Very little has inspired me to post reviews of late...well duh dude, you haven't updated the site for...aaaanyway.  Here's a couple that have surprised, enthrawled and just plain annoyed me.

Bulletproof Monk - stars Chow Yun Fat, Seann William Scott

Why Chow, why???  The question is begged after a promising storyline spirals out of control in a sharp downward motion not ten minutes in.  Its just weak.  Bad dialogue, bad acting, faux thrills and spills, its all way too contrived and if I wasn't feeling crook I would've been bothered to get up and change the disc.  Something tells me Daredevil has something to answer for somewhere in the storyline, its just badly executed.  Oh and the fighting, which incidentally  is the draw card for the flick, is crap!  In a word.  1 star.

The Life Of David Gale - stars Kevin Spacey, Kate Winslett

Gimme a K, gimme an E...one of those actors that can put his name on anything and make it the movie it should be, Kevin Spacey does it once again with this sleeper hit.  Backed by zero promotion I might add, why wouldn't you push something like this???

David Gale (Spacey) is on death row and living the real life irony of being part of Texas' biggest anti-capital punishment group Deathwatch.  A request to Bitsy Bloom's (Winslett) magazine (what's with the name people???) to conduct David Gale's final interview is met with skepticism, however Bloom travels to Texas to do the deed anyway.  What Bloom finds out is more than just a trumped up rape/murder charge, but that my friends, is for you to find out.

Top flick, well acted, well filmed, and although Kevin's in fine form here its Kate that steals the show.  And its something of a mainstream role for her too - think Hideous Kinky and Holy Smoke for starters, not to mention Heavenly Creatures.  Brilliant job.  The rest of the support are also great, but alot of that has to do with the story.  Although a little confusing at first, by jingos it grabs you and sucks you in right to the end.  And what an end, 'bout time someone finished a film properly, I love good endings :-)

The extras are also great including a documentary on the recent history of capital punishment in the States, focussing on Texas, who happily put to death around 10 inmates a year or there abouts.  They don't believe in mucking around down Texas-way, they make that pretty clear.  Loads of actual footage too, no not of deaths, just the circus that starts up when executions are announced.

Stamp of approval!  4 stars...you know, it deserves that extra half for the DVD extras.  Bugger it, 4 and a half stars.

Confidence - stars Edward Burns, Rachel Weisz, Dustin Hoffman, Andy Garcia

It was the cast that drew me in here - not great, but all good - the storyline as per the DVDs blurb screamed "dunnit a hundred times before", not that I can recall it for you here, but we went with it anyway.  Rainy Sundays are like that don't you think?  So what's it about?

Jake Vig (Burns) is a conman who runs a crew.  They move from place to place scamming money out of people who don't seem to either derserve it, or appreciate it, one of the two I can't remember which.  Either way they prefer to have the money themselves and enjoy screwing the rightful owners out of it.  Their latest job goes exactly to plan, except for one thing, they stole the King's money and the King just happens to be LA's most notorious underworld figure.  King wants it back, so Vig decides to do one last job in partnership with King, recover his money and make some extra for everyone.  Wait 'til you see where this goes, and it goes with a twist let me tell you.

Its another one of those its-cool-to-be-bad flicks, and it oozes cool.  The story is told in a series of flashbacks, which usually annoys the crap out of me unless Tarantino's involved, but these guys pull it off well.  Think "One Night At McCool's" and you're pretty close.  Very slick, very simple, yet plenty of guess work involved.  And its got some great characters, the type that although you don't have long to get to know them, you're up to speed already.

The flick also doesn't get bogged down in side plots, any tangent is aimed directly at the storyline.  There's some great dialogue in it too.  I get a kind've "Grifters" vibe from it, but its way cooler than that.  Stamp of approval, 4 stars.

2 Fast 2 Furious - stars Paul Walker, Tyrese

"Lucky there's cars in it" I think were my words after a few scenes.  One thing I am glad of is that I waited for DVD, not because I wasted less money renting it, but because it comes with a prelude, a kind've mini-episode that segues from the first to the second.  You wouldn't have got this from the movie in the cinema and you would've been thrust straight into O'Connor's new Miami way of life.  So for that I'm grateful, the rest, well...

Brian O'Connor, no longer an undercover cop and on the run, is captured by Federal Police in Miami, but they don't arrest him.  Instead they offer him a way out if he cooperates and goes undercover to help bring down one of Miami's crime bosses.  O'Connor won't do it unless he picks his own driver.  Enter Roman Pearce, a childhood pal of O'Connor's who after serving 3 years in jail is now strapped to a GPS and isn't allowed to go further than 100 yards from his home.  They grew up stealing cars together you see, aaawwww, so sweet, back together again.  Everyone agrees and off they go to catch the bad guys.

Ok, lets get a couple of the really stupid things out of the way so I don't go on about them:

Right, done.  Now, the storyline is a bit weak, mostly because they made the second movie "for the fans".  That meeting would've been an interesting one..."So, we're doing a second movie?"..."Ok, well how do we tack it onto the first one?"..."Oh we don't, oh ok, well how come its a sequal then?"..."Oh riiiiight, caus' its got lots of cool cars in it.  Gotchya.  And you said there's only going to be two characters carrying over?"..."That's right yeah, caus' Vin shoved our proposal up our ass, wonder why he did that again..."  Its all pretty clear here.

At the end of the day, its a bit of good fun, and I might be smashing it here, but that's only because the bad bits stood out above the good bits, like towered over them, like really high...ok ok.  So yeah, see it for the car scenes, of which there's a ton, and the cars themselves of course.  There's a couple of nice old muscle cars in there as well for those who appreciate more than a whine under the bonnet.  Oh and before I forget, the DVD is packed with extras, loads of interviews, outtakes, driving school for the actors (one had never driven a car before in her life!), docos on the cars featured in the film and some outtakes and deleted scenes.  Probably more than that actually, its slipping my memory at the mo.

3 stars

The Matrix: Reloaded - stars Keanu Reeves, Carrie-Anne Moss, Laurence Fishburne

I picked this up again last week after its DVD release, just to see if it annoyed me as much the second time as it did the first.  Yup, what's with the rave party?!?  And how come there's not as much matrix action?  And that rave party, sheesh!  And romance?  Who has time for romance???  And don't get me started on that rave party.  For the most part the movie is great though, most  impressive on the DVD were the extras and its got heaps to check out.  There's a ton of behind-the-scenes stuff but there's a couple of gems, in particular the way they did the freeway scene.  Would you have believed they built that whole thing from scratch?  And that scene where Neo takes on all the Agent Smith's?  That was filmed using 13 body doubles.  Bags not being the guy generating the CGI.

I am looking forward to Revolutions in the hope it has more matrixy stuff in it - real life sucks, isn't that why we go to the movies in the first place?  3 and a half stars.

That's it for now, at least you'd be happy I've got new releases up there for a change ;-)

BH