Every Sunday, Gill delves into his archive of over 800 movie reviews and randomly selects three for your enjoyment! Here are this week’s…
The Woman in Black
If you like movies that scare you by startling you, then you’ll love The Woman in Black. Based on the made-for-TV movie of the same name from 1989, this horror flick from Hammer Films is a decent watch, but doesn’t break any new ground whatsoever. In fact, it’s a bit like some screenwriter mixed every horror movie cliche together to create this film, and while it does make you jump, I felt like I had seen it all before. You’ve got your creepy dolls, your dingy old haunted mansion, your screaming reflections, scary kids…you get the picture. If you want a pretty typical haunted house flick, then you’ll get what you came for, but if you’re interested in horror movies that push the envelope, you might as well skip The Woman in Black. On a side note, Daniel Radcliffe does fine here, and doesn’t seem too much like Harry Potter, but he has a long way to go before he can truly separate himself from the character he has played for so long.
3 out of 5
Battle Los Angeles
What a magnificent turd! This movie is effectively what you would get if you got a camera crew to run around following a squad of soldiers doing military training drills, and then CGI’d some aliens into the background. The majority of the dialogue is either people barking orders or people repeating orders that were barked at them, and the majority of the camerawork is handheld and shaky to the point of not being able to tell what’s going on. The alien menace is the only thing that could have made this movie interesting, but unfortunately they’re the most boring aliens ever committed to film: they’re after our water, they shoot lasers, their military is basically the same as our in terms of ranks and such, and what’s more, their weakeness is just to shoot them in the heart (which is exactly where the human heart would be)! Avoid this movie. Seriously.
1.5 out of 5
Warrior
The story of two brothers who are forced to fight each other is nothing new, but Warrior is so solidly written and acted with such gravitas that it rises above most other movies that share its plot. Warrior is also an underdog boxing (well, in this case, MMA fighting) film, and the plot arc for this aspect is likewise nothing new, but again, the acting and script manage to elevate the movie. This is something familiar done extremely well, and I feel like Warrior has been vastly overlooked. The powerhouse performances from Tom Hardy, Joel Edgerton, and Nick Nolte alone make this worth watching.
4 out of 5
See you next Sunday for three more thrilling short reviews!