DVD Reviews10: November

Madagascar - Voices: Ben Stiller, Chris Rock, Ali G
Animated, Childrens - King Julian! I am the King! Look at my crown! It's on my head! I am wearing it right? What a champ. Also the penguins - Where are the people? We killed them and ate their livers... :D Unfortunately all the main charachters sucked ass. Poorly directed, terribly scripted, very average animation to complete the mediocrity. Ali G was teh king btw and one of the directors was the Captain Penguin. If you took out everything but the penguins and lemurs this movie would fkin rock! 1.5 stars

Kingdom of Heaven - Orlando Bloom, Jeremy Irons, Liam Neeson, Ridley Scott [D]
Action, Drama - Beautiful, rich and emotive imagery as expected from Scott. A great script teasing out more important issues of faith and morality. A fantastic cast including Irons, Neeson, and kiwi Martin Csokas, and Alexander Siddig (who I only recognised the second time around as Julian Bashir from Star Trek:DS9). Unfortunately the hero speeches are the let down at the end of the film, both poorly written, and delivered by Bloom. Cool movie nonetheless. 3.5 stars

The Iron Giant - Voices: Harry Connick Jnr, Jennifer Aniston, Vin Diesel (as the robot!), Brad Bird [D]
Animated, Childrens - From the director of The Incredibles a simply delivered, well directed childrens fantasy about having your own 40 foot Giant Robot friend from Outer Space. 50's Cold War Nuclear Family setting leads to ultimate showdown between the military and the visitor. 3 stars

Amelie - Audrey Tatou
French, Comedy, Romance - Fantastic movie. Cute and bizarre, always playful, always touching! 4 stars

The Island - Ewan MacGregor, Scarlett Johansson, Michael Bay [D]
Action - So many people said this sucked. It didn't suck, but it wasn't uber. Being an action movie, it over dramatised and simplified moral issues around genetics and evil scientists and glossed over the most interesting issues. Good use of over exposed film to create the highly contrasting and over saturated images. Although the shaky-action-cam got annoying and was overused. Bay loves car crashes and twisted metal and managed to top the ridiculously cool chase in Bad Boys 2. Scarlett is hot. Macgregor's american is wierd. The mercenary's final loyalties are inconsistent as Luke noted. Fantastic production values, I wish I get the chance to throw that much money at a movie one day - although would probably feel incredibly wasteful! 3 stars

Guess Who - Bernie Mac, Aston Kutcher
Comedy - Not bad. Had some coo black jokes hehe. 2.5 stars

Miss Congeniality 2 - Sandra Bullock
Comedy - Woeful. Really quite very poor. Nice hats, but only 1 Shatner joke, and thats where it gets it's ... 1 star

Hitch - Will Smith, Eva Mendes
Romantic Comedy - Decent soundtrack, some great scenes esp the dancing. Decent RomCom 2.5 stars