My Top 5 Favourite reviews from A Blogggggg Odyssey

Right! OK so this may appear like I'm running out of ideas for reviews on this blog (well let's face it at times I have!) so for this post I have decided to do yet another top favourites list only THIS time it will be based on my pick of the favourite reviews I've done on this blog.

So this may take a bit of trawling through the archives to dig out the best ones (well in my humble opinion) which should be fun!  But I will basically say why it was my favourite and what sections I enjoyed writing the most (and sometimes it will be flaws section!).  I might also draw bit of criticism from these posts too as over the years they have gotten just a bit TOO long winded even for my liking!

But anyway so let's get started....

5. Aliens revisited (January 2016)

Right so at No.5 is this review I did of Aliens back at the start of the year, which saw me revisit my original review of Aliens I did a few years ealier and gave it a massive revamp.  This was another on of my epic rewrites which took me forever given the size of the cast and the notable scenes from the film not to mention also the production background etc.

But revisiting a really good film is always to an extent satisfying to do especially if my original review didn't go into as much detail (which it didn't really) and here I certainly DID go a bit overboard in cramming full of detail from the scenes and performances to my look at the flaws and the production. 

However I do think this is again one of my better researched reviews as I took a bit more effort into looking at some of the background production and I gave a more extensive review of my thoughts on the film's music and direction.

I also enjoy this review for the flaws section as I pick out a few glaring errors in the film such as Ripley's superhuman ability to hold on for dear life as she opens the Sulcao's airlock and the Alien queen is sucked into outer space yet Ripley manages to survive and climb up the ladder against the brutal winds in the vaccum of space!  And I even pointed out that's actually debatable whether or not there would be high winds in the vaccum of space anyway!

I also enjoyed pointing out just why on Earth would any family want to live on a planet like LV-426, a barren toilet of a place with brutal winds and an ugly barren wasteland to look at!  It doesn't really quite add up that may have attracted so many families to move there in the first place!

Anyway so for me, Aliens revisited was fun to do (albeit a bit exhausting too!) and looking back on it I think its a pretty good one and worth sticking on here.     

4. The Dark Knight Rises Re-Re-visited (Published August 2015)

At No.4 is this review which was my THIRD look at the final film in the Christopher Nolan Batman trilogy, the Dark Knight Rises.  This was the first time I have ever looked at a film on this blog three times so I think it deserves some sort of special mention I guess!

The thing I like about this review is that I did a bit research into the actual flaws and problems with the film and decided to add them into the review more as I had omitted from the preview reviews.  And I think I always have a bit of fun in pointing out the flaws in most movies (although who am I really to judge someone elses work!) but here The Dark Knight Rises has its fair share of flaws.

Some of my favourite parts were in pointing out how did Bruce Wayne manage to escape from the supposedly unescapable prison Bane placed him in as no one had make the climb except a very small child, who was the child of the mystical leader of the League of Shadows, Ra's Al Ghul.  Yet how are we to believe a small child could make such a BIG jump to escape the prison in the first place??!  Its pretty far fetched.

It was also fun to point out that Comissioner Gordon would be daft enough to send ALL the cops in Gotham down into the sewers to smoke out Bane, which would ultimately leave hem all trapped below when Bane detonated the explosives around the city.  I mean surely he should have left a few more up top rather than just Blake!

I never really intended to have a go at TDKR and call it a bad film because it isn't and for me its the most underrated of the three films in Nolans' trilogy but regardless it still fun to poke fun at some of the film's problems and it still has its share.

So for me this was one of the more fun reviews to do despite being basically a slightly more extended re-write to the previous ones, so I figured its worth putting up here.

3. Battlefield Earth (Published October 2015) 

So at No.3 is my review on the disaster-piece that is Battlefield Earth, a bafflingly bad sci-fi film with one main redeeming feature, which is a ridiculously over the top performance by John Travolta, who invested a great deal in getting the film made (God knows why though!).

Again reviewing bad films can be alot of fun to do and Battlefield Earth was certainly for me one of the most enjoyable ones to do as it had its fair share of problems but at the same time I have to say despite it all I still enjoyed the film.  Perhaps it deserves a bit of credit for being so bad its almost good as it certainly almost qualifies for that category.

But Battlefield Earth has many problems as a film and here I went to great pains to pointing them out such as why didn't the Psychlos simply learn to speak English and learn a bit more about the humans??!  Instead they just conquered them and made them work as slaves to mine for gold but if they communicate with them they could have found valuable gold despositories such as Fort Knox alot sooner!

And I also point out (as no doubt many other reviewers did) about how Terl accidentally plotted the downfall of his own race by getting the human, Jonnie (Barry Pepper) trained up in how to read and understand the Psychlo's language and their history and even how their ships work!  In the end Jonnie used the Psychlo's weapons against them to wipe out their own home planet!

There are so many more problems with Battlefield Earth of course but I won't go into them here but for me this was one of the most enjoyable reviews I've done on this blog so I think it just had to go on this list.

2. Rocky IV (Published July 2015)

At No.2 on the list is Rocky IV, now I want to start by saying I actually really like Rocky IV, its alot of fun and was easily the most daft and over the top entry in the series but of course it does have its problems but for me this review was a great deal of fun to do.
   
I do like this review however not just for pointing out any of the flaws but I did enjoy also doing a bit of (quick) research into the production of the film and how Sly Stallone nearly died while filming a fight scene with Dolph Lungren.  Lungren also apparently, due to his imposing physical presence reputedly also had a fallout with Carl Weathers, who was furious with Lungren's overpowering strength during filming their fight scenes.

But for me this review was pure fun because Rocky IV does have quite a few flaws and I couldn't resist poking fun at Sly's cringeworthy patriotism in the film with Apollo Creed's OTT entrance to his exhibition fight with Drago (Lungren).  Not to mention the unbearably God awful cheesy moment where Rocky reveals Paulie's birthday present, which is a big robot that Paulie later adjusts to having a sexy female voice!

Then for me there was the biggest plot hole of them all in that Adrian decided to travel to Russia to support Rock and leave her son behind ON HIS OWN!!  Sorry correction, she left him in the services of Paulie's big robot!  Yep that's real good parenting right there, Adrian!  And Rocky doesn't even seem to mind either as he never once asks "Did you leave the kid at home??  Where is he???!".

Anyway yeah this review was alot of fun to do and certainly one of my favourites that I look back on from time to time.

And my No.1 favourite review of this blog is......

1. The Room (Published June 2015)

Yep at No.1 is the ultimate masterwork of badness, The Room and let's face it, this film is a reviewer's dream as there is SO much wrong with it but at the same time so much right with it!  The film is a walking paradox in that as a serious drama it is a joke but as an unintentional black comedy its a priceless masterpiece!

So yeah I had alot of fun writing this one up and its flaws are so numerous that it would be tough to nail them all down here but some of the film's lines were just so priceless and hilarious.  And some of the best (or worst lines) included Johnny (played by the star/writer/director Tommy Wiseau) saying to his best friend, Mark (Greg Sestero) "We are going to get a new client at the bank and make alot of money" and Mark says "That's great, who?" and Johnny says "I can't tell you, its confidential" and Mark asks again "No, I can't!  Anyway how is your sex life?!".

Then of course there is one of the many scenes on the roof where Johnny angrily walks up onto the roof and he says to himself of Lisa's accusation of hitting her "I did not hit her!  Its bullshit!  I did NOT HIT HER!! I did NOT!" and he looks over and sees Mark and says casually "Oh, hi Mark!".

And picking out this film's flaws was exhausting to say the least but it was also alot of fun to do given that there was so much to choose from and so many plot holes.  And these included for e.g. Lisa's chat with her mother, who says she has breast cancer but nothing is made of it or even mentioned ever again!  Then there is the scene where Johnny and a few of his friends play football wearing Tuxes but this is virtually for no reason as we don't even find out why they were wearing the tuxes! 

And lastly there is the ridiculous moment where Mark and Lisa dance and hold each other infront of Johnny who at first doesn't really pay much mind but he soon picks a fight with Mark and quickly makes up with him five seconds later! Then not long after Johnny picks another fight with Mark and then he goes upstairs to be alone but he choses not to believe the affair happened between Mark and Lisa UNTIL he listens to a tape recording of her call to Mark when in fact he saw them canoodling right infront of him!!

Anyway I could spend all night picking out The Room's other flaws but it would take too long but suffice to say it was definitely part of what made it such fun to write this review in the first place and for me it remains my favourite review from this blog (so far anyway!). 

Right!  Well I've done enough scraping the barrell for one day but that was sort of fun to do this post also but next time I will be back with a proper review of sorts rather than a Top 5 or 10 list but it will most likely be in December now. 

So until the next one its bye for now and I'll see you in December!

Allied review

Well went to see that new Robert Zemeckis film that is just out, Allied, a romantic wartime drama starring Brad Pitt and Marion Cotillard as a couple who meet during the 2nd World War but all is not what they seem....

So I won't do a full indepth review with lots of quotes of dialogue so instead I will keep it quite short (honest!) but I will say a bit about the plot so there might be the odd SPOILER ahead but I will try and keep that to minimum too.

So with that in mind here is the usual warning...

A FEW SPOILERS ARE AHEAD BUT NOT TOO MANY!! 

STORY 

Right so the story is set during World War II and begins in 1942 with a Canadian assassin, Max Vatan (Pitt) meeting with a French resistance fighter, Marianne Beausejour (Cotillard) as the two of them join up to assassinate a German official in Casablanca.  And as the two of them get to know each other they begin to fall in love.  Max and Marianne soon also carry out their mission to kill the German official, which succeeds and they manage to escape undetected and after this Max proposes to Marianne who accepts.

The story then switches to London a few weeks later where Marianne gains asylum and the two of them get married and settle down and have a baby daughter, Anna.  However just as they seem happy and content in their lives, Max receives word from his superiors at the SOE (Special Operations Executive) about something that will have a drastic change on their lives.....

THOUGHTS

Allied as a film largely succeeds in being a wartime thriller as some of its setpieces and its action work very well and Zemeckis does an expert job at building up the tension in these scenes.  However it does at times threaten to bog itself down with the usual kind of sentimentality we are used to seeing in Zemeckis's films.  But despite this the film is still quite enjoyable and for the most part it moves along at a decent pace.

PERFORMANCES 

Performance wise, Allied is very good and the two leads of Brad Pitt and Marion Cotillard work well together and have a somewhat understated chemistry although this could be more on Brad's part than Marion given that he plays his character in a rather cool, suave yet subdued manner.  This in fact threatens to kind of detract from any chemistry that the two actors might appear to have for each other onscreen.

Brad himself more specifically does play things pretty cool here and he keeps his dialogue also quite terse and brief but he does succeed in showing that Max can be both suave but also ruthless and clinical in his job when he has to be.  Although if there is one thing you could say about Brad's performance is that at the start of the film he sure doesn't fit in as a posing Frenchman as he's about as far from a Frenchman as you could get (even something Marianne alludes to when she mentions his less than perfect French accent!).

Regardless of this though Brad, shows once again that even at the age of 52 he still cuts the figure of the leading star very well and has aged better than Tom Cruise has!

As for Marion her performance is excellent throughout and she plays Marianne mostly as a carefree party-goer on the outside but also as a calculating assassin on the other who is far from what she seems.  And I won't say anymore about her character plot wise than that as I don't want to give away the rest of the plot!

Marion also does manage to make her character likeable and later on when things turn somewhat sour for them she does succeed in making you feel sorry for Marianne.  So overall her performance is definitely the best one in the film.

DIRECTOR AND MUSIC

As for the direction, well like I said, Robert Zemeckis does a good job here for the most part as he keeps the pacing fairly tight and the film's runtime of just over two hours is about right and he also handles the film's action very well.  Zemeckis also deserves credit for depicting quite a few of the scenes in French using subtitles for the audiences rather than have all the dialogue in English.

Moving onto the music well no points for guessing who did the score.....yep, it was Bob's regular composer, Alan Silvestri, who here has composed a fairly pleasant and inoffensive score that mainly suits the film's tone.  The only problem for me though with Silvestri's music is that its pretty repetitive and identifiable in its use of signature themes and orchestrations as he often uses the same sounding piano and strings arrangements that kind of shows a lack of individuality for most of his more recent scores and this is definitely the case here.

FLAWS (Warning this section may contain the odd spoiler!)

As for Allied's flaws....yeah its not quite a perfect film and for starters I think one of the problems I had with it is that the film towards the end really does take a strong sentimental tack, which kind of threatened to ruin it for me personally.  And this is often the case with Zemeckis films as sooner or later you are reminded that it is indeed a Zemeckis film you are watching as you are bound to get some sentimentality thrown in somewhere!

Another issue was possibly also to do with the timeline of the war as in one scene in London we see the city being bombed above in aerial assault.  Now in the film's timeline this may have been around late 1943 or early 1944 so this definitely meant the timeline is askew in the film as the Battle of Britain or the "Blitz" as it was commonly known lasted from September 1940 to May 1941 so by this time there should have been no aerial attacks over London!

And lastly I have to ask the question and its kind of spoiler so: SPOILER ALERT!! How did Max and Marianne manage to drive their car up onto the sand dunes??  I mean sand dunes can be pretty deep so I'd imagine if they parked their car in one it would be pretty difficult for them to drive back out of one!

Not only that in this scene (ANOTHER SPOILER!!) Max and Marianne have sex for the first time and they do it during a very rough sandstorm which rocks the car violently while they do their own rockin (sorry couldn't resist!).  Now I'm surprised that the sandstorm wouldn't have done even more extensive damage to the car itself and not only that they would also somehow be able to just magically drive the car out of there without getting even more stuck in the sand!

Anyway that's it for the flaws.

SUM UP

So to sum up, Allied is an entertaining and even at times gripping romantic wartime thriller which has its moments of charm and features nice performances from the two leads in Brad Pitt and Marion Cotillard.  And yes OK the film does have some plot issues and it does feel a bit too sentimental toward the end but if you can forgive that then its still a film that might be worth a look.

Anyway so that's it for now and I will be back on here hopefully with another post just before the end of the month.

So till the next un its bye for now!