I’ve never been the biggest fan of Tintin. When it came to that kind of comic book, I was definitely more inclined to read something like Asterix but apparently a lot of people do love the beautified, adventuring journalist because all I’ve heard for a while is how much people are looking forward to the big screen adaptation of Herge’s classic comic. Apparently the people who like Tintin really like Tintin.

So knowing that, keep in mind that I can’t really compare the film’s version of the characters with their comic book counterparts or indeed the general story to how it might have played out on the page. All I can do is judge the film on it’s own merits. Also I watched the film in 2D because, seriously, I’m sick of fucking 3D. It unnecessarily decreases the quality of the film because the stupid glasses make everything quite a bit darker which can really hamper the enjoyment of a bright, vibrant CGI film say, for example, Tintin.

Anyway, the film begins in what seems to be Paris although everyone talks with an English accent and things are paid for in pounds. Yeah, it doesn’t make much sense but whatever. There’s adventuring to be done and mysteries to be solved… Like maybe the mystery of why France has changed it’s currency to the pound… but no. Can’t dwell to much on that. The real mystery has to do with a model ship that Tintin (Jamie Bell) buys which immediately seems to attract the attention of a couple of other people including an American and the mysterious Sahkarine (Daniel Craig). The model ship is stolen and this leads Tintin on a globe spanning adventure that involves an ancient sunken treasure and leads to him meeting the bumbling alcoholic, Captain Haddock (Andy Serkis).

So that’s the basic gist of the film and saying too much more would give away a bit too much of the plot, what with it being a mystery and all. Overall, the film looks beautiful and really shows the leaps and bounds that CGI has come when it comes to creating human’s up on the screen. Gone are the creepy, dead-eyed days of something like ‘The Polar Express’. These characters work just as well as live action counterparts might have done and, for a film such as this, the style is completely appropriate. Motion capture technology certainly seems to have advanced quite far as well with each character managing to be just as expressive as a real person would have been. It all adds up to quite a believable world that at times reminded me of Indiana Jones. The good ones I mean, not that Crystal Skull shit.

The performances were all pretty much stellar. Serkis in particular completely nailed the part of a grizzled, drunken, down on his luck sea captain, Nick Frost and Simon Pegg bring their normal comic sensibilities to the role of the Thompson twins even though I feel they were slightly underused and Jamie Bell was completely believable as the optimistic, adventurous title character.

If there’s one criticism that I can really make about ‘Tintin’ it’s that the plot sometime moved forward a bit too quickly. It’s not a major problem but in a mystery you should perhaps take a little time to explain a few things a bit more clearly before just jumping into the next action set-piece. A prime example of this is Haddock and Sahkarine apparently both having memories of their ancestors. I never really understood quite how that worked but it’s a pretty minor problem in what is otherwise a fun little adventure movie. Overall, ‘Tintin’ gets four pints out of five. Laterz.

Cancer. It’s a subject that you might not think works that well in a comedy unless it’s in something like South Park. Is there a way to do a touching yet funny film about such a serious condition? Well, it turns out that there is as demonstrated by the subject of this review, ‘50/50’.

Joseph Gordon-Levitt plays Adam, a man who’s life is acceptable but not particularly extraordinary. He doesn’t drink, he doesn’t smoke, he has an attractive, if somewhat emotionally distant, girlfriend (Bryce Dallas Howard) and he works at a local radio station with his best friend Kyle (Seth Rogen). So, like I said, nothing special but an agreeable existence. One day his whole life is turned upside down when he goes to the doctor to get some test results to find out what’s been causing his recurring back pains and he’s informed he has a rare form of cancer with a 50% survival rate. To help him deal with this he is sent to a trainee psychologist (Anna Kendricks).

And that’s about all I can really say about the plot without giving away too much in terms of spoilers. Needless to say that Adam goes through several stages of grief, anger, acceptance etc, all whilst trying to deal with the experience of going through his ordeal with cancer in his own way, generally trying to rely on help from the people around him as little as possible despite their own efforts to try and help him in their own way. Kyle tries to get Adam to use his illness to his own advantage by using his friend to help him pick up girls whilst also encouraging Adam to do the same. The character may seem a little selfish at first but it becomes clear that he really does care about his best friend and is basically just doing what he can to keep his spirits up.

There’s also Adam’s somewhat overbearing mother (Anjelica Huston) who, due to a lifetime of worrying incessantly about her son, Adam tries to push away (as kindly as he possibly can) even though this is a time in his life when he should really be seeking her care and love. This is made all the more difficult, and somewhat heartbreaking, because Adam’s father is suffering from Altzheimer’s and so, as Anna Kendrick’s character puts it “she has a husband she can’t talk to and a son who won’t.”

To sum up, ‘50/50’ is a film that manages to take a very serious subject, cancer and the way it affects the sufferer and the people around him, that manages to make it both funny and sweet. It made made me laugh and also brought a few tears to my eyes, especially the scene where Adam is talking to his parents right before he goes in for his surgery (but then again, I realise I‘m a massive pussy who cries at the drop of a hat in films. Fuck, I cried when I watched Jurassic Park in the cinema recently when the main theme played for the first time). I think it’s definitely challenging ‘Rise of the Planet of the Apes’ as my favourite film of this year. Sure, it’s a bit saccharine at times but it never really goes too over the top in the sappiness department. It also has a pretty fine soundtrack. Seriously, if you watch one comedy about cancer this year, make it ‘50/50’. Five pints out of five. Laterz.

I have just finished watching what may be the worst film I have ever seen. And that really is saying something. I’ve seen ‘The Room’, ‘Troll 2’, ‘Birdemic’, ‘Plan 9 From Outer Space’ and ‘Battlefield Earth’ but at least they had some redeeming features. They were all, in some way enjoyable. They fall into the category of film that can be described as being so bad that they are good. It is fun to watch them just because they are so bowel-shatteringly awful and the important thing to remember is that each film takes themselves completely and utterly seriously. Cheerleader Autopsy doesn’t fall into this category. It falls into the so bad, it’s bad category and one of the reasons for this is because it’s intentionally trying to be funny and as far as horror comedies go, it makes yesterday’s entry, ‘Horny House of Horror’ look like Shaun of the Dead.

So what makes Cheerleader Autopsy so painfully unfunny? Is it the crude, incredibly lowbrow humour that includes a close up of someone hacking of their own penis (is every film I review this week going to involve some form of genital mutilation?), pressing down just above a dead girls corpse to make a jet of water shoot from her vagina and a hillbilly mistakenly shooting himself in the head when he thinks there is something wrong with his gun? No, I generally consider myself to be quite immature but these jokes just weren’t hitting home. I think what it may have been was the constant stream of immature and gross out humour. I think back to the films that I love which have quite a high level of what could be considered juvenile humour, such as the films of Kevin Smith, and the reason I’ve enjoyed them is because whilst they do have that level of immaturity, they are well written and always have something else going on in them as well, something substantial that raises the level of the film as a whole. Cheerleader Autopsy is poorly written, cramming as many stupid jokes in as it can within it’s short (but seemingly excruciatingly long) 73 minute run time and it has nothing of substance to fall back on.

So what is the plot of Cheerleader Autopsy? Well, that’s kind of like asking what is the meaning of life. There could be many interpretations but the question itself is practically unanswerable. There’s a cheerleader team called the Stinkwater Beavers (oh, the hilarity!), they get killed, there is a mental mortician who also happens to be the sheriff of the town and his nephew who works as his assistant. The mortician has another assistant who’s a bit socially retarded because he has a small penis (he’s the guy who chops off his own in order to attach a larger member from a body that’s brought in) and now that I think about it, I think there’s only one actual autopsy… although I suppose the film isn‘t called Cheerleader Autopsies so far enough. Oh and there’s jokes and hints about necrophilia and eating the brains of foetuses littered throughout. Now that I think about it, maybe it is the crude humour that makes this suck. I mean, eating the brains of foetuses? I’m a man who regularly makes jokes about paedophilia and even I think that’s going a bit too far.

Of course, the humour can’t be completely held responsible here. There’s also the terrible acting, terrible editing, terrible sound, terrible camera work, terrible picture quality and terrible everything. If you’ve seen Birdemic, imagine all of these things being a fraction better than that and yet Birdemic still remains the far more enjoyable film. Look, I’m really sick of thinking about this film and I’ve got a pub quiz to get ready for. Time to get completely drunk. To sum up just imagine you had a really stupid friend with a camcorder and a worrying level of access to a number of Real Dolls. The result would be something like this film. To further sum up, just watch the damn trailer. 0 pints out of five. Laterz.

Yes, it’s the most wonderful time of the year again, Halloween, and that can mean only one thing: Watching a huge amount of shitty horror movies in order to get you in the right mood. Sure, you could watch a bunch of good horror movies, and I’ll certainly be doing that after I’ve finished this week of bad ones in order to cleanse my palate, but the fact of the matter is that the majority of horror films aren’t worth the film they’re printed on.

It’s a genre plagued with crap largely because many people who make horror films think you don’t need to rely to heavily on plot. A couple of gruesome effects shots, a few gallons of blood and zang, you have a horror film. Another thing that contributes to the glut of truly awful horror films is the fact that, compared to some other genres, they can be done relatively cheaply. So with all that out of the way, let’s get on to the first entry of this cavalcade of crap, the Japanese offering ‘Horny House of Horror’.

Now, I don’t know if you’ve ever noticed this before but the Japanese can sometimes seem a little weird to our Western sensibilities, what with their ultra-violent cartoon porn and their robots and what have you. But fair enough, each to their own and all that. I’m sure they find the prospect of NASCAR or uncensored hardcore pornography equally as weird. And sure, the Japanese never didn’t come up with some of the crazy shit that we have like the ‘Saw’ films, the ‘Hostel’ films or indeed ‘A Serbian Film’ (more on that later in the week) but they certainly have a certain talent for taking the term torture porn and really running with it. Just look at ‘Audition’ for example. And it’s kinda in this vein that ‘Horny House of Horror’ falls though with a bit more of an (attempted) comic twist.

The story begins inside Shogun Massage Parlour where a customer is receiving a happy ending of the oral variety from an employee, Nagisa (Saori Hara) and he excitedly tells her to suck as hard as she wants. She smiles, descends on his penis and proceeds to bite it of, much to the man’s chagrin. It tunes out that this is a most decidedly unhappy ending. Cue unrealistic amounts of blood and cut to credits. So yeah, this pretty much tells you what you should be coming to expect from this film.

After the credits we are introduced to three friends returning home after a baseball match, Nakazu (Yuya Ishikawa) a man about to get married, Toshida (Wani Kansai) and Uno (Toushi Yanagi). Besides Nakazu (and I might be being a bit generous), none of these characters really have much in the way of characterization. The two friends actually kinda seem to have the exact same personality which can be best be described thusly: They are both douche bags. Still, the three friends come across the Massage Parlour and Toshida and Uno decide they should get Nakazu a girl as one last gift before he is married. This makes Nakazu incredibly nervous as he’s never paid for sex before. In fact it’s hinted that, even though he’s a man of forty, he might still be a virgin. Also, he’s incredibly faithful to his wife to be even though she forced him to quit the baseball team and seems to ring him constantly to check up on him. Still his douche bag friends force him to go in there anyway. Because they are douche bags.

Upon entering the men are confronted with three holes through which the three female employees stick their arses so the men can judge just which one they’d like to be getting a “massage” from. This leads to fondling, pinching and farting causing much hilarity. No, wait. Not hilarity. What’s that thing that’s not hilarity? Oh yeah, boredom. Seriously, just get to the genital mutilation already… Hmm, never thought I’d find myself typing those words.

Finally after a short period of waiting during which Toshida and Uno continue to mock Nakazu, the action finally gets underway. It’s Toshida’s turn first and he get’s his revenge for the girl, Nonoko (Asami) farting in his face earlier by cumming in her mouth. She takes great offence to this and proceeds to cut his penis of with a metallic pair of jaws she has stashed away in her vagina. This results in an amount of blood that can only be described as biologically unfeasible, especially since Toshida survives this assault.

Next, it’s Uno’s member that’s on the chopping block, quite literally this time as he has been chained to a wall and has to resist getting a boner whilst Kaori (Mint Suzuki) does a sexy dance for him. If he manages to stay flaccid, he gets to keep his member and go free but if he fails and becomes aroused, his cock will be sliced off by a samurai sword. Of course, he fails leading to yet more crazy amounts of bloodshed.

Meanwhile Nakazu is managing to resist the charms of Nagisa and finally realises the danger that he’s in when he hears the screams of Uno as he is de-membered and he narrowly avoids Nagisa’s hand job with special acidic lotion. He attempts to rescue his friends but they both die along the way, as long as the two hookers who had so grievously wronged them. So in the end it’s down to Nakazu and Nagisa, both trying to escape as it turns out that the poor girl only worked there to raise money for her brothers. Unfortunately Nakazu is shot by a gun that emerges from the wall and Nagisa is left to confront the Big Boss who has been watching this whole time. He claims to have some grand scheme for removing all of the brothel’s client’s genitals and, as it turns out, keeping them in jars of formaldehyde but Nakazu accuses him of doing just because he has a small penis and is just jealous of every other man on the planet which I guess kinda makes sense but seems to be a bit of a harsh way to go about resolving the issue.

So what to make of a film about a whorehouse where customers are lured in with the promise of cheap sex on to get their members dismembered? Well, I kinda wished they’d made up their mind about whether they were making a horror or a comedy. Yes, horror and comedy can mix really well together but there needs to be a delicate balance. I suppose that if I had to call it, this tried to be far more of a comedy but it just wasn’t funny enough for that. As for the horror side, well, because of the continued attempts at humour it really wasn’t particularly scary either. It really needed to be a bit more over the top, violence wise, which is kinda odd for me to say because I’m generally not one for what has been dubbed ‘torture porn’ but when the film’s about something like genital mutilation then tortuous and hard to watch is exactly what those scenes should be. In the end it’s kind of like this old advert from America. Just imagine that instead of chocolate the guy is saying ‘genital mutilation horror’ and the girl is saying ‘cheesy sex comedy’ instead of peanut butter. Also imagine they are both incredibly disappointed by the outcome of the combination of both of these things:

On the plus side I suppose, the girls are hot and the acting is fairly competent throughout. The effects are, again, kinda underwhelming mainly because of the ridiculous amount of blood that ends up spurting everywhere. I know that this is kind of a hallmark of Japanese horror films, particularly those of these type but it just serves to pull me out of what is already a pretty ridiculous affair even more. All in all, the whole thing was just really, really unsatisfying and overall quite boring which is disappointing in something that probably should have been just a cheesy, fun film. Still, I’m sure this film will have it’s fans and bless their little cotton socks for getting something out of it that I just couldn’t find myself. One pint out of five.

I don’t really remember ever watching ‘The Smurfs’ as a kid but I know the basic gist of the whole thing. Bunch of little blue creatures live in a forest and an evil wizard tries to capture them. Pretty simple premise so why not take that idea and stretch it out in a live action/CGI mixed feature length film? Well how about because a) that’s a paper-thin premise that seems like it would require a lot of padding and b) The Smurfs are some of the most irritating fuckers to ever grace the silver screen. This is a point which is actually acknowledged several times throughout the film. If much of the supporting cast are pointing out just how unlikeable the little blue shits are, what makes the film makers believe that anyone watching it should care about them?

Anyway, I’m getting ahead of myself. Back to point a. So how do you pad out such a simple concept? Well, you take the Smurfs and the evil wizard Gargamel (Hank Azaria) and teleport them to modern day Manhattan! It’s a fish out of water story where the characters find themselves confused by the everyday things we take for granted! That concept’s never been done before! (For films that have, to some extent, explored very similar concepts see: Blast From The Past, Coneheads, Crocodile Dundee, Elf, Enchanted, Encino Man, Hercules In New York, The Little Mermaid, Short Circuit, Thor… I think you get my point). I suppose I shouldn’t be to angry with the writers. I imagine they were just told to write a script for a Smurf movie and, honestly, what more could really be done with the concept?

So anyway, The Smurfs are transported to New York and end up staying with Patrick (Neil Patrick Harris) and Grace (Jayma Mays) Winslow and together the group learn important lessons about how important family is and how you’re more than just one defining characteristic, which may be true for humans but honestly seems to go against everything Smurf society is built on. In fact I imagine the sequel to this film involving Clumsy Smurf bringing this dangerous new philosophy back to the Smurf village and, in turn, starting a revolution against the dictatorial Papa Smurf who was the one who gave them all their predetermined roles in life in the first place. Yes, an encounter with human characters other than a one dimensional bad guy can only lead to the spilling of gallons of blue blood. Will the plucky rebels come out on top or will Papa Smurf be able to retain his iron grip on Smurf Society? Find out in ‘The Smurfs 2: Viva La Smurfolucion!’ coming in the summer of 2013.

Ahem. I seem to have gotten a little sidetracked. There are some amusing moments from the couples interaction with the blue demonspawn most of it stemming from Will’s absolute and completely understandable annoyance when it comes to the way that the Smurfs, well, just the way that the Smurfs are. He rails against them for randomly replacing words with the word Smurf. This makes sense because seriously CAN’T POSSIBLY MAKE ANY SENSE IF YOU USE THE WORD SMURF FOR EVERYTHING! VERBS, ADVERBS, NOUNS, PRONOUNS, PROFANITIES! IT DOESN’T MAKE ANY SENSE GRAMATICALLY OR LINGUISTICALLY! I mean, the last thing Patrick says to Grace is “Grace, I smurf you” which is either very sweet or a filthy and degrading insult. There ambiguity of the word Smurf means that there is no way to tell which.

He also points out just how fucking irritating the Smurfs theme tune is which they sing, whistle or hum a fuck load in this goddamn movie. If you’re lucky enough to have never heard the theme tune to the Smurfs, allow me to shatter that peaceful existence you one had and destroy the happiness that once dwelled in your heart:

Yeah, like I said, that theme just keeps coming back again and again and again. There is one time, near the end, where the song is used almost as a war chant a the creatures prepare for their showdown with Gargamel which was, admittedly, kinda inventive. So well done for that I guess.

Speaking of Gargamel, Hank Azaria is actually one of the movies small redeeming features, particularly near the beginning of the film. He also makes a few cracks about The Smurf way of life that everyone has discussed since they got old enough to realise just how fucking weird it was that the Smurfs lived in a village that only had one female. Unfortunately as the film goes on, Azaria gets more and more over the top and eventually becomes almost as irritating as the protagonists. As for the rest of the cast, well, there’s really only one person worth mentioning and that’s Sofia Vergara.

I don’t remember anything about her performance,

but she is worth mentioning.

So all in all, just how bad is ‘The Smurfs’? Well, it’s pretty fucking bad, I don’t know how well it would play for kids but really who cares because kids are idiots. If they weren’t then they wouldn’t get smarter as they got older. In terms of these CGI/live action reboots of old cartoon series though, it is better than the Chipmunk movies and the Transformers movies because whilst this film is awful, it does have some redeeming moments here and there and I didn’t feel totally mentally, physically and spiritually drained after watching it unlike those other franchises. On the other hand, it did have one of the worst blasphemies committed against music. The Smurfs replacing various words in ‘Walk This Way’ with word Smurf…Fuckers.

And that’s one of the big problems with these kinds of films. They take these innocent little cartoons that made up many of our childhoods and try and modernise them in a way that just seems tacky, out of place, completely unnecessary and it just reeks of a coroporate type’s idea of getting down with the kids in the most simplistic, basic and crass way possible. “What do kids like? Rap. Can we make the Smurfs rap? Excellent. That should sell a few more tickets.” All it actually ends up doing is to make the whole thing end up seeming like an empty shell of what it once was, putting as little effort as possible into what was once a beloved franchise in order to make a quick buck. And that’s sad… On the other hand:

The Smurfs gets one pint out of five.

Ugh. Why did I do it? Why did I sit down and force myself to watch this film? I hated the first one. I knew I would hate this one. Probably more because of A) The fucking stupid title and B) Because it’s a sequel (Yes, sequel. Not squeakquel, SEQUEL) to one of the most annoying, pointless and just plain shit movies that I have ever seen and sequels are rarely, rarely better than the first films especially when they are nothing more than blatant cash-grabs as this film so clearly is.

Plot synopsis? Well, Ok. Alvin, Simon and Theodore do stupid things and occasionally get in trouble but then they get out of it again. Also there are the girl chipmunks, The Chipettes, More than that? Fine. Dave (Jason Lee) gets injured in Paris during a Chipmunks concert and, after another accident involving Dave’s wheelchair bound aunt or grandmother (Yes, injuring old people in wheelchairs. The good wholesome family fun of the Alvin and the Chipmunks of my youth…), the three rodents find themselves in the care of Toby (Zachary Levi), who I guess is Dave’s cousin or something. Toby is a pathetic, loser of a manchild who spends all of his time playing video games and isn’t responsible to look after himself, let alone three talking chipmunks.

Dave has also decided that the Chipmunks need a normal childhood and so he’s sending them off to school which is one of the stupidest things I’ve ever heard. Remember, these are chipmunks. I think we can pretty much safely assume that all of the world’s chipmunks are as intelligent as people in this film’s universe which means that they should probably have their own schools and things. In fact, this film would have been awesome if it had been about all the chipmunks coming out of the woods and trying to get equal rights. I suppose it wouldn’t have made a very good kids film but it’d be interesting.
Meanwhile the evil record producer from the first film, Ian (David Cross) has fallen on hard times since losing the deal with Alvin and Co. Luckily for him a package arrives containing the Chipettes and so he begins his attempted domination of the music industry all over again.

Back at school and all the girls go crazy over the fact that they have the superstars at their school and it seem as though they’d very much like the arboreal rodents to fuck them… No. I’m sorry, I’d done with an in depth synopsis. Basically, the school needs money to keep it’s music program going. Both the Chipmunks and the Chipettes enter a contest to help the school win the money and in the end they join forces. Oh, and Alvin briefly joins the football team and shirks the responsibilities of being in the group, much to Simon and Theodore’s chagrin. Oh, and David Cross loses the Chipettes, leaving him to pretend to be them with the aid of two sock puppets at a gig in the Staples Center. It might actually be the only funny bit in the entire film.

I really don’t know what can be said about this film. There’s so much to moan and bitch about here but it seems so futile since the third one will be out later this year and yes, I’ll probably end up watching that as well because I am a glutton for CGI rodent-based punishment. So I’ll just sum up several ridiculous points in some face book statuses written whilst watching it: “Wh-Why are the chipmunks going to high school? They gotta be abut 8 at the most… Which is about the average life expectancy of chipmunks in captivity so I assume this ends with Dave crying as they slowly die of old age.”, “Female CGI chipmunks should not be trying to be sexy. I need to burn my eyes out.”, “You’d think rodents would be excused from dodgeball…”, “WHY DOES EVERYONE LOVE THE CHIPMUNKS SINGING? IT SOUNDS LIKE HOW CHIPMUNKS MIGHT SOUND IF THEY COULD SING I.E. SQUEAKY AND NOT GOOD.”, “A CHIPMUNK CAN’T PLAY AMERICAN FOOTBALL! THERE ARE SEVERAL REASONS AS TO WHY THIS IS A FACT!” “You’re not good with heights? You’re an arboreal rodent, you fucking moron.” That’s just a small taste of the lunacy of this movie.

In summary, fuck this movie. It gets half a pint out of five and that’s for the ending with David Cross in drag. Laterz.

After a few weeks of blip.tv issues and painfully slow internet connections, I finally present the Cinepub drunken video review of Transformers: Dark of the Moon.

I take a drunken look at the Spider-man reboot trailer. Sorry about the audio only portion of this. New camera and I’m still trying to figure it out. Also, I was quite drunk.

In the interest of keeping this thing spoiler-free, this will be a short review. However, if you‘ve seen the film or don‘t care about spoilers then I recommend this site for a pretty damn funny summary which concisely lists every criticism I have as well.

I’ve come pretty late to the whole Green Lantern thing. In general I find Marvel’s Universe far more interesting and the only DC character I’ve had a really strong interest in has been Batman because he’s fucking Batman. Green Lantern always seemed, well, kinda lame to me. Didn’t really understand a great deal about the character except that he had a magical ring and he didn’t like the colour yellow. Still I decided it was time to rectify that situation and so I read the Sinestro Corps Wars and the war between all the colours that followed as well as a little bit of Blackest Night and I was quite surprised by the whole thing. I liked the concept of the whole ‘space cops’ thing and the emotional spectrum (although willpower is absolutely in no way an emotion).

So I had a little bit of background and some understanding of the Green Lantern universe when I went in to see the film starring Ryan Reynolds as Hal Jordan, Blake Lively as Carol Ferris, Peter Sarsgaard as Hector Hammond and Mark Strong as Sinestro, the most subtlely named character in the history of fiction until the Decepticons came along. And let me tell you right now, I am glad I had that slight bit of background because I honestly don’t know how you’d have a fucking clue as to what’s going on in this film if you didn’t. The films opens with a short bit about how and why the Lantern Corps were formed and after that things are just pretty much shown or stated to be a certain way and you just kinda have to accept it. I’m not saying the film should stop and explain in excruciating detail why things are the way they are in the Green Lantern universe but not just being thrown into the deep end would probably be nice.

Now, when I first saw the movie, I didn’t think it was really deserved the critical nut shot it seemed to be getting. Sure, the film was flawed but not nearly as flawed as people said and I originally chalked this up to people perhaps not having the little bit of background that I had gone into the film with but since that time I’ve kind of rethought a few things and, whilst I still don’t think it’s as terrible as has been reported, I do think it’s a more flawed film than I originally did.

For one, the best part of the film was probably the stuff on Oa and I was certainly pissed off with how little of that stuff there was. Hal’s training seems to consist of three lessons which I suppose is all it takes to understand how to responsibly use a weapon with practically limitless destructive power. Compare the way that “Thor” balanced the scenes of Earth and Asgard to the way this film did things and you’ll see why Thor is a much more highly regarded film.

Also, considering this film is supposed to be about a superhero, Hal isn’t particularly heroic. There are scenes where he does nothing to help anyone until the girl he wants to fuck’s life is in danger, scenes where he’s hanging around waiting to stop the villain whilst the villain tortures and kills people and in the scene where he first discovers his power, he isn’t trying to save a baby from traffic or an elderly woman from a terrible fall, no he’s fighting outside a bar with men who he got fired earlier that day due to his own reckless actions. Sure the guys started on him and the first giant emerald fist he generated was accidental but still, to continue beating up these guys with your magical space ring considering you ruined their lives is the height of douchiness.

Ok, I can already feel myself wanting to get into spoilers. In fact, I‘ll give one here but in white text so it will be unreadable if you don‘t highlight it. Why does Sinestro take the yellow ring at the end of the film? I understand that it’s to set up the sequel but at no point during the film did he ever seem anything but an honourable, upstanding member of the Green Lantern Corps. Maybe a hint that something else was going on with Sinestro would have been good but no. Instead we just get a completely 180 degree character turn for no reason other than the need to set up a sequel. Terrible. At the end of the day, Green Lantern is an interesting concept that should have been handled far, far better than it was. I was expecting a film about a group of space cops, defending the universe with as little time spent on Earth as was necessary. Instead what I got felt a kind of crappy, bog standard superhero film. The scenes on Oa almost felt like they were an afterthought, something that the filmmakers felt they had to put in to appease fans and in order to set up their sequel. In the end, Green Lantern gets 2.5 pints out of 5

There is a certain ranking I have for superheroes in my head when it comes to the degree with which I care about the films that are going to be made about them. Certain characters such as Batman and Deadpool (Fuck you X-Men Origins: Wolverine) rank very highly on this list. Others such as Aquaman and Hawkeye don’t rank quite as highly. Thor was definitely on the lower end of the scale. I’ve never really read any Thor comics and find the actual Norse mythology far more interesting than modern adaptations or interpretations of it.

Add to that the fact that during it’s production all I really remember hearing was problem after problem after problem. Reports of bickering between cast members and the fact that the rumour that Brian Blessed would be playing Odin turned out not to be true left me not really expecting much. I was also concerned with just how they’d manage to mix the seemingly magical elements of the character with the seemingly scientifically-based (admittedly comic book science but still) universe that had already been established. Still, it was part of the Avengers experience as a whole and therefore I had to see it.

Well, when all’s said and done I have to admit that I massively, massively underestimated this movie. I don’t know if my low expectations somehow increased my enjoyment of this film but I have to say that enjoy it I did. In fact, I enjoyed it immensely.

The film manages to weave the elements of the Immortals on Asgard and, after Thor’s banishment, the mortals on Earth incredibly well. In fact I remember whilst watching this film, enjoying the opening sequence on Asgard that leads to the Thunder God’s exile, thinking that things would probably get disappointing once the focus shifted to Earth but to my surprise they didn’t. There was a definite shift with the film becoming a lot more comedic with all kinds of misunderstandings stemming from the fact that Thor doesn’t know how things work on Earth but it’s still very, very enjoyable.

What was perhaps the biggest relief was that this film managed to avoid falling into the trap that ‘Iron Man 2‘ fell into which was sacrificing an actual decent film in order to just cram as much setup for ‘The Avengers’ as possible. S.H.I.E.L.D. are back and serve as, well, not villains per se but they are certainly an obstacle for the heroes of this film. They actually advance the plot to some degree in this film rather than just get in the way of the actual story as they seemed to do in ‘Iron Man 2′.

Perhaps what surprised me the most was just how much was drawn from Norse mythology. I was expecting Asgard and the Immortals but I certainly wasn’t expecting things like the Frost Giants, the Bifröst or Yggdrasil to be mentioned or just how well they were turned into believable concepts within the Marvel universe. I’m assuming this all comes from the comics and, if so, I might have to give ‘em a read.

The casting for the film was well done, especially Chris Hemsworth (though I felt there were occasions where his accent slipped a bit though not terribly so) who was incredibly likeable as the exiled immortal and manages the transition of his character from one state of mind to another very well. The scenes between him, Anthony Hopkins as Odin and Tom Hiddleston as Loki are really, really good. In fact after watching the film I can’t help but wonder if that previously mentioned on-set bickering, apparently between Hopkins and Hemsworth with Hopkins saying the young actor wasn’t very good, wasn’t just Hopkins being a bit method becasue I found the interactions between them to be some of the most believable interactions in the whole film.

All the other actors turned in good performances especially Natalie Portman as Thor’s love interest Jane Foster who manages to balance being a serious scientist who’s just a little bit ditzy and clumsy around her affections quite well and I’d be remiss if I didn’t mention Stellan Skarsgård who comes of as very likeable as the scientist looking out for Jane and who teaches a valuable lesson about trying to keep up with a Norse God whilst drinking.

Christ, this is getting long, isn’t it? Well, I’ll just end off with some notes about the visual effects and the 3D. ‘Thor’ is a very good looking film. There are shots of Asgard and space which just look incredible and left me a little awe-struck. Hell, the end credits just has shots of the camera moving through galaxies and nebulae and it looks incredible. Not often can that be said about a credits sequence… Maybe J.J. Abrams ‘Star Trek’… I digress. Speaking of the end credits, make sure you stick around after them for another quick scene building up to ‘The Avengers’.

If there’s one complaint I have about the visual effects, it’s the scenes of Thor flying. I can’t quite put my finger on why but for some reason it just looked a little silly. Maybe it’s because Thor’s feet seemed to be sticking out like he was still standing on solid ground and at this point, thanks to things like ‘Iron Man’ I’ve gotten used to more streamlined flying effects I dunno, it just seemed a little ridiculous. As for the 3D, well, I actually kinda enjoyed it for the most part which is odd for me to say. For the first time I actually saw the benefit of it being used to give just a bit of depth to the world, something I didn’t see in ‘Avatar’. That being said I still recommend seeing it in 2D. The reason is simple. There are some scenes, namely anything involving the realm of the Frost Giants, that are so dark that you sometimes find yourself straining to figure out what is going on thanks to the darkening effect of those fucking glasses.

So overall I shall give ‘Thor’ 4.5 pints out of 5. I honestly think I enjoyed it even more than the first ‘Iron Man’ by just a little bit. It wasn’t as action packed but I really didn’t mind that and the action that there was was solid unlike the disappointing “Hero versus Enemy with similar or identical powers” battles at the end of ‘Iron Man’ and ‘The Incredible Hulk’. So yeah, go see it and that. Laterz.