Category: dice roll: 5

Jurassic World Review

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jurassic-world-posterFor many people, myself included, the original Jurassic Park is forever tied to memories of childhood. I remember everything about my first experience, right down to the smell of the pastry I was eating at the time. Not even the sequels could dull that thrill, though I must admit I have never actively hated either of them until later re-viewings.

Going into Jurassic World was like going into Star Wars: The Phantom Menace again. Would the nostalgia overshadow the flaws? Would it at least be better than the sequels? Short answer: Yes, and HELL YES. If you want explanations to go with that, read the review, which has minor SPOILERS.

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Avengers: Age of Ultron (spoiler-ish review)

On By filmrollerIn action, dice roll: 5, review1 Comment

avengers-age-of-ultronThe Marvel Cinematic Universe is steadily becoming comic-levels of complicated. It’s come to the point where I feel every review should begin with a synopsis of where we are in the timeline. Right now, it’s enough to say that we are post-Winter Soldier by some months. This review does assume you’ve seen pretty much everything that’s out (though I’m not going to spoil Daredevil for you).

The team is hunting down Loki’s staff, which we last saw being played with in a Hydra research facility. We have to assume Thor came back to Midgard with Odin!Loki’s blessing, which begs the question – did Loki as Odin order Thor to retrieve it? Probably. The reason he needs it become clear, and fans have already suspected it. But before it can be returned to Asgard the Avengers have to deal with the artificial intelligence that spawns from Tony’s tinkering: Ultron.

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Interstellar Review

On By filmrollerIn dice roll: 5, sci-fi2 Comments

interstellar3As the spaceship Endurance inched towards the horizon of the wormhole, I felt that bottomless “whoop” like when you’re about to go over the edge of a roller coaster’s first drop. My stomach clenched, and then we were through, now faced with visuals somewhere between a kaleidoscope and a hall of mirrors, both in deep space.

Interstellar is the long awaited next Nolan feature, and as with all long waits you really want the payoff to be everything you hoped for and more. With this in mind, I’d like to try to be a little more forgiving, and not factor in anticipation into this review. That said, Interstellar is not without its problems.

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The Fault In Our Stars Review

On By filmrollerIn dice roll: 5, drama, review1 Comment

fault-our-stars-movie-posterThis review will not be very objective, but opinions never are, so why even try pretending? I pre-ordered The Fault In Our Stars when it was first announced. I haven’t read it more than once, but I did enjoy it a lot. It made me want to read more of John Green’s work, and I admit I was oddly hyped for a movie about teenagers with cancer.

The Fault In Our Stars is the story of Hazel Grace and Augustus Waters. It a story about young love. I liked the book because it managed to be deep in that teenager way I remember. Back when I read books that flew far over my head because I was searching for something. John Green captured that without being pretentious, unlike us back then. It’s hard not to know beforehand going in, even if you haven’t read the book, that this is going to be a tearjerker. One of the taglines reads: “One Sick Love Story.” Enough said, but not quite. Don’t let yourself get depressed out of seeing it, for the story has a lot of humour and love in it.

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X-Men: Days of Future Past

On By filmrollerIn action, dice roll: 5, reviewLeave a comment

rs_634x939-140324091106-634.jennifer-lawrence-x-men.ls.32414It’s strange to me to think that there are seven X-Men movies. It certainly doesn’t feel that way, and I think that has to do with the quality. Even though I wasn’t against The Wolverine when it came out, I’ve found it has very little re-watch potential. The same can be said for First Class, even though part of me knows that’s blasphemy. All that said, the X-Men movie franchise has not, as far as I can tell, been in any danger of stopping.

X-Men: Days of Future Past feels like new ground and back-to-basics at the same time, and I think that’s what makes this, in my mind, the most rewatchable X-Men movie since the original. Like all superhero movies, I enjoyed the hell of out it for the pure spectacle alone, problems and all.

The film starts in the near future, where mutants are hunted to the point of extinction with super Destroyer-like Sentinels. Professor X and Magneto have put aside their differences in a last ditch effort to save their kind. They send Wolverine back in time to the 70s to convince their younger selves to change the future.

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Godzilla Review

On By filmrollerIn action, dice roll: 4, dice roll: 5, review, sci-fiLeave a comment

GodzillaPoster2014The trailer for Godzilla (2014) gave me actual shivers. I’ve never been a Godzilla fan, but I think I understood his potential, even while being misled by the fun but generic monster movie of 1998. When I saw the first image, I think I finally understood why hardcore fans referred to the previous Hollywood version as Godzilla In Name Only. The iconic profile, obscured in debris fog, made my anticipation rise to fanboy-levels, even though I have never seen an original Godzilla film.

You do not want to go into this movie spoiled. This film has one of the few trailers, and marketing campaigns, that hasn’t ruined anything. Suffice it to say, it’s a film about Godzilla, and there might be something else lurking around. The humans in the movie are just as important, however, if not more. You have Bryan Cranston as a nuclear engineer, with Aaron Taylor-Johnson playing his son, who is married to Elizabeth Olsen. Fun fact: they’ll be playing brother and sister, Quicksilver and Scarlet Witch, in the next Avenger movie, hopefully with a different kind of chemistry.

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The Amazing Spider-Man 2 Review

On By filmrollerIn action, dice roll: 5, radio review2 Comments

The-Amazing-Spider-Man-2-New-Poster-spider-man-35222096-1024-1421I was really excited to see this sequel, mostly because I was one of the few people on the internet who liked the first one.

Maybe I exaggerate my dislike for the “originals”, as I know I saw them all in theatres and didn’t really have much to say about them (except the third one). In hindsight I find myself with a bad taste in my mouth every time I see the Goblin’s stupid mask, or Doc Oc’s puppy-like psychic metal puppets. I won’t say The Amazing Spider-Man was perfect, but to me it was an improvement even when it just retreaded the previous films’ steps.

Spoilers for the ending of the last film!

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Captain America: The Winter Absence

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captain_america_2__the_winter_soldier_poster_by_littlemissromanoff-d6dgl3mCaptain Steve Rogers is not a very complicated character. He always tries to do the right thing, full stop. But, that does not mean stories centered around him are any less dramatic, interesting or complex than for example the anti-hero Tony Stark’s adventures. That, however, is not to say that every Captain America story actually is any of those things, but the point still stands. The world around Steve Rogers is all in shades of grey, so who can Captain America trust to help him choose the right thing? The baddies no longer wear easily identifiable insignias.

Captain America: The Winter Soldier shows that SHIELD might not be the bulwark of protection and justice they all like to think. Steve comes into the possession of a piece of mysterious software that might change the face of humanity forever. At the same time, he must fight enemies from within SHIELD, and of course the Winter Soldier, whom I assume everyone already knows who is.   Continue reading “Captain America: The Winter Absence” →

Not Dead Yet – Dead Snow 2 Review

On By filmrollerIn comedy, dice roll: 5, horror, reviewLeave a comment

deadsnowIf you haven’t heard about the Norwegian zombie-movie Dead Snow (2009) then you are in for a treat – if you like zombie comedies, that is. The film resides both inside and outside the genre, poking fun and fulfilling the tropes at the same time. It is gruesome, but the actual massacre isn’t really disgusting. The most grotesque moment, for instance, comes not during one of the many intestine-ripping scenes, but when two of the group have sex in the outhouse. The film features the standard “friends on a camping trip in the mountains”, but ups the ante by including zombie Nazis on the hunt for their Nazi-gold. One by one, the group gets massacred, ending with our last protagonist thinking he finally got away, only to have the Nazi leader, Oberst Herzog (how many zombie movies have zombies with names?) about to finish him off.

And that is where Dead Snow 2 (Dø Snø 2) starts, after a quick recap, so there are some spoilers ahead if you haven’t seen the first one. Our protagonist had his arm cut off during the first film, and during his escape he manages to rip the arm off Oberst Herzog. At the hospital the doctors accidentally attach the zombie’s arm, which turns out has a bit of a mind of its own. Meanwhile, Oberst Herzog and his army of zombies start recruiting in order to finally accomplish the mission Hitler set them: wiping out the quiet town of Talvik.

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The Big Awesome Wolf

On By filmrollerIn biopic, comedy, dice roll: 5, drama, radio review1 Comment

MV5BMjIxMjgxNTk0MF5BMl5BanBnXkFtZTgwNjIyOTg2MDE@._V1_SX640_SY720_The Wolf of Wall Street has so far gathered one Golden Globe and a tidy little pile of nominations and awards. It is in the running for four Oscar statues. My hopes could not be higher for Martin Scorsese’s new epic. Thankfully, my hopes were met with copious amounts of alcohol.

Jordan Belfort’s real life already inspired the movie Boiler Room (2000) according to Wikipedia. Leonardo DiCaprio plays Scorsese’s version of course. We begin the story when he’s hired as a stockbroker at Rothschild in 1987. When the firm goes broke on Black Monday, Jordan has to go sell penny stocks for chump change – only he’s really, really good at it. Soon, he and his buddy Donnie (Jonah Hill) are making more money than they can spend – except they do spend it, on drugs, alcohol and women. Their enterprise soon attracts the FBI.

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