nightcity Reviews

The Hunger Games (2012)

Mediocre

[1/10 · 19 August 2012]

While not actually a "Bad" movie it was at best mediocre, I have not read the books but I get the impression that the film was made for book fans only, since they would be the most forgiving of its faults. Lets get the bad point out the way first. 1: Too much time spent running around a forest doing very little. 2: Annoying shaky cam. 3: Terrible special effects for this day and age. 4: Derivative - see Running Man, Robocop, Rollerball and Battle Royale to name few (its been done before and better in my opinion). While being derivative is not in itself a bad thing since its rare for a movie to be a completely fresh idea you do need to make it unique in its own way and stand out.

Anyway the plot: Evil empire overlords it over the previously defeated working class population who rebelled, as punishment they have to offer up some children to fight to the death in a reality TV death match called the Hunger Games (sounding familiar yet?)

As usual the dictatorship seems to be a little stupid considering that encouraging the youngest members of the downtrodden class to constantly be in training for a prospective death-match when they are the most likely to rebel is hardly conducive to maintaining the status quo. I mean Rome had gladiators but didn't train all their slaves in combat did it? Perhaps this is the set up for books 2 and 3?

Good points: Some of the acting was decent.

Conclusion: It didn't make me want to run out and buy the books.

Royal Kill (2009)

Don't waste your time

[1/10 · 20 July 2010]

I am at a loss as where to start... OK the acting, I didn't recognise any of the actors apart from Eric Roberts and Pat Morita (and they only had small parts). The quality of the other actors was fair I guess given what they had to work with.

The story; I am not sure what the story was about apart from the very basic assassin has to kill target and guardian has to protect target, fairly straight forward, there was a minor twist here but nothing to write home about and it didn't really make a lot of sense.

The action. Well it's billed as an action / thriller but there is nothing thrilling involved and the action that there is; is well limited. One scene was well lit and you could see what was going on, it was below par though, the other scene was in the dark (like a lot of the film) so you couldn't see how bad it was.

The explosion - yes there is one explosion and it wasn't too bad as explosions go, I gave it 1 star for the explosion.

Summery: I wouldn't waste your time, it's dull and boring; in fact it makes it into my bottom 5 movies of all time list.

Humanity's End (2008 Video)

Standard B movie Sci-Fi fare

[6/10 · 31 March 2010]

Considering it's budget I didn't think it was that bad, don't get me wrong, it's not going to win any awards and a lot of people will think it's terrible I expect but it reminded me of all those old movies that tried to cash in on the tail of Star Wars when it first came out like Battle Beyond the Stars.

Perhaps I'm just a sucker for female voiced computers from Nell in BBTS, to Majel Barrett Roddenberry (RIP) voice in Star Trek and now Blue.

The plot was fairly basic, the script was weak and the acting was up and down but overall I still enjoyed it enough to not fall asleep.

Shutter Island (2010)

Predictable

[3/10 · 23 March 2010]

I had seen parts of a trailer for this film and was in two minds about seeing it but I like psychological thrillers with unpredictable plot twists so I went to see it.

Unfortunately it was very predictable, approximately 10-20 minutes into the film anyone with average or greater intelligence will in all probability immediately spot what the plot twist is going to be. I only watched the rest of the film in the hope that I was wrong and that it was a double bluff and I was going to cheer in amazement but sadly I was disappointed, the movie played out as expected, waste of 2 hours.

I can't say the film was truly awful but it didn't make the grade as a psych thriller, I found the music as they entered the island to be very jarring as well, but thats just a personal preference. Also I found the overuse of "certain imagery" to be unnecessary.

I would wait for DVD if at all, but there are much better psych thrillers out there.

Defendor (2009)

Brilliant

[9/10 · 22 March 2010]

One of the best movies I have seen this decade, funny, touching and clever. It would have totally passed me by if someone hadn't recommended it, which is a shame as it's an excellent film.

Acting, music score, writing all come together really well. Thank you Woody for another great movie.

I would really recommend this film to anyone even if the "superhero genre" is not your thing, since that is only tertiary to the theme anyway.

I look forward to seeing more from Peter Stebbings.

I can only hope that "Kick Ass" is half as good as Defendor.

Road of No Return (2009)

Uninspired and Dull

[2/10 · 17 February 2010]

I saw a reasonable review for this movie and this combined with two well known actors persuaded me to give it a chance. Bad mistake, the characters were paper thin, the action was boring and badly executed, and the plot/script was very weak.

Caradine and Madsen were not the main characters (from length of time on the screen anyway) and so the film didn't really benefit greatly from their presence. I wasn't expecting a dumb action movie but that would have been preferable to what I did see, which was mostly dull and uninspired.

There were several attempts at comedy in the movie that I thought just didn't work very well. When I see Indie films they are quite often hit or miss and I often love or hate them, this one I just didn't like much. As a final thought, I think someone likened this film to Pulp Fiction but while there may have been some vague attempt at copying that style, sadly it falls far, far, far short of that movie.