Scorpion King 3: Battle for Redemption review

Now, one of my guilty pleasures (well, not guilty- there’s nothing guilty about it!) is the original Scorpion King movie. The Rock is cool, there’s just no getting around that fact. And this is coming from someone who never watched any of that wrestling stuff in his life!

I was surprised to see there was a third instalment of the story, as I wasn’t even aware that there had been a second one.

Anyway, this one seems to pick up right at the end of the second movie- we get a quick synopsis of what has went before, and are then plunged straight into the action.

Victor Webster plays warrior Mathayus with gusto but no matter how hard he tries, he is not the White Dwarf of charisma that The Rock is. Horus, king of Egypt and sometime Hellboy Ron Pearlman hires him for a job, but things go complicated and there’s a load of double crossing and stuff. And something about a magic necklace and the Book of the Dead from the original Mummy movie. To be honest, it lost me a bit, but luckily there are characters who helpfully explain the plot every few scenes.

Also in the mix is a wildly overacting Billy Zane who, to his credit, is putting a lot of effort into his role as the evil brother of Pearlman’s character.

The special effects are not quite up to the standard of the huge budget original, and neither is the acting (which isn’t, I admit, saying much!).

This is very much one of those movies you watch with your brain in neutral. It is perfect Saturday night beer and pizza fodder.

Oh, and there are elephants. And ninjas. And ninjas riding elephants. That has to be a good thing, right?

Scorpion King 3 is released on DVD by Universal on 27^th February and is available to pre-order now.

Johnny English Reborn review

Now, I have never seen the first Johnny English movie. And being as it was released in 2003, this sequel seems a bit out of the blue.

Did we really need a follow-up to a comedy spoof from almost ten years ago, albeit one that was a box office success?

The honest answer to this is, of course, No. We didn’t need this sequel.

The bigger question is: is it any good?

Ah, well, now we get into another territory altogether.

I’ll tell you what I thought of this movie.

I thought it was okay.

There are some very good things about it. First off, the cast is astounding. Atkinson is a fantastic actor, and is surrounded here by some equally incredible talent. Dominic West manages to hold in the swears as a fellow agent and he’s also joined by Gillian Anderson and Rosamund Pike.

Story-wise it is not actually half bad. Yes, the villain is obvious from the beginning, but it a well told and well directed tale with some very good direction and exciting action sequences.

But... there are a number of problems with it. While there are plenty of jokes in there, most of them, for me at least, didn’t quite work. I could not help but think while watching that a comedian and actor with the skill set that Atkinson possesses could probably have come up with better lines himself. And there is also the character of Johnny English himself. The writers can’t seem to decide what to make of him. He is in turn a bumbling fool who can’t see what’s going on right in front of him and a suave, capable, super-spy. Yes, you’ll say I’m overthinking it, but I’m a writer and that’s what I do.

Now, having said all that, I should point out that I watched this movie with my two boys. They both laughed like drains the whole way though and proclaimed it was brilliant, even pointing out the occasions where I laughed out loud.

So, perhaps I’m saying that cynical 40-something writers may not be the target audience of what was an admittedly fun movie, so perhaps you should bear that in mind when considering my opinion!

Johnny English: Reborn is released on DVD and Blu-Ray by Universal on 13^th Februay and is available for pre-order now. 

The Clinic review

The first shock in this movie comes at the very beginning, and it has nothing to do with the movie itself. No, it is the sight of the wonderful Andy Whitfield in the male lead role that was a bit of a jolt, and just served to bring how much he’ll be missed in the role of Spartacus.
Anyway, on with the movie!
The story starts on Christmas Eve 1979 in the Australian desert, which is another jolt for those of us used to freezing cold snow and bitter winds at that time of year. So we join a young couple as they head across country for the holidays. Stopping off at a cheap motel for the night, things start to go bad when Cameron (Whitfield) finds his pregnant fiancée Beth (Tabrett Bethell) has gone missing.

So far so horror movie. But this movie quickly sends the viewer in a different direction than the one the viewer may be expecting from the set-up. While we see some of Whitfield doing the strong husband act and trying to find out what has happened to his wife (really Australians – do you really dislike your country cousins that much? Or is every remote Australian town inhabited exclusively by sinister weirdoes?), this is very much Bethell’s movie. 

And, I should warn you, it is a grim one. She wakes up in a bath full of ice to find that her baby has been removed and we follow her as she and a group of other women who have had the same thing happen to them try to find out just what the hell has happened to them while they are being staked through the clinic by a mysterious figure...

The story itself has a nice (nice is not the word really, but you know what I mean!) old school horror story feel to it. To me it has the atmosphere of one of the novels of Richard Laymon. If you are unfamiliar with his work, I suggest you check him out, he really is one of the unsung masters of the horror genre.
To me true horror, as I am sure I have said here before, is where people are doing bad things to other people. I find supernatural horror to be much less scary than ‘real’ horror. And that is not to say that movies like Hostel, Saw 58 and the like are scary. They are not. There is a difference between meanness and gore and scaring people.
And there are scares in this. There is a touch of the Saws about it in places, but this is not a torture-porn gorefest, although there is some gore in there.
No, there is an actual story going on here, and while I was a bit annoyed at a brief flirtation with a possible supernatural element, this was explained well in a rather nice twist. Yes, the twist does require the viewer to swallow a gigantic coincidence or two, but that’s okay.

And pleasingly for a modern horror movie, after all the darkness and death and misery, it was nice to have a genre movie that ends on a note that could be interpreted as hope for a change!

The Clinic is released on DVD by Universal on 17^th October.

The home of Horror... Universal Pictures (UK) Ltd presents...

  This Autumn almost 100 years since the studio made its very first horror films; Universal unveils some of its iconic titles in a new collection of Blu-ray and DVD releases – available from 3^rd October 2011.

·         The Best of Cult Sci-Fi

·         The Best of Cult Sci-Fi is a collection of some of the most instantly recognisable and most-watched cult horror films on this planet. From alien invasions to radiation disasters, this four film box set is designed to entertain and will make you jump! To coincide with the hotly anticipated theatrical remake of The Thing this December, this box set includes the original 1950s Sci-Fi classic The Thing From Another World (1951), plus other must-own moviesCreature From The Black Lagoon (1954), The Incredible Shrinking Man (1957) and It Came From Outer Space (1953).The box set comes packed with a wealth of bone chilling bonus features including commentaries and featurettes. RRP: £19.99

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·         The Best of Classic Horror

·         Some of the greatest horror actors of all time appear in this incredible gothic gore DVD collection. The great Bela Lugosi, Boris Karloff, Lon Chaney and Elsa Lanchester, as the mesmerising and beautiful bride of Frankenstein, appear as some of the scariest characters on film.  A must for every fan, this boxset of four iconic horror films is a nail-biting round-up of some of Universal’s most memorable all-time horror movies – Frankenstein (1931), Dracula (1931), Bride of Frankenstein (1935) and The Wolfman (1941). With an array of special features spread across the discs the Best of Classic Horror is the perfect Halloween purchase.

·          Also available as single DVDs is a range of newly released Classic Universal titles including House of Dracula, Frankenstein Meets The Wolfman and The Creature From The Black Lagoon. BOX SET RRP: £19.99, SINGLE DVD RRP: XXX