Dark Shadows: a toothless film that was "just okay."

If I had one word to describe this film, it would be…..sigh. Just, sigh.

Just like most of the movies Burton has been churning out these days, the best I can say about is that “it’s just okay.” That is the absolute best I can say about it.

Based on the 60’s soap opera of the same name, Dark Shadows, the film follows Barnabas Collins (Johnny Depp) and his family in the 1800’s, after they leave Liverpool for the new world in search of fortune. As Barnabas enters adolescence, he makes the mistake of fooling around with one of his family’s servants, Angelique (Eva Green), who turns out to be a particularly vengeful witch. When Barnabas refuses to reciprocate Angelique’s love, she goes on an all out campaign against his family, killing everyone he loves. She kills his parents, his one true love, Josette (Bella Heathcote), and turns him into a vampire and arranges for him to be locked up and buried alive.

Fast forward 200 years to the 1970’s when Barnabas is accidentally awakened, and returns to Collinwood manor to find the dysfunctional remnants of the Collins family.  His family’s house has fallen into ruin, their fishing business is declining every day, and his old lover Angelique is still alive and still holds a vendetta against him and his family. Now it is up to Barnabas to rebuild his family’s name and business.

I will not dedicate anymore time to the plot, because neither did Tim Burton. As a vampire movie, it was absolutely ‘toothless’, so to speak. Tim Burton seems to have been writing this movie as he went along, adding whatever came to his mind with absolutely no regard for the tone or setup of this film. The film starts off with a somewhat serious tone, but as soon as they jump ahead in time to the 70’s this film tries to become an “Edward Scissorhands” type of fish-out-of-water story, with a heavy comedy element. Now I wouldn’t mind this at all, in fact I was really into it during the first act, but the comedy soon degraded into extremely camp vampire jokes (worse than that “toothless” joke I made earlier….yeah, it was pretty bad), that not only had been done many times before (e.g. Barnabas brushing his teeth in the mirror, with only the tooth paste and tooth brush showing), but had been done better.

Tim Burton was grasping at straws throughout this movie, not knowing quite how to move along with the story line. He would toss in new plot elements, only to never revisit them throughout the movie. He introduces such interesting characters with important roles in the story, but neglects to show them for most of the movie, he introduces a character who is crowbarred in with no other purpose than to setup a sequel, and also throws in various supernatural powers other characters have at the end of the film, which add no substance to the story and serve absolutely no real purpose. This includes a moment when one of the members, who is a werewolf, mumbles, “Let’s not make a big deal about it.” Clearly a suggestion Tim Burton took to heart.

So what was good about this movie? I really enjoyed the first act, the initial moments when Barnabas is trying to comprehend technology and innovation foreign to him, like cars, television and even a McDonalds sign! I pretty much enjoyed every scene with Johnny Depp in this film. He was what kept me somewhat entertained throughout the film; he pulled off playing a gothic vampire from the 18th century the way only Johnny Depp can. The costumes, the colors and the cinematography were also excellent, as is expected with Tim Burton movies. But that’s as much as I can say about what was positive with this film.

At the end of the day this movie served no other purpose than to the oh-so-gothic clothes at Hot Topic, which Tim Burton seems to be a fan of. This movie showed so much promise with the first act, winning me over, but as the movie went on it lost me, and failed to win me back. I honestly wouldn’t recommend anyone go out and pay good money to watch this movie in the theater, if you really want to watch it, wait until it’s out on DVD and rent it.

I give this a 5/10

The Dictator: racist, odious bizarre, and somehow still hilarious!

It’s not often that a satirical film with an exorbitant amount of absurdist humor manages to hold my attention for 83 minutes, but Sacha Baron Cohen’s “The Dictator” unexpectedly managed to do just that. I knew this movie was racist, odious, bizarre, and just all out wrong, but I cannot deny that fact that somehow the director, Larry Charles, manages to make this all work.

At the axis of this film is the dictator of the fictional North African “Republic of Wadiya,” is the foolhardy, malevolent Admiral General Aladeen (Sacha Baron Cohen), who is rolling around in Scrooge McDuck type money (so much so that he beds Megan Fox and other celebs on a regular basis, drives around in solid gold humvees and host his own Olympic games, in which he wins 16 Gold medals). This inordinate wealth he possesses also allows him to pursue his nuclear ambitions, which gets him in trouble with the international community, which doubts his peaceful motivations for processing weapons grade uranium (even though he assured them he’d only be using it for clean energy…...). He is then advised by his brother and second in command, Tamir (Ben Kingsly), to address the U.N. in New York.

Once he lands in the United States is when the true fish-out-of-water humor begins (not to say he was quite normal in his home country either). Treachery is afoot the night before he is to give his address, which leaves him without his “great beard” and looking like a homeless person, while his detractor has preplaced him with his double, who happens to be even more of a dunce than Aladeen.

Finding himself impecunious and destitute, Aladeen is helped out by the ultra-femenist, humanist, vegan shop owner Zoey (Anna Faris) who is the only person that offers him any help whatsoever. Aladeen also manages to find his old friend/head nuclear Scientist Nuclear Nadal (Jason Mantzoukas), whom he tried to execute, and enlists his help to get back into power.

Now then, enough about the plot. What “The Dictator” has managed to, quite skillfully, avoid many of the pitfalls similar ludicrous comedies are victim to. Movies that rely heavily on ludicrous humor and just one tiny idea to carry a movie, quite often, fall completely flat. These movies tend to drag on past the introduction of a novel plot point, and never quite manage to find their feet, kind of like “Don’t mess with the Zohan.” The most brilliant thing about “The Dictator” was that it managed to get the pacing right, never seeming to drag on, even though I was prepared for it to do just that. The jokes in this film were so disgustingly offensive in every way that they somehow managed to go full circle and become amazingly hilarious! There were several laugh-out-loud moments throughout this movie, but on occasion the jokes seemed forced and fell flat on their face, granted these moments were few and far between.

With this film, Cohen moves away from the mockumentary format he utilized with “Borat” and “Bruno”, and has returned to deliver a movie more in the vein of “Ali G in Da House.” “The Dictator” has a multitude of amazing comedic performances in the talented hands of Sacha Baron Cohen Sir Ben Kingsley, John C. Reilly, Jason Mantzoukas, Anna Faris, Bobby Lee and rest of the crew. This film never stops being funny and never lags at all, it can veer into disgusting and unfunny at times, but before you even have time to notice, it finds its feet and is back on track. This movie won’t be winning any Oscars, but is a solid comedy which I highly recommend. I give this a solid 7.5/10.

Marvel's: The Avengers Review

Alright, this review is going to have a few minor spoilers so before I get into it I'll give a quick spoiler free review. The story is well thought out, plot progresses smoothly, characters are well developed, fight scenes are awesome, and the special effects are AMAZING! The only minor problem I see with this movie is if you haven't seen all the tie-in movies, you might be lost at the start and might not connect with some of the characters at first, but I don't see this being a major problem because the characters are steadily built up and relatable. All in all I would give Marvel's: The Avengers are solid 9/10.

WOW, just WOW! This movie was all I had hoped for, and in all honesty, a lot more! Being a huge fan of everything that Joss Whedon does (Buffy, Angel, Firefly, Serenity, Cabin in the Woods), I was really excited to see how he would handle The Avengers. Juggling a lot of characters can always be a problem, as we all saw in Spiderman 3 (which was absolutely atrocious). That movie didn't dedicate enough time to all of the characters they introduced, the plot was forced forward instead of smoothly progressing forward and it was just all out cheesy. Joss Whedon on the other hand has lots of experience handling an ensemble cast, like he did in the movie Serenity. He dedicates enough time to all the characters, which I thought quite the quandary. Whedon made all the characters matter: Thor trying to show Loki the errors of his ways, Loki out for vengeance against Thor, the Hulk keeping his distance because he knows how dangerous he can be and how he comes to see his role in the world, Black Widow and Hawk trying to erase their past mistakes with future triumphs, Captain America assuming his role as the leader of the group while trying to find his place in this unfamiliar world, and Tony Stark....being Tony Stark. Having so many characters, I expected some of the more popular characters, such as Tony Stark, to overshadow some of the less popular characters, such as the Hulk, but Whedon makes it work brilliantly!

This is the first time that a film like this has been made. This film was literally 5 movies in the making, and I had no idea how they would converge all of these seemingly different plots. Marvel's: The Avengers manages to gel all the tie-in movies that preceded it into a well oiled machine. Elements introduced in previous movies are are explained further in this movie and are used as important plot devices, such as the Tesseract from Captain America: The First Avenger. I really like the fact that they give every character a purpose, a reason for being there, instead of just crowbarring them in. At no point of this movie did I think to myself "well this is dragging on" or "can we please get on with this story," because in each third of Marvel's: The Avengers Whedon kept the pacing just right; the first third of Marvel's: The Avengers revolved around Loki and his motivations, as well as recruiting the Avengers, the second third of the film was mainly building up our main characters, their conflicts and motivations, and the final third was all action. Pacing and tempo done right. This movie also didn't take itself too seriously, with a lot of Whedon's trademark cheeky humor well on display. Infusing lighthearted humor into heavy scenes is something that I really enjoy in a film, and there was plenty of that in Marvel's: The Avengers, as well as some major laughs!

Marvel's: The Avengers also did the action correctly. Some movies, like the Transformers movies, have a lot of action, but it's extremely difficult to make out exactly what's happening with all of the heavy cutting. Not only was the action in this movie visually stimulating and well thought out, it was extremely clear and easy to make out what was happening and who was winning in each exchange. We also got to see some fight scenes in which different characters teamed up and combined their powers to do some really cool moves, like Ironman ricocheting his laser beams off of Captain America's shield to blast a group of villains. 

The cinematography was astounding in Marvel's: The Avengers, and this was most clearly seen in the fight scenes. I watched this in 3D, which is notorious for making movies look like they couldn't afford lighting, but this was definitely not a problem in Marvel's: The Avengers. The fight scenes were also accentuated with the brilliant special effects that were on display. From the Hulk smashing everything in sight, to an alien rock whale-turtle destroying Manhattan, everything looked splendid. The only complaint in this department is with the Avenger's hovering base, which looked cartoonishly fake at times, but that is a really minor complaint.

What more can I say, I absolutely adore this movie, it's worth watching opening night at midnight, and is totally a full price movie. I give it a 9/10.

Welcome to FilmSession!

Hello there!

My whole life there has been nothing I've loved more than film and television, and I've spent (although my parents say I 'wasted') a good chunk of my life watching movies and tv shows. Since I spend so much time watching movies and tv shows I thought to myself, "why don't you just start writing about them and reviewing them?" My brainbox seldom produces anything of use, but this idea seemed half way decent, so here I am. From here on forth I will write a review for every single movie I watch, and I'll do the occasional tv/comic/book review. It'll be a grueling task, with many uphill battles....bhahahahah! Who am I kidding! This is THE perfect excuse to watch more movies! Glorious, glorious movies!

I have a couple of advanced screening tickets to 'The Avengers,' which I am really looking forward to (I'll watch anything that Joss Whedon is attached to), so that will be my first official movie review! I'll leave this right here to whet your appetites:

Well that's all from me today, so goodnight to all you beautiful people on the interwebz.

-Usman