Since I've seen two new films recently I thought I would go and review them both in one post. So below are my reviews for The BFG and Star Trek Beyond.
The BFG
The book and 1989 animated film are very close to my heart. I used to love the story of The BFG and I remember in primary school when the teacher would roll in the TV and VHS player and stick on the animated film which as much as I enjoyed, also used to scare the crap out of me. When I heard that Steven Spielberg was going to be making a live action adaptation I couldn't wait to see what he did with it.
For the most part I enjoyed this film, its a visual delight and features some great performances. The motion capture and computer effects are really, really good and truly makes this the best live action adaptation of the book we could get. There are a few flaws though and one them is that there really isn't that much of a story here, after revisiting the animated film recently I have found that this has always been the case, I mean it is a short book after all. Spielberg knows this and does his best to keep the visuals at the forefront of the film and hopes that the pretty colours will distract children from its pretty slow paced plot.
What Spielberg also does with this film is take away the fear, although there are some tense moments, you only hear that children go missing as opposed to hearing that a whole orphanage has been eaten and bones left by the window. The world that The BFG is set in is a scary one and it was a world that left an impression on me as child. For better or worse, kids aren't going to be having nightmares about this one.
If you want a good time with your family with a colourful and visually pleasing film then you cannot go wrong with The BFG. I am giving it a rating of 3.5/5.
Star Trek Beyond
I love the new Star Trek reboot films. I know this is not everybody's opinion but I get such a great kick out of them, they are really fun space action adventure films with an amazing cast. Now I should probably point out that I am not a Trekkie and therefore having a lack of knowledge of the original show allows me to look at them in a more open way. Now a lot of Star Trek fans haven't liked the last two movies but the majority seem to have liked this third one, the film I believe to be the weakest in the series so far.
Now don't get me wrong, it's not a bad film, I love that its smaller in scale and you get more time with the characters, but I never really felt like I fully connected with them like in previous installments. For the most part, this film is just a big dumb action movie, it's pretty predictable and has a lot of cool sequences and yes, even motorbike chases however, I did feel these big set pieces were let down by an obvious reduction in the quality of CGI. A lot of the sets and prosthetic's look and feel very real but whenever they cut to something bigger it almost always looked fake and took me out of the film. After watching Into Darkness on the same day I also noticed that the colours were more muted in Beyond and I didn't really like the overall look of the film.
Story wise, it's simple and fun and allows the supporting cast to get more screen time, allowing this to be more of a ensemble film. I did however question the choice of casting the amazing Idris Elba as the villain only to then cover him up in make up and alter his voice. Strange choice but maybe the villain would have been a lot worse without an actor of his calibre playing him.
I didn't hate this film, I just didn't love it as much as the other two. I still really want to stay in this universe and follow this cast on their adventures as I feel they still have a lot of great ones to come. I am rating Star Trek Beyond a 3/5.
Well I hope you enjoyed these reviews. What did you think of the two films? Let me know in the comments below.
Thanks for reading!
The BFG
For the most part I enjoyed this film, its a visual delight and features some great performances. The motion capture and computer effects are really, really good and truly makes this the best live action adaptation of the book we could get. There are a few flaws though and one them is that there really isn't that much of a story here, after revisiting the animated film recently I have found that this has always been the case, I mean it is a short book after all. Spielberg knows this and does his best to keep the visuals at the forefront of the film and hopes that the pretty colours will distract children from its pretty slow paced plot.
What Spielberg also does with this film is take away the fear, although there are some tense moments, you only hear that children go missing as opposed to hearing that a whole orphanage has been eaten and bones left by the window. The world that The BFG is set in is a scary one and it was a world that left an impression on me as child. For better or worse, kids aren't going to be having nightmares about this one.
If you want a good time with your family with a colourful and visually pleasing film then you cannot go wrong with The BFG. I am giving it a rating of 3.5/5.
Star Trek Beyond
I love the new Star Trek reboot films. I know this is not everybody's opinion but I get such a great kick out of them, they are really fun space action adventure films with an amazing cast. Now I should probably point out that I am not a Trekkie and therefore having a lack of knowledge of the original show allows me to look at them in a more open way. Now a lot of Star Trek fans haven't liked the last two movies but the majority seem to have liked this third one, the film I believe to be the weakest in the series so far.
Now don't get me wrong, it's not a bad film, I love that its smaller in scale and you get more time with the characters, but I never really felt like I fully connected with them like in previous installments. For the most part, this film is just a big dumb action movie, it's pretty predictable and has a lot of cool sequences and yes, even motorbike chases however, I did feel these big set pieces were let down by an obvious reduction in the quality of CGI. A lot of the sets and prosthetic's look and feel very real but whenever they cut to something bigger it almost always looked fake and took me out of the film. After watching Into Darkness on the same day I also noticed that the colours were more muted in Beyond and I didn't really like the overall look of the film.
Story wise, it's simple and fun and allows the supporting cast to get more screen time, allowing this to be more of a ensemble film. I did however question the choice of casting the amazing Idris Elba as the villain only to then cover him up in make up and alter his voice. Strange choice but maybe the villain would have been a lot worse without an actor of his calibre playing him.
I didn't hate this film, I just didn't love it as much as the other two. I still really want to stay in this universe and follow this cast on their adventures as I feel they still have a lot of great ones to come. I am rating Star Trek Beyond a 3/5.
Well I hope you enjoyed these reviews. What did you think of the two films? Let me know in the comments below.
Thanks for reading!
No comments:
Post a Comment
Please Feel Free To Comment!