Movies
The acting is good, the stories are smart and the sense of humor is typically Welsh: dark and tragic. The Acid House won't disappoint Welsh fans, but a Danny Boyle film it is not.
A slick and stylish crime flick. Not the oldskool kind, but a more contemporary take, in line with the type of films we saw coming out of the USA around the start of the new millennium. It's a film I liked quite a bit the first time I watched it, a good 15 years later it has lost some of its initial charm. Slevin goes to visit an acquaintance (Nick) in New York, when he arrives the guy is nowhere to be found. Slevin settles down in his apartment, but soon after two burly men come knocking to pick him up. They mistake him for Nick and Slevin gets mixed up in some very shady business. All he can do is play along. The dialogs are pretty witty, the cinematography is polished, and the characters are daft but amusing. It's fast-paced from start to finish and there are fun details scattered throughout the film, it's just that there have been similar films since that have improved on the formula. It's still a good film, just not a personal favorite anymore.Read all
A rather basic retelling of the Frankenstein story, this time from the perspective of Igor, Frankenstein's hunchback assistant. A bit odd since the original story didn't even have the Igor character, then again who cares with all these modern reboots and reimaginings. The monster is there, that's all that counts. McGuigan's film focuses mostly on the creation and history of the monster. There's a little extra background to Igor's character, a hapless romance that amounts to nothing and a police investigation that fails to add extra tension, but most of the time is spent trying to bring Frankenstein's creature to life. It's a shame then that the film fails to capture the imagination. The setting is rich enough and McAvoy/Radcliffe do their best, but the film is just a little lifeless, much like its famous creature. I had hoped McGuigan would've taken this to the next level, sadly he delivers a rather generic blockbuster interpretation. It's certainly not terrible, just forgettable.Read all