EYEGLASS DIRECT BLOG

Johnny Depp and Angelina Jolie, star in this action romance as Frank and Elise. Whilst on a vacation to Italy to recover from a broken heart, Frank a maths teacher, is minding his own business on a train when Elsie sits opposite him. They strike up a bond and Frank thinks its his lucky day when he runs into her later. Unfortunately for him, this is not a chance encounter but rather a scheme by Elise to use him as a decoy as protection for her lover Alexander Pearce who is a wanted man.

As no-one knows what Alexander looks like Frank finds himself in the middle of an intentional misunderstanding that puts him in the firing line of mobsters, from whom a large sum of money has been stolen and the British government for tax evasion led by Chief Inspector Jones (Timothy Dalton) and Scotland Yard’s John Acheson (Paul Bettany)

The main flaw is that this movie contains the top A-list celebrities of Hollywood, director Florian Henckel von Donnersmarck and is all set in the lovely city of Venice implying that it will be a feast to behold. The standards have been set high. Yet not only did I find the movie to be obvious in its direction- I was never sitting on the edge of my seat waiting or even wanting to see what was going to happen next but there was no chemistry between Depp and Jolie at all.

It was good to see Depp as a ‘normal’ character and by that I mean he wasn’t draped in make-up and he did not seem to have any extreme character flaws or quirks that usually accompany his other roles. He was the one who kept the movie interesting for me. However, I didn’t fully understand Bettany’s character. Granted he has some sort of vendetta against Pearce but he just didn’t seem believable and was overly obsessed to the point he would have been issued with some gross misconduct charges.

The action scenes are well done and the settings impressive but you get the sense that the film hasn’t worked out if it’s a comedy, action or a romance. Yes a movie can be all three but The Tourist fails to seam them altogether leading to the viewer becoming somewhat detached from the storyline. And why they found it necessary to put Jolie in a stunning dress for every scene with people gawping at her is beyond me. Don’t get me wrong, I like a bit of eye candy but it turned the movie into something more akin to a perfume commercial or catwalk show instead of a film.

A stunning, beautiful, charming, funny, and great animated feature of contemporary Disney, “Tangled” is a movie for everyone. Yes, this is a fairy tale. A Fairy tale with a widely famous plot (I’m talking about the Brothers’ Grimm original “Rapunzel”). However this version should make the original proud.

To be honest, I was a little skeptical when I walked into the movie theater. I didn’t really know what to look forward to. You see, “Tangled” is Disney’s first CGI animated feature that got a PG rating, so I instantly felt that there has to be something different about this whole experience.

The plot of “Tangled” is very well thought through, literally to the last detail. It has everything: genuinely funny sense of humor (not rude or offensive), a wonderful romance storyline, magic songs, and just wonderfully portrayed characters. The story is predictable (well, we’re talking about a cartoon here), but it’s still very charming. The story is simple. Rapunzel is a princess who has magic hair that is able to heel and keep anyone young. Once upon a time she was kidnapped by an old witch who locked her away in a tower.

The witch (Mother Gospel) wanted to keep the girl’s hair all to herself. However, while Rapunzel grows up thinking that the witch is her real mother, her real parents, the King and the Queen, do not give up hope of finding their daughter. Each year, on the princess’s birthday, the kingdom sends thousands of lanterns into the sky only hoping that their lost princess would return. On her 18th Birthday, Rapunzel asks her mother to go out and see the floating lights, but Mother Gospel forbids her to even think of that. As she puts it, the outside world is full of dangers and evil people.

I do not want to give away the entire plot, but I’ll just say one thing – fairy tales always have a happy ending. Even though I’m not a huge fan of CGI and 3D, I must say that the movie visually is stunningly beautiful. Especially the lantern scene with Rapunzel and Flynn. I honestly think it’s one of the most beautiful things I have ever seen on screen. The lights, the music, everything. Oh, and about the music. I had no idea Mandy Moore (Rapunzel’s voice) has such an amazing voice. She was the perfect match.

One problem that every prequel has to overcome it the ability to keep interest despite us knowing the eventual outcome of the movie. If you have seen any of the previous four films then it’s quite probable you can piece together how this movie is going to end and how the characters are going to turn out. This therefore needs to be compensated for and is done so successfully by the introduction of plenty of new characters to keep our interest and the actual discovery of how two men who used to be friends come to be enemies.

X-Men: First Class follows the exploits of the first mutants to be discovered, primarily that of Charles Xavier (James McAvoy) and Erik Lehnsherr aka Magneto (Michael Fassbender). It begins with a 12 year old Charles meeting Raven (Jennifer Lawrence) and their friendship as they grow up and a young Erik undergoing the hardship of Nazi Germany and the anger that this instils in him. Moving forward, Charles graduates from Oxford with his PhD in genetic mutation and is brought into the US government to help with a mission to locate someone whereas Erik is hunting down the man responsible for separating him from his mother during the regime twenty years earlier.

Both of their paths then cross when we discover they are after the same man, Sebastian Shaw (Kevin Bacon) and the mutant henchmen that he has surrounded himself with. Erik and Charles team up to recruit new mutants to teach them to use their mutations in order to prevent the Cuban missile crisis from unleashing the next World War and bring Shaw to justice.

The two main plots of this movie are based on finding out about the relationship between Charles and Erik and the actual storyline tied into the Cuban missile crisis and an impending world war. The trailers emphasised that this was the film where we could witness the beginning of the X-men and it doesn’t fail to deliver with a good script not only providing the answers but achieving them with a well crafted dialogue.

As with most of the action movies nowadays, the action sequences are both impressive and well shot using a multitude of CGI effects especially during the final scene which was a particular highlight. The acting was also first class (poor pun intended) with McAvoy and Fassbender leading the way, their characters playing off each other perfectly but by no means outshining the rest of the cast.

I grew up watching the constant reruns of the Universal Studios series of Sherlock Holmes films starring Basil Rathbone as the ace detective and Nigel Bruce as his exceedingly bumbling confident Doctor Watson, back in the day when black and white movies were still shown on terrestrial television. I graduated to the original Arthur Conan Doyle stories as bedtime reading and became somewhat of an aficionado in my late teens. My father who was also a boyhood fan encouraged me to join the Sherlock Holmes Society which, in the pre-Internet era, sent out a copy of The District Messenger, a single page newsletter produced by Roger Johnson roughly once a month since 1982.

Whilst there have been some excellent Holmesian television adaptations, most notably the Granada ‘Adventures’ series starring Jeremy Brett whose performance is on a par with David Suchet’s long running portrayal of Agatha Christie’s Hercule Poirot, the more recent film versions have been less than satisfying; the last decent outing was probably Billy Wilder’s The Private Life of Sherlock Holmes with Robert Stephens donning the renowned deerstalker. So, it was in trepidation that I ventured out to the cinema with my wife to see director Guy Ritchie’s action-packed Legendary Pictures reboot with the unlikely pairing of Robert Downey Jr. and Jude Law as the sleuthing duo.

Any fears were quickly allayed as the script (whose storyline was meticulously researched by Lionel Wigram, co-producer and author of the graphic novel on which the film is based) not only captures the celebrated Conan Doyle creations but screenwriter Michael Robert Johnson has faithfully fleshed them out, presenting them afresh for the sensibilities of the 21st century motion picture audience. To some the plot may seem episodic and, at times, convoluted and it contrives to set up the forthcoming sequel in the final reel, but none of that is at odds with the spirit of the original Strand Magazine publications of the 1890s, which thoroughly exploited the cliff-hanger.

If there was ever any doubt about Robert Downey Jr.’s rehabilitation as an out and out movie star then Sherlock Holmes puts pay to that, the role cries out for the diamond-cut precision and razor’s edge synonymous with his recent performances; I can’t imagine anyone else bringing this particular Holmes to the screen with such alacrity, intuition and intelligence. Somewhat surprisingly, Jude Law also scores highly as the long suffering Doctor, bringing a hitherto unseen charm and dynamism to his John Watson, which lends itself more convincingly as to why Holmes craves his approval and friendship, an aspect so often missing when he’s simply depicted as an inept half-wit.

Thor is a devoted warrior who is ironically arrogant and impulsive. His father, the King of the realm of Asgard banishes him to contemporary New Mexico as punishment for starting a war with the neighboring realm ruled by an evil king. Thor must develop patience, thoughtfulness, and humility to earn back his powers and serve as a warrior again.

The story line for this movie is excellent. It has meaningful underlying messages. It is dramatic. It connects to a contemporary American audience. It draws on ancient mythology. This is a predictable movie, but most movies are predictable and the only flaw in the storyline is its predictability.

But this storyline is part of a script that does not tell its story with any adeptness. The movie includes distracting subplots that are predictable and little or no transitioning between scenes. The dialogue is unoriginal. The characters are uninteresting and simple. The script for this movie is subpar overall despite its excellent plot.

The quality of this movie is saved by its artistic direction. Costume designer Michael Kutsche did a fabulous job of designing the costumes for the characters in this film. His designs are inventive and richly detailed. The set design for Thor is almost as impressive as the costume design. The special effects are flashy and entertaining. The visual elements of the movie Thor distract from the quality of the script and are impressive enough to make the film a delight to watch.

This movie would be better without the romantic subplot. No one cares about love between characters that are uninteresting and presented by a script with poor character development. People want to see romance happen for lovable characters. The romantic subplot itself is poorly developed. If the writer cut the romantic subplot, then the writer could have given more time to developing how the larger plot is told in the script for the viewer.

Thor is a character with charisma, but he is too lacking in depth to seem like an actual person. Instead, Thor appears to be more like a comic book hero. Thor is not a lovable character because he is too simple. He lacks uniqueness and personality. Thor’s human love interest is also too simple to be lovable.