I found myself in K-Mart recently, and I bought a few DVDs from their bargain bin.

For the past few nights, I've watched some old Jackie Chan movies.  They're cheap, and silly at times, but very entertaining.

The ones I've seen so far are:
    - Operation Condor
    - Supercop

There's 8 in the disc.  Tonight I'll be checking out Operation Condor 2, which, according to IMDB, was released before the other one!

    dZ.

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Last night I watched this British made movie, I had never even heard of it before which was quite a surprise when I saw the cast. As well as James McAvoy and Mark Strong the film also stars David Morrisey, who is best known as The Governor in The Walking Dead. It's a gritty crime thriller with lots of twists and turns, some of which work and some don't. It's a good watch but doesn't explain itself very well at times and it's a bit too easy to lose grip of the plot.

Last night I went to the BFI IMAX in ye olde Londonium.  When I got there, there was a camera crew doing some filming about the architectural design of the place.  Look, I even have evidence of this :-

Anyway, I went to see the following :-

First things first, it was a very visual movie.  If you can view it in IMAX then do so.  It does look spectacular.  The film does take a lot of influences from other sci-fi films(e.g.  Star Wars, Wall-E, Blade Runner, Moon, 2001, Independence Day, Dark Star, Silent Running and many others) - so much so, that it can become a game of how many you can spot.  It was trying to go down the more cerebral sci-fi film side(e.g. Moon, Silent Running, Logan's Run) which to some extent it did quite well setting up the feeling of loneliness and isolation of the main characters.  I did quite like the plight of Andrea Riseborough's character and how that was handled dramatically.  As for the rest of the storyline, well, I'd say that you probably have seen it all before, apart from one plot twist in the middle of the film which I didn't see coming, but other people might.  That seems to be the problem of the film, we'd seen most of it all before.  Whilst the homages are nice it didn't add anything new.  A visually stunning film - yes, but lacking an emotionally compelling narrative.  Had it been about 30 minutes shorter(the first hour seems to be about the visuals and setting the scene - far too long in my opinion) and developed the storyline better then it could have turned out better.

It was entertaining enough, but if you compare it to two recent sci-fi films such as Moon and District 9 then it pales into significance.  They managed to combine spectacle and ideas much better than this film did.

Thanks for the write-up Katz! I was actually just reading a review in the local newspaper and they said pretty much the same thing as you did! I will wait until this one hits DVD to watch it probably.

Cheers, Katz.  I think I'll wait for dvd too!

Ok, so I watched Priest last night.  Not sure what I was expecting but for some reason I wasn't expecting a vampire flick.  Hey ho, I stuck it out to the end and, well, it worked quite well, slight twist, different take on the vampires, I like the back story/history and the characters, particularly Priest, were good enough.  Karl Urban wasn't great, which was a shame, but he didn't have a huge role.  Well he did but he didn't have a huge amount of screen time and I think it was all a bit middle of the road verging on the lame.

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Last night I watched this as I was on a bit of a sci-fi trip after playing Star Trek Conquest all afternoon. It wasn't bad but was a bit lacking in action. I thought they spent far too much time with the story of the main character and kind of forgot about the other stuff. It's more a full length episode than a film, BSG fans will probably enjoy it though.

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Last night I watched this as I was on a bit of a sci-fi trip after playing Star Trek Conquest all afternoon. It wasn't bad but was a bit lacking in action. I thought they spent far too much time with the story of the main character and kind of forgot about the other stuff. It's more a full length episode than a film, BSG fans will probably enjoy it though.

Yes, this was meant to be more about the young Adama than anything else.  I was left wanting for more at the end of it.  It did, however, feel like the Galactica show and was not too different of a formula when compared to something like Caprica.

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I watched Gangster Squad last night, a pretty enjoyable mob movie with an all-star cast including Ryan Gosling, Nick Nolte, Josh Brolin and the stunning Emma Stone 

I believe it's based on a true story and it was a good watch without ever being really thrilling.

Last night I watched this :- 

It starred Ryan Reynolds(aka the former Mr. Scarlett Johannson).  He played a truck driver who was in a convoy in Iraq and gets captured then wakes up inside a wooden coffin.  Just a quick warning - it's not a comedy!  He has a mobile phone and a zippo lighter.  It's then all about how he can get out of there.  The film takes its influence from things like Rear Window, Wait Until Dark(which I saw just recently) and Sleuth - in that it was all about creating the tension in one setting.  Even though I watched it on a widescreen TV, the film had a very claustrophobic feel to it.  There's plenty of dramatic developments in the storyline.  A very good low budget film that was done with a lot of imagination.  Plus, a superb performance from Ryan Reynolds.  I'll be keeping an eye out for the director's(Rodrigo Cortés) future work.  Here he crafted a highly effective thriller. 

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This was my film for last night, it starts Michael Madsen, who is best known for Reservoir Dogs and the Kill Bill movies. It's a pretty low budget zombie film that is totally lacking in originality and full of bad acting. This won't be a film that figures very highly on Michael's C.V. that is for sure!

Just watched Iron Man 3 at the Cinema. Awesome film, I won't say much as I don't want to spoil it for anyone but I loved it.

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I watched The Hunter last night, a really interesting film starring Willem Dafoe where he goes to Tazmania in search of a thought to be extinct animal. The story has lots of twists from there and is utterly gripping with the well told story, excellent cinematography and stunning scenery. The only down point was the ending, which for me, was nearly enough to ruin the film. No idea what they were thinking.

Last night I watched this :-

I wasn't sure about having a reboot so soon after the Sam Raimi and Tobey Maguire's films.  It starred the British actor Andrew Garfield.  As Hollywood blockbusters go, it was pretty decent.  It did the whole origin of Spiderman story quite well.  Plus, Garfield was quite good in his role.  A decent enough reboot - if lacking that extra magic the first two Raimi Spiderman films had. 

Read my review of Spiderman a few pages back

I think it's far better than all previous Spiderman films, especially the way they told the story.

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Last night I watched Jack Reacher, a thriller that seems to be very highly rated by critics. I have to say that the story was really good and gave you plenty to guess at but I thought Tom Cruise was totally miscast. His acting was pretty poor and he just wasn't convincing in that role at all, very poor choice.