Sherlock Holmes Review

Sherlock Holmes

C+

A Review by Frederick Cholowski

Old characters they seem to like to be brought back in its new age. While after JJ Abrams brought back Star Trek, and very well succeeded there were sure to be more to follow. Sherlock Holmes is the next attempt to bring back old characters that seem to have drifted away over the years, but does Guy Ritchie do as excellent of a job as JJ Abrams. Well sorry to say he doesn't and Sherlock Holmes falls flat on its face in multiple ways.

This movie was disappointing for multiple reasons. First let's start with the plot line that involves Sherlock Holmes(Robert Downey Jr.), who has been off the job for quite a while and is going quite insane. His ex-partner Watson(Jude Law) who Sherlock is living with is annoyed with the shenanigans that Sherlock is presenting in his house such as shooting the wall and doing multiple experiments on his dog. Also, Watson is getting engaged with a beautiful woman named Mary(Kelly Reilly) and does not want to be disturbed by Sherlock, but when an old nemesis Lord Blackwood (Mark Strong) rises from the grave, Watson and Sherlock are forced to hunt down their old nemesis and find out what evil plan he's up to.

There's couple other characters as well. Rachel McAdams plays Alder a girl who's trying to woe Sherlock but ends up failing most of the time. She also ends up being a double agent for a larger threat. And there's also a chief of police to get made fun of a lot.

Overall, the plot kind of sucks. It's your average good guy, trying to defeat the bad guy from doing evil stuff plot and doesn't really go far and enough. In other words, it's an origin story that doesn't really speak of any origins. Also, the ending sucks, it's the whole Terminator Salvation thing "oh we beaten this guy, but now there's something even bigger that we have to go destroy" it satisfies even less than Terminator.

The action could have saved this for mediocrity, but some of those scenes are just bad. There is one scene in the middle of the movie, where explosions are going off everywhere in slow-motion, and it just looks terrible and really cheesy. There are some points in this movie, where you wonder why you're even watching it. This may sound harsh, but scenes like the explosions scene does make you shake your head.

The best thing about this film and the thing that saves it is the acting. Robert Downey Jr. and Jude Law are really great and have this great chemistry. It's like they've been doing these rolls together for years, and it's fun to watch them constantly yapping at each other. On the other hand, Rachel McAdams kind of sucks in this movie, and does not capture her role as I would've wanted. And then there is that police guy who gets made fun of a lot. Oh and Lord Blackwood is serviceable as well.

Sherlock Holmes is a fairly average film, which is disappointing because I expected a lot out of it. The plots to straightforward the ending sucks, and the actions cheesy and overall it just doesn't live up to expectations. Hopefully in the sequel (which is definitely coming by the way) will improve on multiple things that this one fell short of. It's not a terrible film, but Sherlock Holmes fails to meet expectations on multiple levels. And that's definitely disappointing.

District 9 Review

District 9

A+

Alright let's start on this note. In my review of Avatar I said somewhere on the lines of this film has to be really really good to knock become a contender with Avatar for film of the year. I have to say now after watching this film that I'm conflicted on what my movie of the year is.

Well to the movie now, District 9 is an interesting take on human contact with aliens. The movie starts with an alien mother ship landing over of all places Johannesburg South Africa. After a few months of the ship just sitting there the army of South Africa go in and raid the ship and see what's up. They find 1 million malnourished and unhealthy aliens. They under pressure from the rest of the world create a camp for the aliens come to stay and eat. This camp due to weapons is now heavily militarised and then as soon as you know it it's a slum. Then revolts begin to happen and before long the alien affairs group of MNU is forced to move them to a new camp. Unfortunately though all the legality is a white wash and they take advantage of the aliens who are only "Prawns" beings who are not smart and have lost there leaders.

This is the first third of the film shot mainly in a documentary style with some cinematic portions thrown in there as well. This gets the entire deep back-story of the film introduced before we jump into the last to parts of the film witch are more cinematic and less documentary.

span style="font-size:12;"> The next two thirds are about the leader of the moving the alien project Wilkus Van De Merwe (Sharlto Copley). He has a lovely wife and a good job at MNU but isn't the brightest. While evicting aliens he finds a mysterious liquid while searching through an alien's shack. He accidently sprays the liquid at himself and begins a slow, painful, and gruesome transformation into an alien. He soon is captured by his own company MNU and attempts to use his now alien arm to use weapons. After finding out he can use weapons, they use him as an experiment. He (of course) dose not like this and runs and takes refuge in district 9. He joins an alien Christopher Johnson on a campaign to get the liquid back and try to get the aliens home.

The whole story is amazing and layered with lots of stuff to soak in. This is the probably would happen if aliens landed. It proves how mean we can be and what the evil things we have done during the ages.

This is a low budget film but you won't even notice. The aliens look amazing and the action scenes are both creative and look great. There is one scene that involves a meck suit that is my personal favourite action scene all year with multiple layers to it and amazing all out skirmishes. Just the pure creativity of this film is amazing from the documentary style at the beginning to the depth and the pure awesomeness of the action scenes at the end it is just amazing.

Just a note though this movie is 14a in Canada but I do not recommend it for a younger audience at all. The violence is extremely gory and they say the f word alone 150 times (give or take 2-3 and yes I actually counted watching this my second time through). Stick with the R rating in the US because the rating in Canada in my opinion is a bit light.

Overall District 9 is an amazing film that is bursting with creativity and depth. The message is strong, the writing is great and the action scenes for 30 million dollars are amazing. Overall this is by

far one of the best of the year and a contender against Avatar for film of the year.