Every Sunday, Gill delves into his archive of over 800 movie reviews and randomly selects three for your enjoyment! Here are this week’s…
Fright Night (2011)
A great remake, a solid vampire flick and a welcome antidote to the overly-gothy, “sexy” vampires that have been pervading pop culture lately. Colin Farrell actually makes a surprisingly good, menacing vampire who puts a new spin on the ever-popular creatures of the night by making him just an average guy who enjoys reality TV and the occasional kidnapping. Christopher Mintz-Plasse also does a great job with a role that could easily have been a throwaway, but the real star of this movie is David Tennant as a Van Helsing-like character disguised as Criss Angel. It’s scary, it’s funny, and while it’s not a masterpiece by any stretch of the imagination, it’s a damn good time at the movies.
3.5 out of 5
Willow
A terrific fantasy movie from the time before the genre got oversaturated with computer-generated effects. Willow is a pretty blatant ripoff of Lord of the Rings, but it actually manages to inject some new life into Tolkien’s story by including a love story, throwing in a female protagonist who starts as a badass villain, and making the Aragorn character not only a great fighter, but a comic buffoon (played to perfection by Val Kilmer). There are a lot of silly things about Willow, but Warwick Davis’ acting talent combined with Val Kilmer’s excellent performance make it a memorable adventure, and one that I will be watching again and again for years to come.
3.5 out of 5
Duplicity
Duplicity is a decent enough espionage-intrigue film, and views like a combination of The Tourist and Memento (much of the story is told through flashbacks). It’s not a bad movie, and I found the ending to be refreshing, but overall it’s sadly forgettable and doesn’t pull enough original moves for it to stand on its own. That being said, though, the movie does keep you guessing until the end, and it’s hardly predictable. Plus, the opening credits sequence where we get to see Paul Giamatti and Tom Wilkonson get into a slow motion fight is pretty enjoyable. This is one of those cases where I don’t feel like I was enriched by having seen the movie in question, but I don’t regret it either. In other words, this is exactly the kind of movie that people watch on airplanes.
3 out of 5
See you next Sunday for three more thrilling short reviews!