Movie: Red Dawn (2012)

Red Dawn (2012)
Action

I've been wanting to see this film since it was announced and people got all up in arms about it and Tomorrow When The War Began being the same film and turning it into this massive Oz vs. US drama. Well, I have a few things to say about this... 

Being an Aussie, I love the Tomorrow series. These books written by John Marsden are classics and are actually part of the English syllabus for high school students in Australia. Tomorrow was written in the early 1990's and was followed by a series of 6 books which are all about a small group of teenagers resisting the invasion of Australia. (There is also a set of 3 or 4 books of the aftermath, brilliant!) These books are huge in Australia and pretty much everyone I know has read them. 

You can imagine the excitement when we found out it was being turned into a movie... and the disappointment when we finally got to watch it.... I won't go on about it here (I'll do a separate review). Back to the actual movie I'm talking about. 

Funnily enough, it stars Aussie Chris Hemsworth (Thor, Cabin In The Woods - gosh he chooses good roles!) as big brother Jed, fresh back from the Marines which comes in real handy when Korea invades his hometown. Along with his little brother Josh Peck (lots of voice over work and a Nickelodeon Kid) and friends (Including Josh Hutcherson fresh from The Hunger Games, the gorgeous Isabel Lucas from Transformers and Tom and Nicole's son Connor Cruise) they form a rebellion to take back their town. 

People have said Red Dawn is more realistic than Tomorrow but I'm not sure I agree. Maybe I'm Tomorrow series and it just seems to work better for me. Lots of people probably didn't like Tomorrow because its longer, there is a lot more to it and so the movie seems to be slower paced than Red Dawn which contains a lot of action and explosions. I was also more attached to the Tomorrow characters (again, probably because of reading all the books as a kid then again as an adult.)
completely biased or maybe it's because I read the entire

I'm going to have to follow this review up with a review of Tomorrow... stay tuned! 

3 out of 5 yellow-eyed demons...

PS. Great to see Jeffrey Dean Morgan ie. Daddy Winchester from Supernatural! 

Movie: Snow White and The Huntsman (2012)

Snow White and The Huntsman (2012)
Action, Adventure, Drama

I went into the film feeling pretty so-so and I think that has affected this review. Kristen Stewart gives me the shits, she does this stupid thing with her mouth (that's what she said) that makes her look like a stunned mullet. I'm going to screen cap it so that you will never be able to think of anything else except how derpa she looks.

On top of the face, she is a terrible actress. Has anyone seen any of her other stuff....besides Twilight? Adventureland? Into The Wild? Both terrible movies and her character is the same in them all! For goodness sake, someone give her a character with substance so we can all finally realise how bad she actually is! Argh!  At least she can pull off the English accent, which pretty much anyone can do. How is she famous?

Thank God for Charlize Theron (The Italian Job)! She is so amazing, I'm in awe. It's not easy to say the "Mirror, Mirror" line without sounding bloody ridiculous.... Charlize manages it somehow. She is the saving grace of this film I think and I was more interested in her story than I ever was of Snow. Want more Evil Queen, Ravenna!

Even though Chris Hemsworth (Thor, The Avengers) is in this too but I found his character a little underwhelming and therefore have nothing to say about him... Raffey Cassidy (Dark Shadows) was just adorable as the young Snow White, maybe they should have let her do the whole film! Sam Claflin (Pirates: On Stranger Tides) is William, who I'm assuming is meant to be like a Prince Charming character? I don't know... I also just wanted to point out how nice it was to actually see Snow's mum (Liberty Ross), normally she's gone by the time we enter the story.

Even though I really didn't like this film overly much, the visual effects were pretty good in some places, such as the milk bath (as seen in preview). Brilliant, so well filmed. The hallucinations were also well done, a little foggy and stumbly as they should be, plus there were some of the weirdest looking fairies I've ever seen....

I found myself criticizing everything, like; the horse was just sitting there waiting for her? I guess they were trying to bring a little Cinderella into it, what with her bird companions, the horse, the white stag and the troll plus being locked in the tower and her filthy face - as in literally dirty, haha. Then she just leaves the horse to die? Bitch! That scene did remind me of The NeverEnding Story when Atreyu loses his horse, Artax *sobs*

They've left it really open ended for a sequel and I did hear rumours about Snow being the main character but after the scandal of Stewart and director, Rupert Sanders, they canned that idea and are now looking to do a sequel based around the character of The Huntsman; a much better idea in my opinion.

I almost prefer Mirror Mirror... at least that one blatantly makes fun of itself... I found the preview misleading, I thought Snow would be a warrior leading her people into battle but she's just as soft as she always is...

3 out of 5 duckface...

Movie: The Cabin In The Woods (2011)

The Cabin In The Woods (2011)
Horror, Sci-Fi, Thriller

I love a good horror movie and its been a while since any really good ones have been released in my opinion. Then someone told me about this one... At first I thought it was going to be another one of those piss-take horror films packed with cheesy one liners. Well, it is full of cheesy one-liners but it's actually a pretty good horror flick - I know, I'm surprised too!

I was surprised that is, until I saw Joss Whedon's name on it and now it all makes a little more sense. That man is a god and if you don't know who he is, we can't be friends...

It's a very Whedon-esk cast too with Amy Acker of Angel fame and Fran Kranz from Dollhouse, but the star was Kristen Connolly who's most well know for her appearances as iGirl on Youtube's iChannel, and Aussie Chris Hemsworth - Thor, Norse God of Thunder, duh! I also recognized one of the zombies as Jodelle Ferland (Twilight: Eclipse)- yes, zombies!

It took me a little while to figure out what was going on. I hadn't seen any previews and the only thing I'd heard about it is that it wasn't what I would expect of a horror. From that I half expected it to turn into something like Tucker and Dale VS Evil, hehe, but that wasn't it. It's kind of like Big Brother's Haunted House... at least we know what happened to the Cube machine, ha!

It's a relatively short film at an hour and twenty-five minutes, but how long do you really expect people to survive in these situations? I love the idea of it, something really different and the ending is pretty awesome. Sigourney Weaver as The Director made me chuckle.

Will recommend to friends. Should have watched it in the dark...

4 out of 5 monster cubes...

[Quote] "Oh no, don't kill the gorgeous man, we're endangered!" - Hemsworth