Immortals - 3 / 5
Surprisingly good film. I'd expected a copy of 300, but with better locations and more outrageous costumes (director Tarsem Singh's trademark). It turned out to be a bit more than simply testosterony. The story was simple yet effective, and the actors were well picked. Rourke had to play his usual role as the villain, I finally found out why they picked Henry Cavill as the next Superman (that typical Man of Steel-look
is there, it just isn't that obvious), and Luke Evans (whom I'm really starting to like) is acting far too well for the role he was given. It's also nice to see Stephen Dorff slowly reappearing in major roles. And Freida Pinto is just stunning.
One of Cavill's charges in the tunnel - a shot that
should have reminded me of 300 - for some reason made me think of the hallway fight in Oldboy. And I really enjoyed the "divine intervention" fights where they suddenly went from 'normal' action sequences to all-round splatterfests which were actually pretty gore (but Tarsem is capable of adding gore to his films - remember that horse in The Cell?).
Even though it's not a deep film, it is an enjoyable action movie, filled with great visuals and even the 3D (which was added in postproduction
- I had no choice at my local cinema -) was surprisingly well done. Always fun when a movie like this is better than I expected.
Doubted between a 3.5 and a 3 out of 5 in my rating, but my rule is "when in doubt, pick the rating closest to 2.5"...
Real Steel - 2 / 5
Standard and clichéd beyond belief: if you've seen the trailer, you've seen the film. Don't bother with this one, because the robot fights aren't good at all (even though they had Sugar Ray Leonard as a consultant), and Hugh Jackman is acting like he's shooting another Lipton Ice Tea commercial. Even the one not-so-standard idea in the entire film was blatantly stolen from Rocky.
Heck, at the end of the final robot boxing match, Jackman's character was calling out to his son Max. While he was shouting "Max! MAAAAX!!!" all I could think of was "Adriaaan! ADRIAAAAAN!!!"...
A complete waste of Anthony Mackie's acting talent, imo. And he was given far too small a role...
