Captain America "The First Avenger"

Watched Captain America earlier, which the boys got from Santa on Blu Ray.  Enjoyed it more than I thought I would - some excellent comic book action.  The only spoiler I'm giving here is that there was some impressive labelling of bad guy equipment in the final scenes :)

Adventures of Tin Tin - Secret of The Unicorn

An end of half term holiday treat for the family was seeing Tin Tin this morning in 3D at the IMAX.
It's Spielbergs, rather than Herges Adventures of Tin Tin, but he really makes a good job of it.
The boys already have quite a few of the Tin Tin books (they were into this well before we knew about the film), so enjoyed pointing out that the film also covers 'The Crab with the Golden Claws' as well as 'Secret of the Unicorn'.
It's an absolutely, stunningly fabulous film.  The CGI is so good that you sometimes forget it's an animation - go see it for yourself.

Raving Bonkers

The boys had fun this morning at a creative costume making workshop - Frodo made a bat costume, and Samwise built a 'King' Robot - i.e. a robot with a crown on it's head.
This was rather appropriate, as we took them to the cinema this afternoon to see Real Steel .
The concept of boxing robots operated by humans will be immediately familiar to anyone who played with the game Raving Bonkers in the 1970's/80's (it was known as "Rock 'Em Sock 'Em Robots in the USA). This film takes that concept and has you believing that this will be a real spectator sport in the not too distant future.
Samwise was getting far too excited, jumping on the edge of his seat and copying robot boxing moves throughout the fight scenes - hope he doesn't ask for a sparring robot for Christmas :)

Cowboys & Aliens

Took advantage of our baby sitting service and went to see Cowboys & Aliens last night. Thoroughly enjoyed it. Saw it at the IMAX in Liverpool One Odeon - so we were blown out of our chairs by the on-screen explosions every few minutes. Impworks saw it a day or two ago and has given a more thorough review http://www.impworks.co.uk/2011/09/cowboys-and-aliens-film-review/ I would agree that you get exactly what it says on the tin. Reminded me of the eight-year-old excitement I had the first time I saw The Valley of Gwangi. I liked the cross genre, and wondered if like 'Snakes on a Plane' the film makers had simply decided to stick with the working title?

The Smurfs Movie

Day off work today, so for an end of the holidays treat I took the boys to see The Smurfs Movie. The boys thoroughly enjoyed the film, and I enjoyed it more than I expected to. Lots of self-deprecating jokes about how irritating the Smurfs are. Exploring the Smurf language and history. Nods to other films, such as Lord of the Rings and Braveheart. Plus the Smurfs doing Aerosmith/Run DMC 'Walk This Way' and a Smurf army marching to battle to the tune of AC/DC's 'Back in Black'. Smurftastic!

Transformers 3 - Dark of the Moon

We took the boys to see Transformers 3 today - a summer holiday treat that we'd promised them last month - luckily we weren't too late and found a cinema where it's still showing.
The film action was much as expected. This time the Autobots and Decepticons choose to slug it out in Chicago - destroying much of Windy City in the process. Lots of unbelievable robot violence, and scenes of mega-destruction, some of which are more violent and disturbing than in the last two films.
Megan Fox has been sacked from her role as Shia Le Beouf's girlfriend, and has been replaced by what can only be described as the ultimate Bimbo.
There is a plot - but it really doesn't matter what it is!

Megamind

If you find yourself at your local cinema and having to choose between TRON: Legacy and Megamind then go see Megamind.

Took the boys to see Megamind as a holiday treat today, and we all thoroughly enjoyed it. It's a CGI animated comedy, sending up the superman films, from an evil villain's point of view, and explored the relationship between villain, hero, damsel in distress and villain's sidekick.

The humour was working on several levels, as all good family films should. As with all good comedies it was tinged with a little sadness and home truths, which made the humour all the funnier when it came.

The soundtrack was right up my street. Appropriate use of 2 AC/DC tracks (as was done in Iron Man 2). What bad guy shouldn't make an entrance to "Highway to Hell" and return to "Back in Black"? Ozzy Ozbourne's "Crazy Train" featured and the finale was to the tune of Guns 'n Roses "Welcome to the Jungle".
Don't get me wrong though, it's not all Heavy Metal - the last song in the film was Michael Jackson's "Bad".

Great film - go see it for yourself.

Ghostrider

Watching Ghostrider on Channel 5 tonight. Normally I enjoy a good bit of pulp fiction / comic book adaptation / so bad it's good style film entertainment, but this one's particularly bad. It has the look and feel of a low budget early '80's superhero flick. Surprised to discover that they've started filming a sequel this month!

Inception

Went to see Inception last night. "No Spoilers" other than to say this film goes into Phillip K. Dick territory, and messes with your head regarding what's real, and what isn't. The Matrix and Total Recall spring to mind, but this film's a lot darker.
Went to test our current state of reality with a couple of pints in Rigby's afterwards.
impworks has produced a review - but watch out - "spoilers!"

Toy Story 3

Met the family after work and went to the Odeon, Liverpool One, to see Toy Story 3.
Thoroughly enjoyed this one - there's some great stuff in it - comedy on all levels for the adults and the kids.
We'd heard that it was a real tear jerker at the end, but I didn't think it was that bad - just a little mushy.
We took the 3D option, and as usual I found that I hardly noticed the 3D effects after about 20 minutes in. They're allowing you to keep the glasses now, rather than immediately returning them for 'recycling', so you can take them back and use them another time. Wish I'd known that beforehand - we could have reused the ones that we stole last time :)

Clash of the Titans

Saw this at a packed cinema today.

We opted for the 3D version, but this wasn't really necessary. I don't think that the 3D works too well in a live action film - it was OK up to a point, but not that fantastic, plus the glasses seemed to wash a lot of the colour out of the picture.
In future I'll reserve 3D viewing for animations.

The film was worth seeing. They screwed around with the mythology a bit, but that was OK. There was a little homage to Ray Harryhausen near the beginning, and the Medusa was directly lifted from his visualisation of her.

Sherlock Holmes

Finished off our Valentine's weekend with a trip to the cinema.

Romantic Chick Flick? No - for us it was Guy Ritchie's Sherlock Holmes, which was every bit as good as I expected it to be i.e. Ace!

Impworks has already given the film a review here, which I would say pretty well sums it up.

To me it was like The Strand Magazine meets Michael Moorcock (I'm thinking of the likes of Oswald Bastable here), and was just simply loads of action packed, high adventure, historical/alternative history fun.

It was refreshing to see a Dr Watson who isn't just a device for Holmes to explain what's going on to the audience, and a Holmes who is as much decadent and depraved as he is genius.

We were some of those people who stayed in our seats just to watch the end titles, and can't wait for the sequel.

Star Trek

Just got back from seeing the new Star Trek film.

I won't put any spoilers here, for anyone that hasn't seen it yet, but what I will say is that I was expecting to be disappointed, and found it thoroughly enjoyable.

The writers and cast do a great job of breathing new life into old characters, whilst at the same time keeping them familiar. There's a fair amount of homage to the original series, which is fun to spot, but not enough to make the film just for Trekkies.

The special effects and sound effects are excellent - definitely one to see at the cinema.

My only quibble was that a couple of scenes are reminiscent of Galaxy Quest, but not enough to turn the film into a self parody.

Verdict: Thoroughly enjoyable, whether or not you're a Trekkie.

I see that impworks, who was with us, has also blogged a review

Godzilla (Gojira)

There are some films that we can watch again, and again. We first saw Godzilla when it was released - we were on holiday in Las Vegas at the time. It's on Sky 1 at the moment, must be about the 30th time or so that we've seen it.

Don't know why - it's just one of those films that really works for us.

Here's a few others, in no particular order.

The Running Man Only in a re-run!
Total Recall
RoboCop
Strictly Ballroom
Reservoir Dogs
Pulp Fiction
From Dusk till Dawn
Gladiator
The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring (we watch this more than the other two).

There are more. Sometimes (in fact more often than not) the re-viewing is due to what's being put out on TV, rather than say choosing a DVD.

Quantum of Solace

I'm in work right now exporting and importing database files, so I thought I'd do my 2nd Blog Post this month.

I thoroughly enjoyed Daniel Craig's second outing as James Bond at the new Liverpool 1 Odeon cinema earlier tonight.

I'll be lazy and refer you to Impworks Review (who was with us tonight).

This new Bond is a really nasty piece of work... and so he should be - he is an assassin, after all.

Stardust

I read the book last year. Now I've been to see the film.

I went with Impworks and Novelist Supermum who both liked it too, and have each blogged about it.

Thoroughly enjoyed it. I thought that it followed the book (by Neil Gaiman) pretty well - until today when we took another look at the book and realised what had been changed. This doesn't detract from it being a good, fun, fantasy film

Robots in Disguise

Another first for Frodo yesterday. I took him to the cinema for the first time, to see Transformers.

We're very lucky in that we have a local one screen cinema that is a 2 minute walk around the corner from our house. This meant that I could take Frodo straight there when I got back from work.

We decided that to keep his attention he would need to see something with a lot of action, that was easy to follow, and few slow bits, or mushy scenes in between the action - ideally, if possible, with some spaceships. Transformers seemed to fit the bill perfectly.

The only reservation that I had, was that the rating was a 12A. This means that under 12's can see the film, but must be accompanied by an adult. The description was 'Moderate Violence'. We'd decided against Spiderman 3, which had the same rating, when we saw a trailer, since Venom looked a bit scary. The transformers trailer looked a bit wham, bang, pow, crash, wallop, budda budda budda (that's a machine gun sound for those who don't know), but that should be fine for an almost six year old.

It turned out to be the right decision. I think that I enjoyed the film almost as much as Frodo did. I expected the plot to be really trite, but although it was uncomplicated, it turned out to be really well thought out. Perhaps it also helped that I was watching it with a small, very excited boy, which added to the fun.

The opening scenes really grabbed his attention before anything got blown up. The introduction of the Geek, and the girl he'd be trying to get didn't drag on too long before the inevitable "Dad - the car's a robot". I hadn't told him beforehand what was going to happen :-)

The effects were great - the Autobots and Decepticons were really convincing.

The 12A rating was about right, but I think that we made the right decision. One word was used in a comic moment, that I might not have wanted Frodo to repeat, but he didn't pick up on it. Lots of violence and destruction, but a lot less gore than in the average Dr Who episode. It was demonstrated that people were getting hurt, although it was made very clear that the Autobots were trying to prevent this from happening.

Frodo jumped right out of his seat at one unexpected collision. Rather than being scared - he found this hilarious.

He was leaping up and pointing at the screen during the final scenes, pointing out where the bad guys were, and shouting out this information to the good guys.
There was only about 20 people in the cinema, and I'd deliberately chosen a seat towards the back near the aisle, in case Frodo needed to leave for any reason.

We came out of the dark cinema, blinking in the bright sunlight. I grabbed a free poster on the way out, which is now on Frodo's bedroom wall.

On the way home I asked him which cars on the street were going to turn into robots. He said "No they're not!", so I guess that he understands it's all just pretend.

I think that we've solved the problem of what to get him for his Birthday. Just hope that I can figure out how to transform the toys.

Verdict - This film is not just for the kids, and if you like action films it's well worth seeing.

Spider Man 3

Food at Tso's (all you can eat Chinese Buffet) followed by Spiderman 3 at the FACT Cinema last night.

Our decision not to take Frodo to see this was right (the rating is 12A) - too violent and scary for a 5 year old - (although nothing I think that the average 8 to 10 year old couldn't handle). So I guess that his first cinema experience is likely to be Shrek 3 when that comes out.

Enjoyed Spiderman 3 on the whole. We weren't too close to the screen, but I found my head darting about trying to follow the rapid action scenes.

There were a lot of shaking camera "steadicam" effects - perhaps to help hide the CGI.

Some critics had complained that there were too many villains. I didn't think so. The only downside was that it took a while for "Venom" to fully appear, which was fairly quickly followed by his demise.

I did think that they could have cut back on the slushy scenes - far too many of them and too long for most people's liking.

Also Mary Jane - is she fickle or what? The super_geeky PP should dump her and go for the skinny foreign girl who lives across the corridor - she's much more his type.

There were a few laughable plot events - the sort of corny coincidences that you'd expect from a comic.
I give it a 7 out of 10

Hot Fuzz

If you like The Omen, Straw Dogs, The Shining, Mad Max, 28 Days Later, Reservoir Dogs, Pulp Fiction, Jackie Brown, Kill Bill, Dusk 'Till Dawn, Bad Boys (II), Point Break, Commando, The Matrix, Superman (2), The Terminator and a host of other action films, if you thought Shaun of the Dead was OK, but you absolutely loved Spaced then Hot Fuzz is a film that you should not miss.

Even if you don't particularly enjoy the above, but you like a good laugh, with a lot of action, and some Hammer style horror thrown in, then you should see this film.

We went to see it on Friday. We laughed, we jumped, we laughed, we shrieked, we laughed, we were grossed out, we laughed, we shouted out the heroes response to the bad guy before he said it, we laughed, we named the reference to another film, we laughed, we kept on laughing, did I mention that we laughed?

Haven't enjoyed a film so much since the latest James Bond. I don't think that I've ever laughed at a film from start to finish as much as this one.

Went to see it with, amongst others, Novelist Supermum and impworks who both blog about the film here and here

Definitely one that I'll be getting when it comes out on DVD.