Will Smith's back!

Men in Black is a strange movie franchise. It’s not the biggest science fiction movie series ever devised and yet it seems to have an almost cult following these days. Before this year there had been two movies, the second came out five years after the first and it appeared to be the last.

Hollywood had other ideas though, and this summer, ten years after the release of Men in Black 2, Men in Black 3 was released into the universe.

The best action movie since Die Hard.

GOOG GOD HAVE YOU SEEN THE RAID!? That action movie that was out in cinemas for like two days!? If you haven’t then I extremely recommend picking up a copy of it on DVD when it comes out.

The Raid is the best action movie to mole its way into cinemas since Die Hard. It is action in its purest form. It doesn’t mess around, it doesn’t waste your time, it just throws you straight into the action from the moment the curtain goes up!

The movie is about a team of Special Forces who are tasked to raiding an apartment block ran by an organised crime drug-lord maniac. It mainly focuses on one of the team members who is seen as a rookie but has more weaponry in one of his fists than the whole of North Korea!

More Burton Reimaginings.

Tim Burton returned to the director’s chair to create another film with Johnny Depp and Helena Bonham Carter in it. This one was based on an old American soap style sit-com from the 1960s called Dark Shadows. At least I think it’s a comedy...

I’m not really sure what to think about this movie. First of all I don’t really know what this movie is… Is it a comedy? It’s based on a comedy, but this really doesn’t feel like one. So maybe it’s a drama? It’s too light-hearted to be that either. Horror? Well there are some horror elements to it but calling this a horror movie would be like calling Jurassic Park a comedy because John Hammond really hates Ian Malcolm…

So I’ve had to settle with the genre: movie.

Marvelous.

This year was Marvel’s year to finally bring out the movie they’ve been leading up to for what seems like forever! Yes, after four years and five movies The Avengers finally assembled and none too soon as it seems all kinds of evil is conveniently waiting to destroy the world!

The hype  around this movie was so massive I was almost apprehensive about actually seeing it due to the inevitable disappointment that comes with over-hyped movies. It’s happened quite a few times to me, Avatar for example, but I can say with great pleasure that The Avengers is not such disappointment!

Boom.

Thankfully this year there will be no helping of Transformers movies, this is something we all should cherish. However when one door closes another opens; this year’s explosion extraordinaire also comes from Hasbro: Battleship.

I know, it sounds ridiculous but there is a movie based on the game Battleship. You know B2: Miss D7: Hit. That sort of thing. It’s hardly the kind of thing you’d expect to see getting a movie made about it, but here we are.

Battleship is all about, well battleships. There isn’t much else to it really apart from the fact this isn’t blue battleships vs red battleships, this is battleships vs ALIENS! Because as we all know adding Aliens makes your movie a whole lot better! Case in point Indiana Jones 4.

Arrrrrrrrrdman.

Aardman returned to the silver screen relatively quickly after the festive release of Arthur Christmas last year with The Pirates! In an Adventure with Scientists. It’s a little different to Arthur Christmas in that it’s reverted back to its original style of using placticine models instead of computer animation.

There wasn’t anything wrong with the computer animation in Arthur Christmas, but I do prefer Aardman material that uses the typical placticine models. Imagine Wallace and Gromit done solely using computer animation; it’d be horrible!

The Pirates! In an Adventure with Scientists is actually a very good movie filled with all the Aardman charm you’ve come to expect. It’s charming, witty, well animated, has a great script, some controversial characters and has impeccable timing throughout the entire thing.

Originality will get you nowhere.

Disney released its big money blockbuster John Carter this year and it bombed so badly it has been declared the biggest flop in cinema history with losses of over $200 million.

But was it really that bad? Well, no actually it wasn’t. In fact I thought it was pretty good which is quite sad considering nobody saw it because they figured it must be bad because of the unfortunate box office figures.

The movie is about a man, surprisingly called John Carter, who is a bit of a loner living in the old West. While in an unwanted skirmish between cowboys and Indians Carter ends up in a strange cave with stranger spiderlike markings on the floor and walls. Whilst in the cave he’s attacked by a random cloaked man from a divine cult, but he manages to kill him and ends up warping to the planet Barsoom (Mars) thanks to an old artefact the cloaked man had.