Stephen Chow not only directed Kung Fu Hustle, but he starred in it and had a hand in the script. And what he delivers is a wild action-comedy seasoned with some pop culture references as well as seeming to exist in a Warner Brothers cartoon. Set in 1940s China, the story follows a troubled man,…
Tag: visual effects
Mama (2013) – Andy Muschietti
Guillermo del Toro served as executive producer on Andy Muschietti’s Mama an interesting take on a ghost story that also explores the roles of parents, specifically mothers, while fostering some interesting and enjoyable scares with some pretty solid special effects. Sisters Victoria (Megan Charpentier) and Lilly (Isabelle Nelisse) were thought lost when their father took…
The Witch: Part 2 – The Other One (2022) – Park Hoon-jung
The Korean actioner, The Witch: Part 1 – The Subversion was very engaging and I loved how it built a world and introduced the viewer to genetic manipulation, enhancing the human state, the variety of parties involved and a hint of the plan at its heart. The first film ended with some interesting reveals about…
Deep Impact (1998) – 4K Review
I remember the summer of the duelling asteroid movies, 1998. There was Michael Bay’s Armageddon and Mimi Leder’s, with Steven Spielberg in her corner, Deep Impact from Paramount Pictures. Deep Impact opened first in May, with Armageddon following up in July, which completely ended up overshadowing Impact, which is unfortunate, because of the two films,…
Dragonslayer (1981) – 4K Review
Vermithrax Pejorative. There has never been a more unique name for a dragon. Ever. It’s dark. Evocative. And it sends me spiralling back through the chambers of my mind to 1981 to when I first discovered the name. I knew Dragonslayer was a movie, I knew it was coming to theatres, and I put my…
Cloverfield (2008) – 15th Anniversary 4K
I remember seeing Cloverfield opening weekend in the theatre. I was very excited to dig into a monster movie that saw a kaiju trampling New York City, and I loved that it was being told from the viewpoints of a group of survivors who recorded everything with their videocamera. Unfortunately, I forgot my previous experience…
Troll (2022) – Roar Uthaug
Troll is a fun Norwegian monster movie that ticks off a number of boxes for a kaiju movie. While it doesn’t do anything in terms of stretching character development or plot twists (the big one is seen in the trailer, so that doesn’t do the film any good) it does prove to be a bit…
Avatar: The Way of Water (2022) – James Cameron
It’s been thirteen years since writer/director James Cameron introduced to the distant world of Pandora, and its blue-skinned, lean humanoid inhabitants the Na’vi, who live in harmony with their planet. It’s been thirteen years since we left Jake Sully (Sam Worthington) and his wife, Neytiri (Zoe Saldana) and their family has grown, with three children…
Transporter 2 (2005) – Louis Leterrier
Frank Martin (Jason Statham) is back as the Transporter. The first film was a fun European action film, the second sees the locale changed to North America, specifically Florida, which isn’t a bad thing, but the film’s incredibly short runtime, and its employment of really bad computer-generated visual effects doesn’t do it any favours and…
The BFG (2016) – Steven Spielberg
This one seemed like a surefire winner, you’ve got Spielberg working from a script by Melissa Matheson who wrote E.T. The story is adapted from Roald Dahl’s story, and Mark Rylance brings The Big Friendly Giant to life. But no matter how good, the computer-generated images were, combining the computer characters with live-action ones, specifically,…
The Mind Reels 