Loads to talk about

Loads to talk about, lets get started...

Ghost Ship - stars Julianna Margulies, Gabriel Byrne

I'll be the first to admit that I panned this in one of my "things to come to the cinema" writeups, it sounded shocking on paper. So I'm in Video Ezy the other day thinking to myself "self, there's not alot in here and its mostly crap. Get the best looking crap you can find, otherwise its reruns of Law and Order, Bathroom Accidents Unit for you tonight!" I mean what choice did I have yeah?

Ghost Ship sees an ocean salvage team get wind of a ship supposedly lost at sea since the 60's, has been found. Floating. Rumour has it there's some pretty impressive stuff onboard, they decide to go get it. But once on the ship, all is not what it seems, and its by no means empty. Should they risk taking the loot?

This flick excels in one area in particular, and that's its filming. Director Steve Beck has done this before and if you get "13 Ghosts" flashbacks from some of the camera techniques then you'll figure out quickly that he was behind the camera then as well. Its very very slick, super production behind this, and some super slayings too. Yup, you get to see some death and mayhem right from the getgo, we love it.

So is it scary? I mean I'd be the guy to ask right? They say: probably the best scream fest to date. Well, no, but where it fails to scare you, it doesn't fail to intrigue you and there's plenty to keep everyone interested here. The hows and whys unfold nicely and the special effects are tops. Also, Alex Dimitriades does some great support here, who would've thought?!? Go the Aussies. Even cooler is the DVD. Remember I touted the Mr Deeds DVD for its special features and menu setups? Well this one kicks its ass, really really nice stuff on this. Loads of secret stuff and little tidbits to fill the storyline in for you, all good. We actually couldn't get enough of it. Oh and for the metal heads, there's a film clip of Mudvayne's "Not Falling" included. The rest of the album stinks like a cross between Slipknot and Norse Black Metal, but this track is tops! I have an mp3 copy here for anyone interested ;-)

Ghost Ship is some good old hack'n'slash with a twist fun and I recommend it to anyone not willing to risk watching anything else on the new release shelf, 4 stars.

Swept Away - stars Madonna

This thing got absolutely smashed by the critics, and as I've mentioned before, grabbed the worst movie of 2002 from the anti-Oscar awards. Stace loves all things Madonna and has wanted to see it regardless. She's a bit like me in that respect: if they say its the best thing since sliced bread and go overboard with promotion, she'll avoid it like the plague. She still hasn't seen Braveheart!

So was it really that bad? Well, its not a great movie, no, but its not ALL that bad. This is in fact a remake of a 70s Italian flick of the same name, which I haven't seen, but I suspect director Guy Ritchie has tried to faithfully re-create it which for me is a mistake. Remember the remake of Psycho? Frame by frame? Didn't work did it. Same here, but again I'm just guessing. This could've gone in a very dark direction which would've been a nice twist, you know, kind've Lord Of The Flies dark, which it did threaten to when the characters are initially stranded. But no, its very safe, very homogonised.

Madonna plays Amber, a spoilt little rich kid in a middle aged woman's body. She still looks great by the way ;-) She and her hubby and their friends are travelling from Italy to Greece by luxury cruiser, island hopping and the like. She does spoilt little rich kid things and treats the help like shit. Giuseppe is the help and he cracks it big time when, during an outing in one of the dingies to some caves, the motor breaks down and they're stranded. Eventually they reach land which happens to be a deserted island and then must survive until rescued and Amber's pleas to be waited on hand and foot are no longer heeded. The tables are turned.

Where this tries to be one of those timeless stories of finding love in the most unexpected places, it doesn't succeed, everything seems very forced. For the acting, look its not that bad, Madonna especially being under the spotlight she was did an admirable job with what I would consider to be a pretty lame script. I think the blame, if any, should fall on Guy. We all know what Guy is famous for, Lock Stock and Snatch, kooky characters in unbelievable situations and making light of it all. Not here, he has chosen to make a film where he can't do that, but you can see where he's tried to. There's a particular scene on the cruiser (before Maddy gets lost) that harks to that scene in Lock Stock when the guys celebrated their haul in the pub and playing drinking games laughing it up etc all set to music. Same here, only we've got rich middle aged pill popping alco's in an existence unto their own, its a good little laugh. So Guy's tried, but hasn't given himself the forum to do so, and you can see these little Guy-touches all over the film.

So its not great, but its really not all that bad. The storyline is a pretty thin, and that's where the film mainly falls down, and Guy should've known better really. 2 stars.

Indianna Jones and the Raiders Of The Lost Ark - stars Harrison Ford

What a classic! Has been ages since I've seen this. Stace and I were talking about stuff we hadn't seen for ages and got onto the topic of the series of Indy flicks and decided we should get them. Half an hour we're off to hire them and not long after that, we're back in bed watching them. Tops. Here's the crazy thing though, both vid stores near us had Raiders and Temple, but not the Last Cruisade. Not only did they not have it, they didn't even stock it. Crazy!

Great memories came flooding back, particularly that scene where the dude is swinging the sword around and Indy just pulls out his gun and shoots him. As well as the big dude he's fighting at the plane and he gets chopped in by the propellors, top stuff, its all good. You gotta love that whole ancient ruins and secret rooms and amulets and booby traps and finding stuff, looking forward to watching the Temple of Doom now as we haven't yet. Not sure what the DVD offers caus' we got this on vid but hopefully it'll have some nice little making ofs and stuff. 4 stars.

Stark Raving Mad - Seann William Scott, Lou Diamond Phillips

Dude, where's your car? Dude! Dude? Doooooood. Seann "where's my car, stiffler, road trip" William Scott seems a little type-cast. Gee you think? Yup. I haven't seen anything about this flick other than it went straight to video and Video Ezy have exclusive rights to it. I didn't realise Video Ezy did that. Turns out People I Know and The Believer were also Video Ezy exclusives. Crap, doesn't give this much of a wrap then does it.

Seann plays Ben (cool name, this might be alright after all, lol), he's organising a score and talking about retiring from the business and his mates are gonna help him. Rikki's a bit dim and tries to stay out of the way, Jeffery's a paranoid superstitious safe cracker, Jake's entrenched in 80s metal and loves blowing shit up, and Suzy is a hacker extraordinaire. So under the guise of an all hours rave party in China Town, all they have to do is drill into a bank, break into a safe and get out of there like nothing ever happened. What could possibly go wrong? LOL, the mind boggles I'm sure.

Straight away I'm getting something like Go crossed with something Tarantino would do, and maybe throw in a comparison to Ocean's Eleven. There's some seriously kooky characters that our hero is dealing with, and on top of that he's having to run this rave. Its classic, the owner doesn't want it happening, the crime boss is across the street waiting for his loot, a rival gang seems to have gotten wind that's something's amiss, and the FBI just walked in under cover. Situations get stickier and sticker, an uncooperative DJ isn't helping and a bunch of trannies are putting on a take no prisoners show. Meanwhile, Rikki's looking to get laid, lol, its destined for disaster.

There's no need to get into character development, although a couple of tangent scenes are given to us in the beginning. The whole movie takes place over one night and it builds really nicely to a really good ending. I'm so impressed when things end well. A solid performance Scott helps things no end, he doesn't say "dude" once in this flick and plays a very substantive cool streetwise tough guy. We love it! The support is great except for whoever played Rikki, but I'm not sure whether that was the actor or the script, wasn't great either way.

Its a cool wild ride through the night, highly recommended for fans of "Go"-style films, 4 stars.

Ice Age - stars a bunch of cute animated dudes (contains spoilers)

Yeah I finally got around to seeing this. You know why it took me so long? Ray! I can't stand Ray, the face, the voice, the everything, Ray Romano, I don't love you!

So what did I think? Well, I'm comparing it to some really cleverly made animated films here straight away. I want characters that have a voice that suits their character most of all, and also to appeal to an adult sense of humour. Look at Toy Story (1 and 2), Monstors Inc, Ants (with the exception of Woody, ugh!), Shrek, and a Bug's Life. All of them brilliant in those two aspects. Slight tangent, I'd include Final Fantasy but where it fell down, it was because they put voices to animated humans, none of which look anything like they do in real life.

So Ray is a Mammoth. And this Mammoth is pretty tough as one would imagine a Mammoth to be. But Ray is not tough, he doesn't have the voice for it. You know what, he would've been great as Scrat (the squirrel thing with the nut, what was with that anyway?) going "eeee...oooo...aaaahhhhh". Denis Leary as Diego the Sabretooth I thought was great as was John Leguizamo as Sid the thingamejig. In saying that, they were the most memorable characters and didn't really get as much of a go as they warranted. I thought they could've done a lot more with Diego for a start. While I'm on a role, the humour was more infantile than I'm used to in these flicks, yet the subject matter was still up there - death, sex, relationships. It fell flat with me, probably the only thing I laughed at was when Diego grabs Sid and scratches his head saying "Something something, you knucklehead." And with Diego coming back at the end, c'moooooooon, that's so Disney. Disney can kma!

Having said all that I loved the Dodos, poor things, lol. Where all other animated films of this ilk succeed hands down, this one fails on all counts bar the animation itself, which of course is supurb. And no, I didn't like the fact Ray was in it either in case you needed clarification. 3 stars.