Reviews by FG93

The story is relatively standard for a Robin Hood tale, but that's not a bad thing. The action in the film is pretty good and most of the acting is as well and I was mainly kept interested throughout.

Not sure if I prefered Kevin Costner or Russell Crowe as Robin but he was still pretty good. I thought Mary Elizabeth Mastrantonio portrayal of Marian was poor, I found her to be annoying throughout the entire film and didn't really add anything interesting to the film, whereas Alan Rickman and Morgan Freeman make great additions. Alan Rickman plays the evil sheriff of Nottingham and he is pretty much perfect for the role, he really suits being the bad guy, and Morgan Freeman plays Azeem, a Moor warrior who helps out Robin with his trusty saracen sword and other mysterious ways.

It's not as good as some other Robin Hood adaptations I've seen, but I would still recommend it and probably watch it again myself at some point.

This film just isn't that good, I'd say around average to be fair. The fighting scene's showing the civil war especially, in a nut shell, they suck, however there are a few good axe swinging scenes that just about make up for it and to be fair Benjamin Walker does move that axe pretty well. Although I have to say I don't think he made a very convinced Lincoln, in fact most of the cast seemed to give a half hearted performance really. Except Mary Elizabeth Winstead obviously, who's great in every thing she's in, which isn't enough as she's so underrated!
Also I found it hard to fear, or allow myself to believe anyone in the film was afraid since their leader was called 'Adam'. What sort of lame name is that for a 5,000 year old vampire lord, seriously?!
My faourite moment has to be when the good old axe gun makes mr one eye into mr no eye.

It was only on my radar because I kept seeing Sharon Stone on bad ass female lists on here as the character Catherine Tramell. She definitely plays a bad ass, mysterious, and not to be messed with female in this.
The film is around average, maybe a bit better, but Sharon Stone's character is definitely above that. There are some pretty random and weird moments that spice it up a little. The films main story is basically to find the murderer, the two main suspects being the one who writes the books about the murders, which always seem to play out exactly how they were wrote, and the police psychiatrist, both of which the detective has...relations with during the film, making his choices difficult. All made worse by the fact he's trying to stay sober, of booze and drugs, as well as quit smoking, all while being haunted by the accidental killing of two innocents.
Even though I'd seen her on those lists, the film still had me fooled into thinking the killer was actually the doctor. Such a good ending, only in the very last few seconds do you find out, for definite, who the real killer is!
"I'd have to be pretty stupid to write a book about killing and then kill him the way I described in my book. I'd be announcing myself as the killer. I'm not stupid."

This seemed like a sure thing, a movie I could rely on to be good since over 30 movies took the name 'Django' in their titles to capitalise on its success, with only 2 others starring Franco Nero himself, the official sequel in 1987 and Django Unchained.
This is a really gritty western that creates an amazing atmostphere of death around our hero (which is helped a long by him dragging around a coffin of course). Right from the off, after the amazing title theme of course, we see that Django is one mysterious drifter not to be messed with, after he saves a girl from some douche bags.
My favourite moment has to be when Django single handedly takes on all of 'the Major's' 48 men.
This film definitely takes its place as one of my favourite westerns, just behind a few Clint Eastwood films.

Clint Eastwood is one of my favourite actors and I don't think I've seen a film with him in that I haven't liked but I haven't seen many of the ones he directed himself, however if they're all like this then I will be seeing a lot of them very soon.
Clint proves once again he's still the 'always cool, but don't f*ck with me bad ass' we know from his previous films, even when he's an old man.(Of course he proved this in Unforgiven as well)

"Ever notice how you come across somebody once in a while you shouldn't have fucked with? That's me."

The whole thing starts off with portraying Clint's character as a grumpy old man, which to be fair doesn't change much throughout the film, but he does come to accept the Koreans next door and eventually become fond of the son and daughter. He allows the son to work for him, although he origionally doesn't really care for him, eventually he starts attempting to build the kid up as more of a man, which makes for a nice storyline to smooth out the violence. If you take look past the friendly racism, Clint's character is really funny, you can also really feel the connection between him and his car, the Gran Torino, the car not just being special to him because he had a part in building it, but because it's a symbol of himself.
Although Clint's characters death at the end was inevitable, I really wasn't expecting it to happen the way it did, no way was I expecting him to go there unarmed! Although he proved himself to be the better man and got rid of the problem(s) like he wanted.
The cast seems mostly perfect for the roles, not sure if I cared much for Bee Vang performance as Thao, but other than that they all fitted, even Clint's son!

Another Prohibition era tale based on a true story, this one having being written up by the great grandson of one of the brothers in the story.
Its about the Bondurant Brothers, bootlegging siblings who made a run for the American Dream in Prohibition-era Virginia. It makes a great gangster tale that has immediately become one of my favourites.

Just when my faith in Shia LaBeouf had been destroyed (after watching Transformers 3) he bounces back with an amazing performance as the youngest Bondurant brother. That includes both his narration and performance on screen. He plays the typical younger brother role, constantly trying to impress the older two, I found myself really wanted him and his best friend 'Cricket' to catch a break.

Tom Hardy, as always, gives an amazing and really convincing performance, he has easily become one of my favourite actors lately. Every single movie I've seen with him in, his has been the standout character. In this film he plays the older and most respected of the brothers, and has become some what of a legend in both his brothers eyes, and the communitys. During the story he meets the beautiful Maggie Beauford, played by Jessica Chastain, who is wanting a quiet life away from Chicago. The two eventually they get together and a pretty awkward start.

The short time Gary Oldman is on screen he's great as well, obviously. The scene when he takes out a car with his tommygun is pretty epic.

Guy Pearce plays a villain you can really hate too, a really greasy turd of a corrupt law enforcer, found myself really wanting someone to completely obliterate him with a full tommygun clip! [spiler]Sadly this doesn't happen but he does meet a sticky end after being shot and stabbed by Jack and Howard Bondurant.

My brother was always a big Quentin Tarantino fan and so he has most of his work on DVD so I was welcome to liberate any of them from his shelf while he was out whenever I wanted, which I did with a lot of films, but it wasn’t until not very long ago that I actually properly watched a Tarantino film, (think I had seen Kill Bill before maybe?) and that’s when my obsession began, I had to see all his movies as soon as possible, so I got which ones I could from my brother and hunted down most of the rest by other means. At the time I didn’t realise he had only written this one, but I didn’t really care either as this is before I began to actually like the guy himself.

I was also already a big fan of Woody Harrelson after seeing him in one of my favourite movies, at the time, Zombieland, I think he is a really underrated actor who gives great performances and is really fun. I was also planned to hunt a lot of his movies down too, but Natural Born Killers allowed me to kill two birds with one stone as it were. Of course I was also aware that the legendary Tommy Lee Jones was in this, who I think is also a great actor and I have enjoyed watching most of his roles as he always aces the performance. Other actors/Actresses in this film I’m also now a big fan of are Juliette Lewis and Robert Downey Jr.

When I first watched this film, after about 10 minutes I started to think I’d been sold an unfinished version or something because of the strange way it was filmed, however the effect grew on me and by the end of the film I was used to it, and liked it. Quite a bit of the movie, especially the flashbacks of how Mickey and Mallory met, are filmed in a sort of way that would be found on American sitcoms and stuff, with cheers from the crowd being heard and other cues like that, I thought it was pretty weird for that type of stuff to be in a film, but this is a pretty messed up film anyway and so I let that go. And when I say messed up, I mean in a good way of course!

The movie begins with what seems a relatively normal couple, in a diner, and then Juliette Lewis’ character Mallory starts to dance and then before you know it everyone in the place is dead, except the one survivor to tell the tale of course. The movie continues to be full of murder and flashing images of evil memories and demons. It tells the story of how the two lovers, fall for each other, get separated and then reunited, which sounds like a nice tale, but they actually kill a load of people along the way as well, well 52 to be exact, and then there’s the prison break...

I think this is one of them movies that all hardcore movie lovers should see, as it’s something different, with pretty dark themes, including humour, excitement and lots of violent action!

I've wanted to see it for ages and was really excited to do so for two reasons, first, I think Tarantino is one of the best directors around at the moment and I've loved all his work(that I've seen of course), and secondly, simply because this was set to be a western, and many of my favourite films consist of westerns.
So when I finally got to see it I had high hopes, and it did not disappoint! Tarantino blows us away(or rather himself*which you'll get once you see the film) once again with another amazing piece of cinema! It's a classic blood-bath Tarantino film, that I love so much! The perfect example of this being when Django is being shot at by numerous men, but every single shot seems to hit the dead guy in front of him, who's blood pretty much re-paints the house.
The writing, directing and acting are all spot on, Christoph Waltz giving the stand out performance in my opinion, he just knows how to steal the show, much a-like he succeeded in doing in Inglourious Basterds. Samuel L. Jackson plays a great role too, getting in all the swearing needed to feed my swear o'meter, and I never knew Leonardo DiCaprio could play such a convincing bad guy! I knew he was a good actor but he really shone in this. Can't forget the lead, Jamie Foxx, although I feel he gave the weakest performance of the four big names, definitely not a bad performance, which I should stress, its just the other three were on a slightly higher level. Then there's the soundtrack, to be honest I thought it was just perfect, all the songs where played at just the right moments, so fitting, a must have for my soundtrack collection.
I also think its great that Franco Nero, who played Django in the film Django (1966) gets a cameo as well!

Wanted to see this movie for a long time but kept putting it off due to people telling me how bad it was. Well they were right but I had to see it to make my own mind up I guess. Poor acting from the majority of the cast, and generally a poor story that seems to have parts of so many others. The narration is so poor as well, its almost annoying. Its a lame PG-13 so theres not even any gore, which sucks! I really wanted this film to be good and to like as I'm quite interesting in prehistoric stuff, but no, it wasn't to be, and the film had so much potential. I really believe this film could have been a true epic. How it made so much at the Box-office is a myth itself. The best part being the bit with the massive sabertooth.

To be honest, it starts really boring, but the suspense soon starts to build up, and then they're at 'Skull Island'. The locals here arn't very happy to see newcomers, and instead of offering them a nice drink they spear a guy threw the chest. They get scared off by a good old gun shot, but not before some gnarly old woman aims some eerie words at Naomi Watts. Could of been chatting her up I guess but we'll never know now. Anyway, without telling you all the details; Kong eventually gets his prize, the men go back, shit goes down, a giant cockroach kills a guy, Kong gets high and taken to New York, then escapes, then falls off the empire state building. Yet my favourite moment is simply when Adrien Brody drop kicks a velociraptor!