Kind of like Rocky for the modern, MMA-loving era Warrior tells the story of a down-on-his-luck father and husband who is running out of money and opportunities to help his family when he decides to do the one last thing that can make money: fight. He used to do it in his youth but now he’s hitting forty and hasn’t fought in years, only surviving on a school teacher’s wage, a job he ultimately loses for his fighting on the side.
It’s all very Rocky but parallel it also shows the story of his brother, someone he hasn’t seen in years who comes back from serving in the marines to train with their former alcoholic father played by Nick Nolte, a role he was certainly designed to play and one he does masterfully . The long-lost brother, played by Tom Hardy, has a mysterious past that he never explains and shows little emotion other than anger and resentment to his family. It’s the most powerful element of the story and this family dynamic is incredibly well-written, the highlight of a very powerful script. One thing about this movie is, unlike general hollywood films that believe the audience is too stupid to understand anything so they have to spell everything out for them, this movie doesn’t. It lets the audience fill in the gaps by actually having to think which is so unusual to see in a movie that it ends up being the most surprising aspect of the whole movie.
That last hour or so is taken up by the big tournament and even though it becomes obvious that the two brothers will end up fighting at the end it just works, emotionally and physically with very well-filmed fights that feel visceral. I was on the edge of my seat many times throughout.
Excellent movie with some of the best emotions and physical fights ever seen on film. Go see it.

Apollo 18 is one of those movies trying to capitalize on the success of Paranormal Activity and The Blair Witch Project before it and, in a way, it proves successful. Critics complain that this style of filming, using handheld cameras for a secret diary feel, is old and dated but its one of my favorite form of filmmaking, certainly a lot better than what the hundred million pound movies are doing. It feels personal and intimate and as long as it produce some fine actors and a good script then it can turn out well which Apollo 18 definitely is.
Mixing real-life footage with set filming the movie follows three male astronauts who go to the moon but the last official trip to the moon was 17, not 18, and the circumstances appear odd and mysterious. It quickly becomes obvious that the astronauts aren’t bring told the truth about why they are there.
Although it does have some horror staples it doesn’t really become a true horror movie. The jump out of your seat moments are few and far between and while other movies always seem to contain nothing but a collection of these moments this movie uses them sparingly which makes it all the more effective when it happens.
The movie is more a psychological horror although there are monsters here, the movie shows that sometimes the government are more monsters than the creatures that live on the moon. Apollo 18 shows the steady mental collapse of an astronaut that becomes infected by a creature they don’t understand in a situation where they can’t help themselves.
The creatures themselves are suitable alien and despite an obviously small budget the movie manages to make them as realistic as possible on their obviously small budget. They are seen very little and even when they are shown on-screen they are covered in shadows or move so quick as to leave most of what the viewer thinks they are to the imagination. For a movie with a tiny budget this is always the way to go and usually makes the scares that much better.
In all the movie is effective and even a little thought-provoking with some good performances throughout. Well worth a watch.

The movie Skyline looked great in trailers, with the obvious money shot of thousands of human being sucked into the alien ship being the focal point and when that scene does come up it’s great visually but it’s a shame there was no movie to put that scene in. The script, what little there is, is filled with so many clichés that it becomes laughable and so many plot holes that it was becoming obvious that they just let a monkey do the writing as no human being with any kind of cognitive function could have written such a piece of atrocious drivel that is the script. According to the credits there was actually two screen-writers, which is absurd; that’s two monkeys but no common sense.
The cast of actors is almost unknown. I recognized Turk from Scrubs and a guy that used to be in Six Feet Under and that was it. What their names are I don’t care because even if there was some kind of worthy script they probably couldn’t pull it off with any kind of purpose.
The effects of the film, obviously the focal point, is adequate but nothing greater than the average episode of Stargate Universe. The alien creations of this movie also show little inspiration with various examples of carbon copies of other movies and video games, Independence Day in particular. This shows serious laziness on the filmmakers’s part, two visual effects artists.
To top it all off is the ending. When finally it looked like something interesting might happen, it ends. This just tops off an already horrible experience.
The worst movie I’ve seen this year by far.

Due Date is obviously based on the classic Planes, Trains and Automobiles but doesn’t quite reach that level of comedy gold. A buddy movie where the buddies aren’t really buddies at all, the movie starts with Robert Downey Jr. being put on the banned list at an airport due to an altercation with Zach Galifianakis’s idiot actor. Downey needs to get back to his wife who is eminently due their baby and not only can he not get a plane he can’t get any other form of travel as he has also lost his wallet with all his money and IDs. So, of course, he ends up hitching a ride off of Galifianakis who just happens to be going to the same place as him. Strange coincidence. And so embarks various rude jokes and strangely overblown set-pieces.
This movie was funny at times but rarely did it get above a chuckle. The problem is that the script has nothing truly new or different to offer than what one expects. You know when you put your father’s ashes in a coffee tin that somebody is going to drink at some point. Nothing original happens and so, although well-acted by the two leading stars, it never rises about mediocre.
There was a scene where Downey, who is playing a disgruntled and angry man, punches a young boy in the stomach because he was being annoying. This was a disturbing and not very funny. There are other scenes that really tip the balance between comedy and something must less funny. It’s a tough juggle with this form of humour and I don’t think Due Date got it right all of the time.
It’s enjoyable enough but should have been much better with the talent involved.

The Social Network is the story of how Facebook was formed, a rather lackluster premise but a story that is shocking and heart-warming while showing the real goings on behind billion-dollar websites. Mark Zuckerberg is the youngest billionaire in the world and comes as something of a spoiled nerd but you can’t fault his genius. Played brilliantly by Jessie Eisenberg he comes off as callous and uncaring at first, ironically for creating the biggest social networking site in the world he has little friends or apparent interest in any social interactions at all, but Eisenberg makes him human despite the outward appearance, a man who cares about his friendships, albeit with only the one friend.
Direction from David Fincher works in much the same way as his other movies, especially Zodiac which had more scenes of research than actual action but, somehow, made it exciting. Network does it in much the same way with the scenes of Zuckerberg at his laptop crafting code, something that’s laborious in real life but Fincher manages to make it compelling here, showing the way that coders like Zuckerberg become obsessed with this kind of thing. It may not be Fincher’s best, Fight Club still just beats it, but it in the top three.
All the cast impress, including Justin Timberlake and the future Spider-Man Andrew Garfield rounding off a fascinating story of friendship burned and the greed for money far better than this year’s Wall Street did. A surprising film that may just be a serious Oscar contender.

On the surface Salt seems to be just a standard action flick, albeit with a female actor in the action role, but in actuality it’s far more interesting than that and really shows what America should be afraid of and may have to face very soon.
Angelina Jolie’s character, Evelyn Salt, is accused of being a Russian sleeper agent and goes on the run with everyone wondering just who is who and trust being thrown out the window. Jolie really has some great action chops aswell as action ones and really impresses as does the supporting cast but, really, this is Jolie’s show and she just jumps at the opportunity to show off what she can do.
Compared, say, to The Expendables, this movie doesn’t just throw action scene after action scene at the audience it, shockingly, tries to get you to think, which it does very well. It’s a different breed of action movie and you should definitely go see it as chances are that there won’t be another one like this for some time.

For a man old enough to be my granddad Sylvester Stallone still has biceps bigger than his head which is just a little creepy, impressive though it is. Still riding on the success of his comeback movie, Rocky Balboa, Stallone brings together the very best of action heroes for a battle royal of action, eighties style. And that’s what it is: over the top action without having to worry about little things like plot and characters.
Although it claims to be an ensemble of action stars the majority of the movie has just Stallone and Jason Statham partnering together. They both have some great chemistry together with plenty of banter, despite Statham being nearly half his age. This is fine but for a lot of the movie it completely ignores the other members of the gang with no explanation of where they are or what they are doing. Jet Li in particular does very little but pops in once in a while and Stone Cold Steve Austin, as the bad guy’s body guard, spends almost every scene just standing around looking mean. Sure, that’s what he’s probably been employed to do but it seems a waste of some great talents.
Ultimately, this is the Stallone show with some passing the torch moments to Statham. It’s fine but why oh why did Stallone have to use the modern, and very annoying, camera techniques; i.e. very quick cuts where you can’t see a damn thing that’s happening. Maybe it’s just me but every action movie now made has scenes that are impossible to follow due to these quick cuts. I’m guessing this is to signify the hectic nature of battles but I find it very annoying and if Stallone had truly wanted to make en eighties throwback then he would have directed it the way movies were directed then: just point and shoot.
It’s great fun and even if the script is as clichéd as you can get it doesn’t really matter. Just watch the blood shed.

After The Dark Knight became one of the top summer movies of all time, and one of my personal favorites, everyone’s focus went to Christopher Nolan and what he would do next. The man has certainly developed his own style and Inception, his latest, just cements his position as the most interesting director working today. Here is a director that can make a smart, powerful and entertaining summer blockbuster without making the audience feel like they’re being led by the hand through the whole story, which is a rare thing.
Inception is all about the mind and the dreams therein. Leo DiCaprio plays a man whose speciality is to infiltrate people’s minds and extract whatever vital information that’s there, in this case the head of an energy corporation, a man plagued by the death of his father and their torturous relationship that they had; Leo and his other partners’s are trying to plant an idea into his mind so that he will dissolve his company, in so making their rival the only true power in the energy business. This isn’t easy and involves going into his mind and trying to influence him while fighting off his own mental defenses, portrayed as goons with guns.
It’s intelligent and very, very interesting and for all it’s clever, thought-provoking ideas it still manages to have plenty of action and some brilliant set-pieces, including a scene where a train rolls down the middle of a road without any tracks and the money-maker, where a whole city folds itself in half. I was a little disappointed that Nolan went the shaky-cam route with this rather than his steady camerawork of the Batman films. I prefer to see what’s going on in a scene without the editing going past so fast that you can barely tell what’s going on; it’s a modern cinema thing and the sooner they kill it the better movies will be. Despite the shaky-cam these scenes are amazing and just goes to show that CGI has come to such a level that it no longer looks like CGI: it looks real, and when you can imagine whatever you want and have it appear on-screen straight from memory, that is incredible.
Every member of the cast is excellent in this film with DiCaprio professionally keeping it rock solid as the lead. He’s an actor who can really deliver a movie single-handed and even though he’s just a part of an ensemble cast he is the standout.
It is the best movie of the summer so go see it then try to remember your dreams that night.

I think Predator has always been in the shadow of the Alien Franchise, especially with the Versus movies where you know that Alien is always the better of the two in terms of actual films. You can’t argue with the greatness of the first two Alien movies–even if the last two are just so-so–but Predator was good, very good even, but that’s it. Predator 2 certainly wasn’t up to much with Danny Glover being a poor replacement for Arnold Schwarzenegger and the Versus movies, although not as terrible as the critics would have you believe, certainly weren’t up to the Sigourney Weaver quality. Now we have the self-professed sequel to Predator which conveniently ignores the actual sequel, Predator 2. This is back to the jungle, albeit lack Arnie.
A group of trained killers from all around Earth are parachuted into a jungle with no knowledge of what happened for them to get there and it doesn’t take long before they realize that they are on an alien planet being hunted for sport by the titular Predators. None of these characters are particularly bad but there isn’t exactly in-depth characterization going on. Every single one of them is a cliche: huge Russian with a mini-gun, token black guy who I was surprised to find wasn’t the first to die (he’s the second), a uzi-toting Mexican played by Danny Trejo, a man who must be in the front of the cue for all Mexican parts, a death-row inmate complete with orange jumpsuit, a Yakuza, a sniper-rifle toting female and Adrien Brody’s generic tough guy main character. The one interesting character is Topher Grace, an actor who seems to be making his name playing strange and twisted bad guys as he did in Spiderman 3, who is the odd one out of the bunch; he’s a doctor, not a soldier or any other kind of toughened hard-ass like all the rest of them. Of course, he’s not really just a doctor but you find that out eventually.
Predators acts as something of a tribute to the original and it works rather well. Adrien Brody is Arnie in all but name, even if he does still look a bit weedy despite obvious serious gym time and perfecting the sore-throat voice that all these kinds of characters seem to have, and some of the characters are shadows of what came before. There is no one that can match Arnie’s natural butchness or Jesse Ventura’s “god-damn sexual tyrannosaurus rex”. Neither is the script as fun as the original with far too many cliched lines coming from the cliched characters.
The predators themselves are fleshed out a bit from all the other movies, with talk of a blood feud between the predators that we know of and a larger, more viscous breed that has a completely brilliant design. There’s also other alien creatures on the planet and some details of alien plants that helps give it some sci-fi cred.
It’s fun and kind of throwaway, much like the first one, and even if it does repeat a lot of what the original did it still can stand on its on as the second best Predator movie.