New Entertainment Website launched by Borders

More famous as a book store of course, but Borders have set up a brand new website featuring DVDs, Blu-Ray, as well as games and music. Check out the site here.

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CaptainD - Movie Reviews Blog

Trailer for The Soloist

Looks interesting.... Robert Downey Jr. and Jamie Foxx, directed by Joe Wright, interesting plot... sounds like it can't really go wrong! Looking at the cast list it also has Catherine Keener and Tom Hollander, both of whom are really talented as well.

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CaptainD - Movie Reviews Blog

The Invention of Lying Trailer

I quite like the look of this one...

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CaptainD - Movie Reviews Blog

Cloudy, with a Chance of Meatballs (2009)

Just came back from watching this (in 3D). While I'm not convinced that it was worth the extra money to see it in 3D (somehow I expected much more from the 3D effect), Meatballs is a thoroughly entertaining movie. It perhaps lacks that certain magic spark that the very best animated movies have, but it was vibrant, full of energy and contained a lot of humour.

The story revolves around Flint Lockwood, a young man trying to make a name for himself by virtue of his inventions - unfortunately, his creations have a tendency to go spectacularly wrong. Trying to gain the approval and understanding of his father, the love of a weather girl who is extremely smart but deliberately acts dumb, aided by a monkey (or chimp, maybe) with a device to vocalise his thoughts, a policeman voiced by Mr T (!), a mayor who's greedy for food (and everything else), and an assortment of other odd characters, he tries to help the world, then save it from what he's created to help it. All good fun.

The movie relies heavily in sight gags - perhaps a little too heaviliy - but there is some good dialogue and quite a bit of humour aimed squarely at adults in the audience. (Even some adults may not get the "We've got a diem to carpe!" line.)

Somehow it's not quite brilliant, but it is highly enjoyable from start to finish. The visuals are loud and colourful, perhaps lacking a little detail compared to PIXAR and Dreamworks offerings but still very good. Another winner from Sony Pictures Animation!

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CaptainD - Movie Reviews Blog

News on The Hobbit - First chance to see what Hobbiton looks like!

The next The Lord of the Rings movie is set to begin shooting in New Zealand in March 2010. The Hobbit will be directed by Guillermo Del Toro, who has already moved his family to Wellington to begin the intensive pre-production phase. Many locations and cast still need to be confirmed, but redevelopment of Hobbiton has already begun.

In 1998, Director Peter Jackson was searching for the perfect place to build Hobbiton, the hobbit village from author J.R.R. Tolkien’s trilogy. During an aerial search of the North Island, New Zealand, he found it. It’s at the Alexander Farm in Matamata. For young and old(er) hobbit fans, there are exciting tours and activities in and around this area. The coming months will be even more exciting as production of The Hobbit moves forward.

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CaptainD - Movie Reviews Blog

The First Wives Club (1996)

The First Wives Club is a (I use this word with some reluctance) comedy about embittered middle-aged divorcees seeking revenge on their ex-husbands by trying to extort money from them. Though there are some fine actresses involved (Bettle Middler, Diane Keaton, Goldie Hawn) and some witty dialogue here and there, this film is on my "never want to see again list" for two main reasons - most of the time it simply isn't funny, and it constantly tries to deny what it is. If the movie had been honest about the fact that it's a case of revenge and, to a lesser extent, the battle of the sexes, it may have been funny. However, it repeatedly tries to justify itself and the main cast members constantly proclaim that what they're doing has nothing to do with revenge - when quite clearly it is exactly that.

I found neither the wronged ex-wives nor their former husbands to be particularly sympathetic characters, and there was little satisfaction or humour in any of the situations that came up. Only some good writing partically saved it - some of the dialogue was genuinely amusing. Perhaps embittered middle-aged divorced women might find this film funny in a perverse way, but I found it pretty tedious and my wife wasn't much more impressed with it than I was. My advice would be to avoid this movie (unless the basic premise actually appeals to you).

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CaptainD - Movie Reviews Blog

Pleasantville (1998)

Pleasantville stars Tobey Maguire and Reese Witherspoon as a young brother and sister who get sucked into a TV show (by a sinister TV repairman). The show, "Pleasantville", is pretty much like the Waltons but not set in the Wild West - everyone is very pleasant to each other all the time, and in addition everything turns out just fine and dandy every single time. Of course, modern kids in this setting... well it's not going to be pretty!

With a great supporting cast including William H Macy, Joan Allen and Jeff Daniels, this is well acted and brilliantly filmed - the show is in black and white, but as things progress some things become colour (the Art Direction was one of 3 Oscar nominations). It starts off very surreal but once the big unravelling of the plot is made, coinciding with (almost) the whole of Pleasantville becomming colour, I found the pay-off to be a little disappointing... it was a little too... well, black and white! The surrealism was lost and rather obvious comparisons with racial prejudice and Nazism were made - the surreal atmosphere is lost completely and the final scene lacked impact.

Still overall Pleasantville is an enjoyable movie and the filming is superb. Good, but not great.

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CaptainD - Movie Reviews Blog

G-Force (2009)

Disney's movie about small furry animals employed as special agents is quite fun, though it's difficult to know exactly who the target market are. For adults there isn't enough to really hold your interest, though there are certainly a few good moments and quite a lot of movie references. Children small enough to like movies purely for having small furry animals in them might struggle to follow the plot, whereas children old enough to understand the plot will probably think they're too old for movies starring small furry animals.

The 3D is pretty impressive though, if you do go to watch it I'd recommend seeing it in 3D.

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CaptainD - Movie Reviews Blog

Fame 2009 Trailer

Not sure about this one... can't remember the original film, hated the series when I was young (though whether I'd like it or not now, I have no idea!)

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CaptainD - Movie Reviews Blog

Accidental Husband (2008)

Starring Uma Thurman as "The Love Doctor", Emma Lloyd, this is a story of revenge and love. Emma's advice to Patrick Sullivan's fiance causes her to call the wedding off, and Patrick (Jeffrey Dean Morgan) wants to teach Emma a lesson. He gets them married thanks to the joy of hacking, which poses certain legal problems for Emma's planned marriage to publisher Richard Bratton (Colin Firth). For no apparent reason he then falls in love with her. This creates more problems...

I felt that this really never got off the ground because the romance between Emma and Patrick never seemed believable. There were a few funny moments but this remained, for me at least, an average film (my wife liked it slightly more than I did). I was in the mood for a really undemanding film when I saw this and The Accidental Husband certainly fits that bill, but I felt that it really could have been a lot more than a reasonably entertaining hour and a half.

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CaptainD - Movie Reviews Blog

Julie and Julia Trailer

I've been wondering about this movie, reviews I've read so far have made me quite hopeful that I'll enjoy it. The trailer is quite fun, anyway...

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CaptainD - Movie Reviews Blog

Seen on TV Recently - The Mask (1994) and Mean Girls (2004)

Jim Carrey's breakthrough performance in superhero comedy movie "The Mask" showcased his insane energy and elastic facial muscles, and it remains a highly enjoyable movie. Featuring Cameron Diaz at perhaps her most dazzlingly beautiful (and she acts pretty well, too) and a hilarious turn from Ben Stein as a psychologist who;s just written a book about masks, but finds Stanley Ipkiss (Carrey) a little too crazy for his liking...

Effectively turning Carrey into a cartoon character whenever he puts on the mask, I first saw this movie at the cinema - sitting right in the front row, the (sometimes literally) eye-popping special effects really jumped out of the screen at me. (This would be a great movie to re-release in 3D!) Those SFX still actually look good, and while the humour is sometimes infantile, much of it is very funny.

Mean Girls, starring Lindsay Lohan, is a reasonably entertaining coming of age comedy in which Lohan's character comes to "civilisation", meets the nerds, aims to ruin the life of a really horrible girl and - bet you'll never guess - becomes a really horrible girl herself.

As you might also have guessed, she does eventually mend her ways and come away from the Dark Side. Predictable but, for all that, there are a few genuine laughs and it's quite fun.

CaptainD - Movie Reviews Blog

New Website Featuring Indie Films

Haven't had much chance to look at the actual movies yet, but the website looks very nice indeed and definitely seems to be one worth visiting. Note that you need the Quicktime plugin for your browser to be able to watch the movies.

Head on over to:

Film Skillet

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CaptainD - Movie Reviews Blog