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croftwesley
Reviews
Paranormal Activity 3 (2011)
Is it a coincidence I fell asleep TWICE?
I didn't go to see this at the cinema. I waited for the DVD and in all honesty, buying that was more than enough I should've spent. A painfully boring story, uninteresting characters and a conclusion duller than a coma is a good way to cure insomnia and a good way to describe PA3.
The cast aren't that bad but just not that good either. The girls portraying a young Kristi and Katie do a grand job and add some genuine tension and suspense to the story. The rest of the cast are amicable but I guess it could be because there are more than are needed.
The plot had bite at first but lost it's flare 30 minutes in and there was honestly nothing interesting happening in the film until the final half which did get pretty hot. But then the credits rolled! The last 10 minutes although looked chilling, it was just outrageous and pathetic. I remember the first film went out with a few jumpy scenes. PA2 I believe improved on the first film but this has no direction.
A lot of the scenes that were featured in the trailer was strangely left out of the final film which annoyed me a little given the fact that they obviously filmed the scenes so why leave them out? And they looked pretty good too.
Fans of the PA series will be pleased to know that this cow is going to be milked for a while judging by the amount of revenue each movie pulls in against it's budget. But it would be nice for future films to feature new characters altogether so the concept doesn't get boring and dry which is what has undoubtedly happened to Paranormal Activity 3.
Resident Evil: Afterlife (2010)
Truthfully not a bad film!
I was excited about Afterlife when I saw the trailers featuring Wesker and other familiar characters. This film is honestly a good entry in the series and does do the Resident Evil series proud I think. I almost given up on the series after the absolutely dreadful Extinction before.
Another good factor that improved on the previous instalment is that Paul Anderson took over once more as writer/director and I think he's done a very good job.
The inclusion of more characters from Resident Evil 5 also made me like the film more being a massive fan of the game. Although the executioner made his way halfway into the film, his being there wasn't really explained and I feel that he was included just for cameo fun but was still good to see him.
The characters all have flare and spark and none of them behave in a chaotic or headless chicken kinda way which is something I find irritating in an action film sometimes, but I didn't see anyone hamming it up.
The story does pace well and has some good locations, set pieces and a lot of artistic style (the opening scene in Tokyo in the rain is a good one). I did get lost in the plot now and then and I think some characters didn't have a lot of time to shine (Chris, Jill and Wesker mainly). Also I'm not fully switched on to Alice and her predicament.
If you're a fan of Resident Evil, then there is no reason whatsoever why you would turn this down. I genuinely believe these films have transisted well from video game. I'm a fan of the series apart from the aforementioned Extinction but you won't be disappointed with this one. A few minor plot holes and untied knots but a great film overall.
P.S, my only drag with the film which I did laugh at was that amongst all the bullets flying, not one character in the entire movie reloaded their weapons!!!
Rising Damp (1980)
If you've seen the series, you've seen the movie
To begin with, I'm a massive fan of Rising Damp on the small screen and I've watched every episode countless times. When I first saw the movie I was quite eager to see all the original cast reunited (except from Richard Beckinsale who died tragically, he was a great actor).
If you are a big fan of the old TV episodes, then I would genuinely find absolutely nothing new here whatsoever. I was watching this movie with my jaw on the floor because I was stunned at how much of the scripts and scenes have been recycled from the TV series! Virtually everything that occurs in this movie is just re-done. I'm only glad that other writers of classic comedies didn't have this way of getting their shows on the big screen. Maybe if the writers thought of an original story instead of repeating old scripts word for word then this could have been so much better. Don't bother.