Reviews

Michael Bay the director of Bad Boys said he would only return to do the sequel if he could make it better than the original - Here he is helming part two and he is a man of his word because he raises his game and delivers a superior sequel that could be the second of many... Marcus Burnett (Lawrence) and Mike lowrey (Smith) return as the infamous bad boy narcotic cops who keep on wrecking downtown Miami! This time we see our comedy duo investigate the domination of Ectasy on the city and see how they mix it up with the various crime lords involved. Burnett's sister is involved this time working undercover for the drug runners so it gets personal as Lowrey (The Gigolo) is seeing her behind his partners back! Do you get the idea? Minimal script but maximum action... Bruckheimer and Bay turn up the volume on this one with some quite incredible scenes of destruction and demolition. These guys must have seen The Matrix Reloaded and T3 and thought "right let's out do them with the chase sequences" and yep they have! Cars literally by the truckload being thrown at them on a busy Florida freeway make for some great set pieces, the body count on this one is higher than the Gulf War as it adopts a no holds barred kind of vibe as we see and experience the full impact of getting shot many many times - but Bay gives it all such a slick professional cool look that you get dragged along for the ride and boy what a ride! Relentless at times, the action keeps on coming (very reminiscent of Bay's The Rock) but you never tire of it as you see some SFX used in this film in such an inventive way that most people will probably not even know it. Cameras that follow bullets, shots that never stay still or go places that aren't possible make the tempo fresh but familiar and as the audiences today demand more of a sequel, this leaves them gob smacked! The look and feel of the film is great and obviously similar to the first as all involved return and along with Bay's direction the locations and sets are all perfect in look and feel as they give you the wow factor from the very start. Fans of the first will welcome back the cast with open arms as they all fit back into the roles with such ease and comfort you question the eight year gap form parts one and two but hope that the next instalment will be along a lot quicker! The classic Bad Boy rotating shot returns and if you know what I am speaking of you will queue to see this great action movie come October... Expect it bigger; expect it better because I did... Queue – If you don’t get in queue again...

Pixar has quite a track record with expectations growing as every movie they release has to be better than the previous one. Does Nemo keep the company benchmark going? In a word - yes! This father and son drama, with fish as the computer generated cast, shines with a spectrum of colour as the visuals just blow your mind! Nemo (voiced by Alexander Gould) the clown fish is the rebellious son of single parent Marlin (Albert Brooks), who against his father's wishes swims out of sight and gets hopelessly lost...and that's when the real adventures begin. Along the way we meet a host of strange and wonderful characters that are so colourful and funny that they draw you in to this eye-popping world. This is a film for all ages, Pixar has done it again and created such a wonderful, timeless movie that has you laughing out loud one moment and a second later you're dabbing at your eyes. The characters are written and performed so well, and you leave the theatre reminiscing about their great adventures. The star of the show again is the animation. Every year it improves and this is no exception. The use of colour is incredible as we are given an amazing tour of the seabed. There are some Pixar in-jokes, so look out for them as you sit down again and again to watch this modern-day classic.

Sean Connery plays Alan Quartermain (The famous British adventurer), who is asked by way of her Majesty to bring together a team of elite individuals to join, and fight an evil mastermind who is ...guess what? Trying to run the world (Cue Dr Evil laugh...) Set in Victorian times (I think!) Quartermains' freaks include Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde, Mina Harker (Dracula's first wife!), Captain Nemo and Tom Sawyer (who is working for American Intelligence but just happens to be in London at the turn of the century). Are you still with me or like me in the cinema are you laughing? I have missed a few out, but you have the main core of extraordinary gentlemen even if one of them is a woman. Will they all get on? Will they save the day? Will you carry on reading - or watching? Based on the graphic novel, The League Of Extraordinary Gentlemen (LXG) is a messy film that fails to make you believe right from the start, cliché after cliché fit together as the script speeds through the pages in a way that tells me a number of people have been involved - You barely have time to absorb what is happening from scene to scene. Steve "Blade" Norrington takes the helm in this big budget live action cartoon of a film, the look of the movie was a concern to me - I think the idea was to make it as realistic as possible but what Norrington and his team of SFX guys have done is tint it too much and colour it to the point of matt overload, which gives it that awkward obvious fake look. Matt work can look great - eg Minority Report where Spielberg gave the whole film the industrial hues that enhanced the futuristic feel - but LXG it has an adverse effect making it look like the Avengers meets Spawn! Connery and crew are all OK but I expect the reported feuds between director and star were true with Sean getting all the good lines and camera angles! The sets are fine and Prague doubles nicely for old Blighty but you know that wherever they could, they faked the shot and this does tamper your view. Norrington can direct but here you get the impression he was rushed and forced to compromise his project due to the studio already committing to a release date, so even before the cameras were rolling the pressure was on and that ultimately affected the finished film. League could have been another franchise for Fox and raised the bar set by Bryan Singer but for whatever reason this just limps across the line and will disappear into the "could of" archive. I have no doubt the comic book fans will have something to enjoy from it and of course the key teen market but for it to really have worked it needed to cross over to all ages and this certainly does not. Shame. If you must leave your brain in the car