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Showing posts with the label george clooney

BURN AFTER READING - REVIEW

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Back in 2008, the Coen Brothers delivered Burn After Reading , an off-beat comedy about a group of idiotic nobodies who find themselves entangled in a ridiculous plot involving an ex-CIA operative and his leaked memoirs. On paper, this is very much the template for most Coen Brothers comedies with a clueless ensemble having to run around a nonsensical maze of misunderstandings. And yet, Burn After Reading is very different than the filmmakers' earlier works in the same genre like The Big Lebowski or even Raising Arizona . The main difference here is that there essentially isn't a plot in this film with characters all working towards their own individual goals without there being one overarching storyline to link it all together. If anything, the CIA is the only common element throughout but with the exception of John Malkovitch's character, who gets fired from the organisation early on, no-one else is directly linked to the CIA and the latter doesn't interfere wit

TOMORROWLAND - VLOG 04/07/15

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I review Disney's latest George Clooney-starring flopbuster Tomorrowland .

TOMORROWLAND - REVIEW

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Disney's new expensive venture Tomorrowland , which is based on their very own theme park attraction, was all set to become a brand new Pirates Of The Caribbean money machine with early word-of-mouth being positive and released stills looking pretty good. Sadly, the film flopped and that even ended up costing us Tron 3 . Add to that critics not exactly raving about it after the film's international release and you've got yourself another big disappointment for the Mouse House. You'd think that spending $200M on the likes of The Lone Ranger and John Carter would have taught the company some restraint but no. Once again, here we have a relatively enjoyable kids' movie with fab visuals but not much else. The idea of a parallel dimension with some perfect futuristic utopia that may not be all that perfect after all was a good one and the ambition director Brad Bird brings to the table is commendable. You can tell there was a genuine attempt here to take the far

THE MONUMENTS MEN - REVIEW

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George Clooney's latest film, The Monuments Men , sets out to tell the little-told true story of a group of ageing American soldiers (and a French dude) whose mission it was to recover as many precious art pieces as possible from the nazis who had stolen them from all over an occupied France. The film opens by giving us some background and Clooney's lieutenant is soon off to gather his team of all-stars including Matt Damon, Bill Murray, John Goodman, Jean Dujardin, Bob Balaban and Hugh Boneville... together at last! After a promising Indiana Jones-esque first few minutes involving Cate Blanchett's cartoonish French (at least I think that's what she was going for) spy, the film's tone switches to something more akin to Stripes or the MASH TV series before occasionally dipping back into serious mode. Clooney clearly wanted to even out the film by putting in a sad, emotional moment for every jokey, light-hearted scene, Disney-style, but, after watching The Monu

GRAVITY - VLOG 17/11/13

GRAVITY - REVIEW

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If there's one thing we've really learned, since the resurfacing of 3D, it's that cramming a movie with CGI, no matter how good, does not make a great film. Avatar got away with it at the box-office, so did Alice In Wonderland (though the critics panned it) and John Carter simply didn't. So here comes another over-hyped example. It's called Gravity . Now, critics love this movie: it's Oscar-bait at its purest. Gravity is a concept movie with two main leads: George Clooney, who is going for the quirky and loveable Best Supporting Actor nomination and Sandra Bullock, who is going for the big prize. No plot, no brains, no point but boy is it trying. I'll give the film that: it looks pretty good. You're clearly looking at buckets of CGI with tons of stuff flying at you to cater for the 3D aspect but the effects are solid enough to make you suspend your disbelief. Bullock's character is the rookie who somehow got a job in space despite her ner

FROM DUSK TILL DAWN - REVIEW

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Written by none other than Quentin Tarantino, From Dusk Till Dawn was Robert Rodriguez's follow-up to Desperado and was further proof that the director was indeed one the most fun, rock n' roll filmmakers around. The film is one of two halves. The first hour is dedicated to George Clooney and Quentin Tarantino, who play two brothers, criminals on their way to Mexico. After leaving carnage behind them, they take a family hostage in a winnebago and finally make it through the border. The goal was to spend the night in some dodgy trucker bar beautifully called "The Titty Twister", wait for Cheech Marin (who plays like 3 roles in this) and go their separate ways come dawn. Unfortunately, and this is a pretty big spoiler if you've never seen the movie and you're planning to watch it, the bar turns out to be packed full of blood-thirsty vampires. The second half of the film is basically all about our heroes (and anti-heroes) fighting off vampires in the blo