Sherlock Holmes had so much potential. The Great Detective is deathless and compelling, and as sublimely paired with Doctor Watson as whiskey and getting dumped by text. Therefore, the obvious thing to do with this archetypal Englishman – reserved, clinical, supremely intelligent – is to hand his canon to a laddish director best known for marrying Madonna. Isn’t it?
It’s always a risk when film-makers decide to try and attach heavily religious messages to blockbusters, and it doesn’t get more heavy-handed than in The Book Of Eli. Sadly, this post-apocalyptic story of one man’s quest to bring Jesus-based enlightenment to a wretched humanity comes off as what it is; a sermon with added guns.
Warning – don’t go and see this film expecting another Twilight. No doubt that’s what the studio financing this Aussie-made vampire flick is hoping you’ll do, but the blood-suckers in Daybreakers are not so much your new-school pretty-boy vegan variety. They belong firmly to the old guard of demonesque bad guys who have overrun the earth and must be hunted down with big machine guns, crossbows with exploding bolts and other such gore-porn paraphernalia that will have teenage boys wetting themselves in excitement.
So 2009’s Holmes certainly got the full Ritchie treatment – the question is, did it work? In our opinion, the result wasn’t nearly as bad as it could have been. Sure, there are a lot of action sequences, and the staid Holmes of old seems now to have morphed into a buff athlete and martial arts expert played by Robert Downey Jr. Yet despite this, we were hard-pressed to find a moment in the entire film where we weren’t either having a chuckle or glued to the screen.
Regular visitors to Best For Film will know that we’re a little bit sceptical when it comes to films that rely primarily on CGI effects to impress. Add to that we’re not exactly smitten with the oeuvre of serial planet-abuser Roland Emmerich (seriously, the guy’s destroyed the planet so many times he makes Galactus looks like a sulky toddler in a sand pit) and 2012 isn’t exactly the kind of film we usually look forward to
When we had finished watching Law Abiding Citizen, we had just one question. What is it with Scottish actors and the American accent? Seriously, first up there was Ewan MacGregor, sounding like he was talking with a mouth full of nails in Deception. You’d have thought Hugh Jackman (who like most Australians has some pretty convincing Yank speak) would have taken him aside and given a few words of advice. Admittedly they were both probably avoiding eye contact in the hope that if they didn’t look at one another they might awake from the nightmare of starring in the worst erotic thriller since Ernest Goes to Jail
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