R.I.P.D. - Percy Jackson: Sea of Monsters

 

Two further quick film reviews!

R.I.P.D. ** (2 Stars)

I really wanted this film to be better than it was, but I’ll have to start with the negative ... if it wasn’t for Geoff Bridges' appalling Southern drawl it would have got a 3 stars.  Unfortunately, he used the same utterly dreadful accent that he used when he played a cowboy in ‘True Grit’.  His drawl was so ‘drawly’ that I really needed subtitles ... I just couldn’t understand him and it was so infuriating – I got completely transfixed on his awful accent that I really couldn’t relax and enjoy the film.

I remember having to re-watch True Grit with the subtitles on when it came out on DVD because I really couldn’t understand a word he was saying.  So unfortunate that he chose the exactly the same accent for this film too.

OK, I’ll try and move on now ... basically if you liked the Men in Black movies, in all likelihood you’ll like this too.  In fact I think you could have swapped Bridges and Ryan Reynolds (who was the best thing about it ... yum!) for Will Smith and Tommy Lee Jones and it would have been difficult to tell if it was part of that franchise or not!

So what’s it about?  Well in a nut shell, a cop (Ryan Reynolds) is brutally murdered by his partner Kevin Bacon (haven’t seen him in anything but EE ads for a while ... that was a bit of a surprise) and ends up being recruited by the Afterlife Police in order to hunt down dead people, who refuse to die.  Sounds a bit gruesome, but its very tongue in cheek with the ‘dead people’ being rather demon like (in a Men in Black 'alien' type way).

That’s enough of all that now ... go and see it if you really like Men in Black and could bear Bridges awful accent in True Grit ... have I sold it to you?  Here’s the trailer...
 

 

Percy Jackson: Sea of Monsters ** (2 Stars)

This was bloody awful – and probably shouldn’t have the same score as the film above because it was far worse.  If you’ve got a 12 year old boy, he’d probably love it, but that’s as far as it went for me.

Percy, the son of Poseidon, teams up with his Demigod (half God/half human) friends to try and find the Golden Fleece in order to save a tree (yes, honestly – well a tree that grew out of a girl that got killed years before by a Cyclops – yes, honestly!). The story follows their journey.  I still can't figure out why it was called Sea of Monsters though ... hmmmmmmmmmmmm.

Here’s the trailer, but I definitely can’t recommend it!!! ...
 

 

 

Right lovelies, until next time, be fabulous!

Lots of love

Jx

 

 

The Mortal Instruments - Riddick - Insidious 2

It’s been ages since I’ve done any film reviews, so I thought that I’d better get my backside in gear.  So without further ado...

The Mortal Instruments: City of Bones ***** (5 Stars!)

I loved this film and had to award it a mega 5 stars.  I’m reading the book at the moment too and whilst it’s very different from the book (aren’t they always) I thoroughly enjoyed it.  The story centres on a young woman, Clary, whose world is turned upside down when her mother is attacked and goes missing.  As a result, Clary finds out that her mum is a Shadowhunter, a secret group of half angel warriors to keep the peace between humans and the Downworld.  As she finds out more and more about her past, she enters into a world of demons, warlocks, vampires, werewolves and other deadly creatures.

I bloody love that stuff and thoroughly enjoyed it.  I guess you could say that it was a bit of a teen film, a bit of a cross between Harry Potter and The Hunger Games – so if you like those kind of films, you love this too!  Gotta be quick though, cos I don’t think it’ll be on for much longer.  Here’s the trailer...

 

Riddick **** (4 Stars)

I really enjoyed this film (nothing to do with the fact that it contains the rather gorgeous Vin Diesel you understand ... yeah right ... my enjoyment was in direct correlation to the fact that the film was pretty much Vin the whole way!) however, it didn’t get 5 stars because it didn’t really have too much of a story (however, because it contained Vin with his bulging muscles out for a good 99% of the film, I can overlook that!). 

The story ... at the end of the last film, Riddick was betrayed and left for dead on the sun-scorched planet that film centred around.  He finds himself having to fight for his life against more strange alien creatures’ hell bent on killing him.  He discovers a bounty hunter hut and triggers some intergalactic alarms which alert some deadly bounty hunters to his whereabouts.  He then has to pit his wits not only against the bounty hunters but on the planet’s encroaching alien inhabitants.

If you like the other Riddick films, no doubt you’ll like this too.  Here’s the trailer...

 

Insidious 2 *** (3 Stars)

Hmmmmmmm I don’t know what happened here.  I did really like the first one and I was really looking forward to this however, I don’t think I was in the right frame of mind when I went to see it.  I’d had some disappointing news and was in a pretty bad mood (I very rarely do bad moods, but you really don’t want to be around me when I do ... I don’t like being around me then either and I hadn’t had time to ‘adjust’ my thinking before I left the house).  To be honest, I don’t think anything would have scared me when I was in that mood ... in fact, I think if you’d have bumped in to me when I was on my way to the cinema, I would have been far more scary than anything you could have seen on screen!  I’d have given that kid in the Exorcist a run for her money.

Anyway, I digress, back to the film ... If you saw the last film, you’ll remember there being an old witch that seemed to have returned from the dead.  This film follows her story and her fight to stay in the mortal realm.  As the story progresses, we find out her story and what she did to her son.  We also find out the family’s father’s relationship to the mad woman too. 

It’s defo worth a watch ... just don’t go in a bad mood – let the film scare you, not the other way round!

 

By the way, when I came out of the film, I’m happy to announce that I was back to my normal self ... phew!

I have watched other films lately, but they’re no longer on my local cinema, so here’s a very quick rating:

Pain and Gain * (1 Star) – shockingly bad – 2 hours I’ll never get back

Elysium **** (4 Stars) – really enjoyed this one – Matt Damon was brilliant

Right lovelies, until next time, be fabulous!

Lots of love

Jx