Release Date: November 1st, 2002 (UK) Directed by: Danny Boyle Written by: Alex Garland Music by: John Murphy Cast: Cillian Murphy, Naomie Harris, Christopher Eccleston, Megan Burns, Brendan Gleeson
British Film Council, DNA Films, Fox Searchlight Pictures, 113 Minutes
Review:
“Have you got any plans, Jim? Do you want us to find a cure and save the world or just fall in love and fuck? Plans are pointless. Staying alive is as good as it gets.” – Selena
28 Days Later is a zombie movie, even though most of the people I say that to start yelling, “No, it’s not you fucking idiot! People were just infected with rage!” Calm down, juice box drinking basement dwellers, it’s a fucking zombie movie and the monsters might as well be undead, as the “rage” works like a virus, which is what causes the zombie outbreak in a fuck ton of zombie flicks anyway.
This is a movie that sort of blew my mind back in 2003, when I first saw it, as it made zombies fast and therefore, a hell of a lot more dangerous. With that take on the genre, this would inspire a lot of zombie films that came after, most notably Zack Snyder’s Dawn of the Dead remake, as well as World War Z.
As far as zombie movies go, this is one of the best acted. But it’s also well cast between Cillian Murphy, Naomie Harris, Brendan Gleeson and Christopher Eccleston. It’s also got a future Academy Award winning director, Danny Boyle, who does some pretty solid work in the horror genre between this and an underrated gem, Sunshine.
Boyle got the very best out of his cast, here, and this led to them becoming pretty busy actors in the future.
I like the style and look of the film, and was especially impressed with the sequence that saw Jim walking through London, completely devoid of life.
The movie also moves at a good pace but it does fall apart somewhat once the survivors get to the military stronghold and discover that it’s just a compound to attract and rape women in an effort to “repopulate the Earth”, which seemed like a hell of a stretch just a month into this zombie crisis. Although, I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t happy as hell to see those scumbags get eaten and ripped apart.
The movie apparently had multiple endings but I’m glad that they chose the ending that gives off a sense of hope, as it would’ve probably been a bit too much seeing any of these characters die or suffer more than they already had.
Also known as: Dark Sky: First Strike (fake working title), G.I. Joe (Czech Republic, Japan, Spain) Release Date: July 27th, 2009 (Tokyo premiere) Directed by: Stephen Sommers Written by: Stuart Beattie, David Elliot, Paul Lovett, Michael B. Gordon, Stephen Sommers Based on:G.I. Joe: A Real American Hero by Hasbro Music by: Alan Silvestri Cast: Adewale Akinnuoye-Agbaje, Christopher Eccleston, Joseph Gordon-Levitt, Lee Byung-hun, Sienna Miller, Rachel Nichols, Ray Park, Jonathan Pryce, Said Taghmaoui, Channing Tatum, Arnold Vosloo, Marlon Wayans, Dennis Quaid, Karolína Kurková, Brendan Fraser, Kevin J. O’Connor, Gerald Okamura, Grégory Fitoussi
“Technically, G.I. Joe does not exist, but if it did, it’d be comprised of the top men and women from the top military units in the world, the alpha dogs. When all else fails, we don’t.” – General Hawk
*Let me preface this by saying this review will have a massive amount of profanity. You have been motherfucking warned.
Directed by Stephen Sommers, a man that shouldn’t be allowed to touch a camera after The Mummy Returns and Van Helsing, this movie is a massive piece of shit and a huge disappointment to any fans of G.I. Joe: A Real American Hero, whether in cartoon or comic book form.
I don’t know where to start, as everything about this is bad but I have to point out the biggest issue with it and that’s the fact that it has no idea what G.I. Joe is, who these characters are or why any of this is awesome and really hard to fuck up. That is, unless you’re just someone that doesn’t give a flying fuck about the property your adapting and just see it as nothing more than a cash cow with a massive amount of built-in merchandise already attached to it.
Frankly, Hasbro needs to respect their own properties more and stop whoring them out to anyone willing to write stories and make movies and shows based on them. They’ve forgotten what their core brands represent and why they resonate with people. Between this film and the live action Transformers movies and that awful Jem film, Hasbro needs to get their shit together.
Anyway, they couldn’t have chosen a worse director than Stephen Sommers. Okay, they could’ve gotten Uwe Boll, but his film probably would’ve at least been fun and ridiculous for the right reasons.
What I hate the most about this is that none of the characters apart from the ninjas, are even close to who they are in the cartoon series or the comics. For fuck’s sake, Larry Hama wrote amazing comic stories that all could have translated well to screen. The cartoons even had some great epics mixed in that could have been adapted. Stephen Sommers and his staff of a half dozen writers couldn’t come up with a single scene in a two hour film’s script that represented anything close to what was great about the source material.
One of my favorite characters, the Baroness, wasn’t even close to what her character is. She is an incredible character with a great backstory and is really, the most vicious member of Cobra. Here, she is just a brainwashed American girl that can’t be the badass she should be because she’s got a hard on for Channing Tatum the whole picture and turns back into a good guy and helps defeat Cobra. What in the holy fuck?! This is the goddamned Baroness we’re talking about!
It’s not just her though, Cobra Commander was a joke, Destro was boring, Duke was lame, Ripcord was annoying and Scarlett was so terribly uncharacteristic that she should have just been named Ginger Brainy Girl.
In one of the biggest action sequences in the film, we get Duke and Ripcord running around Paris in generic Iron Man suits. Why? Those suits never existed once in any G.I. Joe continuity that I’ve ever seen and I’ve read and seen everything. This was a poor attempt at trying to piggy back off of the success of Iron Man a year earlier. But, Sommers, this isn’t a Marvel film, it’s G.I.-fucking-Joe!
Also, in the big finale, Cobra Commander tries to destroy the Joes by blowing up the ice shelf above them. What does ice do in water people? It fucking floats! So how in the hell does the ice come crashing down like boulders in the goddamned ocean? How?!
But there’s still so much more wrong with this motion picture.
Why does Snake Eyes have fucking lips?! He’s a ninja in a ninja mask. He doesn’t need rubber lips. His head looks like it was ripped from a full size sex doll.
Why does Duke have to be restrained from punching a hologram? It’s a fucking hologram!
How does Ripcord’s jet plane go from Moscow to Washington in just a few minutes? How?!
I mean, there are a lot of other stupid things in this film too but you probably get the point by now.
G.I. Joe: The Rise of Cobra was an expensive movie, given to a four year-old, mentally challenged kid, that just wants to play with his G.I. Joe toys in the bathtub. I’m talking about Stephen Sommers, for the record. And while that may sound harsh, it’s not as harsh as Sommers was to this beloved franchise. Fuck this guy, he’s one of the worst directors of the last two decades.
I never wanted to see this film again but I suffered through it just to review it. The sequel to this was actually better but still far from great. Hasbro needs to stop whoring out their properties unless they can learn how to vet these filmmakers better. Seriously, Hasbro, G.I. Joe is a franchise deserving of a great motion picture. Hell, I’ll make it. I can certainly do better than this film and I know these characters because I’ve spent over 35 years with them.
Seriously, Hasbro. Call me.
Rating: 2.75/10 Pairs well with: It’s sequel, as well as the crappy live action Transformers movies.
Release Date: October 22nd, 2013 (London premiere) Directed by: Alan Taylor Written by: Christopher Yost, Stephen McFeely, Christopher Markus, Don Payne, Robert Rodat Based on:The Mighty Thor by Stan Lee, Larry Lieber, Jack Kirby Music by: Brian Tyler Cast: Chris Hemsworth, Tom Hiddleston, Christopher Eccleston, Natalie Portman, Stellan Skarsgård, Idris Elba, Kat Dennings, Rene Russo, Anthony Hopkins, Ray Stevenson, Tadanobu Asano, Jaimie Alexander, Adewale Akinnuoye-Agbaje, Zachary Levi, Alice Krige, Chris O’Dowd, Richard Brake, Benicio del Toro (cameo), Chris Evans (cameo)
Marvel Studios, Walt Disney Studios, 112 Minutes
Review:
“I will tell Father you died with honor.” – Thor, “I didn’t do it for him.” – Loki
Unlike the other films in the Marvel Cinematic Universe that I have revisited lately, Thor: The Dark World wasn’t as good as my memories of it.
I do remember being pretty fond of it when it came out but it just doesn’t seem to fit well within the overall MCU when you take what came after it into context. Sure, it gives us the red Infinity Stone but not much else here is all that important. But I guess seeing Thor and Loki play off of one another is always, at the very least, amusing.
In the end, this is the worst of the three Thor movies. But it is not all that bad. It’s certainly better than The Incredible Hulk and Avengers: The Age of Ultron. It’s just a film that wasn’t all that necessary. The relationship between Thor and Jane doesn’t matter after this movie, the secondary characters are sort of forgotten except for Dr. Erik Selvig (Stellan Skarsgård), who at least makes one more appearance.
This was just a movie where no one really seemed to be all that into it except for the actors playing Asgardians. Hemsworth was great as Thor, Hiddleston is perfection as Loki and Odin is a commanding Odin. Natalie Portman obviously didn’t want to be in this and acted as such. Christopher Eccleston, who I was excited about seeing as the villain, just dialed in his performance and is one of the most forgettable MCU villains to date.
The film was dry, mostly boring and even the fantasy worlds that they traveled to weren’t very imaginative or fun. Other than Asgard, all the other realms in this just looked as bland, dry and awful as a sand sandwich.
The Earth stuff was all overcast and rainy. I know that this takes place in London but c’mon… the magical realms were dark desert; Earth was grey industrial wetness. This isn’t an exciting film to look at.
While I guess it was about time for Marvel to introduce the Infinity Stones (or at least more than one), there are better ways this could have been done. Sure, I wanted a second Thor movie and it would have been a good place to bring in a new Stone but the execution here was lackluster. This whole thing should have been rewritten.
For a film about traversing through magical realms, outer space and battling fantastical shit, Thor: The Dark World felt very small and confined.
Rating: 6.75/10 Pairs well with:Thor, The Avengers and Thor: Ragnarok
Original Run: March 26th, 2005 – June 18th, 2005 Created by: Sydney Newman, C. E. Webber, Donald Wilson Directed by: various Written by: various Music by: various, Murray Gold (since 2005) Cast: Christopher Eccleston, Billie Piper, John Barrowman, Camille Coduri, Noel Clarke, Bruno Langley, Penelope Wilton
BBC, 13 Episodes, 45 Minutes (per episode)
Review:
It has been a while since I’ve watched the Eccleston era of Doctor Who but I wanted to go back and start with the 2005 revival series from the beginning.
This is certainly the best place to start with modern Who but the beginning of any Doctor’s run is still a decent starting place. However, Eccleston’s debut is more pivotal than David Tennant’s, as it helps to establish Rose Tyler and her friends and family into the Doctor Who mythos, as they do carry over into the show when Tennant takes the reins from Eccleston.
The show starts off with a bang and features an episode with the evil Autons, a classic Who alien race that was always cool to see on screen but have not returned to the show since that first episode of the revival series.
The show then goes on to reacquaint us with what Doctor Who is and how the Time Lord operates in this vast universe, throughout all of time and space.
We meet new aliens but we also get reacquainted with the Daleks in three episodes. The first of which, being titled just Dalek. Still, to this day, it is one of the best episodes of the revived Doctor Who series.
Apart from Rose Tyler and her family of characters, we also get to meet Captain Jack Harkness, played by John Barrowman, who would also play Merlyn in Arrow and other CW shows revolving around DC Comics heroes. Harkness was so popular, actually, that he would get his own spin off show, Torchwood. Harkness is also one of those characters that fans have been clamoring for the producers to bring back. In this season of the show, Harkness is at his best.
All in all, this is a pretty good revival of the long running show. This season isn’t as good as what was to come with David Tennant (the Tenth Doctor) but it was a good foundation for the iconic series to return. Sadly, Eccleston left after these thirteen episodes but that also gave us Tennant, so I can’t be completely broken up about it.
This is a hard list to compile, as I haven’t disliked a single Doctor in the long history of Doctor Who. However, some were better than others and this is my attempt to quantify that in some fashion.
Just because someone ranks in at the bottom spot, doesn’t mean they weren’t worthy of the role. The people behind the show have always done a great job in finding people that fit The Doctor.
Some of the ones at the bottom are also only there because they made only a few appearances and didn’t have the time to really shine in the role over a season or more.
1. Fourth Doctor (Tom Baker)
2. Tenth Doctor (David Tennant)
3. Third Doctor (Jon Pertwee)
4. Twelfth Doctor (Peter Capaldi)
5. Fifth Doctor (Peter Davison)
6. Seventh Doctor (Sylvester McCoy)
7. Eleventh Doctor (Matt Smith)
8. Second Doctor (Patrick Troughton)
9. Ninth Doctor (Christopher Eccleston)
10. Sixth Doctor (Colin Baker)
11. First Doctor (William Hartnell)
12. Movie Doctor (Peter Cushing)
13. Eighth Doctor (Paul McGann)
14. War Doctor (John Hurt)
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This is a hard list to compile, as I haven’t disliked a single Doctor in the long history of Doctor Who. However, some were better than others and this is my attempt to quantify that in some fashion.
Talking Pulp 
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