“We have to stop her here and now, and prevent Ragnarok, the end of everything! So I’m putting together a team.” – Thor
SYNOPSIS: Thor is imprisoned on the other side of the universe and finds himself in a race against time to get back to Asgard to stop Ragnarok, the destruction of his homeworld and the end of Asgardian civilization, at the hands of an all-powerful new threat, the ruthless Hela. – via IMDB
Well, it’s no real secret that I haven’t enjoyed a single Thor movie so far. They aren’t terrible (who am I kidding, what was that Dark World kak?!), they are just… wasted potential. Seriously, all that lore and everything to work with and we got the two movies we did? Oh well. However, then Taika Waitit directed Team Thor, and I had a renewed interest. The man’s brand of humour appeals to me, and the short made me laugh. We all know I love his other work, so how would it go when he took over the reigns of a massive Marvel production?
In a word? Great. Really. Waititi breathed life into an Avenger that really needed it. Two, actually, because one cannot forget the Hulk in this one. Hemsworth is way more comfortable than ever before in his return as the Son of Odin, and he works so well with Mark Ruffalo, so easy and comfortable. Jeff Goldblum has an absolute ball as Grandmaster, and Tom Hiddleston is, as always, supremely entertaining as Loki. Hemsworth and Hiddleston play together well, too, and continue to impress us with their hilariously dysfunctional relationship.
The humour is, as I was hoping, top notch. It’s hilarious, and there were a few scenes my husband and I laughed so hard at we went back to rewatch them a few times (Thor’s explanation of the dirty snake trick Loki played on him when they were eight and Loki and Thor with their “get help” skit are prime examples). It truly had me laughing. I have to admit, Korg (Waititi) had me in stitches a few times, what a character!
Thor: Ragnarok is more than just silly entertainment and solid humour though, and it must be noted that the movie looks great and has some solid effects, which I enjoyed a lot. The colours I truly loved, as it just fit the whole vibe of the movie. The soundtrack, too, works all the way through. This is not to say that the movie is without flaws. I, for once, could have done without the whole Doctor Strange bit, as I seriously felt it did not advance the narrative in any way, and was just there to fill time. I was also not a particular fan of Tessa Thompson in this, though eventually you warm up to her a little more.
All in all, I found Thor: Ragnarok to be a highly entertaining, funny film that just goes ahead and does what it wants, and it works so well. It doesn’t matter what you do/do not know about the MCU, you can still enjoy this regardless of.
SYNOPSIS: Donna’s senior prom is supposed to be the best night of her life, though a sadistic killer from her past has different plans for her and her friends. – via IMDB
Goodness, gracious me. What a bloody mess of a film! Like, wow. I mean, I wasn’t expecting greatness, I was expecting a mindless horror to put on, chill throughout, but then there was this. It was… Shitfest terrible. For reals! There was absolutely nothing going on here!
Watching the title credits roll, I saw Idris Elba’s name pop up on screen, which piqued my interest. That is about as much oomph as the movie brought to the table. His performance was miles above any of the others, though Sheriff Stilinski Ashby was alright, too, and so was Ransone. Well, they were as good as they could be, considering. Brittany Snow was awful. The whole lot was awful, I am not even going to get into specifics here because… well, ugh.
The film lacked tension. Completely. You don’t give a crap about these characters or their “plight”, you cannot even root for the virginal final girl because, well, what a nuisance. You know that’s really bad. Elba swoops in and does what he can, but the script is truly beneath him. Not only are there no characters to root for, there is no fun to be had – not at this stupid prom, not the interactions between characters, and certainly not with the whole “slasher” aspect – no blood, no fear, nothing. It is just immensely disappointing all round.
While we are at it, the score sucked, and the dialogue was so damn cringey, and the plot progression was messy and the story flimsy. A flimsy story does not make for an awful slasher, but when there is nothing else to tempt you, it is a lost cause overall. There really is nothing to redeem this movie at all. It is predictable and lazy, and it is particularly offensive because it plods along and never really tries, so I can’t even give it points there.
People, seriously, you could totally just skip Prom Night and you wouldn’t be missing anything at all. Not a thing. The movie has no spine, no hopes, no dreams, and it will eat up your valuable time. It is wasted, and it is lost, and it is truly not a rewarding experience. Skip it, skip it I say!
RocknRolla was just one of those movies that had so many great things going for it. There was plenty humour, an excellent cast and it was shot really well. Probably my favourite scene of the whole movie is when Mumbles, One Two and Handsome Bob pull a job together against some Russian thugs. Well, these Russians didn’t really take too kindly to being done in, and started fighting back. Mumbles, One Two and Handsome Bob try their utmost best to flee. The Russians didn’t like that, either. The scene progressively gets funnier and funnier, and I am in stitches every time I see these guys and their crazy antics.
If you have a scene that you would like featured, drop me a mail at sporadiczoe@hotmail.com with a link to the scene and an explanation as to why.
“How far would you go to get your answers?” – David
SYNOPSIS: Following clues to the origin of mankind a team journey across the universe and find a structure on a distant planet containing a monolithic statue of a humanoid head and stone cylinders of alien blood but they soon find they are not alone. – via IMDB
The first time that I watched Prometheus I was exceptionally underwhelmed. Like, to the nth degree. There are plot holes and super flaws and so many subplots that are introduced and never wrapped up, there is just too much wrong with this film to make it great. It did have a stellar cast, and they worked with what they had and did a pretty good job.
I thoroughly enjoy Idris Elba, so to see him as Captain Janek was awesome. Theron grated (har har, imagine this) on my last nerve, again, though I expected no less. Guy Pearce could certainly have been used better, I wish we had seen more of Benedict Wong’s Ravel, and Noomi Rapace did just fine as the ill-fated Shaw. I think the one actor that truly think shone from the off in this film was Michael Fassbender. His David was charming, freaky, strange, something you couldn’t quite understand, more layered than any of the other characters and his performance was excellent and consistent. I had a blast watching him.
Let’s talk about something that really bugged me in this movie: nobody bats an eye for any of the messed up stuff going on. Heck, Vickers uses a flamethrower on Holloway, killing him in front of his lover, Elizabeth Shaw, and nobody bats an eye. Then there is the whole David betrayal, again, not a word, and what about the fact that Shaw is limping around later, abdomen gashed open and all that? Nobody bats an eye or says anything. I cannot buy into it. Someone will have to ask something sooner or later, no matter what.
Pity this was one of those films that had a trailer that was infinitely better than the final product – and before people get iffy about it, it is the truth. The trailer was intense, there was so much happening, there was urgency and fear and a real dangerous problem, by the looks of it. In fact, it pretty much gave away anything and everything of interest in the movie. Now, as for the film itself? It was languishing, there were holes in the script, there were things that just did not make sense, there was nothing so completely awesome in there to blow your mind, it was slow and trundled along, never really creating serious tension or delivering anything… it was just another movie. Simple as that. No more, no less. It explored big themes, or tried to, but delivered nothing.
I didn’t hate the movie like I did the first time around (because hell, I despised it), probably because I knew what to expect this time around, but it remains extremely flawed and doesn’t really offer anything. There are places the story can be taken from here and some exceptionally interesting premises that were granted and concepts that could be a thing of beauty, but what we got from Prometheus, on its own? Nothing, nothing at all, because nothing was ultimately realised. Aside from all that, the movie was shot well and looked pretty good, and the Engineers were interesting though incredibly underutilised, though I suppose this will help set up for a sequel. Uhm… I don’t really have much else to say, so I will just end it here.
“When I was a kid, whenever I’d feel small or lonely, I’d look up at the stars. Wondered if there was life up there. Turns out I was looking in the wrong direction. When alien life entered our world, it was from deep beneath the Pacific Ocean. A fissure between two tectonic plates. A portal between dimensions. The Breach. I was fifteen when the first Kaiju made land in San Francisco.” – Raleigh Becket
In 2013 massive alien monsters called Kaijus start attacking Earth. They have access through a oceanic portal in the Pacific, and they are wreaking havoc on Earth. They seem unstoppable, but then the humans start fighting back. They build massive warriors, weapons, called the Jaegers. These are collosal war machines, something manufactured by all the Pacific Rim nations. The technology used is that two people are linked together mentally to operate the machine, sharing the load. The pilots become famous, the Jaegers are successful, and they finally have some form of a defense against the massive and scary Kaijus. Two such pilots, two brothers, Raleigh (Charlie Hunnam) and Yancy Becket (Diego Klattenhoff) are called one night to take down a Category 4 Kaiju. While out there, Yancy is slain and Raleigh is terribly injured. He ultimately takes down the Kaiju, and manages to singlehandedly get the Jaeger Gipsy Danger to shore, where he leaves that life behind.
“There are things you can’t fight, acts of God. You see a hurricane coming, you have to get out of the way. But when you’re in a Jaeger, suddenly, you can fight the hurricane. You can win.” – Raleigh Becket
The governments call for the Jaeger program to be discontinued due to it being considered ineffective. Instead they focus their resources on building Kaiju-resistant walls to protect the cities. Raleigh now works on one of these construction sites, moving around and building. When the program is shut down, his old commander Stacker Pentecost (Idris Elba) appeals to him for assistance. He wants Raleigh to accompany him and the remaining Jaeger pilots to Hong Kong, where the four remaining Jaegers await for them to defend the coastal line while the wall is being erected. Pentecost has a plan to destroy the portal with a nuclear bomb, something that had failed in the past. He calls in two scientists, Dr Newton Geiszler (Charlie Day), a tattooed Kaiju enthusiast, and Dr Dr. Hermann Gottlieb (Burn Gorman), an introverted Englishman. The two are tasked with generating predictions of the Kaijus to come as well as find a way to break through their portal. Raleigh, meanwhile, needs to find a co-pilot, and he is not greeted particularly warmly by Chuck Hansen (Robert Kazinsky), who feels that Raleigh is in the way and weak, while Herc Hansen (Max Martini) believes that Raleigh will help.
“Fortune favours the brave, dude.” – Dr Newton Geiszler
Raleigh is having difficulty finding anyone that he will be suited with, and ultimately it is Pentecost’s right hand woman, Mako Mori (Rinko Kikuchi), whom he seems best suited to work with, but who Pentecost point blank refuses to send out in a Jaeger to fight, though it seems to be her dream. He seems to be very protective of her. Raleigh and Mako seem to connect on a whole new level, something more akin to what he and his brother once had. Dr Geiszler wishes to create a bridge with one of the Kaiju brains that he has in his lab, trying to connect with it like the Jaeger pilots do with one another, to see what memories they hold. Instead he opens a can of worms that is more than he can control. It would seem that the Kaiju fight as soldiers for an alien race that wishes to destroy Earth. The Jaeger pilots need to get themselves ready for the coming war, though Raleigh is still reeling from the loss of his brother five years before, and Mako deals with her fear of the Kaiju, feelings of vengeance as well as attraction towards Raleigh.
Will the Jaeger pilots be able to shut down and destroy the portal that the Kaijus are using to get to Earth? What is with Pentecost’s intense protection of Mako? What is in her history, and will she be given the chance to exact her vengeance upon the Kaiju? Both Dr Geiszler and Dr Gottlieb are onto something, but how will it impact the mission to protect the coast lines of Hong Kong? Will their research change anything? What do the aliens want with Earth after the humans are exterminated? Will the Jaegers be able to withstand and battle against the Kaiju, which are coming up as stronger categories?
“Haven’t you heard Mr. Beckett? The world is coming to an end. So where would you rather die?” – Stacker Pentecost
Another movie that everyone insisted was a fantastic summer blockbuster and fun and all these many things that they promised, none that delivered (with the exception of the scientists, they were hilarious). So we watched this, and I was rather let down. For one, Del Toro seems to be hooked on overkilling with CGI, what is up with that? Secondly, Charlie Hunnam is a second rate actor. I am not a fan, and whenever he tries to pull his angry/serious/peeved face, he succeeds only in looking like someone wiped something really freaking nasty under his nose. And this is not saying anything against the character he played, I actually quite liked him. Then there is Idris Elba, who was probably the best thing about this movie, though I was not a fan of his accent really. Rinko Kikuchi irritated me endlessly, her character was an annoyance of note. The relationship between her character Mako and Hunnam’s Raleigh could have been much better had it just been developed a bit more. As it stands it happened out of nowhere and ludicrously, in a way that (yes I know this is an action and these things can be overlooked) that I just couldn’t choke down. These Kaijus confused me, too, because some Category 4 types are being cut down with swords (which seems most effective if only these chops would stop using guns and canons and start using the blades), and then they cannot be ripped apart by canons and crap, but when they are dead they are being harvested by men just being all regular and all that. I mean really? The whole way through watching this all I wanted in my life was for the new Godzilla to hustle the hell up so we can see some real dangerous and scary monsters (ED: that’s how long ago I watched and reviewed this – pre-May release). Anyhow, there was so much going on in the fight scenes I could not tell if they Jaegers had the upper hand or the Kaijus, which does not really make for good fight scenes. I was told that this would probably have blown me away in theatre, but I intensely doubt my feelings would have changed. I just didn’t really like this, and that is just that.
Well, it’s no real secret that I haven’t enjoyed a single Thor movie so far. They aren’t terrible (who am I kidding, what was that Dark World kak?!), they are just… wasted potential. Seriously, all that lore and everything to work with and we got the two movies we did? Oh well. However, then Taika Waitit directed Team Thor, and I had a renewed interest. The man’s brand of humour appeals to me, and the short made me laugh. We all know I love his other work, so how would it go when he took over the reigns of a massive Marvel production?
The Sporadic Chronicles 