Conan the Barbarian (2011) Dir: Marcus Nispel

Remake of the cult sword and sorcery favourite.

The plot:
Conan is a man born of battle, whose mother gave birth on the field of war. Conan belongs to the tribe known as the Cimmerian, residing in the land of Hyboria. When, as an adolescent, Conan witnesses his village being razed to the ground and his father murdered, he adopts the life of a wanderer but, as is the way of these things, his wandering days cannot last and, eventually, his life must come full circle as he faces the man responsible for his father's death.....

With Baywatch stalwart Jason Momoa in the lead role, this is a real mess of a movie. One battle scene leads to another battle scene leads to another, with nothing by way of character development in between, to make you care about the stuff that's actually taking place.
Momoa broods, holds aloft his broad sword and flares his nostrils menacingly as required but, in truth, he's not very good when called on to do anything else like, you know, speaking for instance.
There's some guff about a tyrannical ruler searching for a 'pure-blood' so that he can become a God but, frankly, the whole thing was so terribly tiresome I stopped watching the film and started listening to my mp3 player after about an hour.
Far and away the most tedious film I've seen in a while, even copious amounts of bare-breasted wenches couldn't save this one.
Didn't like the original much.
Really hated this.

1 out of 5

Rise of the Planet of the Apes (2011) Rupert Wyatt

Wow.
Just wow.

The plot:
Oscar nominee James Franco plays Will Rodman, a scientist working with chimpanzees, hoping to find a cure for Alzheimer's Disease. He's got a vested interest in the project as his pianist father Charles, played by the always excellent John Lithgoe - last seen as the fantastically demented serial killer Trinity in Dexter - suffers from the condition himself.
When a failed demonstration of the efficacy of the research results in funding being pulled the head of the project orders the chimps be put down.
Secretly, Rodman takes a baby chimp home, names him Caesar, and marvels as the youngster displays remarkable intelligence developing, IQ-wise, far more swiftly than even a human child would.
But all cannot remain the same forever and, ultimately, Caesar will be made to choose between his life with humans, or a life with his own kind.

That's all I'm prepares to say about the plot, even though the trailer already revealed way too much.
With stunning visual effects used to bring to life the simian characters, this movie has set a new standard for CGI characters. With genuine emotion, the character of Caesar is one that draws the viewer in completely and, within just a few moments, you completely forget that it's just Andy Serkis in a Mo-Cap suit.
The plot barrels along, with not a single scene or line of dialogue wasted.
Emotionally, this pulls you all over the place. I was a wreck by the end, and just had to remain seated whilst the rest of the audience filed out, simply to catch my breath.
With a rousing finale that is so climactic you'll require a heart of stone not to well up, this is a magnificent reboot of the much loved Monkey Planet franchise and is, head and shoulders, my movie of the year so far.
Absolutely brilliant.

5 out of 5

Salt (2010) Dir: Phillip Noyce

Angelina Jolie action 'vehicle' Salt is a rather silly, surprisingly dull affair.
The plot: When a Russian defector walks into CIA Headquarters voluntarily to turn himself in, Jolie's Evelyn Salt is sent in to interrogate him, to find out what he knows and, just as importantly, to find out what he wants in return for his information. The man is unusually co-operative and, most intriguingly, he claims to want nothing in return.
Then he drops his bombshell:
He claims that an agent named Evelyn Salt is a Russian double agent, one of a batch of sleeper agents set in place by the KGB during the height of the Cold War in readiness for Day X, the day Russia would strike out at America and crush it once and for all.
Salt is rattled, her superiors more so who intend to take her captive, but she has other ideas, making good her escape in a manner so complicated and contrived it brought a genuine smile.
So begins a cat and mouse game of 'hunt the rogue agent,' Jolie protesting her innocence, claiming that she is just trying to protect her husband.
Famously intended as a Tom Cruise movie, the makers had to switch genders when he pulled out to make that height of banality Knight and Day instead, though this isn't much better, in truth.
The set-pieces are ludicrously unrealistic, which would be OK, but they are handled poorly, too, the CGI woven into the onscreen mayhem in a very slipshod manner.
Jolie is OK, I suppose, though she doesn't get to say much, her role pretty much confined to running around a lot, pouting with those freakish rubber lips and clinging on to the top of moving vehicles.
Interest levels aren't helped any by the casting of Liev Schreiber as supporting male, an actor so boring and lifeless he seems to suck the energy out of every scene in which he appears.
Whilst not as bad as I may be implying, this is effectively a watered down version of far superior espionage thrillers; Bourne, Alias, even Bond and, ultimately, just feels a little plodding and tame.
Yawn.

3 out of 5

The Expendables (2010) Dir: Sylvester Stallone

Sylvester 'pushing sixty five' Stallone delivers another pumping, high octane actioner.
The plot: A covert CIA agent (Bruce Willis) hires a motley crew of mercenaries, led by Stallone's Barney Ross, to take out the tyrannical ruler of a Gulf Coast island - played with some gusto by Dexter's David 'Angel Baptista' Zayas - and his wealthy American overlords.
Seriously, that's all you need to know.
As most will be aware, the lure of the movie is the red meat on show, with Ross' team made up of Jason 'The Stath' Statham, Jet Li, Dolph Lundgren, Randy Couture (whoever he is) and Terry Crews (whoever he happens to be), half dozen of the primest specimens of manliness you are ever likely to assemble.
Stallone strings together a series of outlandishly implausible, yet riotously entertaining set-pieces, the script around which they are draped one of the weakest I have heard in manies the moon, with Sly making the classic mistake of trying to write comedy when, as a human being, he is about as humorous as a severe bout of throat cancer. A quibble, but a small one as, inevitably, it's the action that is the star here and, fortunately, it is just excellent.
Dumb as a bag of scratchings it may be, but this manages to showcase several scenes I have certainly never encountered in a movie before; the 'fuel dump' attack by the waterplane, The Stath's death move towards the end of the final showdown and a gun so powerful it makes those automated sentry guns in Aliens look like freakin' pea-shooters. Talking of THAT gun, whenever she appears there is the welcome addition of a touch of splatter, albeit of the CGI kind, though it is worth noting that CGI, for the most part, plays second fiddle to proper, live action stunt work done the old-fashioned way, lending the movie an air of credibility it may otherwise have lacked.
Set your brainwaves to dormant, stick matchsticks in your eyelids and strap yourself to an iron lung to keep your basic bodily functions active.
Then sit back and enjoy.

4 out of 5