Harry Potter And The Deathly Hallows - Part 1

As The Great Soprendo used to say, ‘Piff, Puff, Poof – the first 40 minutes of this are amazing’. After that, he got bored, lost loads of weight and divorced Victoria Wood. Same thing happened to me. Apart from the crash diet and ‘hilarious’ ex-wife bit.

The early scenes are inventive, exciting and exhilarating. I was hugely impressed. But then our heroes go off on a road trip to look for magicky stuff and the fun just stops. Completely. They just mope about in tents and stare wistfully across foggy landscapes. Ocassionally other things happen like a baddie stops the Hogwarts Express and the passengers tell him he’s a bit of a meanie. Then Harry and Hermione have a little dance because they’re fed up and miserable (I knew how they felt).

This is the first Potter film that we’ve taken Luke to and he was really excited. He looked away a couple of times in the scary bits but he did really well. Even he got bored though – two or three times he said “Is it finished yet?”. We had a ton of popcorn and chocolates to keep us going though.

One of the best bits of the film was the specially commissioned animation to show the story of the Deathly Hallows. This had a really quirky style to it and was a real treat after watching some kids hiking for 3 hours. At times it felt like they were doing an amateur dramatic’s version of Lord Of The Rings.

I didn’t hate the film. I just found it really, really dull. All the great characters are barely in it and they were sorely missed. Stretching the book to two films was a definite mistake in my, er, book.

I still reckon the second part could be a bit tasty though.

Skyline

Quick summary, Independence Day in a posh block of flats.

Slightly longer summary, a very silly sci-fi movie with excellent special effects and some of the best, unintentional laughs I can remember in a cinema.

The first half is pretty good and does a decent job of building the tension until the big reveal of the baddie aliens doing their baddie alien thing. From then on, it’s a sprint to the finish full of screaming, Ferrari squashing, running and (from the filmmaker’s) “how the **** are we going to end this?”. The ending they went with is one of the funniest, worst endings of all time. I could sense where it was going but thought there was no way they’d do it. They’re not going to make her say that are they? Yep, they did. I actually laughed out loud at the sheer bravery of its awfulness. Bravo!

I also thoroughly enjoyed the bit where goatee man goes apeshit, mental on one of the aliens and punches it in the face about 300 times. Also the fact that the evil alien bastards all have loads of eyes and yet not one of them spotted the red brain and thought “that one looks a bit off to me”.

A pretty rubbish film then. But rescued from bile by the superb VFX and the downright silliness of it all.

A Nightmare On Elm Street

The 1984 one which 'introduced' Johnny Depp. Watched it with two horror loving chums as wifey was away doing something girly in London. Can remember seeing this as a young lad (got into horror films at a very early age – thanks Lol) and being both scared and fascinated by Freddy.

Didn’t have quite the same effect this time. In fact I found it all a bit silly – especially the bit where Nancy sets traps for old razor fingers which just came across as a weird version of Home Alone. The music was a bit mental too. The main theme is painfully overused and then either sped up or slow down for dramatic effect. Oh and the actress who played Nancy’s mum is absolutely terrible.

Having said that though, the movie’s iconic scenes are just as strong as I remembered. The body bag girl with the bug crawling out of her mouth, Freddy’s claw reaching out between Nancy’s legs in the bath and the freaky marshmallow stairs - definitely the stuff of nightmares.

Quite fancy watching Dream Warriors (part 3) again actually. That was always my favourite.

Sweet dreams…