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PIRATES OF THE CARIBBEAN: DEAD MAN'S CHEST - REVIEW

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After the resounding success of The Curse Of The Black Pearl , director Gore Verbinski and the original cast returned with a sequel to the Disney ride-based blockbuster franchise and it was even more successful at the box-office despite critics giving it lukewarm reviews. Pirates Of The Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest introduced audiences to a new cursed pirate crew led by octopus-faced villain Davy Jones (Bill Nighy) and gave us more Jack Sparrow (Johnny Depp), which made sense at the time seeing how popular the character was. The plot is almost as straight-forward as the original film's with Jack, Will Turner (Orlando Bloom) and Elizabeth Swann (Keira Knightley) all somehow finding themselves at sea looking for a key and a chest in order to steal Davy Jones' disembodied heart. Simple enough to grasp in a short synopsis but in practice, this sequel increasingly juggles plot threads without actually moving things forward leaving you to wonder why the plot is stagnating. T

PIRATES OF THE CARIBBEAN: THE CURSE OF THE BLACK PEARL - REVIEW

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Before Disney decided to remake all of its classic animated films in a big way, the studios turned to theme park rides for inspiration (as you do) and picked one of their oldest and most popular to adapt into a big budget feature film. And so we got Pirates Of The Caribbean: The Curse Of The Black Pearl . The 2003 supernatural swashbuckler would, of course, become a significant success and spawn several sequels but we really didn't know what to expect from this first instalment. The pirate genre hadn't exactly been a hit in a while, if ever, so this was a risk for Disney. Produced by Jerry Bruckheimer and directed by Gore Verbinski, The Curse Of The Black Pearl was by no means a cheap, small scale project but the risk paid off in the end. The plot sees Elizabeth Swann (Keira Knightley), the daughter of a wealthy Governor, help rescue young shipwrecked pirate Will Turner (Orlando Bloom) during a sail. She finds a golden medallion around his neck and decides to keep it. Ye

JACK RYAN: SHADOW RECRUIT - REVIEW

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Here's a movie so memorable it took me like a month to realise I hadn't even officially reviewed it yet... Yes, Jack Ryan: Shadow Recruit was this year's new attempt to bring the late Tom Clancy's character Jack Ryan to the screen in a big-budget blockbuster action thriller. The film was directed by Kenneth Branagh and stars Branagh himself as the big bad cartoon Russian villain while Ryan is portrayed by Chris "Captain Kirk" Pine. The film opens on Jack Ryan studying economics in London before witnessing the 9/11 attacks on TV. This somehow leads him to become a top dog marine in the US army but, after a helicopter crash, he is soon dragged to hospital where he slowly but surely learns to walk again and regain his strength. Eventually, Kevin Costner's CIA agent shows up and hires him for a mission which would involve Ryan checking out if the Russians aren't maybe doing some shady deals with the markets, which, it turns out, they are. Ryan is se