Land of the Lost Movie Review

Summer holidays must be here and the schools broken up as this time of year sees the release of a certain genre of film designed to entertain families and hopefully while away an afternoon.  The Land of the Lost straddles the science fiction/screwball comedy genre and if you are keen to spend an afternoon out of the rain at the cinema then this film delivers a number of nice comedy moments.  It doe not really hang together as a cohesive story though, it gave us the impression of a number of sketches and bizarre situations rather stitched together, but it does have its funny moments.  Most of the amusing lines are delivered by the film's main star, Will Ferrell who plays Dr. Rich Marshall.  The cast includes Anna Friel, playing a somewhat smarter research assistant and Danny McBride as a sort of American version of Ray Mears.

Our trio of unlikely heroes end up proving Dr. Marshall's theory of time travel correct and ending up in a strange parallel universe populated by early hominids, lizard people, Pterosaurs and of course dinosaurs.  The chase scenes with T. rex at least allow Will Ferrell the chance to test some of the theories scientists have regarding this large predator.  For example, how fast could T. rex run, was this dinosaur able to turn swiftly and such like.  We enjoyed the references made to some of these theories and concepts, but in parts of the film the CGI did not look very realistic and overall the look of the movie was quite disappointing.

If you like the bumbling humour of Will Ferrell then you won't be too disappointed.  The film is based on a old American TV series, none of us can remember the original and we suspect that this film will also soon slip from our collective memory.

Review of Ice Age 3 – Dawn of the Dinosaurs

With a release timed to coincide with the start of the school holidays, the third film in the Ice Age franchise is definitely written with the need to keep the kids entertained in mind.  Manny the mammoth, his friends Diego and Sid find themselves in a lost world with dinosaurs to contend with as well as the imminent arrival of Manny's first child, with his heavily pregnant partner Ellie (voiced by Queen Latifah).

The animation is up to the high standards of the previous two movies, but this time the movie is shot in 3-D, whether this gimmick adds anything to the enjoyment of the film is debatable, perhaps the film makers thought it best to add a novel twist to freshen up the franchise.

There are some particularly funny moments and some subtle jibes at parent hood, epitomised by the increasingly anxious Manny as he tries to “baby proof” nature prior to the arrival of his baby.  New characters are introduced, a romantic love interest for Scratt, the acorn chasing prehistoric squirrel and a strange, swashbuckling weasel character called Buck voiced by the English actor Simon Pegg.  Buck reminded us of Ben Gunn, the character in Treasure Island (the novel by Robert Louis Stevenson), that was left on the island and craved toasted cheese whilst awaiting rescue.

An enjoyable and light hearted film, that kept the children entertained.

10,000 B. C. Movie Review

Director Roland Emmerich is well known for big, block buster type movies such as “Independence Day” and “The Day After Tomorrow” but on this occasion he takes the viewer back in time, in a bid to tell a tale from prehistory.

A fur adorned mountain tribe, happily living out their lives believing that the Woolly Mammoth herds are the centre of the universe, is raided by brutal warlords looking for slaves to help them build a temple to their God.  Our hero, a young hunter called D'Leh (played by American actor Steven Strait) sees his love Evolet (Camilla Belle) carried away and so he sets out to rescue her.

Along the way he encounters all manner of strange tribes, most of which have a grudge against the slave warlords as they too have been raided.  What starts off as one man's quest to find his girl ends up being a sort of crusade against the tyranny of the evil warlord empire and their pyramid temples.  As D'Leh wanders through strange deserts and jungles in search of Evolet his small band of followers swells and grows to become an army – just what you need if you are going to have a final showdown with the bad guys.

If you put aside for one moment the historical inaccuracies, the absurd geography (we think much of the film was shot in Namibia as well as New Zealand so in essence our heroes were heading in the wrong direction), and the out of proportion prehistoric animals depicted, then this is a fairly pleasant way to spend an afternoon.  The story is not exactly subtle or complicated (unless you count the bizarre ancient prophesies) but as this film is aimed at a pre-teen audience then it hits all the right buttons.  Plenty of action, not a lot of dialogue or plot and some interesting special effects.  Any film with CGI Mammoths can't be all that bad, and the 12A rating permits youngsters to watch (accompanied by an adult).  The narration got a little iritating at times, what was Omar Sharif thinking!

Absolute hokum, but if you have nothing better to do on a wet March afternoon…

Some points about the prehistoric animals – the Terror Birds (Phorusrhacidae) survived in South America until about 5,000 years ago but we are not sure what evidence there is for these large, flightless birds surviving in the Old World into the Pleistocene/Holocene (we think there is none).  The Sabre-Tooth Cat has been given the typical markings of an ambush killer and these animals although associated with the Americas (where the last Sabre-Tooths lived), they were more widespread in earlier times.   Our alledgedly Palaeolithic hunter might have encountered big cats, but it is highly unlikely that one of them would have been a Smilodon.  The Sabre-Tooth cat depicted in the film is truly huge, far larger than the Pleistocene Sabre-Tooths.  Most of the large Sabre-Tooth cats were about the size of a modern lion (P. leo) although much more stocky and heavy set.  The largest of the last Smilodon species was S. populator of South America.  It would have stood about 1.2 metres high at the shoulder.  We think the CGI operators have used a little bit of licence when it comes to the scale of some of these people.

It might be that the people depicted in the film are actually very small, this could be why some of these animals look so big.  If that is the case then this too is historically inaccurate, there is some evidence to suggest that Stone Age people were actually a fraction taller than their modern counterparts.

As we start to get ready for Christmas – I know we are only in September, but we have to start thinking of increasing stocks, not only of models, soft toys, dinosaurs to make and build, dinosaurs to paint, and dinosaur games (we think the new dino-opoly game is going to be very popular this year), we also have to start stocking up on packaging – boxes, padded envelopes and postal tubes for posters and gift wrap.  We also start to take bookings from schools and nurseries to attend their Christmas fairs (which we do locally).

We therefore take every opportunity possible to take time out and do something different.  This weekend we got the chance to go a local film theatre in Stoke, and see a film we have been trying to get to all summer – “Tell No One”.

The film is based on Harlen Cobens multi-million selling novel, and is in French with subtitles – but do not let this put you off!  The plot concerns a doctor (Francois Cluzet) as the wronged man, who while at work one day receives an e-mail from his wife who was murdered eight years ago! 

There is plenty of tension and action as the film unfolds, the chase scene on foot across the city is excellent, and you piece together what is happening from small scraps of information throughtout the film, but the reveal in the end brings it all together.

It stars Francois Cluzet, Marie Josee Croze, Andre Dussollier and Kristen Scott Thomas.  The intimacy of a small 200 seater cinema is certainly different from the usual multi nationals, and definitely something we would do again.

Zodiac – A Film Review

This film was directed by David Fincher, whose only other film I have seen is Seven.  It is based on the true story of the hunt for a serial killer who terrorised California in the late 1960′s and remained notorious and at large for many years.  The Zodiac is not the central character in this story, the film portrays the obsession of individuals who set out to prove the identity of the killer.  Specifically the film focuses on the preoccupation of a newspaper cartoonist and his desire to find the Zodiac, at the cost of his family and his job.  I think this character is played by Jake Gyllenhaal, although for me it is Robert Downey Jr who steals most of the scenes with his portrayal of a drunken, hack and his fall from grace into despair and loneliness.

The crimes were committed when forensic science was in its infancy, there are few clues to go on and the lack of a co-ordinated police effort hampers the pursuit of the perpetrator.  At various points in the film, you are given the impression that the net is closing in but each time the investigations lead you up a blind alley.  To this end the film was a little frustrating, it lacked the clean, no fuss storyline of a CSI TV episode, but I guess that was the point.  Real life crime is nothing like television and this film depicted the hunt for the killer with a degree of realism.  The Californian police are not like Mounties – they don’t always get their man.  The main detective on the case reminded me of Columbo, perhaps a deliberate attempt by the Director to contrast the police investigation in this movie with the more predictable denouement associated with the standard fayre on TV.

The film certainly had me interested, not fascinated but interested enough not to notice that the best part of 160 minutes had passed before the lights came up.

Overall, an OK way to spend an afternoon, but not enough dinosaurs for my liking.