roundabout way, and is so needless complex for something so simple the movie can easily leave you lost. Twists, upon twists scramble on top of each other, many fly completely out of left field. In the end, it all somehow makes sense (mostly), and (mostly) satisfies but baffles all logic to get there.

What will probably be harder to swallow for most, isn't the films lack of originality or the films unnecessary complexity, it's the lack of action. I'm not saying it's wrong, or even bad, that this is a more cerebral affair where the war is battled mainly through words, scheming and big personalities but those used to the more action packed crime dramas, will probably be disappointed by how rare the action is.

And it isn't until the movie explodes into its first action scene, almost half way through the movie, only to end almost as quickly as it begins that you realise just how slow this movie has felt up until this point. A movie shouldn't kick into gear half way through, that is just wrong.

Luckily, when we do rarely move into an action scene, they are usually extremely well done, with each one being extremely memorable and worthwhile. One major villain is taken down through words - then murdered, while the other is caught in a huge and explosive fight sequence - but dies peacefully in a hospital bed. Creating fun contrasts between the two characterisations of the gangsters.

Plus, although this is a world where guns exist, the main weapons of choice are melee, like knives or golf clubs, because we all know an intense close quarters knife fight in an elevator, resulting in gratuitous (the good kind) bloodsprays up the walls is way cooler than any shoot out.

That is the thing about New World, it excels in the technical execution. You could argue that New World's look is as clichéd as its plot, and I would agree with you. But I actually don't mind movies using clichés for the sake of groundwork, so they can concentrate on fine tuning their movie to perfection. Many movies have wasted lots of potential focusing more on originality than making what they do have work.

New World is an insanely cool movie, with a beautiful neo noirish mise-en-scene, a cast of the kind of Korean faces which would look right in place in the middle of a Twilight movie all wrapped in a series of gorgeous suits and stylish haircuts, framed with cinematography which is so exquisite you could put any screen cap above your mantelpiece.

Then there is the acting, and the dialogue. The acting, and the writing, truly hits its best moments in the confrontation. There is that unique way gangster movies form conversations between enemies, masquerading their hatred behind false smiles, and idle chit chat, while somehow keeping the tension racked up to eleven while talking about the most inane things. So even a chat about the weather has your knuckles white. It's an art, and a brilliantly thrilling one. Where hierarchy can be defined simply in how people are placed in a space, or the way one character looks at another. It's just brilliant when they get it right and man do they get it right.

Another great aspect of the writing is the characterisation. Many characters initially seem like prisoners to their archetypal roles in these stories, but as the film progresses everyone grows to be so much more than they originally seem. Stand outs are definitely Oldboy's Choi Min-sik, playing a balls of steel cop with a skill for manipulation and scheming. Jeong-min Hwang's utter oddball come nutter of a gangster that he gets to chew on, who also turns out to be a total and utter badass when the time calls. And a bunch of red neck assassins. The acting is just stunning across the board.

[Locke]

Lacking a Wikipedia page, and opening with the words 'Inspired By True Events' a Haunting at Silver Falls fills you with dread from the beginning. It's just a shame it's for all the wrong reasons.

Although it takes a while to get there, when the movie hits a late second act twist, the movie really comes into its own. Everyone seems to be having the time of their life, as everything explodes into pure insanity, and everyone is allowed to indulge in some glorious scenery chewing. Although the rest of the film is way too amateurish to really be called 'good', it was worth sitting through for how entertaining the last act was.

This was a direct to disc flick, and it shows. The amateurish production, look and feel of the film undermines many possibilities for scares. And makes some sequences, which have been terrifying in other films, look downright laughable. That isn't to say there aren't some genuine scares, when the movie starts to push a whole 'is she mental' angle it actually creates some genuinely creepy scenes. And the fact that the film rarely uses jump scares, and never uses the headache inducing bass thumps to punctuate them, means many scares seem to come seemingly from nowhere and can really take you off guard. And when the real horror of the movie is revealed, you wont see it coming...

Our protagonist, Jordan is the worst person to follow around in a movie. She is completely selfish, ridiculously smug and disgustingly ungrateful. I just waited for her to get offed so we could move onto a better protagonist. Oddly enough though outside of Jordan, in the character moments, the almost porno level quality of acting actually makes some twists around certain characters feel like an actual twist, because you just wont see it coming. Although why the fuck is Erick Avari in this?

[KRX]

The Hunger Games: Catching Fire... I need to read these books, don't I?