Monday, May 14, 2012

Dark Shadows




‘Dark Shadows’ was quite different from the original television show. Rather than being serious, this film attempted to be comedic. It was pretty much all over the place.

The film begins with Barnabas Collins (Johnny Depp) being turned into a vampire after he refused to be with a witch, Angelique (Eva Green). Centuries later he is accidentally resurrected and goes to live with the Collins family of 1972. Unfortunately, Angelique kept herself alive for a few centuries herself and owns a rival fishing business near the Collins Manor. Barnabas is determined to make the family business successful again and does everything in his power to restore his family’s former glory.

This film is very corny. It tries too hard to be funny and usually the humorous scenes aren’t funny at all. The cast was all pretty good and the music and atmosphere worked very well together, but the script was just poorly written.

The film starts well enough and gives the audience an idea that it’ll work, but just goes downhill from there. Johnny Depp performed very well, and Michelle Pfeiffer was pretty good, but the film just didn’t bring many laughs and was done very sloppily. Unfortunately, this Burton/Depp film will be forgotten quickly. 2/5.



Friday, May 4, 2012

The Avengers



The Avengers is, quite simply, the best superhero film of all time. It is action-packed, has great acting, and great writing. The film deals with six different superheros: Iron Man (Robert Downey Jr.), Captain America (Chris Evans), The Hulk (Mark Ruffalo), Thor (Chris Hemsworth), The Black Widow (Scarlett Johansson), and Hawkeye (Jeremy Renner). They must band together to defeat Loki, who was also the main villain in the Thor film. All this overseen by the head of S.H.I.E.L.D, Nick Fury (Samuel L. Jackson).

This film was one of the most highly anticapted movies of the year. It delivered everything that was promised. I really enjoyed how the director (Joss Whedon) was able to bring all of these superhero's together and did everything perfectly. The argument was one of my favorite scenes because it felt very realistic and showed that these superhumans had big flaws as well.

Every one of the six superheros was given good screen time in order to showcase their awesomeness. Even Hawkeye, who was absent for the first half of the film, was given ample screen time. The final act is the most powerful, not just because it was a huge battle, but because it showed a lot of what these superheros can do and how they work together. R56J2H5Q8ZG8

Nothing like this film has been done before where characters from other superhero films are brought together. There are so many things in this film that could have gone wrong but didn't. 5/5.