some worthwhile films horror shock!

by good fortune i (we!) have been able to watch a couple of films of late. it helps when James has a mid-morning nap on a weekend, or goes to bed relatively early!!

first up is one that i sign the praises very highly of, 3:10 To Yuma. being rather a fan of the Eastwood westerns i tend to be heavy handed in looking at non-Eastwood ones as such, but it looked rather difficult to make a mess with Russel Crowe and Christian Bale involved. this appearance is rather true, as it is a damn fine movie.

it's a rather conventional plot for the genre - hard up rancher, faced with the dawn of the railway system and his land being more valuable than he, agrees to take a notorious criminal into custody and deliver him to justice. the journey taken for this is the spine of the story, and there's some pretty good dialogue and interplay going along, in between the obligatory scenes of "action" as it were.

some of the character development toward the end, not to mention at least one of the shoot-outs, becomes rather contrived as part of getting the whole thing to fit into a neat two hour running time, but cliche seldom gets in the way of one enjoying a rather good western romp here. it's not likely that either Mr Bale or Mr Crowe are going to hold this up as their greatest acting accomplishment, but then again equally both are sterling in the job they do here.

fans of the western genre have probably already long since seen it, but if not, you can happily give over two hours of your time to this excellent film.


30 Days Of Night has that double whammy of being yet another vampire film and being based on some sort of comic book or, if you will, "graphic novel". in the case of the latter, the (ahem) average quality of things like Sin City and 300 hardly filled me with confidence before watching this one.

it seems the concern was misplaced, though, as it turns out that 30 Days is a pretty decent film. it's just not a vampire one. i mean, yes, the "baddies" if you will are some sort of quasi-vampire type things, but the whole plot pitch is pretty much "The Thing meets Assault On Precinct 13 on ice". you could almost describe it as "Dawn of the Dead on ice" i suppose, but there is not really enough shopping mall action to justify it.

plot? a remote town in Alaska or somewhere which experiences no sunlight for 30 days of the year gets invaded by vampires. after the initial attacks, the survivors hole up and try to survive whilst, to quote Jim Morrison and his merry band, waiting for the sun. oh, and they smack the odd vampire here and there to pass the time.

the best bit is some class sort of vehicle which appears to have an industrial size and strength chainsaw on the front of it. believe me, the film is worth watching for that alone!!

it's not the biggest nor best action/vampire/horror/thriller ever made, but it is certainly better than the kind of horror "scares and thrills" type rubbish that America has been investing in over the last decade or so. well worth a look!

anyway, nice one if these reviews have been of any help!!!


be excellent to each other!!!