Movie Reviews. Simple.

..and so recently I've been watching a lot of new movies, so I thought I'd mouth off about the good, the bad, and the downright hideous. Let me just put on my Jonathan Ross hat. It doesn't fit.

Up

So, this was a film which had a trailer which I always thought was a bit naff. They tagged it onto everything they released, and it just never struck a cord with me. Then the amazing words "Disney Digital 3D" appeared, and collided with my 3D loving phase, so I went to see it. Thankfully.

The film is really good, it's a mix of adventure (a lot more adventure than I thought would be in it, which was a nice change from the recent plots I've seen), humour and amazing visuals. Literally stunning, I don't know how it'd look in 2D, but with the comedy glasses on, some scenes looked like the view from a plane window. The first 20 minutes or so (in a way similar to Wall-E) have very little dialogue but show some serious emotions! I was unexpectedly taken off guard by it, expecting it to be a comedy all the way through, something which really helped to boost the film. Overall, the film was sound, the villain was hateable, the hero was likeable, Kevin and Dug were cute comedy sidekicks and Russell looked suspiciously like a squashed Michael Macintyre. I can't really praise the film enough, it was a total surprise to me and is a definate DVD buy. Fact.

The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus

What the hell was this film!? I'll tell you, it felt like 2 wasted hours. The trailer may look like some beautiful CGI fest, but unfortunately whilst the visuals ARE stunning (for about 15 minutes of the film) the plot left a lot to be desired. From what I could see there were about 5 storylines mixed in to one, with countless other parts where a subplot was started and then lost in the flurry of poor writing.

Heath Ledger was brilliant at salvaging a character from the plot, as were his many incarnations (I think his death may have resulted in the plot being twisted to fit, which may explain the lack of it for the most part). The idea of a mirror which apparently takes souls is kinda weak as it is, it is even more confused by the visuals of a dark and gritty London which is verging on Steampunk and appears to play no part in the "Imaginarium" mentioned. I wouldn't advise seeing this film if you don't want to have to think, or if you're not a pre-existing Terry Gilliam fan. I'm debating a DVD purchase, if only for the fantasy shoes scene and Johnny Depp's amazing monologue about death. This film is far from amazing, far from good even. I've seen worse, but if a friend asked I wouldn't recommend it. Probably not to anyone.

Zombieland

Surprise hit for me, even moreso than Up was. There was something that grabbed me in the trailer, like a Shaun of the Dead, in a theme park, with added blood. The film didn't dissapoint, there were one or two scary parts, a lot more hilarious parts and possibly the best cameo ever. So the plot here was also pretty non-existant, but it wasn't a film which needed one. As long as you can understand that zombies all need to be double tapped then that's pretty much the film. Weirdly, the best part of this film was the needing to read, when a rule would come up on the screen, only to be shortly smashed by a zombie, or shot, or cut in half, or slammed into a door, or hit by a truck or, you get the idea.

Infact, I'm gonna describe this as a Juno meets Napoleon Dynamite meets 28 Days Later. That's right, some horrendous mash up of movies there, but it works, it's easy to watch, it's fun and it takes itself about as seriously as people take five News. A definate DVD buy, I assume there'll be many hilarious special features on it too, comedy zombie films love them. My one gripe was the fact that with one switch the whole of the theme park turned on and began operation, but that's a little nerdy obsession there.

Coraline

And finally. I thought I'd stick this in here because I bought it recently and the 3D effects worked at home. The film looks amazing, gotta love a bit of stop motion with a creepy story! Highlight of the film is the explaination as to why the cat can talk in the other world; "I just can ok". Brilliantly put! Take that un-nessacary plot points in Imaginarium! I'm glad people still persevere with stop motion if only for little gems like this - Fantastic Mr Fox maybe not, the trailer doesn't look like there's that much care put into it, filmed for style rather than artisticness - that and they've made him American, which is just wrong. So yes..

..those were my film reviews. They were probably totally gripping. I think I'll not do another of these in the future.. if I hadn't just typed this all out I'd not have even started. I put pictures in though!

Love to all, hate for some, Oscars for me. xx