Quick Movie Reviews: Vol 21

Remakes huh? This one word can make many a movie lover cringe and yell out to the heavens as if they were Charlton Heston. I too was guilty of the knee jerk reactions to remakes a while back, but thankfully with time and a little bit of personal growth I’ve managed to move past that. Do I still hate remakes? Well I still hate the idea behind remakes, but not the individual movies. One of my favourite horror movies is John Carpenters, The Thing, which is a remake, however it works. So not all remakes are horrid pieces of trash. However the laziness behind the idea of remakes is what drives me insane. I could go on but the topic of remakes has been floating about in the discussion boards I frequent, and of course I also watched a remake that got me thinking. So now my thoughts are done, it’s time to move on to the review.

50/50 (2011)

Well this movie appeared on my top list of 2011 so I’m sure most people know where I stand on this movie. Now this would be a hard recommend to people when you tell them it’s a comedy/drama about a man who’s just been diagnosed with cancer. So I want to address this to the people I didn’t convince with my top list of last year. You are honestly doing yourself a favour, grabbing this movie and giving it a watch. It’s a simple movie that actually gets in touch with the real emotions we all feel when faced with adversity and tragedy. I can tell you that the dark times I’ve had in my life have been tinged with both laughs and sadness and this makes this movie seem more true to life. If you are on the fence about this movie, please go and see it as it’s just a movie that really manages to reflect the world we all live in.

The Adventures of Tin Tin (2011)

With each progressive movie we are getting closer and closer to over coming the uncanny valley of motion captured movies. Spielberg puts on an informative class on how to do action and adventure in the CGI cartoon medium, and honestly puts Robert Zemeckis to shame for his efforts. The scary thing is, this is Spielberg’s first foray into this type of movie and you can just sense that he had a ball doing it. There is such a joy to this movie it’s infectious, along with top notch action sequences that are just unbelievable. With the limitation of camera movement out of the window Spielberg shows us why he is the master director. Add to that some top notch performances, in particular Andy Serkis who is king of the motion capture, and you have a family movie that is just fun.

Clash of the Titans (2010)

Now we arrive to the movie that got me thinking about remakes. In order to be fair I’m not going to compare this movie to the original. First off the positive. The acting is rather decent in the movie, sure not award winning but good. Mads Mikkelsen in particular held my attention as the warrior Draco, he was intense and honestly I wished he was the main hero of the movie, but alas it was not to be. Now to the negatives. This movie has rush job written all over it, as such I’m not sure if I should blame the creative team behind this movie, or studio interference. There seems to be entire scenes missing from this movie and it really does create a mess, as characters are never allowed to be clearly defined. But the biggest problem is how dumb it treats its audience. It over explains the simplest of things, things that don’t need explaining, but when it gets to the complicated stuff it dumps those explanations and instead throws an action scene our way so the audience doesn’t have to think to hard. I’m sure people will enjoy this movie, but this movie just drips with laziness on several fronts, and I’m just thankful the acting was decent.