Thor: The Dark World - Danny's review

This is effectively Thor 2 1/2 , after Joss Whedon made the first Thor movie in 2011 and also Avengers Assemble in 2012. Only one year later Thor is back. This time it's directed by Alan Taylor, who has previously made a lot of good TV.

Although Thor headlines the movie, he's not much of a character. Instead he's easily outshone by a very good cast, especially an incredibly old Anthony Hopkins as the 1000 year old God Odin. He looks about 1000. I thought he'd retired, but he's apparently still going, and unlike the equally old Christopher Lee he actually gets up sometimes to say his lines. When he does stand up it's both intimidating and a bit worrying, as you're afraid he might fall over.

Idris Elba brings some dignity to a very silly costume as some sort of all seeing half-blind man. Christopher Ecclestone fails to bring any dignity to the chief bad guy, a dark elf determined to end the Universe, just because he wants to. A much better villain is Loki, who makes a low-key entrance but becomes increasingly interesting, right up to a silly twist at the very end.

There's a lot of people and a lot going on. Thor: The Dark World is good value for money, and I enjoyed it. I think that might partly because I haven't been to the cinema for a few months, and it was a big exciting spectacle and cost me £11.20, plus an extra 80p for my fourth pair of 3D glasses. I barely noticed the 3D effects at all, not sure if that means they were good or not. The only time it was apparent was during Frigga's funeral scene, which was nicely done but wasted on a character I didn't care about.

The plot is this: the nine realms of the Universe are colliding in a once-every-five-thousand years event called the Convergence. At the same time a villainous dark elf reawakens, and also a magic liquid called the aether is rediscovered. I'm not sure which came first, and what caused what. All of these events are heralded as being hugely significant and important, though I don't think they've ever been mentioned before (or probably since).

The important bit is that it happens to be Thor's illicit Earth-love Natalie Portman who rediscovers this dubious aether, and that gets her swept into the plot. Loki tags along with the good guys (some of which have come straight from The Hobbit), but you know he might turn bad at any point. There's plenty of brooding male angst, and I like it.

Some of it is fun, but I don't feel like this movie connects with me at all. Obviously it's a comic book story, but even knowing that it's a very silly movie. The aether, the Tesseract, the Eternity Stones. It feels like they're just making stuff up. There's enough odd Viking stuff already, without all of that.

But I'll probably watch the next movie too.

Riddick - Jamie's review

"She's got Betty Da-avis eyes"

Riddick, played by Vin Diesel as a nude muscle (as if he had a choice), was introduced as a scary bald alien convict in Pitch Black, a compact science-fiction horror film with some decent twists which became a modest cult hit.

After big budget sequel The Chronicles of Riddick died a death at the box office Vin Diesel was forced to retire Riddick for a while. But VD is nothing if not infectious, and he persuaded series writer and director David Twohy (the talented man who wrote, amongst others, The Fugitive, Waterworld and under-seen Charlie Sheen scifi flick The Arrival) to hash out a new, low-budget Riddick story over the kitchen table.

The result is, unfortunately, underwhelming.

It starts well. Riddick is stranded on a horrid desert planet after being fooled by some necromongers (the baddies in the last film). The opening half hour, which is almost dialogue-free, plays like Wall-e's silent first act translated into testosterone and hate. A broken-legged Riddick battles off alien hyenas, makes friends with a puppy and has a great fight with a swamp-dwelling fish/scorpion thing.

But then Riddick finds a shack with a scanner in it, and deliberately gets it to beam his identity into space, and the film goes to pot. (Incidentally, this bit also reveals that, bizarrely, Riddick's name is Richard B Riddick. I was sure Riddick would just have one name - Riddick. But no. He's not even called something appropriately alien, like Dhgpr Riddick. Instead, he follows the naming conventions of western earthlings from the 21st century. Dick B Riddick. No wonder he wants to track down his race. It's so he can find mum and dad and give them a kicking. They landed him with dicks at both ends of his name. He has to give himself a semantic roasting every time he writes a cheque).

Dick B Riddick scans his amusing name into space to attract bounty hunters, so he can steal one of their ships. When they arrive, it's a let-down. They don't have great characters. It's like Twohy got his kid to write a lazy rip-off of the mercenaries from not even Aliens, but Alien:Resurrection.

In an interesting approach, Twohy has Riddick almost disappear from the screen for the next hour. It's an attempt to get the audience to see Riddick from the grunts' perpsective as a deadly, invisible, unstoppable evil, using his shiny irises to pop up and kill them one by one before vanishing like a pervy-eyed madman.

But being cardboard cut-outs, the bounty hunters are not very interesting to watch. And because I knew from the previous films that Riddick is a good guy, I didn't feel the soldiers' fear. I knew he wasn't a threat to the good ones, even the most annoying, a lesbian played by the star of Battlestar Galactica who wears a constant smirk (which, instead of making her look cool, makes her look like she's been told to wear a constant smirk).

Riddick, sadly, also gets annoying. As soon as he speaks he becomes unutterably smug. When he's caught and held prisoner, instead of gagging him everyone listens, rapt, while he predicts their doom in a slow, self-satisfied baritone. It's impossible not to picture Vin Diesel telling Twohy "Write in the screenplay, 'Everyone listens because Riddick is awesome and scary.'" The ridiculously specific prophecies don't help. When Riddick says, "I'm going to kill you with that sword in exactly five minutes," it just made me think he'd flipped ahead in the script.

The twists from Pitch Black aren't there, nor is the huge ambition of the silly-but-fun middle film. And the climax is a damp squib. Well, squid. Tonnes of the double-headed monsters attack, except suddenly they are very easy to despatch. Riddick kicks loads off a cliff as he, erm, runs away and gets airlifted to safety by the lesbian bounty hunter he saved earlier. Not very badass.

And yet...if they can dial down the smug and dial up the broken, silent Riddick, I'll come back for more. I want to find out what the B stands for, Bernard or Bdick.

Elysium - by Danny

This is the follow up from the director of District 9. This one is not as good. It's still entertaining, but is nothing more than a bit of sci-fi fun.

Here the poor people all live on an overcrowded Earth, speak Spanish and have tattoos. The lucky few live on a spinning Space Hotel called Elysium, with robot servants and Med Bays that quickly cure any ailment with a laser. They speak French and wear crisp suits.

Matt Damon is an Earth-bound low-life desperate to get to Elysium. Opposed to him are the evil elite of Jodie Foster and William Fichtner, who have been cast specifically for their pale skin and impassive faces. There's also a South African mercenary, who, as I now expect of all South Africans, drinks beer and eats meat and loves killing people for fun, with a sword and a leery grin.

The director isn't too interested in the actual mechanics of the Space Station. This is no Babylon 5. Instead it's just a general metaphor for rich and poor, and gives Matt Damon something to aim for. I enjoyed that to begin with he is motivated by purely selfish reasons, but sadly by the end his childhood sweetheart and her sickly child are competing for his affection.

As well as the driving force of Matt Damon trying to get into space, there's also a plot device of Matt having something important stuck in his head, which everybody wants. It's unclear what is required to get this out of his head, as sometimes people are putting cables in his head, sometimes just being nearby lets them hack in, and once he has lots of cables put down his mouth to extract it.

The plot lines all converge towards the end in a great big pile up co-incidences, and the two Worlds of Earth and Elysium suddenly seem very small. I would have liked a bit more sweeping majesty and slowness, and less plot.

The best parts of the film are where it's hinted what life is like in each habitat, which you only get for a second or two, before the story drives on. For example, at one point the merc Kruger pulls out some sort of forcefield to defend himself from bullets, then puts it away again. There's no introduction or explanation to this, he just does it, and it makes you wonder what sort of other cool stuff they have in the future. In contrast to this, the regenerative power of the Med Bays is laboured from the first scene of the film to the last.

And the ending is ridiculous. Still, overall quite enjoyable. I'll be curious to see if Neill Blomkamp's next film also features apartheid and mech suits.

Alan Partridge: Alpha Papa - Danny's review

He started on the radio with On the Hour and Knowing Me, Knowing You, then transferred to TV with The Day Today and more KMKY. Then came two series of I'm Alan Partridge, the mini-series Mid-Morning Matters and his autobiography, I, Partridge: We Need to Talk About Alan. I've grown up with this, and am slightly converned that, 22 years on, Alan Partridge is still my favourite character.

I expected the big screen debut to be a new and significant chapter of Alan's life, maybe not involving the radio at all. But the film continues on pretty directly from Mid-Morning Matters, with Alan a DJ at Radio Norwich (changed back from North Norfolk Digital). The plot is set in motion when it's discovered that the station is being totally rebranded. Initially Alan doesn't care, until he sees that they're going to sack either him or other veteran D-Jock Pat Farrell, played by Colm Meaney. When it's Farrell who's dismissed he returns with a shotgun and takes them all hostage. Alan uses this as an opportunity to boost his public image, but he's also quite sympathetic to Farrell's old school radio, and broadcasts a cheesy live show with him throughout the siege, and on the Radio Norwich tour bus.

When Alan was broadcasting I somehow expected his chat to be different, because this was in the cinema now, and not just a web segment sponsored by Fosters. But in retrospect that is the beauty of the film, that it's a slice of Alan's mundane life. It's never boring watching him, and such is the character that anything can be entertaining.

I enjoyed that Alan Partridge continues to mellow out the character, and Steve Coogan, get older. The support performances are all fine too, understated as you'd expect in this sort of close-to-life drama. I especially liked Sidekick Simon, but could have done without Michael the ever-present Geordie. The action scenes are always brief and exciting, as they should be in a comedy.

It's subtly directed. When Farrell leaves the gun lying around no sooner do you think could Alan steal that?, then it cuts to Alan thinking that too. But Farrell always looks so big and mean, you don't fancy Alan's chances. Although it's potentially a dangerous situation, the film takes a light tone and doesn't try to make an emotional drama. It's a low key affair - in fact by the end all Alan's achieved is a slightly better slot for his Radio Show. But maybe, if this film is successful enough, there'll be a sequel building on Alan's new found fame and burgeoning love interest.

I would have preferred it if the film was some sort of pseudo-documentary, to preserve the illusion that Alan Partridge is a real person. As it is there's a logical disconnect of Alan promoting his movie, which clearly shows him as a fictional character. Though I suppose this has already happened with the I'm Alan Partridge series.

Overall, it's a funny film, that keeps up the high standard of the Partridge brand. My favourite part is the final stand off between Farrell and Alan, on Cromer Pier. Farrell is having a breakdown, talking about ending it all, to be with his dead wife again. "It's the circle of life" he blubs sadly, with a shotgun in his mouth. "Cirque de Soleil" replies Alan, irrelevantly.

The World's End - Danny says

This is a buddy comedy which turns into a Sci-fi zombie invasion.

I preferred the buddy bits more than the zombies. When the gang are together there's a great chemistry. Simon Pegg is frenetic and hyperactive, and the rest are happy to play second fiddle to him. He's got a big responsibility, in being the extrovert and in driving the plot forward. It's quite believable that without him the rest of them would happily have a cup of tea or just go home. I enjoyed Nick Frost's very reluctant accomplice the most.

When they go back to Newton Haven the pubs are all chain bars. I couldn't tell if the joke is that the town is actually the same, or if the joke is that it's become completely homogenized. It's a good reflection on forty year old men reliving their youth, and it's actually a bit of an interruption once the zombies arrive. When they do, there's some good set pieces mixing mundane and bizarre and Pierce Brosnan. For my money there's too much actual fighting though, which becomes a bit tiresome once you get over the zombies' funny robot bodies.

The biggest strength is the freedom - you feel like the film-makers can do whatever they want and that makes it unpredictable. There's some nice touches, such as the small number of residents who actually quite like the aliens and want to live among them. There's a casual attitude to peril - when Rosamund Pike asks what's become of her zombified brother she's just told "Er, I'll tell you later, just drive!". The epilogue is good too, when all of the aliens, including Martin Freeman with half a head, are awkwardly integrated back into society.

Despite lots of highlights I wasn't totally convinced. Overall I would rate the film as quite fun. I enjoyed it equally as much as Sean of the Dead and Hot Fuzz, which is probably the best guide for how much you'll enjoy it.

Pacific Rim - Danny's review

Firstly, I thought this was a great movie.

Next, I want to immediately address a few obvious criticisms, which I think are all justitified on the basis of making a dramatic film. Of course the Jaeger's are an absolutely ridiculous way of defending Earth. With unlimited resources and the co-operation of all nations I'd just build a series of massive plasma cannons pointing at the breach. But no one really wants to watch a movie of dispassionate drone attacks, so fair enough having some bipedal robots. By the same logic I can also forgive the concession of a robot requiring two pilots, to split the neural load. It's silly, but makes it more fun.

I like the idea of the pilots becoming heroes. In the rapid five minute catch up at the very start you get a glimpse of a world where nothing else matters but the men who are saving the World. The drifting skill is presented a bit like a psychic power, in that you never know who'll be good at it, and so you get unlikely fighting heroes without any athletic prowess. Having said that though they do all seem quite muscly and good at fighting with sticks. And the synchronicity required to co-pilot gets a bit relaxed as the film goes on - to begin with we see twins, then it's father-son and brother-sister and by the end just two people who fancy each other.

When the main guy Raleigh rejoins the program there's only very few Jaegers left, and with Kaiju's coming through the wall more and more it really seems like they're doomed. Only the most streotypical national pilots are left - massive stoic Russians, impassive Chinese, cocky Aussies and heroic Americans. It's such a desperate state of affairs that it feels like there's already been an apocalypse, and these are the only survivors. In fact, the rest of the World is still all there, but they seem to have lost interest a bit and are only building a big crumbly wall. Having just four Jaegers left does crank up the tension though.

The pilot I'm afraid to mention is the Japanese woman, Mako. She is totally rubbish, and the whole story of her not being allowed to co-pilot, then being allowed after all, is tiresome. I wonder if originally the script had Raleigh flying solo or with someone else, then at the last minute they realised there were no women in the film at all so wrote one in. The other subplot, about the black market in dead monster parts, is much more interesting. It's the one diversion outside of the main robot battles.

After Man of Steel I vowed to give up on 3D films, but accidentally went to the wrong performance of Pacific Rim and had to buy another pair of 3D glasses. I'm glad I did, as the 3D was awesome. Worked even better than Life of Pi. It felt like I was already watching the remastered special edition.

In fact most of the film was gripping. Crucially, the aliens looked really good and reptilian. I wanted to know more about their command structure. When the over-excited scientist mind melds with the Kaiju brain I was braced for one of two possible outcomes. Either the aliens were being misunderstood, and might even be good aliens, or they were just super evil and there was even more incentive to kill them. it turned out to be the second option, which is at least simpler. This mind meld was two way, and naturally the aliens have a hive mind so they all knew the human's plan, but I'm not sure if they did anything with this knowledge. Also I baulked slightly at the throwaway line that the aliens invaded before with the dinosaurs, but that didn't work out.

The early battle scenes were better than expected. It was good meaty fighting. But I didn't feel any empathy when the robots got injured. And I never quite worked out how interdependent the two pilots were. Was the talk of left-brains and right-brains just nonsense or did it imply anything? I'm pretty sure that Crimson Typhoon with it's three pilots and three arms makes no sense. The final battle did nothing for me, as it was all underwater and you couldn't tell what was going on once there were multiple robots and aliens.

I'm prepared to forgive a lot though as it looked so good.

Finally here's a list of things that didn't make sense to me. They're fairly minor points, and maybe I'll work it out when I watch this again.

• Mako knew her father was dying (at one point she prompts him to wipe his nose), so why after drifting with her does Raleigh not know about his cancer?
• The last ditch plan is to drop a nuclear bomb into the breach. Why do they believe this has any chance of working, when it's exactly what's been tried and failed before? (This is before they find out about using alien DNA to open up the breach).
• Idris Elba's character Pentecost used to fly with Aussie Dad (which is how Pentecost justifies being able to drift with Aussie son). So how come Aussie Dad wrongly claims to his son that Raleigh is the only one who's ever piloted alone?

Pacific Rim - Jamie's take

I'm a big Del Toro fan. And on the surface, Pacific Rim promises plenty for a big Del Toro fan. Massive monsters, massive robots, and massive-headed Ron Perlman. But it's a kid's movie. And that's what you should know going into the film. It's for kids.

A bloody big ruskie robot

The plot is this: in the future, giant monsters have been popping out of an inter-dimensional portal in the sea and attacking our cities. Mankind has built giant robots to wrestle them to death. It takes two people to pilot a robot and they interconnet with one another's minds to do it - called 'drifitng'. The hero and his brother, let's call him Danny, are robot pilots, but while they are battling a monster, Danny dies. Fast forward five years, and some stupids in charge of the world have foolishly closed the robot programme because they think building a big wall along the coast is a better way to defend against the monsters. Turns out it isn't. There are only a few robots left, but suddenly more and bigger monsters have started coming through the portal. So robot programme boss Idris Elba calls the hero out of retirement to join humanity's last-gasp attack. At the training base the hero becomes friends with a Japanese woman and argues with an Australian pilot who's mean and who drives one of the other robots with his dad. Then they all pull it together and fight some damn monsters. The hero's played by Charlie Hunnam and he wears a carefully weathered woolly jumper (like the Matrix, everyone seems to have picked their clothes from the H&M derelicte collection).

Unfortunately the dialogue and the characters are so basic it's basically a mime. For toddlers. For adults it is painful. Ron Perlman, who plays a flamboyant, mercenary smuggler of dead monster parts, is great. It must be down to him being a fantastic actor, because it's unlikely the script was a lot better just for his bits. And Idris Elba is fine, playing a stoic God of a man. Despite some awful lines. But... But some of the others. Jeez. Mainly, the Japanese heroine. She is so bad at acting my audience (an audience of uber-fan geeks predisposed to love this film, who all piled in to the BFI Imax 3D for the first public screening in the UK) were coughing laughter at her emoting attempts.

The other problem is scale. As soon as the giant monsters are seen at sea, which is a lot of the time, they stop being giant monsters because there's nothing against which to compare them. Without buildings or people around, we could be watching 10mm-tall robots fighting flea monsters. I stress, I am not a child and hopefully kids will love it. But as a 32 year old, on first viewing at least, I came out craving Cloverfield. The monster in that film is viewed from a human eye-level perspective in built human environments, which gives a context for the scale that makes you really feel there is a giant monster stomping around. Plus it boasts more realistic dialogue and, ironically, more 3D humans. All creating a more scary and transporting experience.

Maybe I'm just too old for this sh*t. A robot hitting a monster in the face with an oil tanker might have got the ten-year-old me giddy. But even for kids, I don't know. This doesn't feel like it could have the impact of Jurassic Park. Maybe I'm wrong. I don't have kids and I wasn't drifting with any when I watched this.

But as a grown-up, even a childish one, I wanted something more sophisticated. Just the level of Del Toro's unabashedly pulpy seam - the Hellboys and Blade 2 - would have been fine. Pacific Rim felt like Mr Bean. Made for a lowest common denominator international audience.

I think it will get a pass from a lot of geek critics because, quite rightly, they love what Del Toro usually brings to the table - sparky myth, amazing monsters and a big dose of originality. I hate to diss Pacific Rim, because I love Del Toro. Hollywood should still give him $250 million every 3 years to make what he wants. Unfortunately this film would get panned if it was directed by Roland Emmerich.