ONE PARAGRAPH REVIEW: Race

Howdy ladies and gents people, time for another single paragraph review and today I’ll be doing a brief review on the film Race. Now I’d heard about this film when it was released in the US back in February, but I didn’t think it’d get a release over here because it the marketing for it wasn’t all that high, but when I saw it appear in my cinema I knew I’d have to check it out before it left within the space of a week.

So Race is a biopic that chronicles the story of Jesse Owens’ rise to fame as the greatest track and field athlete in history of the world, where he faces off against Adolf Hitler’s vision of Aryan supremacy during the 1936 Olympics. Now I’ve seen plenty of biopics in my life since watching Ray back in 2008 and you normally tell from the beginning whether the film will be unique/good or just by-the-numbers, and from some of the reviews I’d heard about, I was lead to believe that Race would fall into the latter category. However was surprisingly deep, emotional and engaging, and while there were definitely moments in the story where things felt like the followed the standard biopic formula, when the film committed to its story and characters, it ended up being a very entertaining film. What I really liked about it was the story and how it not only documented Jesse Owen’s life, but also dedicated time to the characters surrounding Jesse, showed he highs and lows of being an athlete and showed not only the racism of that time period, but also the complexities that came with the Olympics being held in Germany while Hitler was still in power. There were a lot of topics I didn’t expect the film to cover but it was done in a way that serviced the film, rather than take away from it. And the performances all around were pretty solid. Stephan James did such a great job as Jesse Owens having a great sense of charisma, urgency and likeability as a man who had talent, but also had a lot of responsibilities and the weight of the world of his shoulders. Jason Sudeikis was also very impressive as Larry Snyder, I’ve never seen Sudeikis in anything serious, and this is the first film that’s really made me like him as an actor. Jeremy Irons was also very good as Avery Brundage and really enjoyed Carice van Houten as Leni Riefenstahl, William Hurt’s appearance as Jeremiah Mahoney was good and I also liked Shanice Banton as Ruth Solomon-Owens. In conclusion Race was better than expected and while not perfect, the strong performances, and dramatic elements of the story really made it worth watching.

So that was my review, have you seen Race and if so what did you think of it? Please leave your comments below and I’ll see ya on the next review, laters! 😀

 

Horrible Bosses 2 Quick Review

Good day to you ladies and gentlemen and welcome to a new film review. Now every once in a while you end up going to the cinema and seeing a film you didn’t expect to see, but when the choice is made by one of your best friends, you just have to go with it, and that’s what happened when I saw Horrible Bosses 2. As most people know on this blog, I’m not keen on comedies and I hadn’t seen the first film, but I thought I’d give it a try. So how did the film turn out? Read on and find out.

The premise for the film is as follows:

“Dale, Kurt and Nick decide to start their own business but things don’t go as planned because of a slick investor, prompting the trio to pull off a harebrained and misguided kidnapping scheme.”

I thought the plot was fine, however it was fairly convoluted, strange and kind of generic. The best parts of the film was when the main three men went into kidnapping mode as everything else didn’t have enough humour or unique traits to be engaging. When it comes to the humour, there were a few laughs here and there, but most of it was jokes that fell flat or physical humour was crude, lame or a bit offensive.

As for the cast they are good for the most part, though some are better than others. Jason Bateman as Nick Hendricks is probably the most tolerable of his trio, he is level-headed and has certain funny moments, but is a bit dull. And Charlie Day as Dale Arbus, bloody hell, that man, Day was good in Pacific Rim and frigging amazing in The Lego Movie, but in this film he was one of the most annoying people I have ever come across in a film, ever. He’s an idiot who does things without thinking and acts like a fool too often for it to be funny. Jason Sudeikis as Kurt Buckman, he’s alright, he looks a bit like Ed Helms and has some funny lines too. Together Bateman, Day and Sudeikis make a formidable group, though they remind me of a less interesting version of The Hangover guys, and at their worst they remind me of The Three Stooges. All their constant bickering can get tiring after a short amount of time.

Jennifer Aniston as Dr. Julia Harris was pretty decent. Now I have to say something, I normally despise Jennifer Aniston, I think that she’s overrated and overhyped when it come to humour and hotness too. That being said she was tolerable in this film and I would be lying if I didn’t find her attractive in this film. Jamie Foxx was pretty funny as Dean “Motherfucker” Jones, his dialogue was great and though his role was small it was used to good effect. Chris Pine was probably the best person in the film as Rex Hanson, Pine is really funny, has great comedic timing and his character is a douche but the man is so charismatic and cool that you can’t help but like him. another good performance comes from Christoph Waltz as Burt Hanson, this was a very different kind of performance I’ve seen from Waltz but he was pretty funny for sure. And finally Kevin Spacey was really awesome as David Harken and Jonathan Banks (who I love from Breaking Bad and Community) was pretty good as Detective Hatche.

In the end Horrible Bosses 2 wasn’t as bad I expected it to be. There were a few laughs to be had, the story was ridiculous and humourous and the cast did a good job. That being said, at the same time, the jokes weren’t always on-point, some of the cast members are really annoying and I felt like some of these plot elements were a bit cliché. I know a lot of people loved this film, but for me it was alright.

Rating: 5.5/10 (Better than expected)

So have you seen Horrible Bosses 2 and if so what did you think of it? Please leave your comments below and I’ll see you on the next review yo! 😀

 

Epic Review

Alrighty then, time to talk about Epic. The latest big animated film from Blue Sky Studios, the animation studio who make films that look very similar to Dreamworks. Anyways before this film came out everyone was talking about it and said it was gonna be some really hot stuff in 2013, so I had a look yesterday to see what the deal was. So what it good or bad? Well read on and find out!

So the story in this film follows Mary Katherine (a.k.a. M.K.), a teenager who goes to live with her estranged father in a house in the forest. Her father is obsessed with the concept of their being a race of miniaturized people living in the forest. M.K. thinks her father is crazy but by through a serious of events she finds herself transported to a deep forest setting where a battle between the forces of good and the forces of evil is taking place. She teams up with a group of people from the good side to save the forest.

The story in this film should feel familiar for anyone of my generation or older, what we’re getting in this film is in the same vein as Ferngully and Avatar. The concept of there being a small society of mini people existing in the same world as humans is cool and the explanations for why we can’t see them and how they move are pretty smart too, however the rest of its execution wasn’t that good. I feel like there was a lot of drama in the film but it was cancelled out by moments of humour that really didn’t fit in the movie that well. Also there was one thing that happened that I prayed wouldn’t go down but it did and this a partial spoiler by the way… FRIGGING M.K. AND NOD KISS IN THE FILM! WHY? Now granted in this film these things are bound to happen but there needs to be a little build up before hand, there needs to be chemistry and room for the potential relationship to grow. But hell in this film these two go from being casually mates to frigging lovers at the end of the film! There are hints at them being interested in each other but not to that degree. I’m really tired of relationships be shoe-horned into films that don’t require it. Argh! Okay mini rant over, moving on…

As for the characters in this film they were a mixed bag of some nice characters to people I didn’t care about. Let’s start with Amanda Seyfried as Mary Katherine. Argh her character was annoying, while i could understand her background and shock of being shrunk down into this small new world, at the same time she seems to lack a bit of common sense, moans about a lot of time and for a main character she was a bit dull for me. Josh Hutcherson as Nod was another one of those annoying characters in the sense that he was reckless and didn’t want to answer to anyone. He has skills that makes him cool but it doesn’t matter if his character is very likable and I didn’t like him at all. then there’s Colin Farrell as Ronin, now this is the first character I actually cared about. Ronin has focus, he’s awesome, assertive and kicks a lot of ass and that’s something I appreciate in a character. Beyoncé Knowles also makes an appearance as Queen Tara, her character wasn’t in the film as much as I thought she’d be and while she was a decent character she wasn’t around long enough to leave an impression.

Christoph Waltz as Mandrake, the leader of the Boggans was pretty good. When I heard his lines in the trailers he sounded so cheesy and stupid but luckily in this film it wasn’t nearly as bad. As a bad guy he was alright but he didn’t have too much of a scary presence and that was disappointing for me. Also Jason Sudeikis as Professor Bomba was good as the father, though because of his obsessive nature over his work it made his character hard to stand at times.  Aziz Ansari as Mub was alright, most of his lines were joke-based and while some were good, others fell right flat but hey his character was better than Nod so that’s something. Chris O’Dowd as Grub was funny, I could literally just see Roy from The IT Crowd so I liked his character the entire time.

The one successful element that works in Epic‘s favor is the presentation. Visually the game looks good, it does have some moments of true beauty and looks really realistic with the good use of lighting, colour and detail. However there are a few cartoony aspects about the film that break the visual flow and clash with the realism. There is a big sense of realism but it is offset by the cartoonish style that the film adopts from time to time, the blend between cartoonish and realistic styles in this film doesn’t flow like a Pixar or Dreamworks film and it felt like both styles were fighting each other. At least when it came to the action it was very dynamic and had a good use of camera angles.

In conclusion I expecting great things from Epic unfortunately it turned to be not nearly as ‘epic’ as the name suggests. It is a good film for kids and families but the end product feels unoriginal and average. For those looking for something a little more impressive you may want to look elsewhere, Mark Kermode said it best in his review where he stated, the film connects with your eyes but not your heart like a really good animation does.

Rating: 6/10 (It looks great,but that’s the only great thing about the film)

So what did you think of Epic? Did you love it or was it just another okay animated film for you? Whatever your thoughts drop in the comments section below and I’ll see ya later on people! 😀