Recent Reviews
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It had potential. The problem with Edge of Darkness is that the writers took a fairly traditional tale of justice and revenge, and to their credit, they tried to put a modern spin on it. The problem was though, that the film seemed to fall into a giant steaming heap of ‘who-the-fuck-cares’. " - Reviewed by Jamie
17 January 2010: Bronson
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About the closest individual we can probably compare Bronson to would be Australia’s own Mark ‘Chopper’ Read. As much as we are fanatic patriots of talking-up national nutcases, Chopper doesn’t have shit on Bronson." - Reviewed by Jamie
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We really couldn’t give a flying fuck what happened to the two crazy lovebirds by the end, as long as Katie’s huge boobs stayed nice and safe from the evil demon. If there was any threat of harm to the twins, and we were that ponce Micah, would have called Ghostbusters straight in on that shit!" - Reviewed by Jamie
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This isn’t the deerstalker-wearing ponce with a magnifying glass from those old midday movies that you’ve seen on television. He’s far from being a limp-wristed pussy - Sherlock can rumble with the best of them." - Reviewed by Jamie
26 December 2009: Avatar
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Aside from some great attention to detail from Cameron, and ideas like the physical bond of the Na'vi with nature and the creatures around them, there’s not a lot to go on for your veteran film goer. Without giving a whole lot away, by the time the films inevitable conclusion rolled around, we were pretty much cheering for every single one of these overgrown Smurfs to get ventilated with high-calibre firearms." - Reviewed by Jamie
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Clearly the screenwriter, Mark Verheiden, has done his Bruce homework. While I'm not sure how much of the final product was influenced by Bruce Campbell's direction, the film has all the trappings of a dodgy B-grade piece of crap - the sort of junk you would embarrassingly rent from your local video store wearing a brown trenchcoat, baseball cap and a pair of dark sunglasses. Yes, that scary bottom-of-the-shelf territory inhabited by the likes of Dolph Lungren, Steven Seagal, and yep, you guessed it, Bruce Campbell. It's all there: bad acting, cheesy dialogue, cheesy special effects, an even cheesier monster, the semi-hot love interest, the reluctant antihero. It's the bread and butter for men like BC." - Reviewed by Jamie
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This film was downright painful - about as painful as the three minutes I spent with my fingers in my ears, smashing my head into the back of cinema wall in order to block out that absolutely dreadful Bond theme song. I was smashing my head into the wall so hard that a friend in the same row about four seats down commented on the amazing bass vibrating through the sound system - it was just my brain trying to escape my cranium. As the theme song goaded, I really wish some prick would have offered me 'Another Way to Die', because I would have taken the option right then and there, without hesitation. " - Reviewed by Jamie
6 November 2008: Saw V
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Overlooking the fact that the whole franchise has been done to death, Saw V was actually one of the better films in the franchise. While I haven't entirely made up my mind as to where I would rank Saw V in the scheme of things, I must admit that this new film addressed a lot of my own personal criticisms of Saw II through Saw IV. " - Reviewed by Jamie
7 September 2008: Taken
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While Taken is by no means perfect, it is a prime example of a well-executed retelling. Let's face it, the concept of a tough guys daughter getting kidnapped, and having said tough guy track her down, defeating a million bad guys in the process is hardly anything new. It's basically the plot of Commando, or a dozen similar films for that matter. What Taken does well is to play on this tried-and-true formula; it adds depth to the usual one-dimensional characters, and mixes it up in a giant cocktail shaker with stylistic elements that made films like The Bourne Identity such crowd-pleasers." - Reviewed by Jamie
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Whenever the story is getting a bit slow, up pops our favourite banjo-playing comedian with yet another out-of-the-blue physic prediction. Quick Scully, to the Batmobile! Suddenly off we roll from one crime scene to the next, guided by a physic priest - now if that isn't Deus Ex Machina on steroids, then I'm a fucking monkey. I almost get the feeling that Chris Carter just forgot how to use good old story telling devices like, well, you know, finding clues and shit in order to move the story along. Even the kids show Blue's Clues got that much right." - Reviewed by Jamie
02 August 2008: Wanted
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Wanted is a 'leave your brain at the door' type of film - 'leave your brain at the door' being film reviewer code for 'most people will probably think that this is a complete piece of shit, but for some reason I kind of liked it'. The trailers tipped us off to the fact that this was going to be a big, dumb, over-the-top action film wrapped loosely in some ridiculous theme about fate, with a couple of gimmicks tacked-on to separate it from the herd. Yeah, that's more or less what you can expect." - Reviewed by Jamie
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From the opening scene through to the inevitable conclusion, Nolan grabs you firmly by the shirt collar, like Batman dangling a Gotham hoodlum from a rooftop. You expect him to grow tired, to falter and let you splat on to the vicious street below. But he never does. If you thought that Batman Begins was dark, gritty and action-packed, think again - The Dark Knight turns the intensity up to eleven, and once it has you in its grip, it never lets go." - Reviewed by Jamie
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Cue the ‘twist’, for a lack of a better word, and cue the flushing of a toilet. As far as I was concerned, at this point any semblance of interest in the original setup had pretty much been taken out into the Pine Barrens and shot in the back of the cranium. *Boom headshot!* Man, what a waste - it was a complete mess." - Reviewed by Jamie
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Let me say straight off the bat that In Bruges won’t be everyone’s cup of tea, but if you love dark British crime films like Lock Stock, chances are you will enjoy this offering from McDonagh. In Bruges can only be described is a multilayered breath of fresh air: it’s violent, it’s crass, it’s absurd, it’s touching, and it’s as funny as hell." - Reviewed by Jamie
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I don’t know if Shyamalan was specifically going for a C-Grade horror movie feel, but from the woeful banter between two characters on a park bench in the opening scene, to the foreboding few last seconds of celluloid, I almost thought that I was watching some well-financed film student’s end-of-term project that had found its way onto the big screen. Think Italian Spiderman with a multi-million dollar budget." - Reviewed by Jamie
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Usually I can reel-off my trademark verbal diarrhoea at a blistering pace, but to be brutally honest, I’m not even entirely sure where I should start with Get Smart. If Get Smart were any regular film, I probably would have buried this review quicker than a three hundred pound wop in a shallow grave out in the Pine Barrens… but alas, it hasn’t been that easy. I’m wondering exactly how I should review this puppy. Do I review this film as a standalone piece of entertainment? Do I review it as a big screen adaption of a much-loved television show? It’s a dilemma that’s been gnawing at my cerebral cortex like the proverbial shithouse rat." - Reviewed by Jamie
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Don’t go into the film expecting any sort of real origin storyline – this isn’t Iron Man; you don’t get the luxury of spending an hour watching Robert Downey Jr. build a metal suit inside a darkened cave while snorting lines of cocaine off of a hookers arse. Instead, the viewer gets dumped straight into The Hulk’s world armed with little more than a clichéd thirty second introduction, comprised primarily of brief Vietnam-style flashbacks and various assembled newspaper-clippings. You know the type headlines: “Giant Green Yeti Touched My Wife”, “A Sasquatch Ate My Baby” – just enough exposition for the simpletons in the audience to surmise that the filmmakers are referring to the big green guy that they just spent thirteen bucks to watch." - Reviewed by Jamie
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The problem is when you take the stock standard Indy formulae and toss in that freeze-dried shit, ala sci-fi, you’ve probably already lost half of your diehard Indiana Jones fans in the first ten minutes. If you didn’t lose them in the first ten minutes, usually with a lot of coughs that sound like someone muttering the word ‘bullshit’ into a clenched fist, chances are those last ten chuckle-worthy minutes are going to finish them off like a Mortal Kombat fatality." - Reviewed by Jamie