Just when I was beginning to think every film I watched was going to be mediocre or a total dud I’m blindsided by a gem of a movie like District 9! Based in South Africa and filmed for a significant portion in a documentary style this is a whole new take on the “Alien Nation” style story. I personally didn’t recognise any member of the cast but I think that also helped work in the film’s favour and made it much easier to believe the story could be real!

As with all my commentary on movies I will not go into the detail of the plot as I especially do not like to spoil a film that I recommend you go and see. A must for sci-fi fans and I suspect it is also a film that even movie watchers who normally shy away from sci-fi films may appreciate.

I’ve given it 9 out of 10 on the IMDB.

Lock Stock and Two Smoking Barrels and Snatch are two of my all time favourite movies. Both directed, admittedly in similar style, by Mr Guy Ritchie when he was still cool. Unfortunately I’ve not been impressed with much else in Guy Ritchie’s later career.

Anyway, the point of that introductory paragraph to this post is the fact that I have just finished watching Sherlock Holmes and the first thing I noticed in the credits was “Directed by Guy Ritchie”. Oh yeah I realised to myself… I forgot this film was directed by him although really, given the style of direction I should have realised!

So, although I watched the whole of Sherlock Holmes not realising it was a Guy Ritchie film, it makes no difference to my conclusion (so why did I share that info then – well, why not!). And my conclusion Dr Watson is that it was, on the whole, rather a disappointment.

I thought after watching some recent crap films such as Armored and 2012 that this film may be a breath of fresh air. I was wrong. Or maybe I’m just getting too picky.

So what was wrong with it? Well I’m not going to give spoilers away in case you haven’t watched it but my prime problem was that I just didn’t feel that excited or drawn into the story. It was all rather dull. The acting was reasonable, the costumes and the excellent effects of bringing old London to life were great, but the excitement of the story was not.

It is clear the ending, although nicely concluded, left the opening for the next chapter of a Sherlock Holmes adventure and I guess it will be interesting to see how that one pans out and if it is any better. If you look on IMDB it is already listed as being in development stages.

My rating that I have just given it on IMDB is 5 out of 10. Possibly harsh but I just wasn’t that impressed. Probably my expectations were too high having noted it to have an average rating of 7.7 on IMDB (or at least did at the time of this post).

With Muppet at work tonight I decided to watch a movie and the choice was “Doomsday“. I must admit I had never heard of this film until I saw a trailer for it the other day quite by accident and thought its tale of Scotland under lockdown from a deadly virus with a definite tribute to Mad Max looked worth a viewing. Luckily I was not disappointed! What a great little film… and the lead actress Rhona Mitra certainly took my fancy. This lady is destined for a great career methinks and I hope to see more of her in an action role like this again.

Anyway, the film will not win any oscars but if you’re looking for a fun sci-fi/horror tale in the vein of Mad Max then look no further…. plus its not American which is always a good thing too of course! And yes the poster image I’ve put on the blog is the French poster for the film but I liked this poster image much more than the UK version.

Well to conclude my last few posts I’m now up to speed with ADSL2+ and obtaining speeds of up to about 1100kB/s going down and about 100kB/s going up. And I think, given my distance from the exchange, that is gonna be as good as it gets for the next few years…

Now, the point of this post… With Muppet doing a lot of night shifts at the local supermarket over these last few weeks it has given me quite a bit of solo time at home (after the kids are in bed of course).

Normally I usually take that time to play games but instead, these last few days, I’ve been using the time to rewatch some classic films. Yesterday it was Pulp Fiction (still a great film) and today it was American Beauty.

I had seen this film back when it first came out in 1999 but really had fogotten how great it was. This film truly is a classic and I think I have to rank it in my Top 10 films of all time… and I think to be honest I appreciated it more with this second viewing. I suspect maybe it is connected to the fact that I feel myself getting into my late 30’s and know that, like the main character in the film, I will soon be in that similar age bracket and probably assessing life.

Not that this post is suggesting my life is anything like the character portrayed so magnificently by Kevin Spacey in this film!!!

Anyway, just wanted to note down what a classic it is and urge anybody who reads this who has never seen the film to do themselves a favour and see it asap!

Next on my hit list…. “The Usual Suspects”

Tonight I had a burning desire to watch Alien Resurrection, aka Alien 4 from 1997. Why? Dunno… it was just one of those things that I can’t explain.

Yes, I have seen it before but probably about 9 years or so ago now so although I remember snippets I couldn’t fully remember how it ended and who lived or died. Anyway, although it only gets a 6 out of 10 on the IMDB and is strongly critiscised as being the worst of the series I personally thoroughly enjoyed watching it again after all these years and still stick by my original thought that it kicks ass over Alien3. Of course, Aliens (the second instalment) is still probably the best and always will be!

Just before I sign off this post though, one very interesting thing I noticed when I watched Alien Resurrection tonight, one of the characters is played by the guy who plays Warrick on CSI! Wow, small world… particularly as I actually watched an episode of CSI Vegas earlier tonight with Muppet. Anyway, this would have been before he was in CSI so obviously I would not have known him “as the guy out of CSI” when I watched it the first time around… I do find it strange and lots of fun when you watch a film for a second time around and realise it has a cast member who you now know quite well but, at the time, just seemed like an extra!

Felt in the mood to watch a film tonight so decided to watch “Poseidon” - Already knowing the reviews of it were not great I watched this expecting nothing other than a run of the mill disaster film. Probably a good job my hopes were not too high otherwise I would have been very disappointed as opposed to thinking “Well, that was ok, but I probably could have been doing something more productive with my time!”

Overall I guess my verdict was it was a watchable, mindless waste of 90 minutes. Certainly nothing you’d want to watch again for sure but I did make it from start to end! The cast, which is actually quite good, do the best they can but the characters are incredibly shallow. I certainly couldn’t care less as, in predictable fashion, several cast members met with sticky ends.

As at the time I write this the internet movie database gives it a score of 5.6 which I think is probably quite fair.