Frightnight (2011)

Film of 2012 #7
No Spoilers

Another 80's film that got remade to the 2000's, in all honesty the original was cheesy horror comedy with more campness than anything else and in all honesty it was not the greatest film in the world it was quite like Monster Squad great through nostalgia. So the remake stars a fairly strong cast with Colin Farrell, Anton Yelchin, David Tennant, Imogen Poots and Toni Collette. Now it is actually the kind of remake that I can go with, it takes what is a good idea and expands and takes it in  new and interesting direction.

The basic premise is still the same with a vampire living next door to a teenager but they take the characters a lot further than in the original and they also make them quite different in some cases. They do however maintain the basic story and they have a couple of nice references to the original film.

This is the best kind of remake it is not shot for shot it is not just a simple rehash of the original film they take a good idea and expand and explore new and modern ideas. I give this a good 3 stars, while a good remake the film still has some flaws but really worth seeing if you get the chance.

Centurion (2009)

The Roman epic from Director Neil Marshall starring Michael Fassbender as a roman centurion that starts the film escaping from the Picts and linking up with the 9th Legion who have been sent over the border to wipe out the picts. This story is an off shoot and side story from the book the Eagle of the 9th Legion and looks at some survivors of the failed invasion trying to escape from the hostile lands of the north. I have to say that from the outset I was keen to see this film, I really like Neil Marshall as a director and have not disliked anything he has done (Doomsday confused me when i first saw it but still liked it).

This has a wide and varied cast with Michael Fassbender in the role of the Centurion Quintas Dias, Olga Kurylenko as Etain the mute Pict who is vicious and deadly, you then have several actors as Romans in the group trying to get back in to their own territories including David Morrissey and Noel Clarke, you have Axelle Carolyn playing a pict called Aeron, you did not get to see enough from their point of view but when she was on screen she was very good. Imogen Poots was the pict witch that the romans encounter.

Overall this film was a lot of fun with some good bloody battle scenes and some good character development, the only major flaw was that there were too many characters and they could not all get enough screen time so you were left wondering about some of them. Overall though this is 4 star goodness that i will watch again in the future.