King Of Limbs !!!!!!

(Here we go again, I am back my pedigree chums, it took a while but I have finally gotten around to reviewing Radiohead’s newest album The King Of Limbs. My music review takes a slightly different direction to my film reviews as I have dropped a lot of the sarcasm, and I have actually managed to avoid swearing – hooray for me. So yeah, enjoy my review and listen to the album otherwise ill do something regrettable. )

Radiohead are a band that has grown on me in recent months, up until earlier this year I was the complete opposite of a fan, having heard a few tracks from them I considered them rather boring and couldn’t understand their massive fan base. However I was persuaded by a friend to give their music a go and I haven’t been able to stop listening to them since.

Understandably then I was rather excited when their latest album The King of Limbs was released, having not been a fan of them when their previous record In Rainbows was released, this was my first opportunity to sample new material from them as a genuine fan.

The first song to be released from the album was the rather brilliant track Lotus Flower, the song itself has for me become an instant classic and the accompanying video is pretty much genius, if you haven’t seen it, it’s basically just Thom Yorke dancing like a twat to the song and yet he still manages to look cooler than me.  The song itself isn’t a drastic departure from the bands signature sound, but then again it’s hard to give them a signature sound seeing as they constantly change their musical direction , you can listen to Kid A as an example of this. But all in all Lotus Flower is the standout track from the album for me.

Alas there are more songs to be listened to of course, 7 more to be entirely precise. Little by Little the albums third track is another eye catching piece of music; actually in this case I suppose it would be ear catching, because that makes sense to me. The song again I wouldn’t consider to be entirely unique in terms of the band’s sound, but the almost electronic sound makes it the perfect track to have on in the background, whilst also being something that you could listen to with the volume turned up to ear drum burstingnly loud levels.

The album overall seems to have a rather sombre mood to it, which as I have found is a recurring theme when it comes to Radiohead.  A common complaint I have heard from people who dislike the band is that there music is depressing, and whilst I disagree with this, with lyrics like:

 Don’t haunt me

 Don’t hurt me

 Gather up the lust and soul

 In your arms

 These come from the track Give up the Ghost which would for me is the sole ‘depressing' track on the album you could be forgiven for thinking that Thom Yorke is a rather miserable soul.

But Thom does have the ability to write more uplifting and rather more poetic lyrics, an example being:

 Sleight of hand

Jump off the end

 Into a clear lake

 No one around

 Just dragonflies

 Flying to our side

 No one gets hurt

 You’ve done nothing wrong.

These lyrics are strikingly poignant and the song they come from Codex is another eerily beautiful track.

The rest of the album fits together nicely with the tracks that I have already mentioned, with Morning Mr Magpie being perhaps my second favourite of the album.  The albums opening track Bloom and final track Separator are further indications that Radiohead truly know how to make a coherent and well put together record. Even the instrumental track Feral works well and instrumental tracks can quite often be instantly forgettable.

So it should therefore be quite clear to you at this point that I am a fan of this album, it still falls short of being in the list of my favourite Radiohead albums overall, but it is still a very good showing from an excellent band who are fast approaching legendary status, if they are not there already that is.

I was a little disappointed that it only contained 8 tracks and I feel it lacks that certain something that made Amnesiac and OK Computer such memorable albums, but I still give this album and 8/10 and would recommend it to any people who are looking for a new style of music to get into.

A change of direction, well sort of.

Hello again my loyal followers, so I've decided that I am not just going to review films from now on. In anticipation of Radiohead's new album The King Of Limbs as well as future Red Hot Chili Peppers and Foo Fighters albums I have decided to review albums as well. I may also review books and possibly video games from time to time. I will still focus mostly on movies but I have decided to mix it up a bit to keep my legion of fans interested. See you later folks !

See you at the party Richter !

Yes it’s that time again, due to popular demand I am back to review yet another movie. Thank you, you are too kind, but please stop with the endless compliments, I must get on with the review.

Anyways, a couple of people, including my housemate Tom thought my review of The Expendables was rather harsh and unjustified. I disagree wholeheartedly, but just to show that I am not completely against the typical action film, I have decided to review an Arnie classic. Paul Verhoven’s  Total Recall !!!

I just described this as an Arnie classic didn’t I? And what does that mean I hear to ask. Well what one can expect from this type of movie are plenty of bulging muscles, ridiculous gun fights and so many one liners you will lose count; the result however is one hell of an entertaining movie.

What of the plot, well that aspect of the film is rather well thought out. Doug Quaid (Schwarzenegger) is just a typical average joe, albeit an average joe with biceps the size of my legs, but no matter. Quaid is nothing but a simple construction worker, who one day dreams of going to Mars, however these plans are continually scuppered by the fact that there is currently a war taking place on Mars between the forces of evil businessman (did I hear you say cliché? Well, stop it!). Vilos Cohaagen played by Ronny Cox and the rebel alliance led by a mysterious mutant know as Kuato. Despite this Quaid is still not discouraged and decides to visit a company called Rekall which can implant memories into the brain, for instance they can make you believe you are a secret agent on Mars, who fights for the rebels and saves the day, gets the girl, all that jazz. Uber hint here, that’s the memory Quaid chooses, if you hadn’t guessed that already. Everything appears to be going just fine and dandy up until this point until during the process of implanting the memory into Quaid’s brain; he seems to have some sort of fit and begins to make faces that would indicate he is shitting a porcupine. We now realise that Quaid is in fact not Quaid and that his memory was erased only to have his old memory come back as a result of the procedure.

And so our heroes journey begins, after barely escaping Rekall, Quaid is set upon by his buddy and a gang of large adversaries, what does Quaid do one may enquire? Well Quaid destroys them with his fists of awesomeness and breaks many necks in a variety of ways. This particular scene made me laugh no end, but all the same it was pretty cool and just what you would expect from this type of movie. In the midst of all the chaos Quaid manages to escape the clutches of our main villain Richter played by Michael Ironside. Plenty of god dammits and you son of a bitches later, Quaid sits in his hotel room when he receives a phone call from an ‘old friend’ who leaves a suitcase for Quaid, which contains important information about something or other, so Quaid then puts a wet towel on his head and leaves (oh yeah, he has a chip in his brain that helps the bad guys to track him, and a wet towel scrambles the signal, God do I have to explain everything to you?). It later transpires that Quaid is in fact somebody else and as Arnie himself puts it ‘you are not you, you are me’ yes that’s right Quaid was in fact a member of the rebels who was sent to earth to protect or something like that, anyway, sorry I wasn’t really paying attention to this part that much as I was still laughing at the line ‘you are not you, you are me’ Anywho, Hauser, the supposed real name of Quaid tells him to go to Mars and in the suitcase there are a number of things to help him blah blah blah.

Hooray, we have finally made it to Mars, shame it’s full of mutants and is a bit shit, but oh well. Quaid manages to get onto the planet relatively unscathed and narrowly escapes his pursuers once more by wearing fat lady costume, why are you sniggering? I’m being serious ! Moving along swiftly Quaid realises that he must head to a strip club/brothel in the mutant part of town, he is helped there by our obligatory black man, cab driver Benny (Mel Johnson Jr.) Upon reaching his destination and encountering a woman with three boobs (it’s not as hot as it sounds sadly) Quaid finally meets the woman he has been seeing in his dreams Melina played by Rachel Ticotin. And so on and so on, lots of rather shoddy dialogue later, they decide that they must stop Cohaagen from monopolising the oxygen which he is in charge of, of course. They must also try to avoid being killed by Richter and all the other mother flippers trying to ruin things.

I’m doing a bit more on the plot here than I want to, so from now on I will keep it short and sweet (that’s what she said). So yeah Quaid later meets Kuato, the chuckie doll lookalike who lives in a man’s chest and finds out that the core of Mars is ice and that centuries ago, aliens built some device that would melt it all and give Mars an atmosphere thereby negating the need to buy oxygen from Cohaagen, who in turn knows of this and wants to stop Quaid from screwing things up. The main obstacle facing Quaid aside from people with guns is the fact that people keep telling him that his experiences are just a part of the simulation he paid for at Rekall and that in fact none of this is real. Dum dum dum, but are we to believe this, Quaid certainly doesn’t, and he continues to kill his way through the problem eventually reaching the core of the planet, despite being betrayed by Benny and the death of Kuato. Oh by the way, when Quaid kills Benny with a giant drill, proper funny !

Where were we? Oh yes so Quaid has reached the core and he is still being pursued by Richter, but manages to defeat him by removing his arms, another highly amusing scene. From this point we are nearing the end of our adventure, with the help of Melina, Quaid manages to activate the alien device and melt the core of Mars thereby giving it an atmosphere and saving all the mutants. HOORAY Mars is once again safe. Our movie ends with our hero and heroine kissing in the sunset, awwww.

So there we are, I hope you took all of that in. Now for those who haven’t actually seen this movie, do not expect something that’s Oscar worthy. Some of the action sequences are so over the top and ridiculous they will leave you laughing your teeth out of their gums. Which is nothing compared to the dialogue which I must say is just so so bad, for example this peach of a line, ‘who gives a shit what you believe? In thirty seconds you'll be dead, and I'll blow this place up and be home in time for Corn Flakes.’ However that being said this film is thoroughly enjoyable and delivers exactly what it promises, the special effects pre – date CGI but they are not too bad considering. Arnie really is at his best in this movie, he can’t act for shit but hey he is good at punching people and delivers great action movie one liners with aplomb.

I would recommend this movie to anyone who is a fan of a straight and simple action movie, which has a bit of sci-fi mixed in for good measure. And another bonus is that my friend managed to buy it for £1.50 so it won’t set you back much, also don’t be put off by the fact that it was directed by the same guy who did Showgirls, its much much better than that, despite the absence of as many naked women.

I will give this movie a 7/10 and it you don’t like that then SCREW YOOOOOOOOOOU!!!!

DUM DUM DUM Inception review bizatches!

Ok brace yourselves, for I am about to partake in a review of Inception. Christopher Nolan’s clever for the sake of clever high concept action drama about people who infiltrate other people’s dreams for the sake of discovering repressed information from the subconscious mind. I can already hear the collective ooh’s as you take all of that in. It might sound like I do not appreciate this film, while I feel it has been slightly overhyped, I greatly appreciate this movie. Christopher Nolan once again does a stellar job and Leonardo Di Caprio continues to justify his position as one of my favourite actors. If you can get your head around the rather convoluted plot then this is definitely a film worth watching.

Lets dive straight in shall we; I will make my attempt at explaining the plot for all you simpletons out there. Firstly the movie begins rather normally, a meeting between Leonardo Di Caprio’s character Dom Cobb and Mr Saito played by Ken Wannabe. All seems to be going well albeit slightly tense. This tension is pushed up with the appearance of the homicidal Mallorie Cobb, who does her best to spoil things, at this point I was left wondering who is this crazy lady. Little did I know that she was the least of my concerns right now, as we soon discover that this is all a dream. That’s right Cobb, Saito and Cobb’s right hand man Arthur played by Joseph Gordon – Levitt are all inside somebody else’s mind, cue several WTF’s from confused audiences. To cut a long story short here, everything goes tits up and soon all the characters are flung from the dream by the dreamers subconscious, who by the way will attack anyone who is not supposed to be there, now that’s so edgy and cool isn’t it.

After this failure the story moves on to the development of the films protagonist Cobb, who apparently is on the run after he was accused of murdering Mallorie (his wife) and is just looking to get back home to his children. All of this is explained to his father, played by the evergreen Michael Caine. It transpires that Cobb used to be an architect, which is someone who is used to design a world within a dream for the dreamer. However he has had to stop this and seeing as his last architect failed he is looking for a new one, which is made easier by the fact that his father teaches architecture at a university. Cobb asks for a student to which Caine’s character reluctantly agrees and supplies him with the contact details for Ariadne played by Ellen Page. After a few scenes of explaining all of this dream stuff to her, including putting her into a dream without her realizing and then watching her turn the street upside down, Cobb has his architect, in the meantime it is discovered that Mallorie has a habit of turning up in Cobb’s dreams, crazy bitch!

Now for the true nitty gritty of the film, essentially Cobb has been asked to perform an act of Inception by Mr Saito. What is Inception I hear you ask; well I shall explain you impatient bastards. Inception is the action of planting an idea into a person’s subconscious mind. In this case Mr Saito wishes to eliminate his business competitor Maurice Fischer, played by the late Pete Poselthwaite who is currently in his deathbed. The idea is to place the idea in his son’s head Robert Fischer played by Cillian Murphy that he is to inherit the company, which of course is not true, however if he believes this his incompetence will surely see Mr Saito become the king pin of whatever business he is involved with. I am aware that what I just said didn’t make much sense, but this is a hard film to summarize. But anyway moving on, the method used will see our gang of infiltrators enter a multi layered dream that consists of three dreams within a dream (ouch my brain) in these dreams the infiltrators will try to implant the memory into the mind of Robert Fischer and ride a series of kicks, which in other words are a means of emerging from the dream state. In the meantime Cobb’s wife Mallorie attempts to sabotage them at every point she can.

Whoa I’m exhausted after that. After many high jinks and impressive sequences we come to the end of the film. After successfully carrying out the act of inception and defeating the subconscious killer Mallorie, Cobb emerges from his dream to return home to his children. I shall now mention something that I should have mentioned at the start, and that is the use of totem’s which are specific objects held by each dreamer that remind them whether they are dreaming or are in the real world. Cobb’s totem consists of a small spinning top, which if he spins and it falls indicates he is dreaming, ok you got that? Well the ending of the movie where Cobb has supposedly returned to his children provides us with an intriguing finale. For you see Cobb upon returning to his home spins the top and walks off while the audience are left watching whether or not it will fall, then BOOM cut to black and we are left wondering whether Cobb actually managed to emerge from the dream. Cue an extra round of WTF’s once more from the audience, although not from me because I totally guessed that was going to happen, win point for me!

All in all this movie was thoroughly enjoyable and I would recommend it to anyone. Be wary however when watching it, you do have to pay close attention otherwise you will miss something and all of a sudden you will be lost.

Christopher Nolan has once again surpassed himself with another brilliantly directed movie, it looks great and you can’t go wrong when Hans Zimmer is doing the soundtrack. I still feel it will fall short of winning the Oscar though, but it is a worthy nominee and I look forward to Nolan’s third Dark Knight movie, It’s gonna be tight y’all !!!

Mr Nolan, I give your film a thouroughly respectable 8/10

 

(Oh by the way, I am aware that I have missed out several important aspects of the film in this review and quite frankly the structure is just as convoluted as the film in question, but this is only my second review and I can’t be asked to alter it that much because my fingers ache and I really should be getting on with the work I am supposed to be doing. PEACE!)

I have an update, my review of The Expendables !!!!

I know I said I would be reviewing Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban next, however after a debate with my housemate I felt compelled to provide my thoughts on an absolute monstrosity of cinema. The Expendables !

Well where to begin; let’s start with the plot shall we. Ok we are done... just kidding but I’m not exaggerating that much, the lack of an original storyline for a film that received so much hype was utterly astonishing. It is the same old tired plot that has been spewed out in numerous unimaginative action films of the past. Somewhere in a lawless country there is a brutal military dictator, the American government has so far failed to attack them with grenade launchers and fighter jets. Therefore it is down to Sylvester Stallone and his gang of rabble rousers to go in single handed and defeat this man who is killing innocent people. Their methods... go in and shoot the fuck out of anyone who is holding a gun. So yeah there is your plot, there really isn’t much else to tell in all honesty.

Of course with a bad plot comes bad writing and this movie is a prime example of Stallone sitting down with a pen and writing ‘And the man said Fuck you and then shot the man in the face.’ I am of course being sarcastic, but watching this film really made me wonder how the script made it past studio executives. My prime example of this hastily written script is the appearance of Arnold Schwarzenegger, whose inexplicable cameo can only be explained as a means of getting people into the cinema. In fact, if I had been writing the film and that moment in the script came up I can imagine the response. Why is this character here, he has very few lines, makes no impact on the plot and has no purpose in the story whatsoever. Even Mickey Rourke in my opinion fails to make the writing seem believable. Rourke’s role despite his obvious acting abilities is agonisingly small and I can’t help but feel that a bigger role for him in the film would have helped it just that little bit, but alas we have Jason Statham, who can kick people lest we forget.

Where shall we go next, oh yes the special effects of the film. In other words, the bit where things get blown up, people get shot and planes attack a small docking bay (yes that bit actually happens). This film was billed as some sort of spectacular action extravaganza that united all the action stars of the past. Therefore one would expect an impressive array of special effects and pyrotechnics, sadly this is merely another area that this film fails to meet expectations. Of course there are plenty of guns and explosions, but it is nothing we haven’t seen before in any number of action films, from Aliens to Die Hard. By far my favourite moment of the film however is the moment when Terry Crew’s character (the hilariously named Hale Caesar) blows up a sniper tower with want can only be described as a machine gun that fires cannon balls. That one moment just about summed up the film for me; whenever the plot was going nowhere someone would just blow something up or kill the nearest henchman in any number of brutal ways.

To put it bluntly I really really did not like this movie. Actually that’s not blunt enough, in all honesty this film was one of the worst pieces of cinema I’ve ever been subjected to and I’ve seen Norbit. Its utter Fuck wittery was nothing but endless bad acting and shoddy dialogue that made me want to yell at the cinema screen, which I would have done had my friend not wanted to genuinely see the film. My one piece of advice is do not see this film, honestly you are not missing out. If someone tells you it is good harmless fun, they are lying if you are honestly interested in seeing a good film then believe me this movie is not for you. However if you are a person who enjoys watching something your 7 year old brother couldn’t have written during the adverts for SpongeBob, then fill your boots.

My rating of this film comes in at a rather terrible 2/10. One point for Mickey Rourke’s appearance and one point for the fact that Stallone actually bothered.