White House has fallen Down Olympus Dying Hard

You may perhaps have seen a movie called Olympus has fallen? Its about a group of terrorists who take over the White house in America and try to launch some nuclear bombs. It contains lots of scenes of blowing things up and generally smashing the White House about.

Well not content with smashing the white house up just the once, this year we have almost the identical movie White House Down. I can only imagine it is “Please the Terrorists Month” or something because the timing of these releases is terrible with the two films and their story lines being almost identical. Maybe a couple of directors couldn’t agree on how to make the film, so they both had their own goes…

Either way White House Down is not a bad action film. If you have seen Die Hard (again pretty much the same storyline here) you will love this film, Channing Tatum dons the famous Die Hard white singlet and goes into action. White House Down is at least is original in asking us can we really trust the people in elected government? (in between lots of blowing things up).

I had this film sitting around to watch for quite a while (well a couple of years actually). It was on my if-I-absolutely-run-out-of-everything-to-watch pile for two years because I plain didn’t like the original version with Dudley Moore.

Ok it wasn’t the worst film ever made, but seeing that kind of waste and squandering (even as a comedy) usually makes me want to put my foot through the screen.

I was delightfully surprised with the re-make which, unlike the original, was actually very, very funny. Starring Russell Brand who I loved in Forgetting Sarah Marshall (he particularly cracked me up when he divorced Katy Perry via SMS!) and the multi-talented Helen Mirren who was a brilliant straight person to Brand’s craziness.

As the cat is out of the bag anyway (this is a remake) the story sort of went: Brand mega-rich spoiled, immature, alchoholic heir is forced by his mother to marry a woman she has chosen to try and straighten him out, or lose his mega squillions. The women he is forced to marry is Jennifer Garner who looks fairly typically like the average square-jawed over-toned American woman with the motor mouth to match. Brand much prefers cutsey Greta Gerwig and there the fun begins.

If you hated the original like me, give this remake a try, you will be delightfully surprised.

This is a very important British film which chronicles the life of a young African girl kidnapped from her village and sold into slavery to Arabic couples, first in Yemen then in Britain.

The most alarming feature of the film is that it is based on a true story and is fairly close to the mark for thousands of women and men smuggled into the UK each year to work as slaves for rich people. They are hidden right out in the open.

This film is credited with highlighting the extent of the problem within Britain and the start of changes in legislation to properly prosecute people who keep modern day slaves. It is a hard film to watch and I defy anyone not to feel anything but sympathy for the girl and utter disgust for the people who believe in 2013 it is ok to keep other human beings in servitude.

The funniest scene not in Iron Man 3. On the promotion trail Downey manages to make a small child cry trying to convince him he is indeed Iron Man!

The first iron man film was mildly interesting. The second Iron Man film was absolutely barking mad and strange, Iron Man 3 takes us back to a semblance of slightly plausible science.

Robert Downey Jr. is as usual building bigger and better, newer metal suits with super powers that mostly defy logic. Gwyneth Paltrow is Downey’s love interest and carry’s off her role reasonably well. Downey plays up the moody, dark and depressive sides of his character with rapid bipolaresque leaps back to normality. Whether this was the intended effect or a script with poor continuity, we are left guessing.

If you saw the first film, you have pretty much seen this one, not too many very interesting new twists and turns here.

The films saving grace..lots of wanton meaningless destruction.

With oh so obvious comparisons to the transformers franchise of films, tv shows, toys (Yes the Pacific Rim toys are out now) etc. etc., pacific Rim actually was not a bad film in its own right.

I found the whole mind melting with the machines built especially to fight the massive Gamera-like monsters that invade the cities of the world, pretty interesting. I wouldn’t say it was anywhere near as interesting as the mind-melts of Avatar, but nevertheless a bit interesting!

There are so many movies I can probably compare Pacific Rim to..really the whole history of action Sci Films are in their somewhere…but all in all if you like the genre this will kill a few hours for you, even if like me you just like seeing ginormous creatures flattening US cities!