Eden Lake (2008)

Starring Michael Fassbender before he really made it big and Kelly Reilly who most people will probably recognise as Mrs Watson in the Guy Ritchie Sherlock Holmes films. I had heard of this film and all I had heard was that a couple go to the lake and are terrorized by feral teens. It really is about this but is so much worse because of how it is delivered and how it goes as the film goes on. There is a reality within the delivery that actually disturbed me when watching it. You can believe the situation and when the escalation starts the reasoning is believable even if they are extreme, however you can see the reasons for the decisions being logical to the people making them.

You follow Steve and Jenny a nice couple who in very few words and actions you come to understand their relationship and their personalities and then you see their first few interactions with the youths. Before that you have also had a perception of society that can create children like those in the film. The pub scene and the beer garden are very important for the message the film is delivering. This film is disturbing in a tension building way as you know something is going to go down. When it does I think that it is delivered excellently and it is scary in it's reality.

The situation escalates for all involved, this is part of the story, how one decision leads to the next. There is the fact that being in a gang is cool but following a leader who you do not know where they will go can lead to many issues. There are some issues I have with what the main characters choose to do, I understand why they do it but it is not how I would have reacted and not the choices I would have made. Overall if you want to see a well made terror filled film with a disturbing message give this film a go, I would give this 4 out of 5 stars.

Jonah Hex (2010)

Film of 2012 #3
Spoilers

This film is so silly it is unbelievable, that is fine as it is a comic book, as I have no affiliation to any comic books I have no idea if it is a true and good representation of what the writer was looking to achieve. It is also a strange set up as it is an origin movie but also the main tale so fast and pushy and could have been done better with cleaner points and less forced in to the start.

You have Josh Brolin playing a scarred hero who came so close to death he can speak to dead people, well fun but used poorly in my thoughts, it seemed to be big enough of a point to mention and then they do use it but not as much as I thought as it really was his only super power as such. Megan Fox, I think had they got an unknown actress there would have been less screen time and less points for the character as really she was extra weight that was not needed, I did think she did what she needed to do quite well actually.

Overall though you have so much crammed in at the start that would have worked if Jonah Hex was like Batman, Spiderman or Superman, so well known everybody knows the source material and the origin story, they could have gone with the cut down, I just feel that they should have done something different with what is not a bad Steam Punk world. I would avoid this film and it only gets one star from me.

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.

X-Men:First Class (2011)

So after hearing some excellent reviews about the latest installment of the X-Men franchise I was keen to see it on the big screen, throw in James McAvoy and Michael Fassbender and I was sold on seeing it. I really enjoyed it there were enough mutant powers with enough weaknesses that you did not think well they would rule the world. The performances in the film from the other characters was also very good with January Jones as Emma Frost, Rose Byrne as Moira McTaggert, Nicholas Hoult as Hank all standing out to me and Kevin Bacon as Sebastian Shaw was truly brilliant.

The only flaw in the film for me is the fact that it is a prequal, you suffer in the fact that you know where it is going to end up so the story is fully reliant on the journey and often that is not enough. This manages it well enough for me, I think that it is probably because i do not know that much about the X-Men except from the cartoon and the previous films, but I hope that it leads to other films in this world, even a continuation from the end of this film ignoring what happened in the original 3.

So I am saying 4 stars for this, the 1 star taken off as I was not that gripped, the threat scenes lose a lot as you know who survives to the end as it is a prequal.