This was a guest review submitted by Seth Middleton. Thanks Seth! You can submit your own reviews to SquidFlicks here.
I’ll have to admit my perceptions of this film from the previews left me caged in a sense of contemporary redressing. Maybe that quip sounds a little bit overtly complicated. Let me simplify it. The previews left me certainly at odds with how the film was being fashioned. It looked like a packaged action vehicle for Robert Downey Jr.’s new claim to fame as action hero. (more…)
This was a guest review submitted by Seth Middleton. Thanks Seth! You can submit your own reviews to SquidFlicks here.
The appeal of family oriented sport movies were a big staple in the 90’s which stemmed back from the origins that The Bad News Bears started in the 70’s. For whatever reason there wasn’t a backlog of ripoffs or knock offs of this product during that era for whatever reason. When the 80’s ushered in it was a time of fantasy films for kids and it was still laid to rest. (more…)
This was a guest review submitted by Seth Middleton. Thanks Seth! You can submit your own reviews to SquidFlicks here.
If you and your friends want to sit down on a boring afternoon and have an endurance test to see who can make it through ‘The Wiz,’ I’ll gladly sit by with a stopwatch and see whose eyes begin to dart off first. (more…)
This was a guest review submitted by Seth Middleton. Thanks Seth! You can submit your own reviews to SquidFlicks here.
Hate to say it, after being such a fan of stop motion/model motion all my life, I’ve come across something that I just couldn’t finish. Maybe you’d consider that cheating and this review not worthy and should be thrown out but after viewing 1 hr. 15 minutes of this 90 minute film…I think its safe to say I’d seen enough. (more…)
This was a guest review submitted by Ricky Holdman. Thanks Ricky! You can submit your own reviews to SquidFlicks here.
Like most movie genres, comedy for me is becoming…well…stale. What little interest I had in the Comedy Genre Died (R.I.P. 11/5/2010) after seeing ‘Due Date’.The jokes we’ve heard hundreds (literally) of times, unoriginal plot (two people who have nothing in common travel a long distance then randomly become friends at the end), rushed storyline, and hearing Robert Downey Jr drop the F-bomb every 5 minutes didn’t seem to fit. (more…)
This was a guest review submitted by Jeffrey Rule. Thanks Jeffrey! You can submit your own reviews to SquidFlicks here.
Intro
Lots of good tasting cheese! Corey Feldman is back again with more vampire killing and cheesy one-liners. He teams up again with his fellow “Frog Brother”(who happens to be a bloodsucker) to attempt and take down the Alpha Vamp. The Plot was quite good, but all to familiar. It has become popular to breed an army of vampires in this day and age. But with the Lost Boys style its much more unique. (more…)
This was a guest review submitted by William Derbyshire. Thanks William! You can submit your own reviews to SquidFlicks here.
A decade or so and five X-Men movies on, you would have thought by now that Hugh Jackman would have left the role of Wolverine and handed the adamantium claws over to another actor like James Bond’s tuxedo was given to George Lazenby, and then to Roger Moore, in the wake of Sean Connery. Surely, there would be another part for Jackman to sink his teeth, and a new Wolvie film for that new actor to sink his claws, into.
But there is only one man for this acting job and that is Jackman. Seriously, no-one else can play him, even in 2008’s prequel X-Men Origins: Wolverine when a younger star would have circumstantially been needed to portray him in his early days. That, however, was his last outing and it misfired thanks to a tedious plot, a dull villain and a lacklustre climax which left me quaking for the action spectacle that it should have been. But it’s clearly evident in The Wolverine that director James Mangold injects this movie with that much-needed boost and thrill that was lacking in X-Men Origins, but the storyline still suffers from ridiculous twists and the action being cut short when it’s about to get exciting.
The Wolverine kicks off to a good start: Logan being held in a Japanese POW camp in 1945 and surviving the Nagasaki atomic bombing (a cool thing about being a mutant). Then, we move to the present day – he’s also immortal – after the events of X-Men: The Last Stand, which is odd as people would have wanted to forget Last Stand as it left a bad taste in their mouths. Poor Wolvie’s living in the sticks, suffering from visions of Jean Grey (Famke Janssen), the mutant chick he had to bump off at the end of LS, and making friends with bears doing their business in the woods. Ten more minutes into the film and just when he’s started a brawl in a bar, hot Japanese assassin Yukio (Rila Fukushima) makes her entrance…only it feels forced. She’s sexually attractive and you would want to date her, but the scene builds up tension only to be briefly interrupted by her and you wish she was introduced later on. It’s not long before Beastie Boy gets an invite over to Japan to visit dying corporate boss Yashida (Haruhiko Yamanouchi ) who craves Logan’s healing abilities but he’s not the only one who’s after them.
The stunning cinematography in Japan is on a par with Skyfall’s and the action excels, even if most of it is on a cartoonish level. The fight on top of a bullet train shown in the film’s trailers, however, lacks the wow-factor of the train battle sequence in Spider-Man 2, looks amateurish and is needlessly shorter in comparison. But if that leaves us movie-goers deprived of adrenaline, I can tell you now that Mangold definitely delivers a final showdown that’s miles better than before. If only he saved the plot from moving towards silly Michael Bay-esque territory and left an unnecessary, mind-baffling scene half-way through the end credits with two characters who we thought died, along with Jean Grey, reappearing as cameos, where it should have been – on the cutting room floor – that The Wolverine is sadly not entirely the movie we wanted Origins to be, but you would certainly be lacking common sense to pick it over this. Trust me; this film seriously improves on it.
Jackman is still on terrific form and definitely hasn’t shown signs of growing tired of playing Wolverine, even in his sixth film as the hairy mutant. He knows what makes the character tick and gets his hot-tempered personality and burly, muscular physical appearance spot-on like he’s got Wolvie’s DNA inside him. Fukushima does her best playing an ultimately one-dimensional character but hey, she’s sexy, so what does that matter? Well, the relationship between her and her shaggy boyfriend doesn’t quite sizzle. Scenes of dialogue in superhero films are fine but do they have to drag on? Less talky, more slash-y next time, perhaps? If Fukushima doesn’t attract the males, there’s also the steamy Tao Okamoto, given a stronger role as Yashida’s granddaughter Marika and Svetlana Khodchenkova, deliciously malicious as Dr. Green, aka Viper. For all the gals, there’s Will Yun Lee as Kenuichio Harada, head of the Black Ninja Clan, even if he’s given little to do.
For all The Wolverine is worth, you’ll still get a kick out of it and it’ll probably be like Origins never existed, but the most perfect solo movie outing for Jackman’s fiery mutant is still yet to be made. But rest assured, with a seventh film in the works, it may still happen.
A big thanks to Emil for this review!
What it lacks in storytelling, it attempts to cover with massive explosions and crashes and even more garish Han Zimmer scores. Nolan has a penchant for these. The Dark Knight Rises (2012) plot seems strikingly similar to Batman Begins (2005) although far more muddled and the delivery far too long and tedious throughout. The characters are vastly less well developed; in particular, Bane’s ‘badness’ – played by Tom Hardy – pales in comparison to those prior more sinister evildoers in the earlier Nolan films. Christian Bale, who returns as the Dark Knight, lacks the direct emotional cords that tied him – and us – to both Batman Begins (2005) and The Dark Knight (2008): no stakes for the courageous man, only obstacles for the dispassionate superhero. Obvious omissions in the story are commonplace – laughable in parts – for example, at one point Gotham Police are trapped for months in the city’s sewer system, yet when freed look as if they are leaving for work on a routine morning: bathed, shaved, and dressed as immaculately (hats included) as when they were trapped months earlier! Add numerous similar omissions, a lack of dark stealthiness the prior two films epitomized – which incidentally, is glaringly absent, and the unforgivably commercial ending and Nolan has done what his antagonists’ could not. Do Gotham and your fellow moviegoers a favor: wait until you can rent it for a $1, or better yet – wait to catch it free online – else, such dark nights will indeed rise again.
2 out of 5
Do you have a different opinion about this movie? Why not submit a rebuttal review?
This is a guest review submitted by Ryan Hartley. Thanks Ryan!
“What do you do with the mad that you feel?
When you feel so mad you could bite.
When the whole wide world seems oh so wrong, and nothing you do seems very right.”
– Fred Rogers
It’s okay for kids to have emotions. They don’t know how to control them and there will be times when they get out of hand. And while it’s a parent’s instinct to protect their child from harm, to protect them from their own emotions is a tragedy.
Here you go – a bonus and awesome submission for the SquidFlicks festivities this St. Patrick’s Day – an article from THE Tim Gross! Enjoy! This is a super SquidFlicks exclusive, and I have to thank Mr. Gross for his participation and Patrick for setting this up!
Be sure and stay tuned for the FINALE! Part TWO of the SquidFlicks St. Patrick’s Day Special is going live at 12:00 PM CST! See Part 1 if you have not already!