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Star
Wars Episode III
Revenge of The Sith
Cert: 12A
Starring: Hayden
Christensen, Natalie Portman, Ewan McGregor,
Christopher Lee, Samuel L Jackson
Director: George
Lucas
Running Time: 140
minutes
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George Lucas
is a very wealthy man. After 28 years’ worth
of merchandise sales, various DVD and VHS re-releases and extortionate
TV licensing deals (not to mention Box Office takings), it’s
hardly difficult to see how he has accrued his £1.6bn fortune.
But with that much cash, you’d have thought he could have
placed himself on the sidelines and hired a better director.
To be fair, this, the final arc of the series’ prequel, carries
at least a degree of interest, concerning how Skywalker converts
from an eager, righteous Jedi Knight to the famed evil overlord,
Darth Vader.
Throughout the film, he is torn between the advice of his fellow
Jedi knights and the sly manip-ulations of Supreme Chancellor Palpatine,
who finally emerges as
a twisted egomaniac, eventually luring Ana-kin to the dark side.
On the way, the young knight falls out and fights with
Obi-Wan Kenobi, his mentor and friend, who is forced to acknowledge,
sadly: “You’ve become the very thing you sought to
destroy.”
In light of such, near the film’s very end, the iconic image
of Vader offers the audience one of its few genuine thrills.
Revenge Of the Sith is mostly ill-paced, erratically acted and
wholeheartedly flat. And coming in at a mammoth 2 hours 40 minutes,
you can’t help but feel that the entire movie has been blown
completely out of proportion just to accommodate the many new characters,
which are no doubt being converted into plastic collect-ables as
we speak. A pity. |
The
Pacifier
Cert: PG
Starring: Vin
Diesel, Brittany Snow, Lauren Graham
Director: Adam
Shankman
Running Time: 95
minutes
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After a
string of ultra-violent, fast-paced (and generally brain-dead)
action flicks, Vin Diesel has decided to flex his acting muscles
(emphasis on the muscles) within another genre entirely – comedy.
However, after sitting through this lump of a film, it’s
difficult to see why he even bothered.
To set the scene of the action man turned babysitter (of a family
of kids whose scientist father has been assassinated), the film
opens with some of Diesel’s meat-headed antics as a Navy
SEAL, surrounded by crashing powerboats and a rather extensive
array of heavy artillery.
Unfortunately for Diesel, however, this is where his grasp on
the movie’s context starts and finishes. As the film progresses,
it becomes embarrassingly obvious that he lacks the subtle sense
of self-awareness required to spoof his own machismo. Which,
for the record, Arnie did so delightfully in Kindergarten Cop.
A frightfully feeble script dictates that the alleged threat
to the children only becomes apparent towards the movie’s
end, by which point you’ll have quite honestly gone beyond
caring. And to add insult to injury, the much-hyped action sequences
are just plain dull.
Avoid. |
Sin
City
Cert: 15
Starring: Josh
Hartnett, Elijah Wood, Bruce Willis, Brittany
Murphy, Kate Bosworth, Mickey Rourke, Jaime
King, Nick Stahl, Jessica Alba, Clive Owen,
Rosario Dawson, Michael Clarke Duncan
Director: Robert
Rodriguez & Frank Miller
Running Time: 124
minutes
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Welcome
to the writ-large turmoil of Sin City, to streets of hard-boiled
pulp fiction and film noir – a grim prison
of a place from which no-one is ever intended to escape…
Directed by Robert Rodriguez and Frank Miller (the creator of
the original Sin City comic books), and featuring guest director
Quentin Tarantino (who directed at least one of the film’s
scenes), Sin City promises to be a film like no other.
The cast itself, featuring the likes of Bruce Willis, Mickey
Rourke, Benicio Del Torro, Elijah Wood, Clive Owen and Jessica
Alba are complimented by an unbelievable helping of special effects,
with a deep-noir script to die for and some of the best-looking
action sequences ever captured on film.
Unfortunately, Sin City was released a little too late for me
to review, but I will without doubt have a full evaluation of
the film in next month’s edition of The Harp. |
Mr
& Mrs Smith
Cert: 15
Starring: Brad Pitt, Angelina Jolie,
Vince Vaughn, Adam Brody, Kerry Washington, Keith David
Director: Doug
Liman
Running Time: 120
minutes
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John and Jane Smith are an ordinary suburban couple with an
ordinary, lifeless suburban marriage.
But each of them has a secret – they are actually both
legendary assassins working for competing organisations. And
when this truth eventually leeks out, John and Jane inadvertently
find themselves in each other’s cross-hairs…
Mr. & Mrs. Smith is directed by Doug Liman (The Bourne
Identity), and promises to be a wild ride of zany humour, hard-boiled
action and double-crossing lead char-acters. It’s due
out on the 10th of June – be sure to check it out! |
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