Anchorman 2: The Legend Continues: Blu Ray Review

Anchorman 2: The Legend Continues: Blu Ray Review

Rating: M
Released by Universal Home Entertainment

Nearly a decade ago, a small cult began to grow with the launch of the movie, Anchorman - The Legend of Rob Burgundy. Now, Will Ferrell returns as Ron Burgundy in the second Anchorman film - Anchorman 2: The Legend Continues.

After the success of the 1970s, things are looking good for Ron and Veronica (Christina Applegate) - but when she's promoted to lead anchor ahead of him, the narcissistic Ron hits rock bottom - until an opportunity comes to him to be part of a 24 hours new channel, the Global News Network.

However, Ron's got problems as the rest of the Channel 4 news team are no longer working in news. But this is Ron Burgundy and he's never been troubled by anything. So, he sets out to get the gang back together and take the world of news by storm. Again.

Anchorman 2: The Legend Continues had promise.

The first was a creative flash in the pan, a veritable souffle of ridiculousness and long lasting catch phrases guaranteeing it a place in the pantheon of the comedy films.

This sequel, is to be frank, a patchy and disappointing affair. It starts off promisingly with the over-the-top nature kicking in and the stupidity on display for all to see. The idiotic lines come thick and fast as the parody starts to hit home. And there are hints of satire around too, a sly mocking of the softer news formats and weaker news agenda of current times, the lack of integrity of reporters as they try to fill 24 hours of news, a dig at an Australian owner of a media empire and the idiocy of racial and sexual stereotypes. They all have real potential for the film to hit it out of the park (or Whammy, if you're Champ) throughout.

Yet, scenes go on without real punchlines, a series of skits that are loosely narratively hung together and end in gibberish after proffering a few smiles before blustering quickly into the next one. It's almost as if they were a gaggle of comedy moments that worked better on paper and in the rehearsal room than on the big screen.

Nowhere is this more blatantly apparent than in a final out-of-leftfield fight sequence that sees Ron and the team confronted by groups of news anchors from different stations - and proves a chance to pack in more celebrity cameos than you could shake a teleprompter at and be self-indulgent rather than add to the story or prove fodder for some quality quick fire gags.

Don't get me wrong though - Anchorman 2: The Legend Continues offers some laugh out loud moments - mainly at socially awkward Steve Carell's Brick Tamland, who spouts such absurdisms at odd moments that it's impossible to fall prey to this idiot savant who is more idiot than savant. To be honest though, he's a real highlight in this - despite a romance with his female double (played by Kristen Wiig) not quite hitting the creative mark.

Overall, Anchorman 2: The Legend Continues seems to be a case of getting the band back together for the band more than for anybody else. A once-over of the script could have helped and certainly a bit more editing would have tightened the comically weak structure - an entire sequence with Ron raising a shark as part of his character's growth would have been better off left as a deleted scene.

It's frustrating though as the satire is there in the wings, waiting and with a sharpening, it could have been so much more. If you're a fan of the first Anchorman movie or are willing to leave your brain at the door and get pre-loaded, you'll have some laughs. Everyone else may wonder what all the fuss is about as some of the barbs and laughs hit their target, while others miss.

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Saving Mr Banks: Blu Ray Review

Saving Mr Banks: Blu Ray Review

Rating: M
Released by Walt Disney DVD

A Disney film about the making of a Disney film that was so beloved by so many?

Yep, that's Saving Mr Banks - about the creative wrangles and 20 year fight good ole Walt faced to get Mary Poppins author P L Travers to hand over her creation to the Mouse empire.

Emma Thompson is Mary Poppins author P L Travers in this film which begins in 1961 in London with her accountant urging her to reconsider and sign the rights to Disney before she goes bankrupt. After years of wooing her, Tom Hanks' Walt Disney wants her to come to Hollywood so he can mount one final push and show her that he will be careful of how she's committed to celluloid.

But old Walt, despite the charm offensive, has reckoned without the over-protective and over-bearing nature of Travers, whose pernickerty ways could signal the end of Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious before it even hits the screen.

However, through flashbacks to her childhood, Travers' reasons for wanting to protect Mary Poppins are gradually revealed - and it looks like Walt may have to break a promise he made to his own daughters some 20 years ago over the making of the film....

Emma Thompson excels as the controlling Travers, a woman whose life has been precariously built up around the nanny, who saved her in more ways than one. There are plenty of guffaws as Travers dishes out withering looks or put downs as she deals with growing exasperation with the songwriting Sherman brothers (Schwartzman and Novak) and the dwindling patience of Disney. It's a bravura performance, one which soars thanks to the self control of Thompson herself - from the very beginning to the very end of this, she owns and commands the screen with incredible cinematic aplomb - and I'd be very surprised to see her passed over in the forthcoming awards season.

If anything, Hanks' solid performance as Disney is a little overshadowed by the greatness of Thompson. He delivers a slick and subtle turn as the slick showman, so determined to win and fulfil his dream of making Mary Poppins part of the House of Mouse. From bombarding Travers in her hotel room with a plethora of plush stuffed toys, he lays on the charm. It's only really in the final scenes that Disney's ruthlessness comes to the fore as he refuses to have Travers at the premiere of the movie, for fear she could damage its reputation.

So with these two at loggerheads and Travers' antics in the rehearsal room proving the meat on this backstory's bones, it's a shame to say that Hancock over-eggs the narrative pudding with more than just a spoonful of sugar by over-using flashbacks to Travers' life as a youngster in Australia. Complete with Colin Farrell, these are used too often when sparing insertion into the story would have proved more effective. No more is this apparent than in the final sequence as Travers watches Mary Poppins and the director chooses to overstate the sentiment by cutting back and forth - a little subtlety and easing up would have worked wonders, instead of plumping for mawkish, heavy-handed manipulative film-making.

Overall, Saving Mr Banks soars because of Emma Thompson's uptight PL Travers; it's a fascinating dramatisation of what happens when British stiff upper lip meets a bombastic American charm offensive; it's just a shame that in parts, it's a terribly hollow and typically manipulative piece, which cries out for more simplicity and subtlety.

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Jo Jo's Bizarre Adventure: All Star Battle :PS 3 Review

Jo Jo's Bizarre Adventure: All Star Battle :PS 3 Review

Released by Namco Bandai
Platform: PS3

There are some games where you're a little clueless as to what exactly is going on outside of what you can see on the screen.

Jo Jo's Bizarre Adventure: All Star Battle is one of those as far as I'm concerned.

Essentially, it's a Street Fighter style beat'em'up with anime overtones (and reading up on it, I see it's a massive anime fave in Japan) and around 32 characters, ripped from the comic's arcs. Like most fighting games, the aim is to simply beat the HP out of your opponent and progress to the next level with most of your health intact.

As ever, with these games, each character has their own extra special power which is fuelled by combo hits and can be unleashed when the meter's full to devastating effect. Opposition have powers too - from vampirism which drains you to others; there's certainly enough to keep you amused here if you're of that ilk. From story mode to campaign mode (which operates online), there are enough levels to power through if you're that way inclined - though it has to be said, the repeat value of this game is a little pondrous and lacking.

The thing with Jo Jo's Bizarre Adventure: All Star Battle is its extra elements which are powering on around the background that are so hard to comprehend and follow. During fights other characters occasionally float in and out and pages of a comic appear in the middle of the screen without any warning or for any reason. It's confusing and confounding - though I'm guessing if you're a fan of the arcs, then it's fine. Otherwise, casual gamers will be completely lost as to the subtleties of it all.

The big thing going for Jo Jo's Bizarre Adventure: All Star Battle is its look. The characters are visually stunning - 3D anime beasts ripped from the pages of a comic and thrust into a 2D world - they're gorgeous to look at and give the game a feel that's unique to the fight em up genre. Plus they fight fluidly - there's no jarring and no flickering of the animation as they power into each other.

Overall, Jo Jo's Bizarre Adventure: All Star Battle is an odd beast of a game. While it's left me a little lost as to the overall concept and some of the subtleties within, it's certainly a solid enough fighter for its genre.

Philomena: Blu Ray Review

Philomena: Blu Ray Review

Rating: M
Released by Universal Home Ent

Inspired by true events and based on a book, Philomena is the story of ex BBC journalist and disgraced civil servant Martin Sixsmith. World weary and cynical, and not coping with being out of work, Sixsmith is approached by a waitress at a party after she overhears him telling someone he's after a story.

This waitress' mother, Philomena Lee (Judi Dench in another of those turns where she can command a cinema audience with just one look) is racked with guilt at having seen her child snatched from her in Roscrea convent in Ireland by nuns punishing her for having had sex. Plagued by visions of him and unsure how his life panned out without her, the almost shrew-like Philomena wins over the cynicism of Sixsmith and they set out to try and find her son after 50 years.

But each have different motives - Sixsmith is being harangued into doing a "human interest" piece for a magazine which he's scornful of and she just wants to know if her son managed a life after being cruelly snatched away. So begins the Odd Couple style journey, with a clashing of religious ideology and differing worldly viewpoints...

Philomena is a dryly amusing story with an emotionally gooey centre which is, in equal terms, occasionally off-putting and deeply rewarding.

Plenty of sly laughs come from the culture clash between the two - one scene in an airport seesPhilomena regaling a clearly uninterested Sixsmith with the finer details of a trashy romance novel and revelling in her own naivete over how the story plays out. And Philomena would rather watch Big Momma's House in a hotel than head out to see some local landmarks during their global jaunt.

The problem with that humour is that it soon becomes a crutch for the script to fall back on; and the initial amusement is lost as the comedy is repeated for effect, damaging some of the goodwill built up by the more gentle and funny moments from early on. It's a crowd-pleasing plan but what it ends up doing is affecting the feel and poignancy of the story as it continues.

Coogan is serious as Sixsmith, with some dry lines early on setting the scene, but it's a once over lightly which impresses; equally, Dench is on a winner as well as she revels in the slightly twee innocent nature of her character (who even at one point asks if Martin can change her name in the story he publishes - she wishes to be known as Anne Boleyn) which begins to grate, no matter how much truth it's based on.

While the weightier issues of the nuns' behaviour are explored, there's never really a dark undertone which rises to the surface, despite the inherent nastiness of their past actions or the consequences for Philomena; if anything, this crowd-pleaser of a film manages to contain the outrage in a kind of syrupy shock that's a little easier to swallow, though no less bitter.

Extras: Making of, Commentary with Steve Coogan and Jeff Pope
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Latest Guardians of The Galaxy trailer is here

Latest Guardians of The Galaxy trailer is here

More Groot, more Rocket - it can only be the new Guardians of The Galaxy trailer....

Good news for Marvel fans - it's your first look at the Guardians of the Galaxy trailer!

The movie trailer for #GOTG Guardians of The Galaxy is the first full look from Marvel following the Collector's appearance at the end of Thor: The Dark World.


An action-packed, epic space adventure, Marvel's "Guardians of the Galaxy" expands the Marvel Cinematic Universe into the cosmos, where brash adventurer Peter Quill finds himself the object of an unrelenting bounty hunt after stealing a mysterious orb coveted by Ronan, a powerful villain with ambitions that threaten the entire universe.

To evade the ever-persistent Ronan, Quill is forced into an uneasy truce with a quartet of disparate misfits - Rocket, a gun-toting raccoon, Groot, a tree-like humanoid, the deadly and enigmatic Gamora and the revenge-driven Drax the Destroyer. But when Peter discovers the true power of the orb and the menace it poses to the cosmos, he must do his best to rally his ragtag rivals for a last, desperate stand - with the galaxy's fate in the balance.

Guardians of the Galaxy is due in August this year.

X-Men: Days of Future Past: Movie Review

X-Men: Days of Future Past: Movie Review

Cast: Hugh Jackman, Patrick Stewart, Ian McKellen, Peter Dinklage, James MacAvoy, Michael Fassbender,Jennifer Lawrence
Director: Bryan Singer

After six previous X-Men movies, including a recent reboot of the series with a younger cast, X-Men: Days of Future Past arrives at a time-bending moment for the series, complete with a return from one of its most famous directors.

Set in dystopian future where the robot Sentinels are hunting down the mutants, eradicating them and any potential humans who could possess the mutant gene, the pressure's really on for Professor X (Stewart) and Magneto (McKellen). They've joined forces to try and prevent their kind being wiped out in a scheme which could only have come from the comic book 101 of time travel.

Deducing that if they go back in time to 1973 when Mystique (Jennifer Lawrence) was about to assassinate Boliver Trask (the man responsible for the Sentinels programme), they can prevent this future from ever happening. So, Logan aka Wolverine (aka Hugh Jackman) is despatched back to the past to try and save the day - but Wolverine's got bigger problems on his hands because his trying to unite the younger Professor X (MacAvoy in self-loathing, drugged up phase) and Magneto (Fassbender) comes at a time where the pair couldn't have been more apart...

X-Men: Days of Future Past is the X-Men movie that many of the fans have been waiting for.

Stripped free of necessary exposition and explanation of the characters, Singer's deft and pacy return to the genre sees a return to the comic book action and rich emotion, which has appealed to so many (but may leave some non-fans feeling a little alienated this time around.)

Sly humour permeates parts of this action movie that teeters dangerously close to pompous sci-fi at the start. Singer brings all the players together well and adds in a few new elements to show he's still got the mutant sparkle that's needed - a dazzling sequence which shows off American Horror Story star Evan Peters' turn as Quiksilver is the pure highlight of the whole piece. Using the faster than light flippant kid to break out Magneto from under the Pentagon (where he's been imprisoned for assassinating JFK) is a master stroke of Singer's - during one brief sequence alone, Singer brings the joy back into the superhero genre which has wallowed in dour for so long. As Quiksilver takes on the prison guards in a light speed slow-mo sequence, there's slapstick, danger and amusement in high dosage. (Though the real headscratcher is why such a valuable asset be left behind on a key mission...) Also, Singer does a great job of introducing a stand out new character into a crowded ensemble.

Which is perhaps just as well, because the older versions of the X-Men themselves are a little sidelined in the piece, with the danger never quite reaching the high stakes you'd expect. It's curious because given they face extinction, there's very little for them to do after a high-octane opening. And it's a shame given the calibre of talent involved, but when the story is as stuffed as it is, something has to give. Equally, some kind of explanation as to why Trask is so opposed to mutant kind would be good - despite Game of Thrones star Peter Dinklage playing him to perfection, a murky motive is never forthcoming. And the final end sequence becomes a little heavy handed and cluttered to have too much resonance for such an iconic comic book arc.

Thankfully, though, these niggles do not come at the cost of the action, which for 7 films in adds new set pieces to entice and impress throughout. Of the X-ensemble, McAvoy, Fassbender, Lawrence and Jackman more than deliver on their characters, with each adding to their past outings. Equally, the script gives nods to the fans but doesn't alienate those willing to work through the elements of past movies.

All in all, X-Men: Days of Future Past is an X-Men movie for fans to savour; while the stakes have never been higher for the series and its characters, director Bryan Singer doesn't lose sight of the smaller, more intimate moments to provide a blockbuster spectacle that's as spectacular a winter blockbuster as you'd hope for.

(Make sure you stay to the end of the credits, to witness the first look at X:Men - Apocalypse, and your first chance to see the original mutant, En Sabah Nur....)

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August Osage County: Blu Ray Review

August Osage County: Blu Ray Review

Rating: M
Released by Roadshow Home Ent

If you think your family gathering at Christmas is bad, you ain't seen nothing compared to August: Osage County.

Based on the stage play of the same name, it stars Meryl Streep as Violet, the monstrous matriarch of the Weston family. Struck with mouth cancer and addicted to pills, she finds her world comes unstuck when her husband Beverly (played by Sam Shepard) disappears without warning one day.

As the disparate family gathers to help the search, tensions from the past simmer and boil over, causing more anguish than any normal family gathering would cause - and Violet revels in them, spewing forth toxic bile on her own family...

For Julia Roberts' Barbara, her return to the homestead brings into sharp focus her separation from her husband Charlie (McGregor) and her distance from her daughter (Breslin) as well as the resentment from her sister Ivy (Nicholson) who's been forced to stay home all these years. Equally her other sister Karen (Juliette Lewis) breezes in her with her latest squeeze (Dermot Mulroney) causing more divides within the group. Add into that mix, Violet's very own sister Mattie Fae, who detests her son Little Charles, much to the growing chagrin of her own husband Charles (Cooper), and you can see how the roof is ready to explode in this mid-Western American powderkeg.

August: Osage County is a battering experience, a difficult film to sympathise with, presided as it is by the towering monster that is Violet. In some scenes, Streep's character positively chews out the scenery on display (and veers dangerously close into over-acting when compared to others in this troupe); while in other moments, this drug-addled poisonous snake is possessed of such insights that she can destroy anyone else on the screen. And it's the slightly-over-the-top nature of her turn that makes August: Osage County such a polarising experience as it blisters through such an affliction of meanness from its lead - even if the familiarity of family gatherings and meal-times with relatives proves a little too close to the knuckle.

Against everyone else, Streep fully owns her time on screen; but Julia Roberts comes close to matching her with a growing frustration that anyone forced to confront a sick relative / frustrating family member can relate to. Of the men on show, Cumberbatch seems to be woefully miscast as the clumsy halfwit, suffering from awkward guilt, Mulroney is nothing short of a sleaze and only Cooper (and Shepard in his brief scenes at the start) find the backbone of character to shine. In particular, Cooper's moment to stand tall against Mattie Fae's continuing barbs is devastatingly well done as Charles decides enough is enough - with just a few words and some acting, he delivers a punch that carries more emotion and conveys more weight than Streep's juddering harpy presents all the way through.

That's the thing with August: Osage County; it's almost unrelenting in its dysfunctional vitriol that you completely understand why the characters gradually leave as the venomous barbs begin to hit home. There's no reason to support a monster and there's no feeling in the audience that doing so is a remotely rewarding experience.

But that also doesn't make for a comfortable experience as the vile Violet lashes out and there's little spark as the disparate cast come and go; the character arcs aren't as rewarding as perhaps they may be in their stage versions, with just leaving (Exeunt omnes) being the MO that's overused - the overall feeling in August: Osage County is more one of it being there to shock than anything else - despite there being sadness lurking in Violet's background, and despite Streep's at times OTT turn, there's little to care about as this family implodes.

Extras: An evening with, Deleted scenes, Audio commentary

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