Real Movie Views

In this prequel to the Underworld franchise, we follow Lucian from birth to his liberation from slavery under the vampires, where begins in earnest the centuries-old war between Lycan and vampire.

Starring: Michael Sheen, Bill Nighy and Rhona Mitra

Movie Release: January 23, 2009

Genre: Action/Fantasy/Horror

Running Time: 93 minutes

Visually this movie is stunning.  With seamless CGI effects, dramatic lighting and perfectly choreographed and suspenseful fight scenes, director Patrick Tatapoulos pulls all the thrillingly eerie feel of the previous Underworld movies into this third installment.  The costuming is at times brilliant and at others merely awkward, but one supposes vampires get to flaunt fashion in any manner they choose.  The actors’ performances were, while not mind-blowing, more than adequate to the occasion and one suspects that Michael Sheen (Lucian), Bill Nighy (Viktor) and Rhona Mitra (Sonja) have quite a bit more in them if given the proper script.  In short, each technical segment of the movie came together to produce a film of fair-to-good quality which the easily satisfied moviegoer will find quite enjoyable.  If that sounds like praise so faint as to be damning, that’s because it is.

Where this movie fails is in the story.  The writers took an approximately twenty-second flashback from the first movie and expanded it into an entire script.  Stunningly, they manage to do this without giving Underworld fans a single scrap of new information.  At the end of the movie, one knows no more than what one already saw in the twenty-second flashback.  Rise of the Lycans can be best defined by what it does not have, and that is never a good sign.  It has no additional backstory.  It – inexplicably, due to the first movie’s proof of his importance during that timeline – has no Kraven.  It has no Kate Beckinsale, not even an expansion on her backstory, though we know this, too, happened at that point in the timeline or thereabouts.  It’s a movie about war and it has no war.  One blink-and-you-miss-it battle and the occasional short fight scene do not a war movie make.

Rise of the Lycans offers little more than a love story, and one the viewer has trouble working up excitement for as we’ve already seen the interesting bits.  The main focus of the plot is to instruct the viewer, with agonizing slowness, that Lucian and Sonja are deeply in love.  We don’t get to watch this happen either, however.  The viewer is introduced to the story after the fact.  Once we’ve been treated to eighty minutes of heartfelt assurances of this forbidden love, Sonja is killed.  We already knew this would happen.  We’ve even seen the death scene in a previous movie.  It is boring.  With the casus belli in place, the movie wraps up with Lucian on the verge of open warfare with vampires for personal reasons and leading Lycans with more general social indignities fueling their vengeance.

All in all, a decent movie but a poorly written and redundant story.  Rise of the Lycans lives to disappoint.

Transformers 2 Revenge of the Fallen

The plot:
The battle for Earth has ended. After returning to Cybertron, Starscream takes control of the Decepticons, and has decided to return to Earth with force. The Autobots believing that peace was possible finds out that Megatron’s dead body has been stolen from the US Military by Skorpinox and revives him using his own spark. Megatron is now back seeking revenge and with Starscream and more Decepticon reinforcements on the way, the Autobots with reinforcements of their own, may have more to deal with then meets the eye. – some extracts taken from www.imdb.com

Transformers 2

I for one loved the first installment of Transformers, a childhood favorite has developed into an adult addiction. Michael Bay took some critisism on the first with the long intense, sometimes hard to follow fight scenes but generally it was a worldwide hit.

The plot seems acceptable for the second story, I don’t think anyone thought Megatron was killed off, well I didn’t – but with the second in the series more of our old characters will also be making an appearance. There have been rumours that Devastator, the deceptcon who is made up from other robots is back. For the auto bots and Prime, possibly a look at the Dinobots.

Whatever the plot and whatever the critics say about this film – it’s going to be a worldwide hit.