Monthly Archives: March 2012

Chance Crawford (of Gossip Girl) plays a young drug dealer with emotional and social issues.

Twelve is a dark and mildly disturbing ride in White Mike’s life, as he and his friends slide down hill to even darker depths.

It’s an interesting story, on the dark and depressing side of life. Reasonably well done. Chance shows more of his acting ability in this than we ever see in Gossip Girl. In Gossip Girl we see his character as flat, boring and monotone. He stands out in this movie. Too bad he can’t bring some of this depth to his current TV series.

6/10

Immortals is a Greek myth period piece.

I found that they didn’t give preferential treatment to any one lead character; the hero, the villain, or the hero’s girlfriend to be. Usually that’s a sign of a story that never works for the audience. In this case it didn’t matter. The movie is riveting even though it’s uncomplicated. The action scenes are fantastic. Battle scenes are often slowed down, and we see complex fight choreography between many duos on the screen at once that seems impossible. Perhaps the impressive and well choreographed fight sequences are pieced together, but you can’t tell, and it looks fabulous.

My only complaint may be that there are too many whispered scenes that were hard to hear. Whispered scenes in movies should not actually be whispered to the audience, we should see the illusion of them whispering, the audience shouldn’t have to strain to hear what’s going on. This was a constant annoyance, and I would rate the movie a 10 if it wasn’t for this shortcoming.

If you like this style of movie, ancient quest and battle stories, this one is absolutely outstanding.

9/10

Poor Sinbad must be rolling in his grave (if he ever was a real person that is) cause this Sinbad adventure movie is ridiculously bad. If a high school theatre group was given a budget that allowed them to make a movie, and add some really bad special effects, this is what you would get.

The only, and I mean only thing that makes this mess worth sitting through is our Sinbad actor, Manu Bennett. Manu also plays the character Crixus in the Spartacus TV series. He is excellent in Spartacus. He has an obvious talent for playing these period characters, even aside from the muscles. But even a good actor can only do so much with a terrible script and horrible production values.

Unless you are a fan of Manu’s, pass on this painful piece. It’s akin to neighbourhood kids making a backyard movie, and doing it baddly.

2.5/10